What a surprise! – The Hindu

The element of unexpectedness lies at the core of a surprise — delighting or depressing one.
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There’s nothing like a genuine surprise to spice up our sometimes humdrum lives. It could be the totally unexpected arrival of a loved one from afar or a happy and exciting development in the family, of which one hadn’t the slightest inkling, or the quite unforeseen winning of a lottery bonanza against all odds. The element of unexpectedness lies at the core of a surprise — delighting or depressing one.

Life, of course, holds surprises in store for everyone — pleasant as well as unpleasant. How we react to the disagreeable ones is a purely personal matter. We uninhibitedly welcome the pleasant surprises and usually learn to come to terms with the unpleasant ones, willy-nilly. The essence of a surprise, favourable or otherwise, is the degree of delectation, disbelief, dismay or depression it brings in its wake.

Agatha Christie, the universally acknowledged ‘Queen of Crime’, was also the uncrowned ‘Queen of Surprises’. In the denouement of her numerous mystery stories, she invariably springs a stunning surprise on her readers, often leaving them speechless with sheer astonishment. In crime fiction there is perhaps no better purveyor of surprises than her. Indeed, she fully justifies the tag of ‘super surprise specialist’!

A few years ago, I got the nastiest surprise – nay, shock – of my life. Stooping to pick up what looked like a piece of discarded hosing in the garden, my fingers touched something slimy that squirmed. I recoiled in horror as I realised it was a big rat snake, its head buried in a bush hardly three feet away. The snake was as taken aback as I was for it slid away fast, its tail whipping my ankle as it did so.

On the positive side, I still pleasurably recall the time my father — quite undemonstrative by nature — unexpectedly surprised me by seizing me in a crushing bear-hug on learning that I had been ranked first in the eighth standard. A similar gesture followed many years later when I showed him my first article ever to be published in a national daily. The spontaneity of his unwonted reaction touched me to the core of my being.

Of course, nothing delights children more than a truly unexpected gift. My most cherished memories are those of my two grandchildren expectantly ripping open their Christmas or birthday presents and flaunting the contents with sheer surprise laced with pure joy.

Now with many cynically (and pessimistically) tending to expect the unexpected, surprises seem to be losing their sheen and appeal.

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