+ Trysts with Nonsense

Everyone (well, almost) has had a butt-in with nonsense and gibberish when they were young. I did, too, from what I hear. But my real tryst with nonsense began when my brother and I, after flipping through a few issues of Mad and ridiculing everything in sight, found the crazy inspiration to actually try to put the blade, so to speak, to people’s throats. Thus was born, when we were still in school, Sawyer, with no pretensions of being the premier driver-up-the-wall of people. Just an outlet for our own few pet peeves and sense of the ridiculous.

No inkjet printers and no money meant that it was a handcrafted masterpiece, with just one copy in existence. Even that copy hasn’t existed for a few years now.

I still remember the booklet – handwritten and hand-drawn, 12 pages (or eight, I don’t remember right) of something larger than A6, and held together not with staples but with pins. There was a takeoff on Amitabh Bachchan’s dancing skills, one spoof of acne cream, a goodnatured jibe at the Horlicks ad about the kid who says he loves to eat it as it is. The rest of the contents, unfortunately, doesn’t linger anymore in memory.

Issue No 2 has absolutely no recall, but I remember that the effort was beginning to get to us. Just two kids trying to think up enough nonsense to fill at least eight pages – small pages admittedly, but all original content, no jokes picked out of magazines or people’s mouths.

Issue No 3 – that never happened. And Sawyer went into limbo early on, with a mutually agreed resolve to revive it as soon as we could. We are still waiting....

Meanwhile, nonsense found other outlets. In the beginning, my typewriter helped me rattle off whatever built up in my head in my insane moments. I remember one piece about it raining cats and dogs which unfortunately I seem to have lost. Then, there was a weird take-off on Picasso - again, irretrievably misplaced. On and off, the notes I shared with colleagues at an earlier workplace contained bits of inspired (or otherwise) nonsense.

Then, about a couple of years after that, I got an opportunity to get some of it in print. Nothing dazzling, but nothing to be ashamed of, either (I hope!). Here is one of them....

"Food and sleep, it is true, are the basics one needs to stay alive and stay sane. And it has for long been said, at least in the West, that counting sheep is the best way to get to sleep. In India, at least in the rural heartlands, grandmothers are wont to pin kids down to the bed, hold the eyelids down over the eyes and exhort the child to chant the name of Rama till the little one falls asleep. The operative part of both procedures is the utter monotony that eventually induces sleep.

"But coming back to counting sheep... actually, it is perhaps even the best way to get to sleep and also to fill your stomach. The important detail here is that you should not let monotony and boredom, and consequently sleep, overcome you. Or, you can forget the food. Start counting the sheep (the colour does not really matter, just be sure they are healthy) and visualise each one clearly before you count the next one. This will mean that each count will take not the half second it would have taken for thoughtless mortals; instead, it is likely to take a couple of minutes. Once you reach fifty sheep, stop and once again take your mind`s eye again over all those bleaters you visualised. Reach out your mind`s hand. Pick the juiciest, most succulent, most tender of the animals, and... Do you need to be told more? Have the feast of your life. This feast will also have the added advantage of making you even more sleepy. Go ahead; make your day."