LAUGHTER COMES with its own music but more than the vocal chords it is the time, at which it bursts out measures it on the scale of melody. Often I have heard that those who laugh when alone are assumed to be mad and those who laugh without reason are assumed to be twerp. Though personally I don’t subscribe to this notion but as I happened to fall prey to laughter of later category while in public, the audience might not think on similar lines. And that makes me believe that the sudden burst of laughter, which visited me other day in class from nowhere might have made me a butt of ridicule before the students of my class. Though, I would like to think otherwise.

It was the first time that I found myself going guffaw in public and that too before students for whom I was nothing short of an epitome of a typical brooder as far from being a vivacious person as chalk is from cheese, until this fateful day. I really don’t have any idea, how the students had taken to the capricious side of my character, which surfaced itself all of a sudden. So I have my apprehensions in this regard. But one thing, I can vouch for is that I still feel so embarrassed and abashed after what happened that I won’t be able to bring myself to appear before them. I couldn’t have imagined even in my wildest thought what was in store for me even minutes before the fateful event was to begin and leave its indelible imprints on my mind or may be even student’s. The timing couldn’t have been more apt and appropriate for the serpent to raise its ugly head. Stage was all set for what was going to become an unusually preposterous moment, and a quite long one at that. Superficially it was only a sudden burst of laughter but deep inside I fear it might result in some grave upheavals viz a viz what students think of me. Now what remains to be seen is, which side the wind blows!

Settling comfy in my chair, I was all set to address students staring at me as if I was going to drop pearls from my lips. Nobody would have anticipated what was going to unfold a few seconds later. Barely I was able to cast a few words that a sudden burst of laughter, which later graduated itself into a guffaw intervened my sentence and within a few seconds, I, the victim of an otherwise welcome emotional manifestation, the laughter, found myself at the centre of an awkward and ludicrous situation; astonished students waiting for the routine instructions and guide giggling unabashedly and unabated. I tried every trick to keep this sudden monster of mirth into check but in vain. And within a few seconds I had converted myself from a laconic portrait to an all time laughing machine though at the expense of being ridiculed and made target of snide remarks even. Nothing was going my way. I felt as if I had lost control of all the faculties of my mind. All my pretensions of being suave and controlled were roughed up to ground by this gatecrasher evil of laughter into the soirée of my sedateness.

Soon the infectious disease began to show its signs of proliferation on visages of students also. I could see a few girls trying to keep their chuckle stifled but with a greater rate of success than mine. Their chuckling faces further fanned the fire of my laughter to make it surpass not only all limits of duration but also of decibels.

Somehow I brought myself to utter out a tottering sentence directing students to retreat to their respective seats from within the implacable guffaw. After the students had parked themselves in their seats I continued with my misadventure what must have been wanted to occur to me for days or even months, not to mention, against my own wish.

It was not before at least fifteen minutes of putting up with my nemesis that I found myself again restored to normalcy but only to find the respite too short lived. As I called a girl student and made her sit before me, I could feel the first pulse of uninvited arrival of ogreish laughter once again. Hardly had I felt sorry for my earlier misadventure as I was doing to all students and asked her a casual question about this phenomenon of burst of laughter before beginning the viva voce that the indocile guffaw again attacked me with not any less punitive intensity than earlier one. So much so, that the very vehemence of attack brought tears to my eyes. It left me in no position to utter out even a single word much less ask questions. I beckoned her to retire back to her seat while constantly being subject of ogreish laughter. The laughter, which made me expose my guffawing visage to students, and which send everything out of gear; I know, to some extent, was my comeuppance, which couldn’t have been averted any longer. As far as my being ridiculed is concerned, for this blunder, I would consider it a small price to pay for making students laugh at my expense. Before I regained my equanimity not only had my class savoured or endured my mouth angles but also I had tasted the bitter taste of having fallen prey to not so brighter side of laughter.