JOIN USTo compound the agony, two of my pals decided to pop in, without prior notice.
I remember as children the way we used to unleash avalanche of amusing curses on an arch adversary – ‘Let her be bitten by a mad dog… Let a dirty crow drop dollops of poop while decked in her dazzling dress… Let her find a dead worm in the delicacy food that she’d be devouring on…
Let her have a long-lasting Saturn effect in her life…!” Perhaps had we been in pre-teens now, possibly we’d have also cursed a couple of concurrent borewell drilling, in close vicinity of our mortal enemy’s place.
Well, I was kind of ignoramus of the ear-jarring and nerve-jangling sounds of borewell drilling, till our adjacent neighbour decided to dig one in their place recently. Hardly the streets were awash with daylight that morning. Lo! The ear-splitting drrrrrrrr…. began interspersed with sibilant sounds of shhhh....as though a giant was piddling nearby. The ear-shattering sound was so loud that I couldn’t hear my own thinking. Apparently, I had bid adieu to the day’s noon nap, also to my fave English telly soaps like Grey’s Anatomy and Two and Half Men.
To compound the agony, that particular day, two of my pals decided to pop in, without prior notice. Having them, it looked like I was grappling simultaneously with two different set of problems. Since, one buddy is even more garrulous than me; while the other one is totally soft-spoken, with low-decibel subdued voice. So, when the first one had so much to say the second one had hardly anything to say, and whatever little she was saying, she was struggling to say even that.
Naturally, while speaking to the over-chatty one, it looked like she and I were vying with each other, over-exercising our vocal cords, to show who has better lung power. Speaking in stentorian tones, we gave each other a liberal dose of headache, while subjecting the other ‘quiet’ friend to verbal assaults (along with aural assaults, caused by outside drilling).
Now, it was a greater challenge speaking to this ‘clammed-up’ friend, who speaks in mono-syllables, in muted voice, inaudible to herself.
At that instant, how I wished I was conversant in deaf and dumb language. With her, it looked she and I were pitted against each other in a contest of ‘who communicates more effectively’. For, amidst deafening drilling, I had difficulty in delivering my deluge of words, and she had difficulty in making me comprehend her muffled whispers.
Finally when they got up to leave, I heaved sigh of relief. As I reclined near compound gate, I could see the street looking unsightly, being slathered with surfeit sludge, making it treacherously slippery.
People, screwing up faces, were gingerly walking on sidewalk kerb, as though they were treading on a tight-rope. Truly, if you want to hurl a curse at your arch foe, just wish for a dozen borewell drilling nearby their place. Indeed this is one of the worst miseries untold!