After Monu’s wedding, it seemed that there would be no posts to share until the next wedding is fixed. But at our age we are living in, as Jason Mraz says “an island of reality in an ocean of diarrhea” and the diarrhea is marriage. So we are surrounded constantly by questions like ‘की सोच्या तूं’ (highlighting yet again that marriage is the only thing one should be thinking about), ‘हुण settle हो जाना चाहिदा ऐ, right age ने’ and so forth. Now plenty has been afoot since the last post and this time, it concerns our two brothers, Sushil and Ram.
Why, you will wonder did I not post anything on this blog about these developments earlier? I will tell you why.
The thing is good folks, not only is Punjabi gossiping all-pervasive and omnipotent, it is also highly complex. The two figures below will explain the vast complexities underlying and overlying Punjabi gossip:
Figure one shows the entire gamut of gossip there is about, say Ram’s roka. So when did the roka happen, when was it decided when the roka will happen, when was it decided that it will be decided when the roka happens, who decided that the roka will happen, who decided when the roka will happen, who decided who will decide when the roka happens... you get the drift, right? Now from all of this gossip, there is some part that one Buaji will deem appropriate to be shared. Maa will have another part of the entire gossip appropriate to be shared and Chacha will have yet another part.
There is also the concept of receiver-appropriate gossip (see Figure 2) so Buaji might select some bits from her total gossip deemed appropriate to be shared to be relayed to one person while she may choose to provide her entire portion of gossip deemed appropriate to be shared to another person. The same thing is followed by all other family members and the entire situation is made even more complex (you did not think that was possible, right?) by the fact that the family members often have overlapping receivers of information. So if the entire information is alphabets A-Z, Chacha will tell PQR to मनोहरलाल वीरजी while Buaji will tell ABCDMNOPQR to मनोहरलाल वीरजी and then Chacha will crib that Buaji told more to मनोहरलाल वीरजी and मनोहरलाल वीरजी will call Maa and Badi Mummy and Buaji and Chacha and Chachi and do some fin Punjabi गिल्ला about how “सान्नू ते कोई कुछ दसदा वि नहीं है”.
Why am I telling you all of this? Because this is exactly the reason, mine good folks why I withdrew into the proverbial shell and refused to update this very fine specimen of a blog. Sushil believes in free speech so he is cool with anything written here. But older family folks have come to consider this blog as a bit of a pain in the ass. Ram is a bit of a private domain/public domain person who compartmentalizes information worthy of sharing like the freakiest obsession. Plus I am scared of him.
See I am woefully indiscriminate in sharing information; the proverbial open book. I will, for example, at the slightest provocation of how my ‘भाभी ’ (Ram’s fiancée who by the way retches at the word 'भाभी') is, share details of her hairstyle and her apartment and the fact that she has a nice tattoo on her ankle that is Japanese for “bittersweet life”. See why this blog gets me in trouble so often?
Anyhue, I have been biding my time and fighting my secret battle to update the blog for several months now. In the process of my forced silence, I have acquired the habit of reciting blog posts to myself that I could not write, much to the concern of Sonu who until recently was sleeping in the same room as I do.
But all is good, my unsuspecting-and-blissfully-unaware-of-the-iron-gloves-clamped-on-my-fingers-for-so-long-so-that-I-cannot-type readers. Only this morning did I receive a gracious ‘you can write what you what on the blog’ call from Ram and Sushil was equally sporty about his wedding story.
Watch this space!
