Human natures are strange. Sometimes it makes you laugh and at some juncture also force you to cry. Some characters are unforgettable. Some are immortalized in movies and novels while some are immortalized in human brains. You may be facing a lot of problems in your career or life but seeing people who are really funny characters make you forget those moments. I would not name these characters here. The first one is a character who can be best described as one of the most selfish person I have met. When he arrived in the city, I forced a relative of mine to rent out his newly acquired flat to him at a cheaper rent. He continued to visit our group during his weekly holidays and we used to go out for dinner. But in more than a year of the outing that we had, I have never seen the color of his purse. He would rather sit quietly without bothering about the bill each time we went to a restaurant. We always felt that we had undertaken a long bond to feed him. But after the meals, he would never forget to enter into a cyber café and talk to his girl friend, whom he had befriended on net. Obviously she was not an Indian. Early morning into the house and he would take his breakfast only after the lunch hours because the nighttime chatting never allowed him to see the beauty of early morning sun. But as soon as he woke up, he did one thing and that is to move the newspaper from the doorstep the stack. The collection of newspapers on one corner of the house kept room looked as if he is working archive fresh newspaper stocks because it never got opened. Ironically, he worked for a newspaper. Ultimately he went to the country of his girl friend and got married. But he never told his marriage news to any one including any one of us. But couple of my friends forced him to admit it. Back to India with his wife he never offered a single cup of tea to any one of us. What’s worst, he never told me that he got married and never met me again after the marriage. But while he was in the city bankrupting all friends with his no nonsense approach for denying payment of any type of bills, there were other funny characters in town in the same profession that he was in, journalism.
Another was a colleague of this funny one. Let’s Call him Mr X. If there were at least a thousand like Mr X, detergent brands would have lost its charm. For he is the one who is allergic to water. He also glues his clothes to his nature, never to wash at all. Fairy tale stories about this character are laugh riots. As soon as he reaches home, and that too some body else’s, he would sit with his regular quota of sweets, some times more than a kilo. By midnight, he would go to a corner of the room, unzip the pants and it falls down to the ground. Because of the high content of salt particles on clothe, the pant would rather stand straight. He would take his legs out of it and lie down on the floor with the shirt, which was almost down till the knee. There is also a reason behind the length of the shirt. Like his allergy to water, he was also allergic to undergarments. Morning he would go to the same corner where his pants firmly stood and put both his legs into the leg room of the pants, pull it up, zip it and leave to the office. What a character? Some of his friends narrated his embarrassing experience in one of the Mumbai suburban stations. As the train was leaving the station, he ran in the thought that he would make it. But his pants deceived him. Rather his waist deceived him as the pant made its way down to the floor of the platform. With no undergarments and the shirt in a swinging condition, the scene would have been a lift from Mr. Beans show. But he was not bothered. He pulled the pants up and waited for the next train amidst some amazing looks.
The other character I would not forget is from the government department where I worked when I was prime. People called him JP and he was a head clerk when I last saw him in the department corridors. The first time that I met him was in a section where we used to go to fetch our monthly salary. He comes to the office in spotless white. He is fair and good-looking and would rather keep the Commissioners and above on the back burner with his charisma. But his real nature was worse than any class four employees. There are witnesses who said that JP would approach cloth merchants for favours in the name of his officer. In one such incident, JP reached one of the whole sale cloth traders in Ahmedabad asked 100 meters of lined cloth that is used to stitch underwear for elderly people. The trader was curious enough to know why he wanted such a huge pile of cloth to be delivered to his own address. Pat came his reply, “saab ke kuch mehmano ko nikar chahiye” (Some relatives of saab want to stitch underwear). The trader was stunned and asked him whether saab had sent him for this purpose. While he made his way out, he nodded his head but did not notice one of his own colleagues sitting in the same office for another purpose.
Poor saab would not have even dreamt of stitching a hundred meter underwear. Rather his appearance shows that he would prefer some trendy undergarments.
JP is very particular in his timings in the office. He has a small brief case and the security guards always itched to give him a 21 gun salute when he entered the office. Their bashing of shoes would even make 9/11 collapse to shame. Such was the respect that they gave to him. The only problem was that they thought he was the highest ranking authority in the department though they sometimes doubted seeing his parrot green scooter. But if they had brains to think and ponder over it, they would have replaced JP in the department. So they don’t think and the first criterion for the salute is costume.
Two floors above, he had a special table and chair. He would sit on his chair and start talking about his overnight deeds to his already bored colleagues in the room. The fingers would slowly go to the lock of the brief case and any new onlooker would be impressed to see that he took the files home so that the pending works are finished. But surprisingly, it is not the file that comes out of the brief case. It is rather a blouse. A blouse.
But it is no surprise to his colleagues in the room. They are seeing it for years. He would then take a needle and some thread and start stitching the hooks of the blouses so that it is delivered before noon. The blouse belongs to one of the lady members in the office and those who wear his stitched clothes agree that he is a number one tailor. But the ultimate pleasure is that these same people have no knowledge how he spreads around the news about the size of their bosoms. He is actually a data bank for the information on the sizes of each and every part of a majority of the lady employees. And he displays these data with great punctuality and pride. Amidst all these drama, one thing that is very punctual is not to be loyal to the department that pays him the salary. There are obviously more characters.
To conclude
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