One sms please

There are two cooks in my guest-house. The count was actually three till one of them quit last month. They cook delectable food and – as individuals – are very decent, caring and hard working folks. You can ask them for a coffee or a chaai any time and you get served in minutes. A few hours ago, they came to my room and asked me if I could help them send an sms. They wanted to send their vote for the Prince Group. I recalled noticing an advertisement in yesterday’s or the day before yesterday’s ToI. The ad pleaded all Oriyas to vote for the group which had made it to the finals of a talent hunt show on a national TV channel. I had seen some episodes of this show where individuals / groups from all over India performed anything that they were capable of. Most of them went for dangerous stunts, some sang, some did choreo, some played musical instruments and so on. The show had three judges – Shekhar Kapoor who kept crying most of the times, Sonali Bendre who often appeared shocked, bewildered and dumb after witnessing some of those dangerous stunts (the only words that she said nine out of ten times were – “I don’t know what to say!’) & that fat lady who played Aamir’s mother in RDB, Kat’s mother in Singh is King, Aishwarya’s mother in Devdas – you get her right? Anyway, this post is neither about the judges, nor about the performers (I must confess though, that most of the performers whom I saw were stunning while some of them were simply out of this world). This post is about my cooks and their sms request. When they asked me to help them send the sms, I was touched. Had I been a sixty year old fat woman, I would have hugged my cooks and shed real tears – I was that touched. I had myself never seen the Prince group perform but I am sure that my cooks must have had. I am sure that the entree of the group into the finals must have had bloated their chests. Now, they wanted to do their bit to help the daily wage labours from their state – the state of Orissa – the state that otherwise no one in India really cares about – the state that everyone assumes lives under continuous cyclones and is full of poor people – the state that if holds any value whatsoever for the outside world is mainly because it has been bestowed with abundant mineral resources. My cooks – who had never sent any sms so far in their lives – were determined to help their poor state-mates in their endeavour. They could have simply asked me to send off an sms from my cell but they brought their own mobile and all they asked me was to type out the two words PD and sms it to the number that they had memorized. I did it for them. Oh how elated they looked.

Life might be worthless but it is beautiful once in a while. I might be lonely but I am happy once in a while. Live on! 🙂