I never meddle, but plight of the middle needles.
Mind-boggling, if not maddening. Amidst motley of ‘mids’, it’s a medley of ‘middles’.
Malady or melody…depends:
It is a mystery why the mid-wife is a wife only in the mid;
It is an enigma whether ‘midnight’s children’ are born on this or ‘the other side of midnight’;
Even if it is a wily woman lurking in the shadows, behind every shady deal is a sinister ‘middle-man’;
While one end devours and the other discards, the middle alone fights battle-of-the-bulge;
Facts: It is always the mid-riff which is reported bare on a bike; Middle names are lost like middle-ages; Medium-spicy always turns out to be low-bland, like mid-day meals;
Having lost youth’s charm, and lacking wisdom of the old, the misfit middle-aged try to be both, and land up in no man’s/woman’s land;
Caught in the middle, like pendulums they perpetually swing from end to end, as if caught between ‘goodbye’ and ‘I love you’;
The moment we mingle middle with class, we assign it to the mundane; sensing the mood, even Modi has abandoned it;
Glory is of the elder, love is with the younger, and leftovers of both for the mere middle;
The middle-of-the-road always gets it – hook from the ‘left’, hit from the ‘right’;
A hit is a hit, but it is amazing over the mid-wicket; Out is out, but it stumps when ball hits the middle;
The mean is never mean, the median adheres to the median, and the mode is always a model, yet the central tendency of being in the middle is scoffed at;
No one wants them (even though they have their advantages): middle seat in airlines, middle berth in trains, a puncture in the middle of the journey, a slap in the middle of the road; the notable exception being a fiendish fart in the middle of a politician’s lecture;
Even though it is the longest, you can’t raise the poor middle finger, lest you are booked for being illegal or immoral;
Whereas the mad flings with mids* or maidens cause the mid-air collisions, the ‘midsummer night’s dream’ becomes a midwinter nightmare for the jilted;
The middle-east today is so west, it has none of the middle and little of the east; And in that County why is it only Middlesex, even if no one is counting?;
Don’t come running to me with your mid-life crisis when I am in the middle of nowhere. My signboard is succinct:
“Don’t disturb, I am in the middle of something” (read- I am enjoying ‘nothing’ more than I had enjoyed ‘anything’)
*weeds
Disclaimer: I have written this in good humour, not to ridicule anyone. I believe we can laugh at ourselves.
Pic: Gabriela Pala, pexels.com
