YOU MEAN LUNCH?

YOU MEAN LUNCH?

Khaliqur Rahman

“What’s for launch?” he inquired. Asking a counter question, I mumbled rather mischievously, “You mean, you are asking what there is for lunch. Were you expecting Ilish? “No! I have books in mind” he clarified. ‘I’m sorry’ I apologized, ‘Bongobhasha is like that only, no?’ Then, I told him how I misunderstood a Bengali office assistant who said Mera boss aagayee, me’n jaayegi when it, in fact, was HIS bus!

Yes, Jug, nowadays everyone either speaks or writes, just as I’m doing right now and just as you always have and, in fact, just as you’ve been doing all along and/but doing so well and for so long. I say that because for every write-up of yours, you have so many comments. I don’t know if they comment because they have ‘something’ to comment or having just got the infection from you, have the itch to ‘comment’ something which I’m doing now because of the itch, overcoming, of course, the hitch to scratch in public. But who cares for public norms these days which even Kapil Sibbal cannot properly define (Will he sue me under 66a?).

But coming back to public speaking, public writing and public launching (of books, I mean), shall I tell you, I, too, had my books – four of them – launched on 09-09-’12 (on the counsel of a numerologist), not by a Neta or a Jam Aadmi (my own coinage to contrast, compare with or cancel Aam Aadmi) but by human beings?

I have an honest desire to send these books to you. For a change, just choose to be a reader of small things. I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading them because –aside- (they weren’t, I mean, published in toi, but…) quite a lot of them have been published in newspapers like Morocco World News, Daily Times (Pak), Kashmir Monitor, State Observer and Central Chronicle (has published all of them). The titles, Navel Ideas and Out in the Middle, may activate your taste buds, if you’re still thinking of lunch! The other two, printed in devnagri, Huwee Takheer and Ek She’r Sunata hoo’n are a compilation of my weekly column Ek She’r that ran for five years in a local Hindi Daily Deshbandhu.

I must assure you, I’m not fishing for anything in return from you. On the facebook and twitter my profile intro says I am a kid of 70 and I love kidding, seriously, which I think I’m doing now because I think I’m a nobody. | If you’re a nobody, too, | come along, let me know your postal address, I send you the books and you, hopefully, have a nice time. Otherwise, I’ll think, like Dushyant Kumar, I had thrown a stone into the sky… it didn’t pierce!

Why do you need to be a no-body to be able to respond to me? Because some-bodies don’t normally respond or reply to a no-body like me! And, I’ve made it almost a habit to write to one of the some-bodies  to find out if they’re really some-bodies, because real Some-Bodies, like, our former President, Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, have responded and / or replied to me!