Friday, April 06, 2007

The Washing Machine that Laughed

This post was done around holi this year. It was a tribute to my dear friend A Mishra's Holi Travails in college:

A was in the bathroom. His passionless laughter echoed through the corridors, making the 'laughter-challenged' also laugh in the process. (I know who you are thinking of...especially when cricket is around the corner, but please do not bring in extra-human references;-)) He had been in this process since afternoon. It was Dinner timebut this guy was still unfinished with his chores. Strange for a non-fashionable and average looking young man, who would dump laundry back at his local home every weekend? Not really...

A non-habitual person taking generous dose of ‘Bhang’ is not strange on Holi of Avadh. It was Hostel Holi that day. The pond was dug up between new boys and D Block. People had been taking and giving holi dips for the entire day and now was the washing up time. The sins had already been rinsed off in the pond.

Washing colour off is not such a good idea but people do so, nonetheless. First you get ‘coloured’ and then work hard on 'discoluoring'. As if in the defiance of the dictates of thermodynamics. To show to HKP that Heat to Work and Work to Heat are equivalently convertible (reversible processes). Sink retained no heat, only some coloured muddy water. But profoundly thought, it is like dying the soul colorful. The interiors gets soaked and then the superficial excess is to be washed off (thermodynamics was correct after all). Efficiency of the dyeing lied in how less colour you rejected to sink.

The chromium, copper, strontium, cadmium salts etc (in colours as well as crackers) are actually good for body and soul; environmentalists, doctors and neo-rationalists be damned. At least these (the colours:-)) make one bathe off the winter deposits in one straight session, whose length varies depending upon the dose. If you bathe daily even in winters, you just might do without any dose. On the other extreme, if your frequency was bisessional (one at mid and the other at the end) you might as well have had to take a golf ball.

Coming back, whereas many had finished theirs, A was still going strong at his discouloring, washing laughing laughing washing…sucked in the vicious circle. The laughing washing m/c humming and hawing…and occasionally crying too.

Anyone who has heard that laughter of late and can point to how and whereabouts of A is welcome to do so…
Many such stories are up for chewing a lavish lunch with on 18th.

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