Worldover, Indians are infamous for not having a funny bone. This missing bone is perhaps making our day-to-day life …boneless! So why we are the way we are? There are multitude of factors contributing to this state of mind : stressful life, perennial short supply of time, over-load of work, trying to pace with fast striding society & economic disparity with immediate social circle, blah, blah. But do any of these worth leading a boneless life (…I mean life minus the funny bone)???
Contrary to the popular perception, humour too has to pay its price. And perhaps our society is too poor to afford it! At times, humour require us to be careless, carefree or even ignorant. And taking things lightly might ease out some ongoing tensions but we might behave irresponsibly, thus paying the price in form of the resultant losses.
Of late, we have started taking things too seriously however trivial or unimportant they might be. We have gone over-cautious, over-conscious, over-committed & too rigid in our philosophy, values & approach. There are protocols for smiling (or rather putting up plastic smiles), etiquettes attached with laughters, whispering at the lowest possible decibel limit for lol! and so on. All these leave no space for humour but paradoxically are equally humourous. 
To find out more, I went on to observe the normal default emotions of Delhiites in their idle state …when they were travelling sitting idly in the vehicle. In public transport, whether it was tightly packed over-crowded Blue-lined buses or the airconditioned ultra-modern Metro-rail coaches, I observed that majority of commuters’ faces wore a tired, exhausted & tensed look whereas passengers in private vehicles gave a snobbish, unrestful & angry look. Increasing road-rage cases here stand testimony for their highly volcanic anger waiting to errupt at the slightest push of a button. My observations & conclusions terrified myself & I forgot all about humour, deciding to avoid any kind of interaction with such class of people.
But some couple of weeks back, I had a unique experience which tend to change the perception of adamant nature of unfavourable behaviours. One of my friends (a wannabe political leader) invited a State President of some national political party to my home for a quick lunch as there was a very short interval between his arrival & departure flights. To make himself in his good books, my friend insisted some drinks before the lunch engaging him in some long engrossing conversations. Whenever he will remind my friend for dropping him at the airport, my friend will politely tell that its just a five minute drive from here. Well, finally they got up to leave.When my friend asked me to accompany this politician to see him off to airport, I declined reasoning him that I don’t like people at airport lounge as their default emotion is mostly anger with an air of ego, and this doesn’t make a good sight for me. Most people do a little on their part to fulfill their responsibilities like reaching in time and then expect all royal & extra-ordinary privileges to be conferred on them for baggage clearance & checking in as all considers themselves as V.V.I.P.s. My friend & the guest laughed out at it and he reassured that we are not going inside the airport in any case. We shall be back just after dropping him outside the departure lounge. So, I agreed. On the way to airport, the guest was wondering about the distance and the never-ending roads with one leading to another. He checked the ticket & told the flight time as 4:20 p.m. I was shocked as it was already 4:00 at that time and questioned whether it was the actual take-off time or the reporting time. My friend laughed at it and said whatever it be, we shall be there in another five minutes. We did reached there in seven minutes. Our now tensed guest hurried up his baggage-trolley towards check in counter fearing that he might not be able to make up to that important conference at Chennai!
Ten minutes later, when we were returning back, we received a call from the guest that he was denied to board that flight due to late reporting. My friend went furious on the situation and said …I have some contacts in that airline, …I’ll do something, …am calling you back, ….you drop this person’s name to that …but why didn’t you show your Visiting Card to the crew, for you are not a common-man and flight has still not taken off, etc., etc. The guest at the other end was just cool defying the common default emotion of anger & irritation and replied he has already arranged a fresh ticket for the next flight scheduled an hour later and is waiting for it. But my friend could never understood that why this person hasn’t handled this situation and was unable to make it to the flight still at ground when he could have used his powers to do that.
Perhaps our discussion about the default emotions at airport just prior to his take off had made the impact. Yes, he paid the price of not putting up the anger …a cool Rs. 6,000/- and a delay of an hour! Wasn’t it worth the temper?
So here is the final question to you. What is your default emotion at most of the time? Be sincere to your replies.
Technorati Tags: Anger, Emotion, Happyness, Fun
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