The snorer

The snorer enjoys sound sleep. It is the rest of us who are vexed with his sound! Snorers come in various flavors. In his simplest form, the snorer is like a metronome. The pitch and volume stay the same. He simply breathes audibly. Once you get used to him, he is no menace.

The second snorer is a variant of the first kind. His is a one-way traffic. You can hear the sonorous sound as he draws the breath inwards, like a syringe filling up. On the way out, the sound is muted. He blows out air in one puff through the mouth!

Some snorers are great whistlers. You hear the gurgle of the snore, followed by a high-pitched whistle. You wonder how he can whistle even when asleep. The curiosity keeps you awake, as you scrutinize his mouth- how it is held in a little pout!

And then, there is the snorer who builds the tempo step by step. The initial snore is at the lowest octave. Each succeeding snore is at the next higher pitch. You can hear the snore ascending to a crescendo. You wonder what is going to happen next! The end is in an anti-climax. After hitting the highest note, the snorer gasps, wakes himself up, turns the side of the body, and starts once more from the lowest octave. This pattern continues.

The problem gets compounded when the snorer is also a sleep talker! A snorer cannot talk coherently. He is like a drunkard who slurs over the words- now pleading and now threatening.

As if this is not scary enough, there is another brand of snorers who snore and intermittently produce animal sounds like a wolf. It is exactly a wolverine that looks at the full moon and howls! The mind is filled with images from horror films, packs of wolverines running with protruding canines. With the wolverine around, sleep is out of question!  But never make the mistake of waking up this snorer. It is 3 am in the night, and your nerves are jangled. The moment you wake up this snorer, he shrieks and scares the daylights out of you! You scream back in fright. The ping pong continues, each one scaring the other. The night cannot be more nightmarish!

And then, there is the snorer who is a blustering steam engine. He generates a resounding volume- you are 5 rooms away, and you can still hear him!

The sun is finally out. Your eyes are red as you have not slept a wink. You confront the snorer- “You snore so much. I couldn’t sleep all night”. He simply says, “Did I?” and walks away, leaving you high and dry!

The snorer is like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde- a gentle deer by the day and a snarling wolverine at night!

Wren and Martin

Few academic books enjoyed cult status like the “Wren and Martin”. This tome on English Grammar was the unrivalled Bible. It was your constant companion through school. No one saw a new copy of the book. It was like heirloom, passed from generation to generation.

That the “Wren and Martin” referred to two separate authors was lost on the students. It was taken as one composite word, the mention of which, reminded of you of that unmistakable book with a red cover.

They say the “root of education is bitter”.  To a high school student, as far as this book was concerned, the root, shoot and fruit were equally bitter.

The problem began with the size of the book. Once you stuffed The Wren and Martin into the school bag, it encroached the entire space and refused to budge. It was like the proverbial camel, to whom you gave an inch, and he ended up taking a mile! Secondly, it weighed a ton.  The student’s backbone was bent for life, carrying the load like a donkey’s burden.

Students tried innovative methods. They tore the book into multiple segments. The English teacher was aghast. To her, who referred to the book in hushed tones, it was an act of absolute sacrilege. The punishment was swift and severe.

English Grammar was tedious. Active and Passive voice, prepositions and Gerunds were like balls of clay. They had a clear form in isolation, but when rolled together, they coalesced into an amorphous mass, with no distinction whatsoever.

Elders at home, claimed to have committed the entire book to memory, “Mr. so and so, powdered and drank the entire Wren and Martin like a potion!” You imagined the aftertaste and felt like asking a counter question- “Didn’t he have anything better to do?” It seemed as purposeful as memorizing a telephone directory, with the names and the corresponding numbers! 

Students loved the “Wren and Martin” for a different reason. The book was thick and best suited for an engaging game called “Book Cricket”. You opened a page at random, and the last digit of the page-number denoted the number of runs hit by a batsman. If it ended in a zero, the batsman was out.

When the teacher was absent, students played “book cricket” for hours together. After a year-full of “book cricket”, The Wren and Martin was totally worn out.

During the summer vacation, the book lay stacked in the bookshelf. My grandfather was an erudite man. He sifted through the pages of the book. He was elated and complimented, “You have studied The Wren and Martin very well. I can discern that, from the tattered condition of the book. The knowledge will serve you well in life!”

It was tough to explain “book cricket” to grandpa!

Masks and fancy-dress!

The pandemic has altered the primary meaning of masks. In the past, masks were meant for tiny tots in a fancy dress competition. Overzealous parents made elaborate masks, drawn from characters in mythology. Unless you were the parent of one of the participating kids, masks provided comic relief through their malfunctioning.

Masks had a fundamental problem. You never got the alignment of the eyes right. You cut apertures to match with the child’s features. However, masks had a naughty habit of getting misaligned once the child got on stage. And now, the child could not see a thing. In the ensuing pitch darkness, it forgot its lines, froze on stage, and had to be escorted back. Parents blamed “stage fright” for the poor performance, conveniently overlooking the root cause.

Masks had other issues. Once the child wore the mask, it was too tight. It lifted the mask and wore it like a cap to get a breather! To remedy this problem, you drilled holes for the nostrils. One step further, the child’s voice could not be heard. And now, one more hole was punched for the mouth. Suddenly, the mask was totally frayed- they were more holes and less mask.

Masks were made from cardboard. Cardboard was smelly. Dress rehearsal was done a few minutes before the competition. Once on stage, the mythological character was sneezing uncontrollably!

Tying the mask to the child’s face was done minutes before the competition. In a hurry, two holes were punched to the sides of the mask, a thread went through it and tied to the head.  Another case of bad design. At the nick of time, the mask loosened and dangled like a beard.

To remedy this fault, masks were fitted with rubber bands. Rubber banded masks posed a greater danger. The moment the child started saying his lines, the voice served as an impetus. At the opportune moment, the rubber band snapped, and the mask was ejected like a catapult upon the audience! The result was total mayhem. The audience was in splits. The impact of the mythological character was now, of a different kind!

Fancy dress masks were essentially 2-D cutouts. With these masks, you had to be right in front. From the sides, only the cheek of the child was visible. The competition judge, positioned at an angle, had a tough time. He had no clue who this character was- whether it was a human, an animal, a deva or an asura! Parents protested, “We made such a beautiful mask for Vihaan. He did not get even a consolation prize!” 

As kids grew up, they were less cooperative, “I am not wearing this silly mask! You can wear it and sit at home!”

When life becomes too serious, head out to a tiny-tot fancy-dress competition. It will be a laughing riot. You will come out, a lot refreshed, and the world, that much easier to deal with!

Cotton Candy!

Cotton candy is indelibly linked to childhood. When the vendor reached the building, he wooed the children like the Pied Piper of Hamelin! A glass cube container was slung across his back. It was stuffed with cotton-candy balls, all soft and fluffy, in a bright pink hue.  The moment he raised his voice and lowered the box, children materialized from all directions and surrounded him.

For a paltry price, the vendor pressed the cotton ball into an umbrella mold. And out emerged an umbrella-complete with ribs and hub. He deftly created a crown-tip for the umbrella, stuck a handle to it and handed it over to the eager child. For a few more paise, the vendor metamorphosed into an expert sculptor. Right in front of your eyes, the peacock was born- with its slender neck and sharp beak, and with a fan-like tail!

Children gobbled up the umbrella and peacock in a trice, happiness writ on the face! It was unclear what captivated the children more- whether it was the color, the texture, or the sweetness. Once in the mouth, it dissolved like sugary syrup, leaving you asking for more and more.

The wandering cotton candy hawker is no more.  His extinction was precipitated by a two-fold change.  Children stay arrested at home for most parts. In addition, parents suddenly raise fundamental questions centered on the hawker and his sense of hygiene.

But even these days, the festival season unfurls funfairs in the neighborhood. Families flock to the giant wheels and merry-go-rounds, the food stalls and gaming kiosks. Invariably, the biggest hit is the cotton-candy wala! In his new avatar, he has an added attraction. You can see cotton candy in the making- how the crimson-colored concoction is stretched and woven into fine cotton-candy strands and amalgamated into a full ball of candy-floss.

Children are drawn to the stall like iron-filing to a magnet. You can see the twinkle in the eye and the delight on the face as they hold onto the candy-balloon twice their size! And when they nibble at it, it’s not just the mouth that eats. The forehead and cheeks, ears and nose are all smeared a deep pink. By the time they finish, they are a mini cotton-candy themselves!

For all its simplicity, cotton-candy teaches us life lessons. It “looks” huge and bulbous. But the moment you compress it, the entire structure collapses into a tiny ball, that fits the hollow of the palm. Life throws us challenges from time to time. They loom large and you fear how you will tide over them. In the end, they are just like cotton candy- wisps of cotton that either fly away or dwarf to the size of a little candy nugget!