Sound advice

On the eve of his 18th birthday, Ramaseshan's parents finally revealed to him the secret behind his inability to laugh.

"Amma, listen to this. A Sardarji has five sons. Their names are: Kanwaljeet, Manjeet, Harpreet, Manmeet and Jiang Zemin. Why?", rattled Ramaseshan, as he walked into his house in Triplicane.

His mother gave him a blank look of incomprehension.

"Because every fifth child born in this world is a Chinese.", he finished rather flatly, when he realized that an answer was not forthcoming.

His mother smiled politely, not to hurt his feelings. (But she needn't have bothered.)

"I really don't understand the joke. Nandhini told me this when she saw me chasing the cows away from our vegetable garden.", he moaned, in a rather agitated tone.

Nandhini, their beautiful (newly moved-in) neighbour, and daughter of advocate Rules-Ramanujam, fancied Ramaseshan, which probably explains her attempt at humour at their very first meeting, over the garden-fence seperating the two houses. But when she only encountered his laughless countenance, she mistook it for sarcasm, burst into tears and ran back home. Ramaseshan, consequently, was quite perplexed.

His father, looking up from his Hindu newspaper, merely raised an eyebrow.

Ramaseshan, had he read Wodehouse, would probably have remarked that his father looked like what Jeeves would have, had he (Jeeves) been an Iyengar. (You see, Ramaseshan's dad was already one). But more importantly, had he read Wodehouse, Ramaseshan would have discovered laughter much earlier.

Now, dear reader, I agree, the Sardarji joke was not particularly funny- the lack of any laughter from your end merely stands testimony to your rather sophisticated sense of humour. In Ramaseshan's case however, the reason was somewhat more sinister.

Therefore, when he posed the following question to his mother, she gave her husband a worried look, as if goading him wordlessly, to answer that immortal and long-unasked query.

"Why don't I ever laugh, Amma? It's not just this instance, you know. I have never found anything funny in my life. Ever!".

His father, as was his wont when he was disturbed from his ritual poring over the dignified pages of The Hindu, polished his glasses in a rather agitated fashion, before replying. "Son, this is a long story. We have been hiding this from you till you reached an age where you could understand what actually happened. 17 years ago, to this very day, you fell ill to a disease that was unknown then to the world of medicine. Probably still is. We knocked on all doors- allopathy, ayurveda, magicians from the local mosque, old ladies who had routinely visitations from the Malayala Bhagavathi, but all to no avail. The fever kept escalating. Finally, a kind old lady from this neighbourhood mentioned that there was a Maha Yogi in town who could banish our woes . He had a great track record for curing the sick, but she warned us, he usually extracted a terrible price from his patients. We were ready to pay any price, so we wrapped you in a bundle and went to the Yogi's ashram in Mylapore. He took one look at you and said, "We shall cure the little one. But you must promise us one thing. We will take from this child, all his laughter. Do you agree?" We were at our wits' end then, so we had no option but to accept. Lots of people didn't laugh. Why, your very own thatha, your mother's dear father, his face has never seen a smile light it once. So we thought that it wasn't such a bad deal after all. You were cured, but, but.. This my dear fellow, is the reason why you can never laugh!"

The room was quiet for a second. Not many people are ready to hear that their lives' were straight out of a Rumpelstiltskin story, but Ramaseshan was different. Blessed with a cool intellect, his only consideration then was, "Is this Yogi still alive? Where can I meet him? I will remonstrate with him and get my laughter back!".

His mother, who was silently cursing her husband while he was casting aspersions on her father's sense of humour, replied sharply, "Oh yes! The Yogi told us that you will come looking for him, so he left his address with us. I think it was in the old almirah. Hope those blasted termites haven't eaten that paper!". In the few minutes that his mother was gone, the room fell silent once again. His father, trying to avoid his eye, embarrassedly returned to The Hindu. Ramaseshan, as usual, stared ahead expressionlessly .

"Ahh, here it is. Number 8, Vivekananda Cave, Himalayan hamlet, The Himalayas."

Armed with such a detailed knowledge of the Yogi's location, Ramaseshan set off on his journey to rediscover his lost humour, with a renewed confidence. We'll skim over his adventures, to speed up the pace of this somewhat laggardly narrative. Suffice it to say, he soon found himself outside the cave of the Maha Yogi.

"Sir", he said reverentially, "I have come to get my laughter back. Please show me some mercy!"
To which the Yogi majestically replied "Ah little one! So you are here, finally. We trust that you were able to find our cave easily?", and without waiting for an answer, as was the practice of all great men, he continued, "What we have taken from you, we cannot return. If you are truly lucky, you may find out why. But never fear, for the moment, ask us something else."

At this point, my memory fails me, and I am not able to recollect what exactly transpired between Ramaseshan and the Yogi. But let me assure you, it was very interesting indeed.

Ramaseshan, with the new knowledge gained from his master, decided that he did not miss his laughter much after all, and began his long journey back home. On his way back, more adventures followed. He convinced an amateur mountaineer that her family honour wouldn't be tarnished if she dropped her foolhardy idea to scale Everest, thus saving one innocent life. He discovered that the seat of the Maha Yogi was also in fact the Lost Tomb of Christ, believed by many to be in Kashmir. He hit upon a solution to the long standing Kaveri water dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. He devised the perfect plan to entrap Veerappan (the sting operation later was somewhat inspired by Ramaseshan's original masterpiece). However, all these achievements are a mere trifle compared to his greatest idea, which he quite accidently discovered during a particulary severe snow blizzard, while riding piggyback on a passing-by Yeti.

He discovered a truly remarkable solution to the Kashmir issue, which I'm afraid this margin is too narrow to contain.

Enough said.

Many, many donkey years later, as the millionaire Ramaseshan was lying in his deathbed in a swank, upmarket hospital in Chennai, his wife Nandhini was startled to hear a strange new sound emanating from the prostrate figure on the bed. Ramaseshan was laughing hysterically.

And with his rediscovery of laughter, I find that I have redisovered my memory to recollect what happened in that fateful meeting between Ramaseshan and the Maha Yogi:

Ramaseshan asked, "Swami, what is the sureshot way to success?", to which the Yogi, in his infinite wisdom replied,

"Little one, that is a very intelligent question. There are two, very simple ways to success. One, never reveal everything you know to anyone."

And thus, Ramaseshan, following his life credo till his death, died before he could tell Nandhini why he was laughing. But let me assure you, he died a happy man.