Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Absurdities in Life and Death

A few weeks back one of my relatives passed away in Bangalore. About 100 of us assembled in Bangalore for mourning and after all the rituals, the body was taken in an ambulance from Kaggadasapura to the electric crematorium in Byeappanahally. None of us knew the way to the crematorium, so we all followed the ambulance in an assortment of two wheelers and four wheelers. The ambulance driver kept going past the Old Madras Road, on to Brigade Road and Commercial Street. Only after reaching Brigade Road did we sense something amiss and found out that the ambulance driver was new and didn't know the way. At each signal he would stop and call some one in his mobile phone and try to ascertain the route. And at each place where he stopped suddenly, some of those following would miss him and take a different turn. So I found myself in the pillion of a motorcycle with a stranger, the only common link between us stranded in an ambulance in the roads of Bangalore. After a million phone calls and an hour later finally all of us reached the crematorium. It was hard to bring back the solemnity of mourning after the comedy of errors.

It was RK Narayan who once said " It is stimulating to live in a society that is not standardised or mechanised, and is free from monotony. Under such conditions the writer has only to look out of the window to pick up a character (and thereby a story)."

10 comments:

Ram N said...

i vividly remeber reading (probably yours was the 1st blog i've read) about MSEC in your dabblings ....

i'm not sure why i started to write these in a post which was very humane in nature ....

i guess these crossed my minds ....

Also the 2 lines which was truly amazing from a tamizh song what i heard in the FM today : "Kaanathanae Kangal, Kaneer sindha illay. Vazhathanae vazhkai, Veezhvatharkku illay"

Lalita said...

I like the juxtaposing of the incidents. Comedy of Errors going hand in hand with the tragedy of King Lear, and you can't say which is which. A good post, Chenthil.

Anonymous said...

Very good!:)

Chenthil said...

Ram, good to see you take up blogging. We had a MSEC 96 Class reunion last week, next post would be on that. One word - Class reunions are bad for health.

Missus Em, thanks - even though I forced the comment out of you.

Anon - :-)

Ram N said...

I agree about class reunion's being bad for health ;-)

We're meeting (class of 93) this Dec29th after 14 years .... eagerly awaiting ....

Anand said...

Chenthil: http://youtube.com/watch?v=4kLTbvjqF6Y

Anonymous said...

mdeii -- sod it all :-).

Sirpy said...

Oh, Chenthil, imagine what is life without all these absurdities... It will be melancholic, stereotyped.. There is no fun, an expectation of the unannounced.. Something new.. Right..? :)

The Talkative Man said...

Aditya's score is 187 :( Katchucrap comprehensively thrashed!!

Link

Idhula yen blog mattum escape-u :)

Chenthil said...

Anand that was an apt video. How do you search for them?

Jillu, Anand is a genius I tell you.

Sirpy - true, that's what RK Narayan's quote meant too.

TTM - I thought with my non activity I would have gone below the radar of spammers, but sadly no.