Some people have all the fun!

YESTERDAY, when I opened my Facebook page for updates, a friend whom I had met just the other day was seen waving from Lake Tahoe. The otherwise sombrely dressed legal luminary was sitting by the waterfront, wearing a floral shirt, a dandelion in his ear, and a straw hat half covering his face from the tropical sun. I didn’t even know where Lake Tahoe was. I presumed it was somewhere in Tahiti, where famous impressionist painter Paul Gauguin went looking for artistic inspiration, found Polynesian beauties instead, got drunk, married and did not return to his Parisian wife for years.

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Fearing the worst, I immediately posted a thumbs up with, ‘Come home soon, buddy, the country and Chandigarh need you.’ My staid post solicited no response. Lake Tahoe is not in Tahiti, but in California, where he has plenty of rishtedars keeping a watchful eye on him, and his wife is very much with him on holiday.

As I scrolled down the page, there was the fitness freak couple who start the day with a video of Zumba dance or marvellously synchronised callisthenics. Their amazing fitness regime makes me feel like a pitiful, lazy blob of fat who is still in bed lolling around waiting for some chai to stir. The couple’s recent post is a musical clip prancing around a heritage London telephone booth with its hallmark postal red. That might have raised an eyebrow or two of the pin-striped Britons, walking along Oxford Street.

Talking of the morning cuppa, there is this classy couple who always post their morning ritual tea service or chhota hazri savoured amidst lush-green lawns of their palatial bungalow, with two or three of their furry cats snugly ensconced in the lady’s lap, while the ‘Burra saheb’ indulgently feeds a pair of Labradors biscuits and rusks.

And here, I’m trying to shoo off the street dogs that have jumped across the hedge. But one has to be wary of the ‘bleeding hearts brigade’ that has lately adopted all ferocious canines of the neighbourhood and feed ‘the poor babies’, and then, immediately post the morning’s noble deed on Facebook.

In the meantime, the happy birthday/anniversary brigade has already got into motion with mushy greetings. I always thought that greeting one’s life partner in senior years was a private affair. It’s mandatory nowadays to be not only loving, but also seen doing that in the public realm. Some of my peers profess their undying romantic love with Facebook posts, where the husband and wife dress in matching reds, present roses to one another and post endearing comments. The late Yash Raj Chopra would have been envious of such Himalayan scene-stealers, dripping with latter-day passions of love and romance.

And here I’m stuck at home, no travel, no anniversary, no birthday — envious of all Facebook movers and shakers. But as they say, ‘They also serve who only stand and wait’, or rather post emojis of thumbs up, hearts, claps, smileys and festoons!