“The party is going to start in an hour. You’re not even dressed. How can you sit there…”
“I have plenty of time for that. Now, will you please let me finish…”
“What about the caterer? She’s not here. What if…”
“She’ll be here in half an hour. Now for God’s sake, will you please chillax?”
“Chillax? What does it mean?”
“It’s a combination of two words — ‘chill’ and ‘relax’. When you ‘chillax’, you become very calm and relaxed. You stop worrying about things.”
“In other words, you stop being nervous about something. That’s what I need to do now — chillax.”
“Exactly! By the way, the word is pronounced ‘chi-LAX’. The stress is on the second syllable. It’s a word that’s mostly used in informal contexts. When I noticed that Ravi was extremely nervous before the interview, I told him to chillax.”
“That’s what we should tell ourselves when driving in this crazy city of ours. We should take a deep breath and tell ourselves to chillax.”
“I doubt if it’ll help, though! There are certain situations when you just can’t chillax!”
“Like what happened to you at the office yesterday?”
“Office? What are you talking about?”
“Sujatha told me about the big argument that you and Ramesh had yesterday. What was it about?”
“News gets around, doesn’t it? How did Sujatha come to know about it?”
“I didn’t ask her. So, tell me what happened?”
“I’d requested Ramesh several times not to park his office files on my desk. But he...”
“Park his files? What are you talking about it? How can anyone park their files?”
“When you ‘park’ an object somewhere, you leave it there temporarily.”
“And in the process, you end up annoying a few people!”
“I guess you could say that! Though, not always. Whenever I park my backpack on the sofa, my mother doesn’t like it. She asks me to park it in the cupboard.”
“My grandfather doesn’t like to see anything parked on his favourite rocking chair.”
“That’s a good example. The word can also be used to suggest that the object has been left there for a considerable period of time. When the parents were away, the two kids parked themselves in front of the computer and played video games all day.”
“When my aunt lived in Kodaikanal, we used to park ourselves in her house every summer.”
“That’s one way of chillaxing during the summer, I guess.”
“I find it difficult to chillax. When I’m upset, I find it difficult to calm down.”
“You need to school yourself to remain cool under pressure.”
“School myself to remain cool? I didn’t know that school could be used as a verb.”
“It can. When you school yourself to do something, you train yourself to do it.”
“In other words, you are asking me to teach myself to remain calm.”
“Exactly! People dealing with the security of high-profile individuals are schooled to spot potential danger.”
“So, how can I school myself to be to chillaxed all the time?”
“I have no idea! It’s for you to figure out. Maybe you should talk to your grandmother. She is chillaxed most of the time.”
“That’s true.”
“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”
- Robert A. Heinlein
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