Joie d'Vivre

It's great to be alive... I've felt that way even at times when I might want to play the archetypal, morbid, melodramatic heroine from some god-forsaken tear-jerker which some frustrated Director makes every now and then, polluting the atmosphere more than it could be polluted by ethane-methane-benzene and similar horrid stuff. On an amazingly sunny morning, I meet Madame Killjoy, forty something...but I dare not mention it! She claims to have celebrated her twenty eighth birthday two months ago. "Heavens!" I think, "Thank heavens....I was prepared for worse. I was grateful that she didn't claim that to be her twentieth birthday." You see, I have awfully weak facial muscles. I tend to laugh at the slightest provocation. So, as I was saying... I chance into Madame Killjoy,who's only twenty eight (sob) and who (sob) has uncountable sorrows in her life(sob):-( She greets me with a weak smile as I bump into her and suddenly eyeing my luxuriant curls jealously,she exclaims,"Dear,you've been over-using your curlers!" "There're natural Madam,"I correct her.No,she isn't satisfied...she doesn't even take my answer as true.Rather goes onto say,"Ah!everybody says so...now who would believe that I used to have curls like yours few years ago..naturals ones...before the death of my first lover!" I glance at her receding hairline and her limp,flaccid greying tresses, and find it difficult to imagine her once beautiful hair. I sigh sympathetically.Naturally the grief of losing a 'first' lover resulted in the flatenning of her curls and recession of her hairline.Madame Killjoy has an excess of time and money and I have neither.I am on my way to work,infact I'm slightly late on this amazingly sunny morning.Wonder what made me over-sleep!I'm already late and Madame Killjoy takes a sudden fancy to me.Due to some strange reason,unknown to man and animal,she believes that she has found a sympathetic friend in me,to whom she can pour her heart out.It is an amazingly sunny morning...and I feel great to be alive...not Madame killjoy though!She invites me to drink a coffee with her and I tag along,unwillingly.Rather I can't help it.Madame Killjoy ate well...and her biceps would perhaps make Arnie Schwardzenagger blush!!! And she uses them to her benefit upon me.

The last time anything unfortunate happened to me was when my cat Ginger got embroiled in a
scandal with my neighbour's pretty feline,Snowbell.Ginger has taken to me...a thorough philanderer.He would not get into any serious commitment.He broke Snowbell's heart for all that it was worth.My furious neighbour had come furiously yelling,demanding a compensation.Snowbell had lost her appetite and even in her 'meows' my neighbour could hear Ginger's name.Ginger rolled his eyes lazily at my yelling,thundering neighbour.He couldn't care any less!This was quite some months back.Ginger has mended his ways to some extent,ever since and looks like he's slightly devoted to his latest girlfriend,a bright orange cat named Auburn.And today I feel as though I'm in greater crisis.It is not great from any angle to have to provide company to a tormented soul of forty-something,who pretends to be twenty-something!She begins with the number of times her heart has been broken(sob)by men who never cared enough for her beauty.Madame Killjoy reminds me of the Wife of Bath...sheis somewhat a cross between Chaucer's Prioress and the Wife of Bath...gap-toothed,her forehead must measure upto nine yards and her girth...she can actually use it as a coffee table! She sobs that her social life has been in a mess lately...she has only been able to organise few dinners in the past month,but the 4 o'clock tea parties have almost disappeared from her life.To add to her miseries,her maid has to attend to her sick child every now and then and is absent when she is needed most...at the time when she is to make Madame Killjoy's hair or paint her face to conceal her 'untimely' wrinkles! This undoubtedly is inexplicable misfortune and I sincerely sympathise,assuring her that I would pray for an increase in the number of tea parties she attended or threw one herself.Saying so,I make an attempt to leave...I will be fired if I'm not seen in office within fifteen minutes! Madame Killjoy has not yet had her share.She has many more unfortunate stories to narrate to me.She can't figure out what makes her look so many many years beyond her 'actual' age...she's 'only' twenty-eight after all!When she goes out for a walk with Lisa,male homo sapiens stare...at Lisa,not at her. "Something must be wrong with the men, don't you think?"she scoffs.I nod my head in agreement...if I had been a man,I'd lose my heart to her gap-teeth!!!Oh, before i forget,Lisa is Madame Killjoy's lapdog!

At this point,I begin to feel that I must either make a brave exit or remain Madame Killjoy's protegee for the rest of my life...dining on caviar, pate' d'foie gras and champagne and giving audience to her skills of playing the archetypal tragic heroine,thus blotting sunshine,blue skies,bumble bees out of my life forever.I break into a cold sweat at this thought and stand up immediately. Madame Killjoy uses the last tissue to carefully wipe the tear drops that were gingerly perched onto the edges of her eyes.If she let them stream down her cheeks,disaster would strike. The cake of make-up would crack,revealing her 'untimely' wrinkles!she makes a good job of the tissue and says finally,"Now where is my chauffeur?" As soon as she manages to extract her enormous girth out of the cafe',a dazzling white Chevrolet comes rolling by. She flashes her gorgeous gap-teeth at me for the final time and waves me 'goodbye',acknowledging that I have been a sincere friend!I walk down the usual route to office.It is an amazingly sunny day,the sky a delicious blue...a strange bird twitters past me,chirping a late 'good-morning' perhaps. My house needs refurbishing,my dad's gout is getting worse and I slog twelve hours at office to keep my body and soul intact.Ginger has contracted an eye infection and the Vet has charged me a whopping amount to cure him.I glance at Madame Killjoy's car speed away into vanishing point,look up at the delicious blue sky and breathe long and deep. I was alive,I had limbs to work,I felt tired at the end of a long day and once again,I count my blessings and name them one by one.And then I discovered... it's great to be alive!!!