Am I Funny?

I have been putting a lot of effort towards thinking of a premise where I could talk about something funny, a funny incident, a funny tale, a funny anecdote. Funny being the keyword (at least give me a smile, reader). Somehow, I have finalized upon a situation where I am on a stage, delivering a talk about my life, which ends up making you laugh.

So here I am on a stage, my walk till this mic would suggest I am so confident. You’re wrong, I’m currently trembling with overconfidence. And now that I already started speaking, I just realized that I forgot I was supposed to start like, “Hey! Everybody, my name is Mrs Maisel” (identify the overconfidence), nope its Mera-ki. And do a joke about my name, which is Meraki, but if you break it as “Mera ki” it opens avenues for Punjabi jokes, which you’ve to admit are a hit, even with South Indians. Anyway, that ship has sailed, however, as of Mera ki? Well, I am not an MBA, I never worked for a call centre, no I am not an IT guy/Software Developer/CS engineer but basically yet another IT guy, and neither did my start-up well, not start. I am originally willfully a comedian/insect murderer. Neither of these professions help to put bread on my plate and cheese on my ass hence my parents work full time. Laugh, reader laugh, it was a punch line.

I am generally a literature kind of girl, but I must deliver jokes to you. And what romance is to literature sex jokes are to comedy, what tragedy are to literature is Uber/Ola jokes to comedy, but I am a self-proclaimed writer as well. Hence, I must be original and separate myself from the herd. So, I must not write tragedies which truth be told I’d prefer. Rather jokes, sardonic ones just to satisfy the recently brewing Charlotte Bronte in me. Charlotte Bronte, who you ask? Well, she is, umm was a writer who has written many books, which today we call classics. And I bring her up just to polish myself as suave, finessed insect murderer. Because you know “chipkali marne waali didi who reads Charlotte Bronte” sounds much cooler than “chipkali marne waali didi”. From where I am standing, I see a few kids, who like to call themselves men because their beard no more grows in patches, smirking. Well, why are you smiling? Because I called myself didi and you disagree? I qualify as didi, I am unmarried for starters, I am spoiled, I don’t have to feed kids (mine at least), and a few sensible elder society kids correct other younger kids who’d call me aunty with a “she’s wearing a skirt, she’s not an aunty!”. You see what’s wrong with our society and what we feed our children with? But then again, I don’t have to care, because…? I’m didi!

Moving along, two hours ago I was standing in front of my closet. Overthinking about what should I wear tonight, instead of preparing for the set, which would’ve been a wiser choice because this clearly blows as currently exhibited by your smug faces. I invested my time in curating my outfit. And now as I stand in front of you, exactly after 10 minutes I have realized I have a black, no-no, a Jet-Black colored curtain behind me, the same Jet-Black as my jeans. So, all this while, when I was speaking out loud my not so well-prepared jokes and being proud/mindlessly pouting about how sexy I look tonight. What? Yeah, I can multi-task, I am a didi, remember! Where was I? Yeah, on how sexy I thought I looked, I realized for all these 11 minutes you’d been seeing just a green colored torso wearing a wrap-around with kaftan sleeve blowing at you. Don’t smile sir, “blowing, at you” not “blowing, you”. See, cheap stuff always gets a laugh. Look what you made me do!

Remember I told you about me being an insect murderer, in the wild-wild west they call us the pest control. But what are we Indians if not literals. This is a point where I want to make jokes about our swear words which are as literal as it gets. I mean I still don’t understand how anybody’s mother’s vagina be a statement coming out of your mouth when you’re angry or pissed. That’s like a child’s version of “no, you’re an idiot”. Mothers have vaginas. Vaginas are birthing canals. That’s where you come from. How do we let this gaali inflict so much of pain and provoke us is beyond me.

Anyway, coming back to my passion which I also made into my career, because Confucious, Deepak Chopra, Martin Luther King Jr’s father, my father, Shahrukh Khan and the chai sutta waale bhaiya next to my society, they all said so. All these people are instrumental in me being an insect murderer. Every job has a description associated with it, SOP. My work involves a lot of high-level strategies too. For instance when I am on the run for that one last mosquito that’s left in the room, that blood-sucking, noise-making, fat, a white striped mosquito that flies too high for you to be sure that it is not a Dengue mosquito (which is an Aedes aegypti, I didn’t even have to Google it, I just knew it, we studied it in Chapter 8 in 8th standard – some common diseases). I roam around naked in my room, I am the bite bait. And the moment he lands on me, life would have been so fun had a “he-man” be landing on naked me instead of a “he-mosquito”. Anyway, I am all about jokes and not tragedies. So the moment he lands on me I wait, and they usually like to start from the legs and work upwards, well at least in the beginning, later it’s all boom kaboom, I bit you, I got the blood, you, my lady can go to hell. Anyway, no tragedies. Yes, so I lure them, let him suck the blood, and just as he thinks I am not noticing, BAM! I slap him.

Fun fact, be it a ‘He-mosquito’ or a ‘He-man’, they just like to give thappad(s) not get them.

That’s been my time my name is Mera-ki. Like, share, subscribe. Follow me everywhere except for home. You’ve been a great audience, good night!

She smiled in her dream, resting back her raised arm on herself. And yet another night passed when her dream just remained in her dream. Until next time, maybe.