Witerati: For whom the closing bell tolls

As if recession and the Great Indian Deathly Depression was not enough, along came the Great Global September Stock Crash Riding Re-Lockdown.

Even as this week’s bear run saw many a stock see the ‘Fall’ faster than the tonne of bricks tumbling in Kangana Ranaut’s office, surprisingly some things have seen their stock rising.

Nah, one isn’t talking of the soaring stock of “Schitt’s Creek” and “Succession” post Pandemmy’s, but certain sundry or secret stock piling up courtesy Lockdown.

The Sound of Music

If you too belong to that breed of a Bard born or bestirred in the time of India Quarantining, you may have noticed how with every second person (candid confession: Yours Truly included) parking their poetry on Twitterverse, the global stock of unsung and unsolicited poets has risen for better or verse.

Unsung poetry, because this Lockdown verse of Lollitas, Lamba jis & Co is the articulation of deeply embedded unrealised aspirations to poet-hood that could not be sung out, it in the solitariness of the bathroom or beyond.

The curious case of ‘How Bard Can It Be’.

My Big Fat Grease Pudding

Another thing which is seeing its stock rise rapidly is readymade food, Parottas to Pohas, under whose soaring stockpiles the poor Lockdown refrigerator has been labouring.

Nowhere are this ‘Fatten the Curve’ narrative’s side-effects more visible than on the benches or bar stools of Unlock. When Lamba ji or Lally Ji park their pyjama-ed posteriors on the Condo’s concrete benches, they unmask their stock of cellulite accumulated from readymade Parottas dripping Amulite. Or out of their boxers on bar stools at McDonald’s or KFC oozes cellulite like extra cheese spilling out of a Subway sandwich.

The curious case of ‘Who Moved My Grease!’

For Your Eyes Only

If you’re seeing too many moustaches on the Zoom grids, it’s not as if mustachioed machismo is back to give fashion a ‘bear’ hug nor as if Hercule Poirot lookalikes leapt out of the grids to flaunt their groom on Zoom.

Rather, it’s to do with the rising stock of forest cover of moustaches and bodily hair, as dense as Brahmaputra Tropical Forests, mushrooming on the follicular soil of not just Lockdown’s uncultivated males but also unwaxed female Zoomers.

If, more than a full face, you find a budding Tropical forest peeping from a mustachioed mouth on a Zoom grid, it’s confusing whether it is a Lollita’s unwaxed upper lip or Lamba ji’s unkempt crop.

The curious case of Pandemic’s ‘Pammi Aunty’ cross-dressing syndrome.

Trading Places

With most kabaadi-wallahs migrating to villages – Malda to Muradabad – yet another thing which has had its stock piling is Lockdown’s ‘raddi’ (newspaper junk).

If Lollita was wondering when there’s no kabaadi-wallah in sight, where in the world is the raddi stock vanishing, she needn’t look far.

Loo and behold, all she needs is to look in the bathroom.

The loo is the haven where Lockdown’s Lamba ji & Co pursue prolonged poring over pages – sports supplements to Page Three. It is while performing excretory functions that Lamba jis & Lally jis also perform discreet-ory functions – of casting the glad eye upon cleavages and calves of the Kareenas or Serenas, or the unmasked ‘assets’ of the Rheas.

Upon sighting the stock of newsprint stashed away in the bath, Lollita’s inquisition of Lamba ji across the loo door proceeds thus:

“Where on earth is that stock pile of raddi?”

“It’s crashed?” Lamba ji blabbers from the innards of the loo, suffering selective hearing, immersed as he is partially in matutinal ablutions and partly in the newspaper’s stock update “What changed for the market while you were sleeping”.

“Crashed?” Lollita gasps nonplussed like a Cat who when scouting for fish is told they’re to be found up a tree. “Where?”

“Wall ...,” Lamba ji’s prattle is paused by pressing bowel action and the levitating lexicon is released post his abdominal release, “… Street!”

“The stock pile crashed into the wall?” Lollita by now is beginning to sound as befuddled as a Cat who’s not only being misinformed the fish are up a tree, but also that the fish are swimming aloft in the air.

“What did the kabaadi-wallah say about coming back?” Lollita persists.

“T...,” by now Lamba ji has progressed from the Shapoorji Pallonji shares’ selloff to goggling at Page Three’s tinsel town tits. Aloud he only dares to deliver a staccato, “T … T ... Tata.”

“Tata?” Lollita looks even more flummoxed. “The kabaadi-wallah said ‘Tata’??!!!”

The curious case of certain stocks meeting their water loo.