By Ratna Manucha
The other day I found myself at a gathering to pay homage to a dearly departed childhood friend where the Master of Ceremonies (yes, there was one, honest) took his job rather seriously.
Once he had introduced himself and asked a few family members to speak about their association with the person who was no longer amongst us, he took it upon himself to call random people from among the crowd to come up and speak. It was obvious that they were not prepared and hence, hesitant, but he was rather a pushy fellow and wouldn’t take no for an answer. At one point he even remarked that this opportunity would not come again as ‘Old Joe’ (not his real name), had already left this world and was not going to come back and ‘you won’t get a second chance’, were his exact words, ‘so pour out all that’s in your heart’. But what if there was nothing in their hearts?
But our Man of the Moment was not going to take no for an answer. No Sir, not him and so, reluctantly, one by one people whom he beckoned got up and fumbled and hummed and hawed their way through the next forty minutes, oblivious to the surreptitious yawns that floated about the room.
I was just wondering why I was not being summoned (after all, I was his chaddi buddy till about fifty-five years ago) when suddenly, the MC’s eagle eye landed on me.
‘Ah-ha! You are next. Come and share your thoughts with us. I know lunch is getting cold but as I said this opportunity will not come again. So, grab this chance. Come on! One last one won’t hurt.’
Okay, chill pal. I don’t need cajoling. I was ready to speak. Didn’t you see me almost jumping on my seat. I got up, took a deep breath and began my eulogy.
I began with when we were little and lived next door to each other and how we would climb the mango tree outside my house to steal raw mangoes. Then in school when we were punished and I ratted on ‘Old Joe’ and how he got the spanking of his life. I moved on to our college days where he had joined the National Defence Academy and I joined a law college. By now, I was quite enjoying my moment in the sun and somewhere down the line, I forgot why I was there in the first place.
Poor ‘Old Joe’ was soon pushed into the background, somewhere far out of sight (literally and figuratively) as my talk shifted to how I won the gold medal for my college hockey team. By then ‘Old Joe’ had joined the services. And seamlessly, just like that, my eulogy turned into something called self–aggrandizement. I think my audience forgot too, because I distinctly heard a few claps while I was narrating the gold medal incident.
And why is this man, the self-styled MC standing at my elbow, trying to nudge me out from the podium? I haven’t a clue.
Hold your horses, man! I’m just beginning to enjoy myself.
Stop being a spoil sport. Go and sit down!
(Ratna Manucha is an academician, poet, columnist and author of fact and fiction. She lives, dreams and writes in Dehradun, her happy place.)
