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The middle aged man sat in the train trying to engross himself in the day's edition of The Economic Times. His head, where baldness had started making its very slow ascend, did not have many of the grey strands yet. His family sat around and across him which included his middle aged wife, who was herself buried in some kind of magazine; a teenage daughter, elder one, busy herself with a book, and two boy kids - one probably has just started to go to school, and the still younger one maybe is of three or four years of age.
He is immersed in reading. The two kids are quarrelsome, a rather obvious case of sibling rivalry. He gets irritated at times by the ruckus the kids are making - and shouts at them to behave. He goes back to his reading, jumping from one article to another one. He is probably aware of me squinting at him and the whole scene intermittently but clearly has no difficulty in ignoring me.
One could postulate that he, his adult self rather, is trying to provide itself with 'entertainment' by the reading that he is performing. This may sound like an injustice to the conventional sense of the word - 'entertainment' - but deep down the psychological purpose probably is the same. The adult self is getting entertained. He is completely in control of himself, prim and proper; no emotional surf breaking the placid sea of his face.
The scene changes after some time. The two kids start playing the game of cricket using their fingers. One is the batsman and the other the bowler. Both have to show, at the same instant, a number, using the fingers of one arm only. Thats one ball. If the bowler manages to show the same number as the batsman's, then the batsman is out. If they are different the batsman gets a number of runs equivalent to the number he has shown. One bats till he gets out, then the other bats and tries to outscore him. They shout, the younger one sometimes screams, with a raw pleasure in each show of fingers.
The father looks up at times on this game. He seems to be slowly picking up the rules, without any conscious trying, from the ongoing exchanges. The elder kid is psychologically advanced, and often cheats the yonger one by employing a very minute delay in showing his fingers. The younger one wants Daddy as the referee and prods and pulls him into their middle. The father, having almost finished his Economic Times, obliges rather gingerly. Now frequently during balls where he loses out, the younger one looks at Daddy and questions, "Papa, late show?". Papa thinks for a a few seconds, and acknowledges sometimes, othertimes rejects vociferously with a vigorous shake of head. Couple of cliffhanger matches and the Papa is soon engrossed in the whole thing.
Now the younger one wants to play against Papa. The elder one takes up the referee role. The game ends up being a close contest - Papa is batting to outscore the kid. Now all three of them are excited and make noise at each ball. The kid hits Papa out just when he needed couple more runs and wins the game! Ha!
As he was slowly recovering himself from the excited state he catches a glimpse of me squinting at him and sheepishly tries to hide an automatically creeping smile from his lips.
Now its the kid in him, the child self, that is getting entertained. The difference is stark - his self is more prone to surging emotional waves. His whole being is at instants catapulted to exalted states of consciousness. His face is no more placid.
A joyous state, this is - one very mellow, plesant, sparkling and bubbling inside with laughter - from my own experiences of this.
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