The Belly laughter of a pair of middle aged laboring class: A Management lesson for living

Early morning when cell phone alarm clock alerted me to rise from the bed, I had firm resistance. After a few minutes, again it signaled me that I should get up from the bed, rather than laying idle and allowing the molecules of brain to generate wild dreams and desires.

Somehow by sheer grace and willpower, I got up and walked towards beach. I was impatient enough to return quickly and absence of the tender coconut vendor, on the street corner added more irritation to the troubled mind. For quite some time, why for a long time indeed, my absent minded nature has compounded the chaos ruling over mind.

While standing near my house gate, I saw two middle aged ladies, both of them short, and one was slightly fat, soaking themselves in roaring laughter. It was not an ordinary laughter, but something extraordinary, really great belly laughter. Continually, both of them were laughing over something, which I could not understand.

I couldn’t figure out the theme or topic which was triggering that kind of spontaneous, overflow of innocent emotive feelings, getting translated into pleasant sound and making me watch.

I called my youngest daughter, at home who was preparing for her end semester exam. I told her to watch them. Knowing my nature, she cautioned me and just checked me. The message was: I must be quiet.

But undaunted, I asked her to stay back near the grill gate and wanted her to hear their laughter. But this time, there was an uneasy silence for a minute or some seconds. Then, again like sea waves they roared in a more pleasant way, their whole bodies shaking with wonderful sensations. Believe it or not, it was a rare assemblage of body language fused with tremendous sense of humor.

My daughter went back to resume her work. As I had to cross their way while going for the purchase of some groceries; I couldn’t resist myself from talking to them. After all they are the known faces and with ageing process, I had little inhibition to start the conversation.

While I picked up the conversation, the short lady was stunned for a moment, as she did not expect me talking. I could not help from telling them a few kind words:

“I saw you laughing for sometime. I don’t know over which topic, both of you were deriving that kind of laughter. I am happy that you laughed this way. Whatever the problems you may have, all of them will just melt away. You laugh like this. That is good for health and do you know laughter is the best medicine”

Again they laughed more profusely. There were tears of joy, moisture in their eyes. It was a busy main road corner. It was really a pleasant sight to see native illiterate women having some discourse and recollecting some episode and then laughing in a more natural and normal way, unmindful of who was listening to them.

A few days later, while I was returning from the beach, I saw that fat lady and enquired about the reason for that laughter on that day. Again she did not expect me picking up the conversation. When she told the reason I was shocked. They were laughing not over any jovial or interesting event, but rather the other short lady was narrating her family problems, and this lady had the wisdom and tact to laugh them away by her management skills. That surprised me and I saluted her in my heart. Thiruvalluvar’s saying that laugh while you are sapped by problems and there is nothing other than that, which would solve the problems was empirically at work on that D-day.