Humour Armour!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 There must be a hidden sense of humour in this.... am quite convinced that there is.... whoever, I have narrated this to.... the reactions have ranged from a grimace, to a smile, to a burst of laughter... and I fail to understand why... so, either my ability to notice and acknowledge humour is lost OR worse still, never had one in the first place...

So, the jest started with my driver who attempted to reverse my new vehicle ( a very expensive one) by looking at the side mirrors... he had seen me accomplish that successfully; and obviously was upset that he found it tough to do so without having to turn his body at an angle of 90 degree, crane his neck over the drivers chair, and (not to forget) quickly calculate the distance between the car and the pillar and the wall. Well, he tried, failed and the result was a depletion in my vitamin M (money)..... the so called 2nd free service was hardly free... the service station welcomed me, the mechanic smiled at me, and my life came to a screeching halt on looking at the bill ... Anyways, this was just the beginning of a day in my life which would seem to unfold unlimited reasons for people around me to giggle.... and I was the only one far from being tickled...

Clearly, I shoudn’t have displayed my ability to reverse my vehicle without having to crane my neck.... If I had adopted the acrobatics that my driver uses day on day, I wouldn’t have been spending so much time in the gym or on those innumerable massages that promised me a slim waistline!!!!! A twist of my waist, a turn of my neck would have ensured a slimmer ME and a FAT pocket.......

AND then I go and narrate it to a colleague who responds with “you mean women can park a car using the mirror?????”..... and that was funny???? Coz the sentence is punctuated with a LAUGH... and so do some of my women colleagues... So, are they laughing at his remark, my depleted bank balance, or at themselves??? I am confused!!!!!!

The point being - there is a framework that we seem to be all operating in... my driver is supposed to be more adept than me, my colleague believes that as a gender there is a WAY in which I will always operate, and myself of course, reacting to a so called bigotry (and I choose to call it bigotry coz it sounds advantageous to me ....)

A series of events... starting with my car, my colleagues reaction and then with a friend who raises an objection at work to the kind of humour that is depicted at an official gathering. .. She was ‘objectified’!!! And the men apologise - ”if you find it insensitive, we apologize”...

IF - the word endorses a hypothetical situation... the event is not hypothetical, the humour is for real, the bigotry is glaring... and the word IF dangles! All hell let loose, leaders upset.... it is the event and the starkness of the bias that one is NOT SUPPOSED to harbour that enrages all... and all efforts made to ensure that the ‘right’ message is flaunted....a series of warnings!!!!! There is laughter at the crass sense of humour and a repleted smile at actions taken and my colleague is beaming - All’s well that End’s well!!! A Shakespearean end to a corporate drama.

And I am all the more confused! What sense am Isupposed to make of this???

There must be some sense in this action ..... Warnings to eradicate bigotry!!!!! Admonitions to ensure that we respect women! And all this done and finally laid to rest with a smile of satisfaction... Judgement given, jury dismissed..... A Hamletian comedy of errors! Imagine, Hamlet voicing ‘to be or not to be’ and his twin miles away trying to just understand the word BE and then attempting to translate it into her every day existence.... one confused between options, the other not sure if there is an option at all...

There was a time when I was aware that there were issues that one dealt with ... and I was then convinced that the issue in such instances was far more fundamental and therefore could not be addressed by speaking TO the event. We had to look at what 'drives' the event - a thought process! There was a time when I thought I knew what the thought process was... today, I don’t....

For an entire race to look at an event and pass a judgement - there must be something that drives them to do so....and this entire race cannot be suffering from myopia .... and if there is a sense of comfort in being myopic, then there must be a sense of humour fraught in it.... a sagacity that I have not been privy to! And, I am calling it a sense of humour as I am convinced that “the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humour in it” - sayeth Frank A Clark who ministered thousands of people through his one panel newspaper cartoons......

There is a problem...can someone VOICE it for me... and even more fundamentally, find the right words to voice it... and then find the humour in it.... and please even explain it to me... coz I seem to be the only lonely confused sole amongst the laughing souls!!!!!