A quirky kind of love

I often feel very privileged to know the kind of people I do. It pleases me to no end every time I encounter their quirky sides. I feel all warm inside and want to give myself a pat on the back for choosing to include them in my life.

My mom's brother, for example, is a very straightforward, honest and hardworking dentist. You'd probably say he's boring. Not unless you take a ride in his car. To compensate for his non-functional tape deck, MY Uncle (please note the possessive 'My' in the sentence) once started singing a popular Hindi film song, 'Yeh Dosti (Hum Nahin Chodenge)'. It's just that the lyrics made no sense- "Emmmmm, hechhh, zero five, la la la, six, two, nine, eiiiiiight, la la la, la la la". After he'd belted out about four or five such hit numbers I realized, to my utter delight, that he was actually singing out the license plate numbers of the cars in front of him.

Then there’s my eldest uncle from fathers side who barely has four strands of hair on the top of his scalp but cleverly disguises the fact by pulling over a few longer ones from the side and arranging them strategically on his bare patch. He’s also reversed the whole point of nick names. Instead of short, soppy names of affection, he lengthened mine by a whole nine alphabets. He shuffles his feet and sticks out his paunch when he walks, his burps are combined with the name of the Lord and his most favourite way of starting a sentence is, “The point of exaggeration is….” (You know, I have never asked him what the hell that means.)

My Quality analyst Arun . His clever turn of a phrase always catches you off guard and makes you laugh out loud. Well, the first time anyway. He’ll tell you the same story one hundred times with the same passion. And you don’t want to spoil the moment because, well, he’s so excited about entertaining you.

You’ll see my cute neighbour Shalini or Monika standing there having a perfectly normal conversation. Suddenly, their arms will start writhing in a Bollywood dance move, even though there isn’t a single musical note in the air. watch them for 2 minutes and you will find they never stand in one position and talk wonder how they ever stood during national anthem. I have a very young cousin following them in their footstep when ever there is a song on TV she will some how stand and starts shaking her booty.
The absolute pinnacle of quirkiness is my ex-room mate. It's only because he's so amusing that I still hang out with him. He buys lottery tickets every Thursday and Saturday and promises to give me 5 lakhs when he hits the 3 crore jackpot (yea, right). He moved from one apartment building to another because he stammers on the letter 'P' and had a hard time telling the take-out joints which building they had to deliver his food to - 'Peridot'. He has newspapers dated back to the year 2002 because he, "Still hasn't had the time to read them." And he jumps out of his skin when you drop a few crumbs on his table but doesn't see the irony in the fact that he hasn't washed his bed sheets for over 6 months.

They say you’ve got to find joy in all the small things in life. Some people stop to smell the roses, some to help an old lady cross the street. I, fortunately, don’t have to do a thing.