As I could notice, S14 was approaching me with great pace and vigor, determined to cloud me in another round of dust, when suddenly... she collapsed.
For a moment or two, I thought she might have considered taking a break from the running and chosen to study the ground’s grassy vegetation, considering the fact that she had a good minute or two before I could come close to catching up.
However, milliseconds later, my ears began to process the shrill notes of a female writhing in pain and I realised how wrong I was.
Separated by a good fifty feet or so, I began pushing myself as hard as I could in her direction. The cries got louder as I closed in and so did my heaves and wheezes. Much against the will of my body, I wished to reach her as soon as possible; perhaps if I had made running a regular habit I would have even achieved the goal.
But then, how many times you think about staying agile because the girl you like might need urgent medical attention someday?
Sadly, that was one such day. S14 needed my help and I was as slow as an ambulance on triangular wheels.
“Ess-fo... Ess-forti,” I blurted, when I finally reached my destination, panting hard enough to create an impression that it was me who deserved greater medical help.
“Are you okay?” S14 asked, looking concerned.
Now, wasn’t that my question? I just ran what felt like a thousand acres, with that very question in my mind all way long and she props it before my chance. So much for winning a race.
“Uh? I-I am good,” I said, catching breath, “I heard you scream. Are you okay?”
“My leg,” S14 winched, suddenly reminded that she was lying on the ground for a reason, “it’s stuck.”
And so it was.
Bloody rodents, I cursed, as my eyes fell upon her right leg wedged deep into a burrow.
“Are there any rats in there?” S14 enquired like I was born with vermin sensing powers.
“Uh, no, I don’t think so,” I replied, hoping there weren’t any.
“Okay, but how do I get out of it? I can’t stay in here all day!”
“How about you try and twist your leg a bit?” I suggested, kneeling next to her.
“No, it’s stuck so bad that I can’t even move it.”
“How about you try and nudge-”
“No.”
“How about you push-”
“No.”
“How about you-”
“No!”
Huh?
“No, no, no! I can’t move my leg, not even a bit” S14 cried, uprooting a few blades of surrounding grass.
“Hmm, I think I know how we can solve this problem without you needing to move an inch,” I said with an enlightened look on my face.
Wrong verbatim, one may say. For someone who hated Math as much as he hated that rat who burrowed the hole which now temporarily housed S14’s right leg, ‘solving’ something was perhaps far cry.
“How?” S14 asked, looking doubtful.
“Wait right here, let me find a big stone,” I said, getting up.
“A stone?” S14 gasped, perhaps fearing I was planning to amputate her out of the problem or something. Suddenly, rats in the hole wasn’t the biggest concern for this girl.
“Yeah, trust me,” I smiled, keeping the suspense intact.
Seconds later, I had a considerably large stone and a considerably shaken girl in my custody.
“Now, stay put, don’t move okay?” I instructed, taking position.
S14 nodded, looking aptly horror-stricken.
Raising the boulder few feet above ground level, I applied it on the land that roofed her leg with measured force. The effect was visible immediately and so was my plan.
The patch began to develop cracks and loosen up. Couple more hits later, it was all left to me using my hands to bulldoze the pieces off and thus liberate S14’s leg from its earthy confinement.
“Looks like I’ve sprained my ankle,” she said, taking a toll of the damages.
Her leg was swollen pretty badly around the ankle area and had developed rashes all way up to the knee. Hairline fracture, I would have said. However, considering the patient’s mental and physical state, it was vital that I kept my diagnosis to myself and just stick to nodding in solidarity.
“Yeah, and very minor one too,” I said and extended a hand to help her get up.
“How am I gonna participate in the heats next week?” S14 rued, trying to steady up.
A minute ago she was worried about her chances of ever watching herself walk again and now she’s concerned about her absence as a participant at Sports Day. Fantastic.
Then suddenly, without warning, she put her other hand around my shoulders and latched on me, causing me to almost shrug her off in fright. Though I must admit I had visualised this scene at least a dozen times per day on average, I never knew it would be for such reason and this awkward.
“By the way, thanks,” S14 said, smiling at me, as we prepared to trudge towards where we kept our bags.
“What for?”
“For helping me out of that mess.”
“Oh c’mon, it was the least I could have done.”
“You could have easily finished the race and then help me out,” S14 said. “I wasn’t going anywhere!”
I could? Hell yes I could. Why didn’t I think of this before?
“But you sacrificed your winning situation and chose to help me instead, that’s so sporting of you!”
I did? Hell yes I did. That’s why I didn’t think of that before, at least that’s how it would remain for the rest of this conversation.
“Ah well, how could have I thought about winning that race with you in so much pain? I mean I certainly knew that I could have won the race and all, but you had fallen on the ground and-”
“You know something, I like sporting more than sporty,” S14 said, smiling shyly.
“You do? T-That’s good,” I said, feeling a lump at my throat.
“Yes I do, Mr. Carl Lewis!”
Okay, I know the race was left unfinished but that didn’t mean we were starting all over again. Were we?
“S14 I must apologise for calling your favourite athlete a-”
“No you needn’t, not a big deal really,” S14 dismissed, like it was never an issue. “To tell you something, I too mistook her someone else when my last boyfriend first told me.”
“Really?”
“Yeah and since then he always used to tease me about it. He even told all his friends that they too started picking me over that. Hence, when you did the same I suddenly saw myself in the same situation again and hence, got a bit defensive. I am sorry.”
What was I hearing? S14 had apologised, to me? If I knew that falling into a burrow would yield such brilliant results, I would have employed an army of mongooses and trained them to dig holes all around the school property, many weeks ago.
“No, not a problem,” I said, lending a cheek-to-cheek smile, “not a problem at all!”
“So, we are cool then?” S14 asked, smiling back.
“Oh yeah, super-cool!”
With S14’s left hand over my shoulders and her schoolbag in my left, I had readily transformed into her human crutch cum bellboy and we limped in tandem towards the auto-rickshaw stand.
“So there you go, all set,” I said when we reached our destination.
“Thanks again,” S14 said, halting next to a waiting rick.
“No problem, again,” I said, helping her into the vehicle.
As S14’s rickshaw took off, I saw her craning out her head and smiling at me.
There was something there, right when she smiled, hinting me that though there may be no need to start the race all over again, there’s something else that was about to start soon, very soon.
So much for winning a race :)
12/27/09
12/22/09
Being a Sport - 2
"I am saying I don’t want to talk to you. You must be a big Carl Lewis or a Ben Johnson fan but that does not mean you make fun of Marion," S14 hissed.
Fantastic... With very little effort, I had managed to hurt her feminist instincts.
Now what?
What’s in a name, one may ask.
Perhaps not much. What’s called a rose would certainly smell as sweet as it does if it were called a cauliflower; maybe not taste as good as one.
However if you happened to seek my opinion on this very topic roughly thirteen years ago during that eventful Science lecture, I would have said there are 206 bones in our body and each is named differently not just for the heck of it. There has to be some logic behind what you may want to call something or say, someone.
As I sat flummoxed on my part of the most sought-after bench in four divisions wondering what part of ‘Marion Jones’ sounded feminine, my sinking heart earnestly wished one American family had applied the same logic before deciding upon a name of their quickest running daughter.
How compelling my naming theory might have been, something told me that it just wasn’t enough to convince S14 out of her grumpiness. Learning from the recent chain of events, she might even consider walking to our teacher’s desk and borrowing the human skull from her collection, taking good aim and flinging it in my direction like one might fling a grenade at an enemy bunker; if I chose to bring up the topic with her.
Hence with rational thinking ruled out, I had to figure out something else, something better... something Plan B.
“Please S14 please, please try to understand me,” I pleaded, begging for her forgiveness, “I didn’t want to make fun of anyone, trust me.”
“Anyone? Did you say anyone?” S14 snared, taking the matter a bit too personally if you ask me. “For your kind information mister, my Marion’s not anyone. She’s the best sprinter in the world and can outrun your Carl Lewis with a whole minute to spare.”
Her Marion? My Carl Lewis? What does this girl play with? Athlete action figures?
Okay, Plan B seemed to have landed a turkey, but the way I saw it, it wasn’t a complete failure either.
To the untrained eyes snooping at us from the neighboring benches, clearly finding our hushed argument far more engrossing than knowing about tarsals and metatarsals, it might have looked like I had managed to infuriate her more than I possibly could. However, the fact was that it actually gave the female activist within her some fodder to chew on.
It had helped her to unleash her wrath on the whole male sporting fraternity including her ex-boyfriend who by now seemed like a total MCP to me. The feeling of kinship towards her kind and the random piece of what seemed to be (not that I really cared about) a wishful piece of sporting trivia were the clues.
The bait was taken and now I only had to suck up a little more, just a little more and I had my fish reeling back to her bossy, self-adoring, perfectionist self. Oh, how much I missed her that way.
“I think you’ve just opened my eyes,” I said with glistening sincerity. “How wrong could I have been? I totally take my words back and promise not to-”
“How about,” S14 interjected, looking at me for the first time in seven minutes, “you and me, after school, sports ground?”
Normally, such an offer would have sounded as appealing as watching our Hindi teacher being mauled by a ferocious pack of wolves, but keeping the situation in mind, I was forced to give it a second thought.
“What? I mean why?”
“Why else do you think mister?”
Why else did I think? To summon her army of admirers and lynch me in public? Or perhaps, take the task solely upon her self? How was I supposed to know?
“Okay, if you say so,” I agreed, like I had an option.
The bell rang, signaling the end of lecture and school for that day.
“See you at the ground in five minutes,” S14 said and rushed from her seat, leaving me with my naming theory, an imaginary fishing rod and the unaccomplished half of Plan B.
For those who are interested to know, my school consisted of three concrete structures, namely, the main building, the playschool and the church. An impressive looking ground made up for the space between these edifices. That wasn’t the Sports Ground.
The Sports Ground was a neglected piece of school property located right behind the main building. With rodents inhabiting almost every inch of its hundred and fifty feet area, neatly marking their territories with holes big enough to fit an adult Pomeranian with ease, the place looked more like an abandoned minefield than a playground.
Why would a girl like S14 call a guy like me to a place like that? The possibilities were endless.
By the time I reached the venue, she was already there, performing what looked like stretching exercises akin to the ones performed by Taekwondo practitioners before a major bout.
So she did want to kick my butt in private, I thought, swallowing hard.
Like a sacrificial lamb walking towards the pedestal with a clear idea of what was about to follow next, I gulped in a large volume of air and quietly walked towards her, preparing for the worst.
“So you are finally here,” S14 said as she saw me coming; her legs spread at wide angles and her right hand miraculously clutching on to the frail end of her left toe.
I nodded timidly.
“Don’t you want to warm a bit before we begin?” S14 enquired, performing her acrobatic stunts with shocking ease and flexibility.
“Warm up? I don’t know-”
“Oh I see, so you don’t think you need to warm up, huh?” S14 interrupted, breaking from her flexing routine for the first time. “Suits you mister, but even the pros tell us to never miss a warm up before an event.”
An event? Butt-kicking was perhaps a celebrated sport in Canada, I thought.
“So what do you prefer? A 100 meter sprint or a 200 meter dash?” S14 asked, tying her hair into a cute little bunch. “I would suggest we mark that pole right there and then cover the same distance back, what say?”
Okay, I do get the part where am guilty and I deserve a good punishment, but to the pole and back? What was she planning to do? Kick my butt while making me run for my life?
“Now drop the bag and take your position," S14 ordered, morphing into a half-kneeling, half-hunching like stance, "remember, like professionals, on the count of three, okay?”
So, this is what it was, I thought, smiling to my self.
While I feared being kicked around the circumference, all she wanted to do was stage a race and win it. Considering the fact that I wouldn’t anything against her even if I were given a year’s preparation time, I didn’t even need to fake this one. I just had to keep it going while she crossed the finish line and there it was, all done. This was so much easier than I expected!
“On your marks, get set…” S14 called out, rising up a bit from her position.
Go, go, go, I cheered mentally, while trying to keep up with her abrupt change of body movements.
“Go!”
And there it was... Like the champion athlete that she was, S14 took off like a F16 released from a giant slingshot, leaving me behind in a massive cloud of dust.
By the time the dust settled down, I had barely moved a few feet from the starting line, but she had reached the far end of the ground. Within no time, S14 swung around the pole and was on course to meet me on her way back, before she would cross the finish line.
Just a few more seconds and we are through with this my-athlete, your-athlete crap for good, I thought and wheezed; trying to talk myself through the ordeal as my body started showing signs of protest.
As I could notice, S14 was approaching me with great pace and vigor, determined to cloud me in another round of dust, when suddenly... she collapsed.
(To be continued in the next post...)
Fantastic... With very little effort, I had managed to hurt her feminist instincts.
Now what?
What’s in a name, one may ask.
Perhaps not much. What’s called a rose would certainly smell as sweet as it does if it were called a cauliflower; maybe not taste as good as one.
However if you happened to seek my opinion on this very topic roughly thirteen years ago during that eventful Science lecture, I would have said there are 206 bones in our body and each is named differently not just for the heck of it. There has to be some logic behind what you may want to call something or say, someone.
As I sat flummoxed on my part of the most sought-after bench in four divisions wondering what part of ‘Marion Jones’ sounded feminine, my sinking heart earnestly wished one American family had applied the same logic before deciding upon a name of their quickest running daughter.
How compelling my naming theory might have been, something told me that it just wasn’t enough to convince S14 out of her grumpiness. Learning from the recent chain of events, she might even consider walking to our teacher’s desk and borrowing the human skull from her collection, taking good aim and flinging it in my direction like one might fling a grenade at an enemy bunker; if I chose to bring up the topic with her.
Hence with rational thinking ruled out, I had to figure out something else, something better... something Plan B.
“Please S14 please, please try to understand me,” I pleaded, begging for her forgiveness, “I didn’t want to make fun of anyone, trust me.”
“Anyone? Did you say anyone?” S14 snared, taking the matter a bit too personally if you ask me. “For your kind information mister, my Marion’s not anyone. She’s the best sprinter in the world and can outrun your Carl Lewis with a whole minute to spare.”
Her Marion? My Carl Lewis? What does this girl play with? Athlete action figures?
Okay, Plan B seemed to have landed a turkey, but the way I saw it, it wasn’t a complete failure either.
To the untrained eyes snooping at us from the neighboring benches, clearly finding our hushed argument far more engrossing than knowing about tarsals and metatarsals, it might have looked like I had managed to infuriate her more than I possibly could. However, the fact was that it actually gave the female activist within her some fodder to chew on.
It had helped her to unleash her wrath on the whole male sporting fraternity including her ex-boyfriend who by now seemed like a total MCP to me. The feeling of kinship towards her kind and the random piece of what seemed to be (not that I really cared about) a wishful piece of sporting trivia were the clues.
The bait was taken and now I only had to suck up a little more, just a little more and I had my fish reeling back to her bossy, self-adoring, perfectionist self. Oh, how much I missed her that way.
“I think you’ve just opened my eyes,” I said with glistening sincerity. “How wrong could I have been? I totally take my words back and promise not to-”
“How about,” S14 interjected, looking at me for the first time in seven minutes, “you and me, after school, sports ground?”
Normally, such an offer would have sounded as appealing as watching our Hindi teacher being mauled by a ferocious pack of wolves, but keeping the situation in mind, I was forced to give it a second thought.
“What? I mean why?”
“Why else do you think mister?”
Why else did I think? To summon her army of admirers and lynch me in public? Or perhaps, take the task solely upon her self? How was I supposed to know?
“Okay, if you say so,” I agreed, like I had an option.
The bell rang, signaling the end of lecture and school for that day.
“See you at the ground in five minutes,” S14 said and rushed from her seat, leaving me with my naming theory, an imaginary fishing rod and the unaccomplished half of Plan B.
For those who are interested to know, my school consisted of three concrete structures, namely, the main building, the playschool and the church. An impressive looking ground made up for the space between these edifices. That wasn’t the Sports Ground.
The Sports Ground was a neglected piece of school property located right behind the main building. With rodents inhabiting almost every inch of its hundred and fifty feet area, neatly marking their territories with holes big enough to fit an adult Pomeranian with ease, the place looked more like an abandoned minefield than a playground.
Why would a girl like S14 call a guy like me to a place like that? The possibilities were endless.
By the time I reached the venue, she was already there, performing what looked like stretching exercises akin to the ones performed by Taekwondo practitioners before a major bout.
So she did want to kick my butt in private, I thought, swallowing hard.
Like a sacrificial lamb walking towards the pedestal with a clear idea of what was about to follow next, I gulped in a large volume of air and quietly walked towards her, preparing for the worst.
“So you are finally here,” S14 said as she saw me coming; her legs spread at wide angles and her right hand miraculously clutching on to the frail end of her left toe.
I nodded timidly.
“Don’t you want to warm a bit before we begin?” S14 enquired, performing her acrobatic stunts with shocking ease and flexibility.
“Warm up? I don’t know-”
“Oh I see, so you don’t think you need to warm up, huh?” S14 interrupted, breaking from her flexing routine for the first time. “Suits you mister, but even the pros tell us to never miss a warm up before an event.”
An event? Butt-kicking was perhaps a celebrated sport in Canada, I thought.
“So what do you prefer? A 100 meter sprint or a 200 meter dash?” S14 asked, tying her hair into a cute little bunch. “I would suggest we mark that pole right there and then cover the same distance back, what say?”
Okay, I do get the part where am guilty and I deserve a good punishment, but to the pole and back? What was she planning to do? Kick my butt while making me run for my life?
“Now drop the bag and take your position," S14 ordered, morphing into a half-kneeling, half-hunching like stance, "remember, like professionals, on the count of three, okay?”
So, this is what it was, I thought, smiling to my self.
While I feared being kicked around the circumference, all she wanted to do was stage a race and win it. Considering the fact that I wouldn’t anything against her even if I were given a year’s preparation time, I didn’t even need to fake this one. I just had to keep it going while she crossed the finish line and there it was, all done. This was so much easier than I expected!
“On your marks, get set…” S14 called out, rising up a bit from her position.
Go, go, go, I cheered mentally, while trying to keep up with her abrupt change of body movements.
“Go!”
And there it was... Like the champion athlete that she was, S14 took off like a F16 released from a giant slingshot, leaving me behind in a massive cloud of dust.
By the time the dust settled down, I had barely moved a few feet from the starting line, but she had reached the far end of the ground. Within no time, S14 swung around the pole and was on course to meet me on her way back, before she would cross the finish line.
Just a few more seconds and we are through with this my-athlete, your-athlete crap for good, I thought and wheezed; trying to talk myself through the ordeal as my body started showing signs of protest.
As I could notice, S14 was approaching me with great pace and vigor, determined to cloud me in another round of dust, when suddenly... she collapsed.
(To be continued in the next post...)
12/10/09
Being a Sport
It is my belief that within the normal span of our lifetimes, each of us is given an opportunity, one chance, a single calendar day to announce our arrival and prove the world what we really are capable of. And for each one of us, this blessing may arrive in a different disguise.
For some, it could be a heroic day on the battlefield while for some on a cricket field. It could be an office Monday for one or a box office Friday for another. An Olympic medal for a chosen few and perhaps, a school sports medal for its future recipients.
Sports Day at school was one such event that occurred every year with a promise of a fair chance to all who wished to make a mark amongst their peers. It gave the bullied a chance to set some scores straight and the chronic backbencher to prove why he deserves something other than canework and homework. It gave the Romeos a chance to sweep their would-like-to-be Juliets of their feet if they managed to swipe a medal or two. All this in full view of the entire school fraternity – maximum coverage.
Nevertheless, the significance of this day to my school life was as much as of the release of a saucy C-grade film to a Zen monk. The thing was, at a very early age, I had earned the ability to look at things from a higher karmic level. This allowed me to gauge the frivolity of such puerile gatherings and avoid them at will.
Okay, that wasn’t exactly the case.
Truth be told, how much I might have wanted to, I could never really find myself rubbing shoulders with the Sports Day hunks who could have easily made a fortune if they ever decided to sell all the metal they had earned for scrap. Plainly said, I could never muster the courage or the motivation to put myself through the ordeal of early morning jogs, unsympathetic diet regimes and truck load of tendon splitting exercises. Nonetheless, I always enjoyed watching the show from the sidelines with a bottle of Coke and a pack of popcorn for company.
Back in the autumn of 1996, it was that time of the year again. My mood was set for a similar showdown. Like a kid knowing the circus was about to come to his town soon, I had begun to anticipate the antics of a handful brave souls who would soon be running, hopping, skipping, jumping, throwing and catching their wits out over few circular pieces of metal, when...
"Sports Day is just around the corner!"
It had been a little more than a month since S14 had ‘moved in’ with me. Apart from the occasional tantrum thrown over a Math problem solving session gone problematic or some homework assignment not done as it was supposed to be or not done at all, I seemed to be enjoying her presence at large.
"What? Oh is it," I said, wondering why that was a reason to be so cheery about.
Though I had to admit that anything compared to the sight of our Science teacher prancing to and fro with a human skull in one and a thigh bone in the other hand was a matter of pure joy, I quite didn’t expect her to be so psyched about the annual Sports Day event. I mean, what did a bossy, geography-loving bookworm like her know anything about having fun? Huh.
Perhaps this year they might have declared a holiday for all non-participants, I thought.
"So, will you be participating?" S14 enquired, looking at me intently, her voice barely reaching my eardrums thanks to the skeleton show that was taking place a few rows ahead.
"Participating? Like in an event? Well, I really don-"
"I like guys who kind of sporty, you know," S14 interrupted, smiling cutely.
"I am," I said and paused, using the time to wonder what on earth was I doing, "participating, I guess."
"You are? Hey that’s really cool!" S14 chirped, sounding as excited as if I had just told her that I happened to be Ben Johnson’s personal trainer.
"Yeah, I mean, like every year, this year too I would be participating of course," I said, basking in my artificial glory.
Okay, I know I wasn’t correct, not even a bit, but then, what the heck? I could have even admitted to juggling chainsaws blindfolded while balancing on a rope tied over a pond infested by crocodiles, if that meant S14 showering compliments at me.
"So, what kind of sports are you into?" S14 asked eagerly.
"Uh, I am basically into the running and sprinting stuff, you know?" I said, using some time to think.
"You mean track and field events? Like athletics?" S14 asked, sounding tad suspicious of my claims.
"Yes, exactly, athletics!" I said, visibly glad you have been reminded of the term. "So you knew the word, eh? I just thought you might not know it hence I..."
"I just happen to know a few things here and there. I am pretty new to this field you see," S14 admitted, nodding her head.
Ha! Miss. Pretty-New-To-This-Field... You clearly have no idea how brand new I am to the concept of running for no particular reason, I thought and smiled to myself.
"I’ve been participating for only about three years now, that too only when my last boyfriend insisted that I should."
Something seemed to have exploded in my cranium - as our Science teacher told it was also called.
Three years? Last boyfriend? I suddenly found myself in a state of acute bafflement. Which of these two dilemmas deserved greater and immediate attention?
"P-Participating for the last three years?" I asked, picking the former as it seemed less personal and more relevant to the situation at hand.
"Yes, I know I should have started off early," S14 said, "I’ve only managed to represent my school at the track event twice before we had to move here, you know?"
What does this girl eat, I couldn’t help but wonder.
"My last boyfriend was the school sports champ, and hence I said I like guys who are into sports," she said, smiling slyly.
Now, I must admit I was starting to lose my patience over this ‘my last boyfriend’ thing. If her vocabulary allowed her to think of words like ‘athletics’, why couldn’t she just replace that term with something suitable? Like say, a ‘moron’ or a ‘twerp’?
"Hmm, that’s very good. I like people who are into sports as well," I said, hesitatingly.
"Really? Who is your favorite athlete?"
"My favorite athlete?" I asked, suddenly reminded of a similar predicament that I was in previously.
Now, what was this game called? Naming the Athletes? Why couldn’t we just stick to pushing pens around the desk or drawing x and zeroes like the good old times?
"Shall I tell you my favorite athlete?" S14 hurriedly offered, as our Science teacher replaced her last two skeletal artifacts with one that seemed to have originated from the groin area.
"Please do," I said, relieved.
"I just like Marion Jones! Don’t you like Marion Jones?"
"Oh yes, me too!" I said, determined to milk the given opportunity dry, "I totally dig Marion Jones. I think he’s a wonderful athlete, what skill, what pace, what-"
"Marion's a female."
"Yeah, what female, what... what?"
"I know what you are trying to do," S14 frowned, her voice turning into something that distinctly reminded me of not completing my homework on time. She had also choosen to look away from me and at the piece of groin.
"You do? I mean, I don't really get what you-"
"You remind me of my last boyfriend, he used to speak just like you."
Okay, I might not be all Mr. Clean here but I certainly didn’t deserve to be compared to that ‘my-last-boyfriend’ specimen. While S14 kept whispering to herself, I imagined beating the crap out of that jerk with the groin bone or the pelvic girdle as I soon learnt it was called.
"Each of you are the same, I should have know this before, I am a fool to think that you could be different, but no, you all are-"
"S14... S14..." I had to interrupt her, "I really can’t hear or understand what you are trying to say, could you please be a little audible?"
"I am saying I don’t want to talk to you. You must be a big Carl Lewis or a Ben Johnson fan but that does not mean you make fun of Marion," S14 hissed.
Fantastic... With very little effort, I had managed to hurt her feminist instincts.
Now what?
(To be continued in the next post...)
For some, it could be a heroic day on the battlefield while for some on a cricket field. It could be an office Monday for one or a box office Friday for another. An Olympic medal for a chosen few and perhaps, a school sports medal for its future recipients.
Sports Day at school was one such event that occurred every year with a promise of a fair chance to all who wished to make a mark amongst their peers. It gave the bullied a chance to set some scores straight and the chronic backbencher to prove why he deserves something other than canework and homework. It gave the Romeos a chance to sweep their would-like-to-be Juliets of their feet if they managed to swipe a medal or two. All this in full view of the entire school fraternity – maximum coverage.
Nevertheless, the significance of this day to my school life was as much as of the release of a saucy C-grade film to a Zen monk. The thing was, at a very early age, I had earned the ability to look at things from a higher karmic level. This allowed me to gauge the frivolity of such puerile gatherings and avoid them at will.
Okay, that wasn’t exactly the case.
Truth be told, how much I might have wanted to, I could never really find myself rubbing shoulders with the Sports Day hunks who could have easily made a fortune if they ever decided to sell all the metal they had earned for scrap. Plainly said, I could never muster the courage or the motivation to put myself through the ordeal of early morning jogs, unsympathetic diet regimes and truck load of tendon splitting exercises. Nonetheless, I always enjoyed watching the show from the sidelines with a bottle of Coke and a pack of popcorn for company.
Back in the autumn of 1996, it was that time of the year again. My mood was set for a similar showdown. Like a kid knowing the circus was about to come to his town soon, I had begun to anticipate the antics of a handful brave souls who would soon be running, hopping, skipping, jumping, throwing and catching their wits out over few circular pieces of metal, when...
"Sports Day is just around the corner!"
It had been a little more than a month since S14 had ‘moved in’ with me. Apart from the occasional tantrum thrown over a Math problem solving session gone problematic or some homework assignment not done as it was supposed to be or not done at all, I seemed to be enjoying her presence at large.
"What? Oh is it," I said, wondering why that was a reason to be so cheery about.
Though I had to admit that anything compared to the sight of our Science teacher prancing to and fro with a human skull in one and a thigh bone in the other hand was a matter of pure joy, I quite didn’t expect her to be so psyched about the annual Sports Day event. I mean, what did a bossy, geography-loving bookworm like her know anything about having fun? Huh.
Perhaps this year they might have declared a holiday for all non-participants, I thought.
"So, will you be participating?" S14 enquired, looking at me intently, her voice barely reaching my eardrums thanks to the skeleton show that was taking place a few rows ahead.
"Participating? Like in an event? Well, I really don-"
"I like guys who kind of sporty, you know," S14 interrupted, smiling cutely.
"I am," I said and paused, using the time to wonder what on earth was I doing, "participating, I guess."
"You are? Hey that’s really cool!" S14 chirped, sounding as excited as if I had just told her that I happened to be Ben Johnson’s personal trainer.
"Yeah, I mean, like every year, this year too I would be participating of course," I said, basking in my artificial glory.
Okay, I know I wasn’t correct, not even a bit, but then, what the heck? I could have even admitted to juggling chainsaws blindfolded while balancing on a rope tied over a pond infested by crocodiles, if that meant S14 showering compliments at me.
"So, what kind of sports are you into?" S14 asked eagerly.
"Uh, I am basically into the running and sprinting stuff, you know?" I said, using some time to think.
"You mean track and field events? Like athletics?" S14 asked, sounding tad suspicious of my claims.
"Yes, exactly, athletics!" I said, visibly glad you have been reminded of the term. "So you knew the word, eh? I just thought you might not know it hence I..."
"I just happen to know a few things here and there. I am pretty new to this field you see," S14 admitted, nodding her head.
Ha! Miss. Pretty-New-To-This-Field... You clearly have no idea how brand new I am to the concept of running for no particular reason, I thought and smiled to myself.
"I’ve been participating for only about three years now, that too only when my last boyfriend insisted that I should."
Something seemed to have exploded in my cranium - as our Science teacher told it was also called.
Three years? Last boyfriend? I suddenly found myself in a state of acute bafflement. Which of these two dilemmas deserved greater and immediate attention?
"P-Participating for the last three years?" I asked, picking the former as it seemed less personal and more relevant to the situation at hand.
"Yes, I know I should have started off early," S14 said, "I’ve only managed to represent my school at the track event twice before we had to move here, you know?"
What does this girl eat, I couldn’t help but wonder.
"My last boyfriend was the school sports champ, and hence I said I like guys who are into sports," she said, smiling slyly.
Now, I must admit I was starting to lose my patience over this ‘my last boyfriend’ thing. If her vocabulary allowed her to think of words like ‘athletics’, why couldn’t she just replace that term with something suitable? Like say, a ‘moron’ or a ‘twerp’?
"Hmm, that’s very good. I like people who are into sports as well," I said, hesitatingly.
"Really? Who is your favorite athlete?"
"My favorite athlete?" I asked, suddenly reminded of a similar predicament that I was in previously.
Now, what was this game called? Naming the Athletes? Why couldn’t we just stick to pushing pens around the desk or drawing x and zeroes like the good old times?
"Shall I tell you my favorite athlete?" S14 hurriedly offered, as our Science teacher replaced her last two skeletal artifacts with one that seemed to have originated from the groin area.
"Please do," I said, relieved.
"I just like Marion Jones! Don’t you like Marion Jones?"
"Oh yes, me too!" I said, determined to milk the given opportunity dry, "I totally dig Marion Jones. I think he’s a wonderful athlete, what skill, what pace, what-"
"Marion's a female."
"Yeah, what female, what... what?"
"I know what you are trying to do," S14 frowned, her voice turning into something that distinctly reminded me of not completing my homework on time. She had also choosen to look away from me and at the piece of groin.
"You do? I mean, I don't really get what you-"
"You remind me of my last boyfriend, he used to speak just like you."
Okay, I might not be all Mr. Clean here but I certainly didn’t deserve to be compared to that ‘my-last-boyfriend’ specimen. While S14 kept whispering to herself, I imagined beating the crap out of that jerk with the groin bone or the pelvic girdle as I soon learnt it was called.
"Each of you are the same, I should have know this before, I am a fool to think that you could be different, but no, you all are-"
"S14... S14..." I had to interrupt her, "I really can’t hear or understand what you are trying to say, could you please be a little audible?"
"I am saying I don’t want to talk to you. You must be a big Carl Lewis or a Ben Johnson fan but that does not mean you make fun of Marion," S14 hissed.
Fantastic... With very little effort, I had managed to hurt her feminist instincts.
Now what?
(To be continued in the next post...)
10/16/09
Happy Diwali
As the Festival of Lights shines upon us...
nights looks brighter... smiles look fuller...
dreams look nearer... friends become dearer...
houses are cleaned... walls are painted...
goods make way for those... that seem to have tainted...
feet are touched... hands are shaken...
what's important is remembered... what's not is foresaken...
lamps are lit... hymns are read...
eyes are closed... and prayers are said...
hands are joined... heads are bent...
in name of the Almighty... some time is spent...
skies brighten, shine and glimmer...
as fireworks burst... flutter and shimmer...
each is joyous... for one common reason...
the reason is nothing but a mere change of season...
but as mere it may seem the transition is needed...
as it teaches a lesson.. that must always be heeded...
as this festival brings along a refreshing change of weather...
change is inevitable... for the bad or worse, the good or better
nights looks brighter... smiles look fuller...
dreams look nearer... friends become dearer...
houses are cleaned... walls are painted...
goods make way for those... that seem to have tainted...
feet are touched... hands are shaken...
what's important is remembered... what's not is foresaken...
lamps are lit... hymns are read...
eyes are closed... and prayers are said...
hands are joined... heads are bent...
in name of the Almighty... some time is spent...
skies brighten, shine and glimmer...
as fireworks burst... flutter and shimmer...
each is joyous... for one common reason...
the reason is nothing but a mere change of season...
but as mere it may seem the transition is needed...
as it teaches a lesson.. that must always be heeded...
as this festival brings along a refreshing change of weather...
change is inevitable... for the bad or worse, the good or better
5/27/09
Capital of Canada
Sometimes, life puts us in situations which demand quick answers to questions that are commonly believed to hold no particular significance in the real world. Questions which have long surpassed the boundaries of human interest and can now be found languishing in the forgotten pages of a forgotten encyclopedia or a yesteryear notebook of a yesteryear’s quizmaster.
Questions which were perhaps intriguing when invented but slowly lost its trivial content due to the lack of appropriate answers. Questions, to state a few would be like Andrew Symonds’s mental being, Michael Jackson’s physical being, the natural vegetation in the Kalahari Desert, the GDP of Mozambique or say, the capital of Canada.
Though I can’t deny my mood was on par with that of a fully fed infant when our class teacher implemented the ‘Buddy’ system in our batch, it brought along a different kind of a problem that I could have lived without… Okay, flash back time.
Before we delve any deeper into the reason of my happiness and the immediate problem, let me give you a background of what exactly happened.
Standard Seven saw the advent of a path breaking concept in the field of school teaching. Buddy System, as it was called, revolved around the idea of clubbing an academically weak student with an unreasonably bright one and then hoping that the former learns something from the former and not vice versa.
Basically, it was like one of those scientific experiments where you mate a donkey and a mare, hoping to get a smart looking donkey that could run fast rather than a dumb looking horse that kicks and acts retarded. Thus, keeping a similar motive in mind, our teacher began announcing the new set of pairs that would be sharing a desk for the next eight months or so.
By the time my number came (it always came pretty late) I could see I was left with only a couple of options. If my calculations were correct (they normally never were), I was seconds away from being told to sit next to C2H3O8 (the bomb guy) or… S14, the girl in pink (who had now become ‘the girl in brownish off-white’, thanks to our uniform).
Although I expertly maintained a very calm and unaffected composure on the exterior, my interiors were hopping mad with anticipation. Like a pendulum with suicidal tendencies, my heart oscillated precariously from one side of the ribcage to another, or at least it felt like it did.
It had all boiled down to the final seconds. I was heart beats away from knowing the outcome – Canadian bombshell or nerdy, Indian bomb maker.
“And, S14 will now sit with…,” our teacher announced, causing me to crack the pencil I had held on to.
What followed next was this - Class Seven, Division B, row Second and bench Four – an uninteresting piece of school realty suddenly transformed into perhaps the hottest property on Earth.
The primary reason behind this miraculous act was the fact that this address, formerly owned by me… now co-belonged to S14, for a healthy part of that academic year.
So, there was I… with S14 sitting next to me and the whole class watching us like one might watch a special screening of ‘Beauty and the Beast’.
To add some more icing on the heavily iced cake, our teacher announced that our Hindi professor had met a bicycle accident and will be absent for the day. This news was worth celebrating twice – because 1) the professor was way due from meeting a well deserved accident and 2) we now had the next lecture off.
"Hi, I am Vishal," I said, welcoming her to the desk.
“Teacher says that you very weak in Math,” S14 said, choosing the sentence as her opening line.
“Uh, did she?” I asked, reacting like a Bollywood composer being accused of lifting music from English numbers.
“Yeah, she said that you had problems with other subjects too, but Math was something else,” she added matter-of-factly.
“Looks like we have the Hindi lecture off!” I said, feeling a desperate need to change the topic.
“Yeah, sir has met an accident,” she said with a confusingly saddened face.
“So, do you wanna… play a game or something?” I suggested hesitantly, cautioned by her reaction.
“Yeah, let’s play a game!” she declared, her face brightening instantly. "Let’s play Naming the Capitals!"
"Naming the what?" I asked, not sure if there was a game by that name.
"Naming the Capitals! Its very simple,” she assured, preparing to explain the rules. “Look, I will give you a country and you need to name its capital. If you name it correctly, you get a point. Then on my turn, you give a country and I try to name it, simple!”
That can’t be tough, I thought. How many countries were on this planet anyways?
“Okay, so let me begin with an easy one,” she said, taking charge of the situation. “Name the capital of… Canada!”
“Capital of Canada?” I asked, sounding worried. “Like the one where you’ve come from?”
"Yeah! Let me give you a hint," she offered, understanding my plight. "It falls in the south eastern part of the country!"
Now what kind of a hint was that? She could have just given me the latitudes and longitudes instead, or perhaps just hand me an altas.
"Ah, the south eastern part?" I said with an enlightened look on my face. "You mean the real south eastern part or the one which kind of lies in the… north?”
“The real south eastern part!” she said with a cute little chuckle, apparently finding my query exceptionally comical. “Okay, you don’t have the whole day for this, do you say pass?”
I passed.
“It’s Ottawa!” she divulged, “you get a zero and I get one point!”
For a moment or two, I thought I was missing something from the rules. When was I told that she would get a point if I passed? However, considering the fact that I was that wired to lose this game and it seemed to have brought S14 in a cheery mood, I decided not to make any fuss about it.
“Ah, okay… so, my turn to ask now?” I asked.
“No! We need to record the scores before we proceed,” she said, stating the point with all the seriousness it deserved. “Do you have a rough page? I don’t like tearing pages from my rough book.”
I nodded and handed a piece of paper, tearing it from appeared to be my Composition notebook.
“Okay, so S gets one and V gets a zero!” she proclaimed, jotting down the score. “Now, your turn…”
The break soon ended and so did our game. Our final scorecard read ‘S – 5 / V- 0’, leaving me with the capitals of Uruguay, Swaziland, Romania and Philippines in addition to that of Canada.
However, as I stared at the peice of paper on my way back home, it wasn't this abysmal score or the names of the places that occupied my mind, but it was the smile on S14's face, that appeared everytime I passed my turn...
Questions which were perhaps intriguing when invented but slowly lost its trivial content due to the lack of appropriate answers. Questions, to state a few would be like Andrew Symonds’s mental being, Michael Jackson’s physical being, the natural vegetation in the Kalahari Desert, the GDP of Mozambique or say, the capital of Canada.
Though I can’t deny my mood was on par with that of a fully fed infant when our class teacher implemented the ‘Buddy’ system in our batch, it brought along a different kind of a problem that I could have lived without… Okay, flash back time.
Before we delve any deeper into the reason of my happiness and the immediate problem, let me give you a background of what exactly happened.
Standard Seven saw the advent of a path breaking concept in the field of school teaching. Buddy System, as it was called, revolved around the idea of clubbing an academically weak student with an unreasonably bright one and then hoping that the former learns something from the former and not vice versa.
Basically, it was like one of those scientific experiments where you mate a donkey and a mare, hoping to get a smart looking donkey that could run fast rather than a dumb looking horse that kicks and acts retarded. Thus, keeping a similar motive in mind, our teacher began announcing the new set of pairs that would be sharing a desk for the next eight months or so.
By the time my number came (it always came pretty late) I could see I was left with only a couple of options. If my calculations were correct (they normally never were), I was seconds away from being told to sit next to C2H3O8 (the bomb guy) or… S14, the girl in pink (who had now become ‘the girl in brownish off-white’, thanks to our uniform).
Although I expertly maintained a very calm and unaffected composure on the exterior, my interiors were hopping mad with anticipation. Like a pendulum with suicidal tendencies, my heart oscillated precariously from one side of the ribcage to another, or at least it felt like it did.
It had all boiled down to the final seconds. I was heart beats away from knowing the outcome – Canadian bombshell or nerdy, Indian bomb maker.
“And, S14 will now sit with…,” our teacher announced, causing me to crack the pencil I had held on to.
What followed next was this - Class Seven, Division B, row Second and bench Four – an uninteresting piece of school realty suddenly transformed into perhaps the hottest property on Earth.
The primary reason behind this miraculous act was the fact that this address, formerly owned by me… now co-belonged to S14, for a healthy part of that academic year.
So, there was I… with S14 sitting next to me and the whole class watching us like one might watch a special screening of ‘Beauty and the Beast’.
To add some more icing on the heavily iced cake, our teacher announced that our Hindi professor had met a bicycle accident and will be absent for the day. This news was worth celebrating twice – because 1) the professor was way due from meeting a well deserved accident and 2) we now had the next lecture off.
"Hi, I am Vishal," I said, welcoming her to the desk.
“Teacher says that you very weak in Math,” S14 said, choosing the sentence as her opening line.
“Uh, did she?” I asked, reacting like a Bollywood composer being accused of lifting music from English numbers.
“Yeah, she said that you had problems with other subjects too, but Math was something else,” she added matter-of-factly.
“Looks like we have the Hindi lecture off!” I said, feeling a desperate need to change the topic.
“Yeah, sir has met an accident,” she said with a confusingly saddened face.
“So, do you wanna… play a game or something?” I suggested hesitantly, cautioned by her reaction.
“Yeah, let’s play a game!” she declared, her face brightening instantly. "Let’s play Naming the Capitals!"
"Naming the what?" I asked, not sure if there was a game by that name.
"Naming the Capitals! Its very simple,” she assured, preparing to explain the rules. “Look, I will give you a country and you need to name its capital. If you name it correctly, you get a point. Then on my turn, you give a country and I try to name it, simple!”
That can’t be tough, I thought. How many countries were on this planet anyways?
“Okay, so let me begin with an easy one,” she said, taking charge of the situation. “Name the capital of… Canada!”
“Capital of Canada?” I asked, sounding worried. “Like the one where you’ve come from?”
"Yeah! Let me give you a hint," she offered, understanding my plight. "It falls in the south eastern part of the country!"
Now what kind of a hint was that? She could have just given me the latitudes and longitudes instead, or perhaps just hand me an altas.
"Ah, the south eastern part?" I said with an enlightened look on my face. "You mean the real south eastern part or the one which kind of lies in the… north?”
“The real south eastern part!” she said with a cute little chuckle, apparently finding my query exceptionally comical. “Okay, you don’t have the whole day for this, do you say pass?”
I passed.
“It’s Ottawa!” she divulged, “you get a zero and I get one point!”
For a moment or two, I thought I was missing something from the rules. When was I told that she would get a point if I passed? However, considering the fact that I was that wired to lose this game and it seemed to have brought S14 in a cheery mood, I decided not to make any fuss about it.
“Ah, okay… so, my turn to ask now?” I asked.
“No! We need to record the scores before we proceed,” she said, stating the point with all the seriousness it deserved. “Do you have a rough page? I don’t like tearing pages from my rough book.”
I nodded and handed a piece of paper, tearing it from appeared to be my Composition notebook.
“Okay, so S gets one and V gets a zero!” she proclaimed, jotting down the score. “Now, your turn…”
The break soon ended and so did our game. Our final scorecard read ‘S – 5 / V- 0’, leaving me with the capitals of Uruguay, Swaziland, Romania and Philippines in addition to that of Canada.
However, as I stared at the peice of paper on my way back home, it wasn't this abysmal score or the names of the places that occupied my mind, but it was the smile on S14's face, that appeared everytime I passed my turn...
5/17/09
Joining the Dots
Survival, as most of you would agree, is by far the strongest instinct of any human being… and for who haven’t had the opportunity to test their instinct to survive, I recommend you enrol yourself to my school lectures for a year.
Lectures, as self-explanatory as the word is, were a matter of enduring rather than attending in school, with of course a few possible exceptions like the times spent with S22H25L. Going by the aesthetical appeal of my classroom and the people who ran the show, one needn’t be an Einstein to figure out that seconds spent outside the classroom felt like light-years when spent inside it, especially if it had to be done in a full bladder situation.
Things only graduated from bad to worse by the time we trudged into the post-lunch sessions. Ask any normal school-going chap and he will tell you that food and lectures is easily the most screwed up combination ever invented.
It was during these difficult hours when lectures got the better of our tolerance levels and dozing off was not a sensible thing to do (especially if it happened to be the Hindi lecture), we engaged ourselves into some ingeniously devised ‘activities’ that promised maximum output with minimum input. These games, though not Olympics material, were good enough to kill a good amount of lecture time with little or no consequences.
A fitting example of which would be Pen Fight which was very popular amongst all divisions. Developed on the grounds of a cock fight, this one had all the intensity and excitement of the real version, with the minor replacement of a live cock with an ink pen.
For those who couldn’t bear the sight of their pens being trashed around the desk or wished to have fun and yet appear to be insanely engrossed in his or her text book, we had the game of Book Cricket. A work of pure genius, this one basically involved choosing a team of 11 players and scoring as many runs in an innings using nothing but a considerably large sized textbook. The ‘shot’ here was turning the pages of the book and the ‘runs’ were the digits that appeared in the unit’s place for each shot. On occasions when that turned out to be a zero, you had your man walking back to the pavilion.
I have many fond memories associated with this game... but the one that deserves a mention in this post is that eventful History inning when my Venkatapathy Raju thumped 5 sixes in an Alan Donald over, before my opponent realised that I had marked the pages which ended with the digit 6. Some things always look fishy, even in Book Cricket.
However, despite all these and a dozen more, the one that was my personal favourite was called as Joining the Dots. This game had the excitement of the Pen Fight minus the damages and the safety of Book Cricket minus the scope for cheating.
The rules of play were fairly simple as well. As a prerequisite, you had to fill a page with uniformly spaced dots that ran from top to bottom and left to right. You then took alternate turns in connecting two dots with a segment. When one managed to create a box by closing the 4th side of it, he would score a point and take another turn. The one who gets the highest number of boxes wins. Easy pleasey!
As I now look back at those days, I realise that life is after all, an exaggerated game of Joining the Dots. Each event that we are a part of is nothing but a segment drawn towards making a box – hitting a target, achieving a goal, being successful, realising a dream. The arrival of the Canadian sisters into my class only strengthens this notion.
Back in the summer of 1996, it had only been a calendar month since the Canadian sisters had joined our class but to me, it felt like it was a connection that was made long time ago. Like segments waiting to be joined… like a box waiting to be made.
Consider this - Of all countries in the world, their family had to move to India. Of all cities in India, they had to come to Bombay. Of all schools in Bombay, the two had to get admission in the one I happened to study. Of all classes in my school, they had to turn up in my class. Each segment drawn with the intention of achieving the target…
But was them just ending up in my class good enough? Was that the ultimate goal?
Perhaps not… perhaps fate had another turn to be taken… another segment waiting to be drawn.
This wait seemed to have ended the day our teacher introduced the ‘Buddy System’ to us… Well, more on that in the next post … :)
4/22/09
Przepraszam, jestem za późno!
Ladies, gentlemen and gentle men,
I dedicate this post to say sorry, be repentant, show regret & offer my apologies towards my sudden disappearing act. Having done that, I would now like to touch upon the cause of my absence.
To tell you the truth, the last few weeks have been, as I may put it, an out-of-suitcase experience for me. Days of scheming, loads of buttering, a few threatening emails and one hostage scenario later, my boss finally agreed to send me to a much awaited trip to Poland.
The trip was in many ways a memorable experience and unlike my other business trips, for some good reasons as well.
Apart from the fact that my luggage or I wasn't lost in transit, the hotel which I was put in was kind of classy and 4 starish. To give you an idea, it was one of those places where you could easily get intimidated by the housekeeping staff. My room in particular had perhaps the best view of all, as its windows gave way to a high definition view of the swimming pool and the sauna room.
Such was the charm of the place that I couldn’t help but pick a few travel souvenirs which mainly consisted of half a dozen shampoo bottles, a pair of bathroom slippers, the tv remote, some silverware and the hair dryer by the time I checked out.
Things turned out to be very bright and productive on the work front as well. Though the office floor starkly reminded of the one here in Mumbai, the people were of a pleasing nature and most spoke good Pinglish (Polish + English) as well. Prior to a minor accident at the pantry involving me and some of the equipment, which ultimately rendered the coffee vending machine useless, my presence on the floor usually attracted welcoming smiles and an occasional 'Namasthey!' as well.
My escort, who also happened to be my counterpart at work and a die hard Bollywood fan, was kind enough to show me some interesting places in & around Krakow. Thanks to some vicious rumours doing rounds in emails across the Indo-Polish borders, Marcin insisted that I must sing a Bollywood song and mimic Shahrukh Khan. It was only when I actually relented to his demands did he learn that I wasn't really known for such talents.
Otherwise, our guys day out together was largely enjoyable and fun. Perhaps, if I only hadn't got carried away by his 'Krakow looks best on foot!' advice, I would have saved myself a walking marathon and my legs from cramping under the coach class seat on my return flight. Now I am counting days before he gets to visit Mumbai and I put forth a 'Mumbai looks best in local trains, at peak hours!' offer before him. Ha! 8-)
To put it in a nut shell, my maiden trip to the land of vodkas, chocolates and vodka filled chocolate was a memorable experience by all possible means. Now since that I am pretty much back to where I truly belong, I promise to pick from where I had left and continue posting my blogs with no major leakages.
Till the next blog... take care and god bless! :)
PS: For those wondering what caused me to use something that resembles a phrase from a Harry Potter book as the title for this post... 'Przepraszam, jestem za późno!' means 'I am sorry, I am late!' in Polish. :)
I dedicate this post to say sorry, be repentant, show regret & offer my apologies towards my sudden disappearing act. Having done that, I would now like to touch upon the cause of my absence.
To tell you the truth, the last few weeks have been, as I may put it, an out-of-suitcase experience for me. Days of scheming, loads of buttering, a few threatening emails and one hostage scenario later, my boss finally agreed to send me to a much awaited trip to Poland.
The trip was in many ways a memorable experience and unlike my other business trips, for some good reasons as well.
Apart from the fact that my luggage or I wasn't lost in transit, the hotel which I was put in was kind of classy and 4 starish. To give you an idea, it was one of those places where you could easily get intimidated by the housekeeping staff. My room in particular had perhaps the best view of all, as its windows gave way to a high definition view of the swimming pool and the sauna room.
Such was the charm of the place that I couldn’t help but pick a few travel souvenirs which mainly consisted of half a dozen shampoo bottles, a pair of bathroom slippers, the tv remote, some silverware and the hair dryer by the time I checked out.
Things turned out to be very bright and productive on the work front as well. Though the office floor starkly reminded of the one here in Mumbai, the people were of a pleasing nature and most spoke good Pinglish (Polish + English) as well. Prior to a minor accident at the pantry involving me and some of the equipment, which ultimately rendered the coffee vending machine useless, my presence on the floor usually attracted welcoming smiles and an occasional 'Namasthey!' as well.
My escort, who also happened to be my counterpart at work and a die hard Bollywood fan, was kind enough to show me some interesting places in & around Krakow. Thanks to some vicious rumours doing rounds in emails across the Indo-Polish borders, Marcin insisted that I must sing a Bollywood song and mimic Shahrukh Khan. It was only when I actually relented to his demands did he learn that I wasn't really known for such talents.
Otherwise, our guys day out together was largely enjoyable and fun. Perhaps, if I only hadn't got carried away by his 'Krakow looks best on foot!' advice, I would have saved myself a walking marathon and my legs from cramping under the coach class seat on my return flight. Now I am counting days before he gets to visit Mumbai and I put forth a 'Mumbai looks best in local trains, at peak hours!' offer before him. Ha! 8-)
To put it in a nut shell, my maiden trip to the land of vodkas, chocolates and vodka filled chocolate was a memorable experience by all possible means. Now since that I am pretty much back to where I truly belong, I promise to pick from where I had left and continue posting my blogs with no major leakages.
Till the next blog... take care and god bless! :)
PS: For those wondering what caused me to use something that resembles a phrase from a Harry Potter book as the title for this post... 'Przepraszam, jestem za późno!' means 'I am sorry, I am late!' in Polish. :)
4/14/09
1996
Standard Seven, in my opinion (Also proven by a kick-ass scientific study. Sacchi, meine padha hain), is the most challenging year in a student’s life. The reasons, as I will soon put forth, are a handful. Let’s start by looking at what happens on the ‘educational’ front.
Normally, anyone who has ever bothered to check the syllabus when s/he entered standard seven must have at least for once played with the thought of exterminating the author and his next five generations. If you ask me, I think such a thought process comes pretty naturally to anyone who 1) happens to share my levels of interest in anything remotely scholastic, 2) hero worships the Chainsaw Massacre guy and owns a pet python or 3) both.
Thus, unless you were immune to all forms of pain or happened to drool over things like empirical formulae and the Pythagoras Theorem, you too will probably recollect going "Photo what frigging synthesis?!!" when you first turned the pages of your syllabi, seventh standard and every standard.
The second and perhaps the most important point is the fact that by the time you reach standard seven and happen to be a guy, the world seems to be a lot lesser nice place to live in.
Apart from the thing with the hormones that is constantly playing havoc with your age old beliefs about girls being a source of unbridled nuisance, you suddenly find yourself uncomfortably placed in a 'semi-kid' kind of a state, a lawless territory where its residents are labeled by the degree of confusedness on their sparsely moustached faces.
Contrarily, this does a world of wonders to the female population, especially for someone on M34I26S34’s growth path. Thanks to the hormonal thing (which works totally in their favor) that I briefly touched upon in the paragraph above, they are suddenly inundated with buying-your-bus- ticket and helping- you-with-your-homework offers.
Hence considering the fact that I carried fairly normal tendencies and was as hormonized as anyone else, it shouldn’t go against me if I told you that I happened to be one of the guys in the class who steered their attention towards the door, when they stepped into our classroom… the exchange students... from a formerly alien part of the world called Canada.
Pink looks hot on girls. This is probably the other thing to learn by the time you hit standard seven. I learnt this when I saw her wearing the color, partially eclipsed by our class teacher and the other girl she was accompanied with.
Standing amidst her escorts, she looked visibly shy and mildly perturbed by the hustle she had generated. Perhaps, she had planned to coolly walk into the class and hope no one would give two hoots about it. So much for wishful thinking, ha!
This is India, young ladies. You come from anyplace minutely foreign and you WILL be stared at!
“Hello children! Please join me in welcoming S14X17C and E12X17C! They have come from Canada and will be studying with us. I hope you will make them feel at home!” the teacher announced to our largely awestricken class.
Her wish seemed to have been heard rather instantly, as some of us dived into the task of wiping the dust and our partners off their seats, making place for the Canadian goddesses. While others, including me, restricted by the lack of courage than anything else, only managed to construct inviting expressions which bordered on the risk of appearing lecherous if overdone and pray earnestly that they might sit in the adjacent row or perhaps the row adjacent to the next two rows.
Feel at home? Hell yeah!
PS: Thanks to my teacher's rather vague form of introduction, it didn't strike me at first which one of X17C sisters was the girl in pink. I, of course, did manage to figure that out eventually.
4/8/09
Present Ma'am!
Back in school, the second strongest reason - the first being the natural lack of focus and motivation - to help me find solace as an underperforming flag-bearer of the underperformers, was a distinct team of faculty members.
Akin to a baton-wielding jail superintendent, working zealously towards making life as difficult and regretful for its resident inmates, these ‘givers of education’ strived to achieve a similar result.
To mention a few… there was that slap-happy Hindi professor, who had the tendency to whack the living daylights of anyone caught half-yawning during his awe-inspiring, post-lunch lectures. One neatly landed blow from this guy and you had the germs residing in your dental cavities dive into coma. Man, this guy could make a full-fledged Sunny paaji’s water-pump uprooting ‘Dhai kilo ka Haath’ assault feel like a peacock feather caressing your butt cheeks in comparison. Believe me, I speak from experience.
Then, we had Miss P58T67S - our PT instructor. This lady could make Hitler laugh his moustache off with her grammar-no-bare usage of the English language. I distinctly remember her telling us once, rather fondly, that she had ‘two daughters and both were girls’. I tell you, nothing was more daunting than conversing with her and yet maintaining a straight face. (Now you know whom to blame if you find something funny with my writing… Undesirably funny that is.)
Last, but not even remotely the least, was the Biology professor, who perhaps out of sheer affection for her subject, always found striking similarities between the animal kingdom and her class. Thus, on a given day, you could hear her calling someone a ‘dim-witted buffoon’, an ‘undernourished flea parasite’, a ‘super-sized amoeba’ or when highly agitated, a ‘bottom-of-the-food-chain dwelling, filter-feeding zooplankton’.
However, amidst and in spite of these wonderful reasons to get up every morning and head to school, there were few people who helped me sustain my belief in the Indian educational system.
The first being our librarian Miss L33I66B, who also doubled up as an invigilator during our exams – a favor which I will never forget. Apart from being a very kind and a gentle lady by nature, she was a deeply religious person as well. This, probably, prompted her to do nothing but softly announce “God is watching!” when she managed to find someone cheating in class. Undoubtedly, I owe her a lot to help me wade through most of my math papers.
And then of course was Miss S22H25L … my English and class teacher for standard six. She was easily the only person who deserved the title of ‘Miss’ as the rest were either married or even appeared to have married off their grand-children.
Ah, Miss S22H25L… She was way not married and was way not like the rest of them! She was, as I fondly recollect, my inspiration to take a bath before I left for school. She was, amidst the jaw-rattling, language-murdering and animal-comparing teachers, my inspiration to learn. She was the reason why I waited impatiently, one roll number at a time and all forty of them, to watch her look into the attendance registry and call out my number with that pleasing smile on her face.
“Present Ma’am!” I would scream, raising my hand with sheer delight.
Much to the horror of my fellow classmates, I began participating in debates, elocution competitions, roll playing activities, debates, quizzes and absolutely anything that had to with English and Miss S22H25L. I began answering ad-hoc questions; some which had even left the chronic toppers staring at the blackboard with gaping stupor.
(Now is perhaps a good time to reiterate to the post where I had spoken a bit about my roll number and my English marks. You probably must have realized by now why these two could have been the possible exemptions. Okay, back to this post.)
Yes, things were changing and they were changing fast. My perplexed twelve year old heart was finding it increasingly difficult to come in terms with this new and totally uncharted feeling. A feeling which by any sixth grader standards was as good as unlimited access to video games and toffee bars minus the need go to school or eat veggies for like a month.
But, as it happens with all earnest, one-sided love stories, the girl is fled away by a moustache-sporting, car-driving, MBA-holding, bank-managing guy… While the secret admirer (read me), the one who has tones of silent adoration for her in his bespectacled eyes (Okay, I had a number. Who doesn’t?) is left with well, just all by his self.
I learnt about Miss S22H25L’s engagement when she gleefully broke the news to the class and even resorted to distributing éclairs like it was an occasion worth celebrating. Citing an incessant pain in my tooth, I plainly declined from picking the sweet when she turned at my desk. For a moment or two, I felt she might have smelled the rat. Perhaps she must have noticed me munching a toffee bar right out of my tiffin box during the recess break. Nonetheless, she never made any fuss about it and walked on. And, so did I…
Slowly but steadily, I began to trudge back into my original self. The painful process of self-recuperation had begun. Questions were answered, but only when asked to. Hand was raised, but only to seek permission to attend a nature’s call. Bath was taken, but only when mum threatened.
By the time I entered standard seven, Miss S22H25L was honeymooning in Shimla. We had a new English teacher at our disposal. But, post Miss S22H25L, things never remained the same with English teachers. Thanks to my first and what could have been my last female-liking experience, I was months away turning into a hard-wired, tin-hearted, lifeless robot. Things would have pretty much headed in that direction, if life hadn’t met an abrupt diversion.
The year was 1996 and mathematics had just become stratospherically tougher. But it wasn’t something that had exactly caught my attention. It was something or rather someone else.
Akin to a baton-wielding jail superintendent, working zealously towards making life as difficult and regretful for its resident inmates, these ‘givers of education’ strived to achieve a similar result.
To mention a few… there was that slap-happy Hindi professor, who had the tendency to whack the living daylights of anyone caught half-yawning during his awe-inspiring, post-lunch lectures. One neatly landed blow from this guy and you had the germs residing in your dental cavities dive into coma. Man, this guy could make a full-fledged Sunny paaji’s water-pump uprooting ‘Dhai kilo ka Haath’ assault feel like a peacock feather caressing your butt cheeks in comparison. Believe me, I speak from experience.
Then, we had Miss P58T67S - our PT instructor. This lady could make Hitler laugh his moustache off with her grammar-no-bare usage of the English language. I distinctly remember her telling us once, rather fondly, that she had ‘two daughters and both were girls’. I tell you, nothing was more daunting than conversing with her and yet maintaining a straight face. (Now you know whom to blame if you find something funny with my writing… Undesirably funny that is.)
Last, but not even remotely the least, was the Biology professor, who perhaps out of sheer affection for her subject, always found striking similarities between the animal kingdom and her class. Thus, on a given day, you could hear her calling someone a ‘dim-witted buffoon’, an ‘undernourished flea parasite’, a ‘super-sized amoeba’ or when highly agitated, a ‘bottom-of-the-food-chain dwelling, filter-feeding zooplankton’.
However, amidst and in spite of these wonderful reasons to get up every morning and head to school, there were few people who helped me sustain my belief in the Indian educational system.
The first being our librarian Miss L33I66B, who also doubled up as an invigilator during our exams – a favor which I will never forget. Apart from being a very kind and a gentle lady by nature, she was a deeply religious person as well. This, probably, prompted her to do nothing but softly announce “God is watching!” when she managed to find someone cheating in class. Undoubtedly, I owe her a lot to help me wade through most of my math papers.
And then of course was Miss S22H25L … my English and class teacher for standard six. She was easily the only person who deserved the title of ‘Miss’ as the rest were either married or even appeared to have married off their grand-children.
Ah, Miss S22H25L… She was way not married and was way not like the rest of them! She was, as I fondly recollect, my inspiration to take a bath before I left for school. She was, amidst the jaw-rattling, language-murdering and animal-comparing teachers, my inspiration to learn. She was the reason why I waited impatiently, one roll number at a time and all forty of them, to watch her look into the attendance registry and call out my number with that pleasing smile on her face.
“Present Ma’am!” I would scream, raising my hand with sheer delight.
Much to the horror of my fellow classmates, I began participating in debates, elocution competitions, roll playing activities, debates, quizzes and absolutely anything that had to with English and Miss S22H25L. I began answering ad-hoc questions; some which had even left the chronic toppers staring at the blackboard with gaping stupor.
(Now is perhaps a good time to reiterate to the post where I had spoken a bit about my roll number and my English marks. You probably must have realized by now why these two could have been the possible exemptions. Okay, back to this post.)
Yes, things were changing and they were changing fast. My perplexed twelve year old heart was finding it increasingly difficult to come in terms with this new and totally uncharted feeling. A feeling which by any sixth grader standards was as good as unlimited access to video games and toffee bars minus the need go to school or eat veggies for like a month.
But, as it happens with all earnest, one-sided love stories, the girl is fled away by a moustache-sporting, car-driving, MBA-holding, bank-managing guy… While the secret admirer (read me), the one who has tones of silent adoration for her in his bespectacled eyes (Okay, I had a number. Who doesn’t?) is left with well, just all by his self.
I learnt about Miss S22H25L’s engagement when she gleefully broke the news to the class and even resorted to distributing éclairs like it was an occasion worth celebrating. Citing an incessant pain in my tooth, I plainly declined from picking the sweet when she turned at my desk. For a moment or two, I felt she might have smelled the rat. Perhaps she must have noticed me munching a toffee bar right out of my tiffin box during the recess break. Nonetheless, she never made any fuss about it and walked on. And, so did I…
Slowly but steadily, I began to trudge back into my original self. The painful process of self-recuperation had begun. Questions were answered, but only when asked to. Hand was raised, but only to seek permission to attend a nature’s call. Bath was taken, but only when mum threatened.
By the time I entered standard seven, Miss S22H25L was honeymooning in Shimla. We had a new English teacher at our disposal. But, post Miss S22H25L, things never remained the same with English teachers. Thanks to my first and what could have been my last female-liking experience, I was months away turning into a hard-wired, tin-hearted, lifeless robot. Things would have pretty much headed in that direction, if life hadn’t met an abrupt diversion.
The year was 1996 and mathematics had just become stratospherically tougher. But it wasn’t something that had exactly caught my attention. It was something or rather someone else.
4/4/09
50 percent of 50
I wasn’t, as you must have gathered from my last post, the most popular guy in school. Definitely not as popular as T78O89P (the chronic topper), M34I26S34 (the girl who had grown quickly & how!) or C2H3O8 (the science wiz kid… Man, that guy could devise a fully-functional bomb from the contents of a make-up kit, seriously)… And evidently, not as someone whose name a girl might remember when tapped in a local bus after a decade or so.
To put things in the right perspective, let’s say I was comfortably average. Like someone who found bliss in passing his subjects rather than scoring in them. Someone who was friends with most in his class but no one in particular belonged to his ‘circle’… maybe because he never had a circle… not even a triangle … not even a segment. Someone, whom most found was a nice guy to know but perhaps not nice enough to know for good…
Ha! Got you, didn’t I? Jyada senti hogaya kya? Aare boss, aisa kuch hota to kya mein yahan full-on Valmiki style mein apna school-puran likh raha hota?!!
To be true to you, the first line fits my scholastic personality bill like how those hot pants fitted Rimi Sen in the opening song of Dhoom 1 (Yeah, you know what I am talking about… ;) … or perhaps the first two lines, the second being only partially true.
You see the need to score 35 percent or the golden minimum was limited to 5 or perhaps 6 of the 9 subjects I had in a year. The number would have been far lesser if something as lovable as ‘Science’ had not mutated into an ugly three-headed monster namely, Biology, Chemistry and Physics by the time Phoolan Devi became an MP or I reached the seventh standard.
However, thanks to my extraordinarily developed mugging skills, I somehow saw the end of these subjects by the time I wrote my final exam. But, how do you deal with a subject that can’t be mugged? How do you deal with a subject that doesn’t award you five marks for filling a page or two with meaningless crap? How do you deal with something like… mathematics?
Yes, I hated Maths. I hated every percentage of it, it’s every permutation and combination, it’s every angle and it’s every side. I hated it as much as Rakhi Sawant hates to leave her house without make-up or with donning clothes more than ten inches in length. Okay, maybe not that much. Nonetheless, exam times with Maths were always difficult. The lack of scope for mugging always left me staring blankly into mine and then intently into the papers of those around me.
Of all frightful exam memories that still manage to wake me up in the middle of an office meeting, there is this one instance… one question that I might have stared so hard that it now appears to be photocopied in my mind. The question was something like:
Section 2. Solve the following (3 Marks each)
01. 50% of 50 is ___
Yeah… fifty percent of fifty. Two identical numbers separated by one confusing symbol and you’ve got the kid. Pure evil.
I am positive I hadn’t got it right back then. Now of course if you ask me, I can tell you right away the answer is … yes, it is… (Ah, now where is a frigging calculator when you need one?) … Ha! Yes, 25… I would have told you the answer is 25. But, I couldn’t back then. Going by the intellectual composition of my class, I can say for sure that 50% of the 50 odd students never got either. I was one of them. One of the 50%. And that’s how it remained for most of my initial schooling years. I was always trailed by 50% of the best. To make it sound better, I always managed to lead the 50% worst performing students… Comfortably average.
However, scoring consistently low wasn't all that bad afterall, as it soon turned out to be… The year was 1996 and we had a new student joining our class…
4/1/09
A Himeshious Encounter
The other day I spotted one of my long lost school acquaintances aboard a local bus (recession hain bhai) on my way home. She was seated a few rows ahead from where I stood, playing audience to a guy who was either insanely in love with or was under a legally binding contract to play Himesh numbers in public, as the speaker of his phone kept dishing out one melodic gem after another.
Now, I am not that kind of a guy who would barge into the ladies section of a BEST bus and strike a conversation with a girl I hadn’t seen for like a decade. But, considering the dangers associated with prolonged exposure to H-rays, I did just that. Well, almost that.
For the good part of the story, I did manage to leave the musical carnage a few seats behind. Snaking past a few bystanders who seemed to have either been zombiefied or were ardent fans of 'something, something more, something more... statue!' game, I reached the ‘ladies reserved’ section of the bus and stood right behind her seat. From the top view, I could see that she was engrossed in some heavy duty texting whilst listening to what I hoped was not Himesh on her iPod. Thus, after spending a minute or two trying to recollect her name, I finally called it out.
“Hi X29C56D…” (You probably must have noticed it by yourself, but I have change the name to protect her identity)
X29C65D gave no reaction. Not a turn of head or a swing of the bag or a fling of the sandal or any such act that might suggest that she heard me call her name. However, it was not that I hadn’t attracted any response at all. Everyone else seated in the perimeter of 4 chairs or so, stared at me like a young kid would stare at a captive monkey before his acrobatic performance – anticipating some form of entertainment. A large part of my audience which unfortunately consisted of rather hefty looking aunties had already labeled me as a regular ruffian, some staring hard enough to indicate they were trying to find resemblances with their neighborhood goon.
Must be the iPod, I reasoned.
Allowing me to believe that the music player had shunned her from all forms of worldly sounds apart from the ones it was playing, I decided to adopt a somewhat ‘physical’ form of gesticulation. Thus, breathing courage into my perplexed self, I tapped her shoulder using the icebergish tip of my index finger.
The trick worked. X29C56D looked up, looking as freaked out as any girl might be when tapped out of nowhere in a public mode of transport. The aunties looked up too. They had perhaps made their mind to pound me into a pulp if she made any signs of protest or annoyance. Much to their disappointment, she recognized me in an instant.
“Hey you… you were that guy from school, right?” She asked with a smile.
Okay, almost recognized me. But, good enough to save me from featuring as the ‘Breaking News: Bespectacled pervert gets lynched in a public bus!!!’ guy in the evening show of a local news channel.
“Yeah true, from school,” I replied, nodding my head. “I had a name too, it’s Vishal.”
“Oh yes! Vishal… Vishal V, follower of girls!” She announced with a chuckle.
Now, before you take cues from this story and assume that am a habitual female stalker, let me tell you that the term ‘follower of girls’ is spoken in a completely different context. The thing is, thanks to my initials, which is V followed by another… yes, you’ve guessed it, another V; I usually ended up getting the last of the ‘boy roll numbers’… thus making way for the girls in the class, starting with one of had AA as her initials. The only possible way to break the jinx was to get a minus vowel naming Chinese or a Polish exchange student in my class, but sadly, that never happened. (Speaking of exchange students… Well, more on that later)
“Yeah, the one who had the last of boy roll number and was preceded by the girls in the class,” I replied, detailing the point for the benefit of my blood-thirsty audience. “By the way, how are you doing?”
The conversation went on for the next 4 stops, after which, she had to alight the bus. Between those 4 stops, we spoke at length about each other, about our common friends and some events which involved me in a not so lets-disclose-on-a-public-blog way, while Himesh crooned in the background, declaring some soniye that he loved her unconditionally (Actual lyrics. In English. I swear) for the second consecutive time.
No sooner than later, my stop had arrived and I stepped down of the bus, taking some bits of Himesh and the conversation along with me. As I straddled my way home, my mind began to incline towards that summer of 1996 when the first and possibly the only batch of exchange students stepped into my classroom…
Well, more 0n that later… :)
Now, I am not that kind of a guy who would barge into the ladies section of a BEST bus and strike a conversation with a girl I hadn’t seen for like a decade. But, considering the dangers associated with prolonged exposure to H-rays, I did just that. Well, almost that.
For the good part of the story, I did manage to leave the musical carnage a few seats behind. Snaking past a few bystanders who seemed to have either been zombiefied or were ardent fans of 'something, something more, something more... statue!' game, I reached the ‘ladies reserved’ section of the bus and stood right behind her seat. From the top view, I could see that she was engrossed in some heavy duty texting whilst listening to what I hoped was not Himesh on her iPod. Thus, after spending a minute or two trying to recollect her name, I finally called it out.
“Hi X29C56D…” (You probably must have noticed it by yourself, but I have change the name to protect her identity)
X29C65D gave no reaction. Not a turn of head or a swing of the bag or a fling of the sandal or any such act that might suggest that she heard me call her name. However, it was not that I hadn’t attracted any response at all. Everyone else seated in the perimeter of 4 chairs or so, stared at me like a young kid would stare at a captive monkey before his acrobatic performance – anticipating some form of entertainment. A large part of my audience which unfortunately consisted of rather hefty looking aunties had already labeled me as a regular ruffian, some staring hard enough to indicate they were trying to find resemblances with their neighborhood goon.
Must be the iPod, I reasoned.
Allowing me to believe that the music player had shunned her from all forms of worldly sounds apart from the ones it was playing, I decided to adopt a somewhat ‘physical’ form of gesticulation. Thus, breathing courage into my perplexed self, I tapped her shoulder using the icebergish tip of my index finger.
The trick worked. X29C56D looked up, looking as freaked out as any girl might be when tapped out of nowhere in a public mode of transport. The aunties looked up too. They had perhaps made their mind to pound me into a pulp if she made any signs of protest or annoyance. Much to their disappointment, she recognized me in an instant.
“Hey you… you were that guy from school, right?” She asked with a smile.
Okay, almost recognized me. But, good enough to save me from featuring as the ‘Breaking News: Bespectacled pervert gets lynched in a public bus!!!’ guy in the evening show of a local news channel.
“Yeah true, from school,” I replied, nodding my head. “I had a name too, it’s Vishal.”
“Oh yes! Vishal… Vishal V, follower of girls!” She announced with a chuckle.
Now, before you take cues from this story and assume that am a habitual female stalker, let me tell you that the term ‘follower of girls’ is spoken in a completely different context. The thing is, thanks to my initials, which is V followed by another… yes, you’ve guessed it, another V; I usually ended up getting the last of the ‘boy roll numbers’… thus making way for the girls in the class, starting with one of had AA as her initials. The only possible way to break the jinx was to get a minus vowel naming Chinese or a Polish exchange student in my class, but sadly, that never happened. (Speaking of exchange students… Well, more on that later)
“Yeah, the one who had the last of boy roll number and was preceded by the girls in the class,” I replied, detailing the point for the benefit of my blood-thirsty audience. “By the way, how are you doing?”
The conversation went on for the next 4 stops, after which, she had to alight the bus. Between those 4 stops, we spoke at length about each other, about our common friends and some events which involved me in a not so lets-disclose-on-a-public-blog way, while Himesh crooned in the background, declaring some soniye that he loved her unconditionally (Actual lyrics. In English. I swear) for the second consecutive time.
No sooner than later, my stop had arrived and I stepped down of the bus, taking some bits of Himesh and the conversation along with me. As I straddled my way home, my mind began to incline towards that summer of 1996 when the first and possibly the only batch of exchange students stepped into my classroom…
Well, more 0n that later… :)
3/28/09
Bit about me...
Before you proceed reading further, I would like to flag a small disclaimer.
There are chances that your brain might react as it normally would when subjected to some Anu Malik type of music when you read the paragraphs that follow… The reason being, I had posted something similar as part of what I now call as my ‘had blog’. However, considering the gravity of the incident which I shared with you in my last post, I have taken the liberty to assume that you might just not have read it before and thus, posting it again…
Not a very long time ago, a couple of months since I procured my Bachelor’s degree to be precise, me and my dad were not in talking terms or shall I say, my dad was not in talking terms with me. As obvious as it might look at this juncture, let me assure you that the reason for such parental hostility had nothing to do with the genuineness or rather the lack of genuineness of my Bachelor’s certificate or the stream which I passed out from. It actually lay in the fact that after experiencing a brief phase of unemployment and being occasionally taunted for doing awaaragardi with my lafange friends, I took up a job at a call centre… yes, a BPO as it is fondly called.
Now, apart from the obvious fact that I had gained a rather inebriated version of the American accent, following which my grandma accused me of challoing a chakkar with a firang ladki and my brother offered me the role of an autistic horse in his school puppet play, I had a difficult time understanding this sudden indifference towards me... and it’s not that it really mattered to me, well at least not for the initial few weeks. The freedom and money that my new job brought along helped me think like a rebellion, like an outcast. I had begun to drift away…
But then, zor ka jhatka dheere se laga… and I soon began to realise what just might have irked him. You see, my dad, a teacher by profession, had spent most of his teaching years watching his students scoring percentages which on any given day, outdid the number acquired by adding all possible digits on my report card - including the roll number. (Okay, I might have exaggerated a bit here… I mean not the roll number and perhaps not my English marks as well. I could have explained you the reasons behind these exemptions, but that qualifies for a separate post altogether… So, more on my school going escapades later).
Most of these kids would eventually grow into responsible young adults and take up flourishing careers… aur fir milne aatein hain ghar par thank-you bolne… like as if, the fellows who’ve designed the ICSE 10th boards syllabus took hints from the guerrilla warfare training course or something.
My dad had perhaps thought of something as such for me as well. He might have wanted me to do something that he could remember and feel proud about. I had disappointed him to two accounts... academically and what I thought back then, professionally as well.
Many things happened during that phase of my life. Lost some old ‘friends’ because I had become a ‘call center waala ladka’, made some new ones at my new workplace, lost health… thanks to the night shifts, caught upon a few things which were not necessary… Amidst all this fun, I had enrolled to a local coaching class and had begun preparing for CAT and then SNAP (more on that later) as well.
As I look upon those days now, I see myself grappled in a different kind of fear… fear of being unidentifiable, fear of being looked down upon, fear of being called the black sheep of my family, fear of being quoted as a bad example... and perhaps, most fearsome of all, the fear of letting someone down again.
Lekin, bhagwan ki duwa se, things soon started changing for good. I started bringing home a few performance awards… which as it must be mentioned here, was my first up-close and personal experience of being a legible award recipient. Few months later, I finally put my headset to rest for good and boarded the Neeta ‘Express Volvo’ bus to Pune, to embark upon the journey of earning myself a diploma in management from a well-off B-School… Two eventful years (more on that soon) later, I completed my post-graduation and found myself a job that my dad could reason with. He now doesn't leave an opportunity to quote his friends and fellow students how (apparently) well am doing it… though I know for sure that he is as perplexed with what I do in office till date.
Acha abh yaha tak padh liya hain to let me take the opportunity (pata nahi kya opportunity hain ismein… lekin aise bolte hain English mein), to flag another disclaimer.
I do not wish to admonish those who work in call centres. Nor do I say it’s a bad job. I personally learnt a lot of things while working there… like the importance of one’s own hard earned money, the gratification of helping someone in need, a bit of taxation and some corporate world ke taur-tarike… and yeah, made some great friends too. All I am trying to say is that while I worked there, I realised what my family expected from me, and soon, what I expected from myself.
There comes a time in your life when we have taken too many things for granted, too many hours wasted and too many opportunities unseen. But sooner or later, the sand begins to sink under our feet and we are hit hard by the fact that what we always believed was us… was nothing more than a reflection of the hard work done and goodwill earned by our guardians. I learnt this back then. You might have learnt this in some other way, in some other manner. It doesn’t matter how you've learnt it... all it matters is how soon you've learnt it.
Chalo bahot philosophy ho gayi… Time to hit the sack (its 1:45am at the moment) … Take care, go bless and have a nice weekend! Bye! :)
There are chances that your brain might react as it normally would when subjected to some Anu Malik type of music when you read the paragraphs that follow… The reason being, I had posted something similar as part of what I now call as my ‘had blog’. However, considering the gravity of the incident which I shared with you in my last post, I have taken the liberty to assume that you might just not have read it before and thus, posting it again…
Not a very long time ago, a couple of months since I procured my Bachelor’s degree to be precise, me and my dad were not in talking terms or shall I say, my dad was not in talking terms with me. As obvious as it might look at this juncture, let me assure you that the reason for such parental hostility had nothing to do with the genuineness or rather the lack of genuineness of my Bachelor’s certificate or the stream which I passed out from. It actually lay in the fact that after experiencing a brief phase of unemployment and being occasionally taunted for doing awaaragardi with my lafange friends, I took up a job at a call centre… yes, a BPO as it is fondly called.
Now, apart from the obvious fact that I had gained a rather inebriated version of the American accent, following which my grandma accused me of challoing a chakkar with a firang ladki and my brother offered me the role of an autistic horse in his school puppet play, I had a difficult time understanding this sudden indifference towards me... and it’s not that it really mattered to me, well at least not for the initial few weeks. The freedom and money that my new job brought along helped me think like a rebellion, like an outcast. I had begun to drift away…
But then, zor ka jhatka dheere se laga… and I soon began to realise what just might have irked him. You see, my dad, a teacher by profession, had spent most of his teaching years watching his students scoring percentages which on any given day, outdid the number acquired by adding all possible digits on my report card - including the roll number. (Okay, I might have exaggerated a bit here… I mean not the roll number and perhaps not my English marks as well. I could have explained you the reasons behind these exemptions, but that qualifies for a separate post altogether… So, more on my school going escapades later).
Most of these kids would eventually grow into responsible young adults and take up flourishing careers… aur fir milne aatein hain ghar par thank-you bolne… like as if, the fellows who’ve designed the ICSE 10th boards syllabus took hints from the guerrilla warfare training course or something.
My dad had perhaps thought of something as such for me as well. He might have wanted me to do something that he could remember and feel proud about. I had disappointed him to two accounts... academically and what I thought back then, professionally as well.
Many things happened during that phase of my life. Lost some old ‘friends’ because I had become a ‘call center waala ladka’, made some new ones at my new workplace, lost health… thanks to the night shifts, caught upon a few things which were not necessary… Amidst all this fun, I had enrolled to a local coaching class and had begun preparing for CAT and then SNAP (more on that later) as well.
As I look upon those days now, I see myself grappled in a different kind of fear… fear of being unidentifiable, fear of being looked down upon, fear of being called the black sheep of my family, fear of being quoted as a bad example... and perhaps, most fearsome of all, the fear of letting someone down again.
Lekin, bhagwan ki duwa se, things soon started changing for good. I started bringing home a few performance awards… which as it must be mentioned here, was my first up-close and personal experience of being a legible award recipient. Few months later, I finally put my headset to rest for good and boarded the Neeta ‘Express Volvo’ bus to Pune, to embark upon the journey of earning myself a diploma in management from a well-off B-School… Two eventful years (more on that soon) later, I completed my post-graduation and found myself a job that my dad could reason with. He now doesn't leave an opportunity to quote his friends and fellow students how (apparently) well am doing it… though I know for sure that he is as perplexed with what I do in office till date.
Acha abh yaha tak padh liya hain to let me take the opportunity (pata nahi kya opportunity hain ismein… lekin aise bolte hain English mein), to flag another disclaimer.
I do not wish to admonish those who work in call centres. Nor do I say it’s a bad job. I personally learnt a lot of things while working there… like the importance of one’s own hard earned money, the gratification of helping someone in need, a bit of taxation and some corporate world ke taur-tarike… and yeah, made some great friends too. All I am trying to say is that while I worked there, I realised what my family expected from me, and soon, what I expected from myself.
There comes a time in your life when we have taken too many things for granted, too many hours wasted and too many opportunities unseen. But sooner or later, the sand begins to sink under our feet and we are hit hard by the fact that what we always believed was us… was nothing more than a reflection of the hard work done and goodwill earned by our guardians. I learnt this back then. You might have learnt this in some other way, in some other manner. It doesn’t matter how you've learnt it... all it matters is how soon you've learnt it.
Chalo bahot philosophy ho gayi… Time to hit the sack (its 1:45am at the moment) … Take care, go bless and have a nice weekend! Bye! :)
3/26/09
Second Innings
There, all set!
I've finally completed what I like to term as 'Reengineering my Blog' ... Okay, to be frank with you this just a lame excuse for starting all over again, thanks to not being able to blog as frequently as I initially promised myself that I would... *sigh*
The motivation of doing is strongly drawn from a humbling conversation with one of my good friends... Before I divulge the contents of this life changing conversation, let me promise you that I the words you are soon about to read have not been doctored &/or mollified in any manner whatsoever… each syllable is kept intact, presented in its original form…
Me: "Dude, India *beep*ed the Kiwis… we won the test man!"
Friend: "Yeah I know! We got them by the *beep*ing like a *beep*ing *beep*!! It’s been splashed all over the net… people are blogging like crazy!"
Me: "Aw, c’mon dude, it’s been like eternity since we won a test abroad!! Isn’t that worth expressing in words? I mean, why the *beep*would I have a blog?!"
Friend: "It’s actually the first in New Zealand since 1976 and I wasn’t speaking of your… wait a second. Holy *beep*!! You had a blog too, didn’t you?"
Me (mentally): I had a blog? I had a blog? Since when did my blog become had?
It then struck me that if a close aide had no whereabouts of my blog, it was almost criminal to keep even an iota of hope with the rest of the literate, blog-happy population…Thus, driven by this rather scary realisation (and the fact that I had a good 2 hours of free time in office), I stepped on the task of refurnishing my blog with a whole new interface, new title and a new purpose... In addition, I’ve also promised myself (real promise this time, sacchi waala) that I will try and blog religiously & at a reasonably decent pace...
Let’s see how this works out this time… Till my next post, ta! :)
I've finally completed what I like to term as 'Reengineering my Blog' ... Okay, to be frank with you this just a lame excuse for starting all over again, thanks to not being able to blog as frequently as I initially promised myself that I would... *sigh*
The motivation of doing is strongly drawn from a humbling conversation with one of my good friends... Before I divulge the contents of this life changing conversation, let me promise you that I the words you are soon about to read have not been doctored &/or mollified in any manner whatsoever… each syllable is kept intact, presented in its original form…
Me: "Dude, India *beep*
Friend: "Yeah I know! We got them by the *beep*
Me: "Aw, c’mon dude, it’s been like eternity since we won a test abroad!! Isn’t that worth expressing in words? I mean, why the *beep*
Friend: "It’s actually the first in New Zealand since 1976 and I wasn’t speaking of your… wait a second. Holy *beep*
Me (mentally): I had a blog? I had a blog? Since when did my blog become had?
It then struck me that if a close aide had no whereabouts of my blog, it was almost criminal to keep even an iota of hope with the rest of the literate, blog-happy population…Thus, driven by this rather scary realisation (and the fact that I had a good 2 hours of free time in office), I stepped on the task of refurnishing my blog with a whole new interface, new title and a new purpose... In addition, I’ve also promised myself (real promise this time, sacchi waala) that I will try and blog religiously & at a reasonably decent pace...
Let’s see how this works out this time… Till my next post, ta! :)
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