Hmm...

I keep wondering if it's just my father and their entire generation!Maybe from a different angle it could be me and my generation too.I mean no one kills a good joke like my father perhaps.

He starts narrating a supposedly funny incident.We are all glued on.Following him like a leopard one may say in the anticipation of a prey of a punch line.The story proceeds and one detects subtle pauses and irrelevant details,but that's shoved aside as poetic license.We focus on the main point all ready to burst out into giggles and/or guffaws.(We are a diverse lot,my family.)

That's when one notices that the subtle pauses aren't so subtle anymore.They keep getting longer and longer.He seems to want to swallow after every word.'And' getting the biggest gulp amongst the others!Not only that,every few seconds he gets all dreamy like he is actually re-living the whole episode.By this time my mother starts to fret and worry if she has switched off the cylinder in the kitchen,my brother disticntly looks like he has drifted off to la-la land.Moi being the most compassionate and optimistic of the lot,I still try to follow the remains of the once promising joke.Ofcourse that's of no avail because I have been so busy trying to look interested and motivating that I have lost the punch line amidst the gulps,inconsequential data and all that heavy breathing.

Maybe our world moves faster than theirs.We talk faster,we work faster.Speed is such an important part of our lives.I have never seen my father rush anything,even if it costs him his humor.While I would probably answer a question before it is completed,he takes his time mulling over it,editing the answer in his mind many times over even if the answer is a simple yes or no.

To him I always appear to be frenzied, like I have only half a second left to board a plane.He says I am always whizzing across the house that I am just a blur,and it's not even like I have any place important to get to.Strange!For him time is a wonderful companion,to be taken along through a slow sedated walk of life but for me most of the times it is something to be spent in a hurry failing which time seems wasted.