You know how it is when you stay at home on one of those days when you have to be at work: You have no agenda, no schedule to adhere to, and you definitely don't have to bother about who's peering into your computer screen.
Even better, you don't even have to take the trouble to make conversation for the heck of it. And you definitely don't have to bother about whether your colleague is talking to you or pretending to do so as she or he makes a detailed map of the Web sites open on your desktop.
Today was one of those days for me. :) Oh but I didn't bunk office! I was down with a cold - the one that attacks me without fail at the beginning of every winter that visits Mumbai. That aside, I had done a lot of 'work' the other day and I thought I needed to treat myself to a day's rest.
So, I sat at home and idled my time. Well, by afternoon, I got fed up of doing that too. It seemed like fun initially - no plan agenda etc etc - but then it settled down into another routine - a routine I follow at home: that of doing nothing.
To break that, I decided to go rummage through YouTube.com.
YoutTube is, as you all know by now, this lovely Web site that everyone wanders to for some stupid reason or the other. It's either a song that drags you there or - most of the time - sheer boredom deposits you on YouTube's homepage.
I admit I was bored. I wasn't interested in reading nor did I want to watch a movie. So, I decided to search completely at random on YouTube.com.
Father was getting ready to go to church at that time. So, quite naturally, I searched for Harry Belafonte's
Mama Look a Boo-boo. Harry Belafonte began to sing about how his children don't like him and how they make fun of him. Somewhere between the verses, he also mentioned how his wife tells them to shut up and "go away". Finally, towards the end, poor Mr. Belafonte feels mortified to question the mother. The mother quite coolly says, "The children are playing with you my dear." She also mentions something about them being taught too bloomin' slack, to which he says, "That aint kind of joke to crack." And then the song goes back to the chorus.
It's quite a simple song, actually. It talks about poverty in the Carribean islands perhaps and pokes fun quite shamelessly at the strict disciplinarian of a a father. And somehow it does manage to poke fun at such fathers all around the world. Father hates the song I think: I have never heard him hum it. Which is why I take every opportunity to hum it
for him!:)