got tissues?

It is seriously starting to embarrass me.   Just this week alone, it has happened about half a dozen times.  I weep for the weirdest reasons these days. 

I am afraid to go to concerts anymore.  Poor musicians!  After enduring hours of practice, there they are on the stage pouring their hearts out expecting to enthrall their audience and what do I do?  Clap in appreciation like everyone else around me?  Oh no, I don’t.  I sob hard into my ‘dry-clean only’ saree!  At the last concert, the lady next to me took one look at my bawling face and gingerly scooted her chair as far away from me as possible.  Really, who can blame her?  

3 days ago, I had an urge to read ‘Thiruvasagam’ at 5 am in the morning and with an iPad next to my bed table and Lord Googleswara at my fingertips, what is to stop me?  There I was leaning back comfortably on a couple of pillows fluffed up for my morning reading and into the first 10 verses of Sivapuranam, sure enough my eyes started to leak.  My husband woke up in confused concern when I greeted him not with a ‘Good morning Sankar’ like any normal wife but with a weepy ‘Thiruchitrambalam Sankar’.  Poor guy!  His life with me seems to be one endless soap opera.

All this crying is exhausting.  I had to recently switch handbags just to accommodate a bigger Kleenex box.  I run through tissues like there is no tomorrow.  It is bad enough that I bawl in public but to do so without the assistance of a tissue box?  The idea does not bear thinking.  If it weren’t for Costco and its value-priced tissue boxes, I might have been forced to take a second job to dry clean my clothes each week.  I guess it is true what they say about God opening one door when another closes.  Yes, it is true that He gave me a faulty eye faucet but He also gave me tissues to deal with it.  His compassion chokes me right up. 

The saga continued yesterday in my music class.  Two teenage boys were in my classroom doing an exceptional job singing a composition in Hamsanandi ragam.  I closed my eyes in appreciation and seconds later, the tell-tale signs of a brewing Tsunami made themselves known – my lips were trembling, nostrils were flaring and from behind the closed eyelids, tears started to peep out.  All in front of two boys with budding mustaches!  Talk about embarrassment!  It took all my willpower to suck it in and blink it away.  Poor, poor kids!   It is such a tender age to be traumatized this way.  A boy should have the right to sing in front of his teacher and not have her wail and whimper all over him.  And which parent will want to pay for trauma therapy in addition to music lessons?

Either I am getting old or it is payback time for all these years of teasing my Dad for crying alongside the poor women of Tamil TV drama, not to mention, crying in patriotism at the achievements of Indians in the world of Science, Philosophy, Sports and Technology.  My gut feeling says it is the latter.  The only difference is my Dad sobs in to his somewhat-white-looking cotton towel and I sob into my 20^th century pristine white disposable tissues.  Life does come full circle. 

And so, it begins again! 

Till next time, Thiruchitrambalam, my friends! :)