Like the laughing clubs which have sprouted in some pockets of the urban lifestyle, there was a melancholy-cure club in the busy streets of Bangalore, where people could discuss their doldrums and despondency. It was one of the unexpected things that happen in urban human tradition, and it happened with great thoroughness.
The event had been such a hit that adults from all walks of life would throng the three hours meet scheduled every week twice at the old memorial hall quite at the heart of the city, beating all odds of the traffic fix or absolving from the intricacies of work life and for the more privileged, from the boredom of aristocracy. It seemed to be an expedient to counter desolation which it was strange no one had thought of before. Discussions seldom remained just exchange of tenebrific anecdotes and would often be accompanied by a concluding exhibition by relays of women, few tens at a time, who wept continuously. Even those young and riotous, mad with the joy of life would be imperiled by the presence of drearily weeping women in stalls and galleries of the areas adjoining the memorial. The week before, one of the brightest divorce cases that had been tried for many years, and had made national headlines, was robbed of much of its sparkle by the lachrymose behaviour of a section of the audience who had been so miserably offended by a valuable prospect of marriages which had for some time now helped dissever estranged connubialities. The trauma of divorcees had more often than not been a source of constant ventilation at the formidable colloquium.
It was not wonderful that the melancholy-cure club became a formidable attraction in the city and divorce a prime theme. People, mostly society women seemed unwilling to leave anything to the imagination of a casual observer, and their talks grew gallingly personal and introspective, sometimes the rendering becoming an incubus.
"... And so, due to lack of compatibility I had to ask him to leave. It was difficult but then I had to move on..." sobbed a lady twice divorced summarizing her most recent past, a note of fecklessness unknowingly crept into her voice. There was a hustle as some at the back benches unable to sense the shrill in her tone got restless to hear the details of the bereavement.
" I know he loves me still but it was impossible to adjust to a life of such inordinate expectations. I -- I don't believe in love anymore..." she continued, trying to throw a chilling inflection into a voice that was already doing a good deal of sobbing and talking at high pressure. There was an abominable lull as silence filled the house for a few anticipatory moments even as Severino Covell privately calculated the left over possibilities to the story now that love was out of the equation. He had earlier walked himself in to disport at the concept of the melancholy club which from its onset had kindled his imagination on the novel fatuousness.
"When love is over, how little of love even the lover understands ," quoted Severino to himself.
" I don't trust guys " she said frigidly, with the conscious air of defiance that a waiter adopts in announcing that the cheapest-priced whiskey in the liqueur -list is no more.
After a cloudy hiatus she exclaimed, "But why me?!"
On this rather provocative question the proverb "Weep and you weep alone," broke down as badly on application as most of its kind. There was a lugubrious sweep of rows near to the lady and some farther away could still sense of the deprivation that a woman of such gentility had to undergo.
Severino alone maintained an unruffled cheerfulness.
"Why did fate have to be so cruel to me? " she whimpered.
"Even Fate today can be enslaved with dexterous subtlety to explain the debacles brought about by one's own volition!" thought Severino.
"It was not until two months later that I could actually find solace in my co-worker , with whom I today share a healthy relationship," continued the lady tearfully, who seemingly was equipped with that merciless faculty which finds as much joy in the eighteenth time of telling a story as in the first.
" Was it my fault that he turned out to be a wrong choice ?" The expression on her face wasn't entirely discernible but quite a few felt it was distinctly morose; "Don't I have the freedom to chose what is best for me ?" she declaimed with a painstaking effort to talk intelligently. It was the one matter in which she attempted to override the decrees of Providence, which had obviously never intended that she should talk otherwise than inanely.
Severino languidly thought to himself of the wistful compunction on display, after the contrived execution of having freed oneself from a noteworthy predicament, as particularly tactless.
" Perhaps it appeals more to try ones choices before using them for a lifetime. Spouse or partner shouldn't be an exception to the proposition " was Severino's rejoinder. The lady wasn't sure if the statement was ancillary to her question but quite began to feel that she was not getting the astonishment and sympathy from this man to which her catastrophe entitled her. She was quick to consummate her palaver should further suggestions come her way as response to her question.
Without wasting further time Severino spoke " I would like to share my pathetic story." After an incipient silence he continued," I was a world renowned monkey trainer a couple of years back." It was at this point in the monologue that those gloomy and surly with the earlier rendering became galvanized into alert attention.
" I had it all : Fame, money, beautiful wife and a successful career as a naturalist. It was then that I found that monkeys as our closest primate link could prove the best subject for my study on a problem I had long worked." said Severino; " I had spend six years on the means for instructing animals in the art of human speech and the monkeys had proved to be my first successful pupils! " exclaimed Severino with the authority of one who has tried. The hall was now largely a bewildered mess.
"With this discovery the monkeys quickly learned to pick up human subjects of intelligence. " continued Severino with a patronizing air of achievement beside which the invention of nuclear bombs, of the space shuttle, and of mobile communication were inconsiderable trifles. Technology had made bewildering strides in many directions during recent decades, but this feat seemed to belong to the domain of miracle rather than to scientific achievement.
" On a particularly dizzy morning during my unannounced visits to the monkeys, I happened to eavesdrop on a fantastic ramification: a ceremony to recognize their leader was under way. Said the newly appointed leader in a tone of even indifference,' We must now target to learn the human ways. ' I nearly jumped out of my skin." remarked Severino. There are obscure and preposterous theories that people would believe in all their amazement given they sounded well constructed, cynically manipulated or even fleetingly conspicuous ; but if you were to tell a truth with glaring simplicity, they would stare in pained wonder at the frivolity of your motive. And Severino had grasped the fact precociously enough.
"Then as a bolt to my work I discovered that the monkeys were plotting against me!" said Severino with a painful strain. The listeners were by now numb with discomfiture.
"They embezzled all my money and kidnapped my wife!" continued Severino trying to inject a wistful inflection into his voice.
"As if these jolts were not enough, my wife fell in love with their leader, Bing-bong, who had all my money. I lost everything. "
At this point the ladies in the house smirk and lose control. The lady with the earlier palaver rendition snorts hurriedly, " Just imagine , what a loser he would be that his wife could chose a monkey over him! She would have had little choice!" The house bursts out with laughter.
After the cackle subsides Severino serenely replies with the air of a prophesier, who expected an outburst of this nature from the lady who a little while ago was devastated, " Its a little surprising that the muliebrity in the house didn't find anything amusingly wrong in their promiscuous kind choosing to make love to any monkey they find!"
An awkward silence prevailed which seemed to stretch to eternity. The lady swore never to return to this place of such horrific disregard for her loses. No one spoke hence of a broken relationship or how they managed to move on in spite of a devastating breakup.
" I don't suppose," mused Severino, as he drove his car townwards, " that they will be in the least grateful for the melancholy-cure."
Obviously the club lost the most prominent theme when cotqueans and beaus restrained from yearning for condolence after successful breakups, and soon after, faded from public interest.
-Jesh
26 May 2010Inspired from Dilbert and Saki
Painting courtesy of Edgar Degas
