Monday 11 September 2017

Musings IV:Fruस्त!

We have been conducting an examination today since early morning and now are correcting the answer papers and collating the results.
We are four, of various ages, genders, professions and circumstances. But at this moment, we have one distinct thing in common: We are bone-exhausted.
The day has been tiresomely long, more than twelve hours now.
The room is a little warm, our backs are aching with the continuous sitting in one posture and our eyes are swollen red with all the small print reading. And as for our  brains, they have congealed into mulch with the rubbish that the examinees have submitted, masquerading as answers.
I look at the clock. Its hands are inching towards eleven and twelve.
Then I look around. The young man opposite me looks as if he will slide down the sofa if I just tap his shoulder. But he is bravely holding on to the paper, reading loudly in an attempt to ward off sleep. The woman beside me stretches and then walks over to a table, hoping that the straight posture at a hard desk and harder chair will keep her awake. The young woman sitting opposite stares back at me unseeing, eyes glazed over, hair askew......and as for me, I don't even dare to conjecture what I must be looking like just now: probably like a banshee on amphetamines maybe....
The rot that we are correcting is not helping in any way, adding layers and layers of frustration, futility and monotony over our muscle-wrenching exhaustion.
We are at the brink of a breakdown, all four of us.

Just then, the young woman opposite me slams her papers down, slams herself against the sofa back and announces,
"Ma'am, मैं तो Fruस्त हो गयी!!!!!!!

At first I don't get it. Then as I look at her face, it hits  me:
Frustration+ त्रस्त=  Fruस्त!!!!!!!

I find the giggles forming at the pit of my stomach and rising up, like when you've had a whole can of fresh, fresh Pepsi.
I laugh, loud and free and then keep giggling in bits and pieces as the humour hits in fresh waves each time I think about it.
What a beautifully apt description.

"Fruस्त!!!!!!!" indeed.

Even my blog with its supercilious five hundred worded Tharooresque pretensions, could never in its life be able describe our current predicament and state of mind as well as this simple two syllable fusion word.

Fruस्त!!!!!!!

😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼

I can feel energy and life return slowly back to my bones. The laughter has done its bit; and re-energised I attack my work with renewed vigour.

As I walk back home all alone in the night,  under a sharp clean sky and an incandescent moon, I look up at the dark mountain towering above me and gleefully say out loud to it, 'Fruस्त!!!!!!!'
Then letting that flabbergasted mountain mull over my new word of the day, I run back home, giggling.........

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