“Thank God it is Friday” was on my lips the moment I left office on February 22 2008. Tony (Toddy) Pullachen had invited us over to his flat for a drinking binge. I had been of the drink for quite some time due to viral fever and other god forsaken ailments, so I took to the invitation like fish to water.
Now, I pride myself on being a reasonable man when drunk.
Drunk and loud? Guilty your honor.
Drunk and obnoxious? Guilty again.
But Drunk and Unreasonable? No way. I aint the type who says “Don’t hold me, I can walk straight” or the type of guy who insists on driving the moment he is drunk. In fact when I am drunk, I insist that the sober man drive. But Friday was different..:(
After successfully downing God knows how much of those divine cups of Ambrosia, we turned on the idiot tube and lo! There was this old Mohanlal starred movie “Pakshae”. As we lay about watching the movie passing snide comments on how beautiful olden time heroines looked, Innocent (another actor) who does a cameo in the film entered the scene. One of his dialogues roughly translated to “let’s rock at the city centre, that’s where the fun is”.
You can’t tell that kinda dialogue to four drunken men without a response. Pullachen was on his feet in a second shouting “let’s go for a night ride, all the fun is in the city”. Not surprisingly in five short minutes I found myself the pillion rider of a bike driven by Shyam who was fortunately not too drunk. I would have stayed there if not for Samjith driving the other bike. You see, Samjith did not know how to ride a bike and he was riding it. I did not know how to ride a bike and I wasn’t riding it. Blatantly undemocratic and un-socialistic if you ask me.
I wanted to drive our bike then and there. Shyam soothed me with some soberly words and finally we compromised that I would drive up till the gate and he would take on afterwards. But, at the gate I decided that I could go up to the main road and I drove up to the main road. At the main road, I felt that I could drive up to Hyderabad (from Bangalore!) but fortunately two things stopped me from doing it.
1) The biked had very little petrol
2) Shyam decided to get the bike back (big monkey do as he please!)
All this time, Samjith to his credit was driving his bike very well. After going past Marthahalli on the outer ring road, we stopped due to lack of petrol. There was only enough left to get back in one piece.
Samjith on the other hand drove away with not a care in the world. As we waited for them to return, I badgered Shyam to allow me to drive “a little on the main road”. Finally Shyam agreed. Just as I spotted Samjith’s bike, I jumped on mine and accelerated away. Shyam was holding on for good life.
I: Ever seen “matrix re-loaded”
Shyam: Yes
I: Let’s teach Trinity a few moves shall we?
Shyam: No Way!
I: Yes! Here’s the way
Shyam: Oh noo….
I zigzagged between trucks like a maniac, my alcohol induced self-confidence kept telling me to “push it dude, push it” and I pushed it. At one point, I looked back to see where Samjith was (somebody forgot to tell me about the wind factor! You can’t just turn around and look when driving a bike at speed, you loose your balance!) Fortunately, the bike was stable and Shyam did not notice anything. But that moment of imbalance send electric shocks down my spine.
All the alcohol in my blood seemed to vaporized away. The foolishness of what I was doing struck me. Crazy! that’s what I was in those moments. What the f*** did I think I was doing? and that too with somebody in the pillion seat! Me, I didn’t have a license and more importantly I didn’t know how to drive a bike, this was maybe my 2nd/3rd time driving a bike.
It was only a few months before that a cousin* of mine had a bike accident and here I was happily repeating what my parents and relatives had pleaded me and my cousins not to do. I slowed down carefully, stopped the bike and gave it back to Shyam.
The good part:
1) I screwed up, but it did not harm anyone else, so thank you God
2) I screwed up, but I did not get harmed, so thank you God
To err is human and err I did, hence proved that I am not a monkey! Friends who for long had suspected simian antecedents in me are thus proven wrong!
*If my cousin reads this blog then all I gotta tell him in my defense is “hey! I was wearing a helmet!”
Friday, April 25, 2008
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Kite Runner
They say that the book is better than the movie. “They” must be pretty wise.
I read Kite runner some months back. Anish Chandran was the first to recommend the book to me. I did not give it much thought at the time, but when Tony K Thayil also mentioned the same book, I decided to buy it. And Boy! Was it worth every single ‘pirated’ paisa, so much so that I bought the original. Once I bought it, I just couldn’t keep it down. I even got up early the next day to finish it off!
The first part of the story focuses on the relationship between two boys, master and servant in erstwhile Afghanistan before the wars. A “nice” read is what I’d call this section. A morbid situation develops quite suddenly that pulls Hassan and Amir into a quagmire that would change their lives forever. This pivotal part is exceptionally well written by Hosseini who weaves in a plethora of emotions finally leaving you aghast. It breaks your heart reading it and you end up asking the “why God why” q. Here readers get the first taste of Khaled Hosseini’s genius. I must warn you that from then on, it is no longer a “feel good” book.
When a person reads a book he or she is affected differently from another person reading the same book. But the differences would be small (I am guessing a lot here). What is special about reading this book is that people seem to be affected in totally different manners. Most people relate to at least one character in the story. The characters are so completely original and different from each other that readers automatically gravitate to one of them and get affected as such.
Amir the cowardly writer is the protagonist. Hassan is his servant, innocent to a fault, naïve and completely loyal to Amir, he is the character which shapes the story of Amir. Baba, Amir’s all conquering father is the third character. Other characters worth mention are Ali, Hassan’s father and Rahim Khan, Baba’s friend.
I personally related to Amir, while I would have loved to be like Hassan and aspired to be like Baba. The whole damn this is “haunting”. You keep thinking about the characters weeks after you read the story.
At each point of the story, you are left wishing that something different happened. But the story has a mind of its own. It does not pander to the audience except at one point when Amir takes on his childhood nemesis, Assef and for once sheds his cowardice. Come to think of it, Kite Runner is almost like the antithesis of a “feel good” book. Fortunately, Hosseini does not fall into the trap of making it into a tragedy. The ending is not a tragedy, but then it is no “lived happily ever after” either. If I were to rate best endings I would rate it third after “The city of Joy” and “The Alchemist”.
To me, this story underlines two things, one that “nobody is completely bad or incapable” from Amir standing up to Assef and two that “great good can come out of evil” as explained by Rahim Khan to Amir regarding an incident in Baba’s life that I will not enumerate here(It would take the sting out of the story if you haven’t read it). The whole story is about atonement, about the evil things in your life causing you to do good.
Dialogues by Hassan really take one’s breath away “for you, a thousand times over” being one of the classics. “There is a way to be good again!” uttered by Rahim Khan being another.
The moment I saw the movie at my local DVD rental store, I picked it up. when you see a book you read, made into a movie, you always feel something is missing, that some important things are left out etc. I have the same gripe against this movie too. The biggest being that the way I imagined the characters like Baba and Hassan was not the way they turned out.
The movie also tries to catch a lot of childhood scenes but loses out in coherence since they are all small “flashes”. Character building is another thing that it misses out on. Except for Amir and to some extend Baba, the characters are not built up properly. Hassan is a startling example in that the movie almost completely misses his significance.
I don’t want to sound like a girl here but “Baba isn’t tall enough!” From the novel, he is said to be a huge person with an imposing personality. Homayoun Ershadi in the role of Baba is good but not great. And the heart breaking scene regarding Hassan is nowhere near heartbreaking in the movie. A bit of special effects like slow motion, total silence etc might have helped this scene.
The camera work and the background hue given to the film are fantastic. Afghanistan looks like Afghanistan should look. Thankfully, the characters in the film use native language, which greatly adds to the “originality” of the story. Overall it is a good movie by Marc Foster but I guess it won’t touch your heart the way the book does.
P.S: If you don’t want to lose out on the suspense, don’t read wiki.
I read Kite runner some months back. Anish Chandran was the first to recommend the book to me. I did not give it much thought at the time, but when Tony K Thayil also mentioned the same book, I decided to buy it. And Boy! Was it worth every single ‘pirated’ paisa, so much so that I bought the original. Once I bought it, I just couldn’t keep it down. I even got up early the next day to finish it off!
The first part of the story focuses on the relationship between two boys, master and servant in erstwhile Afghanistan before the wars. A “nice” read is what I’d call this section. A morbid situation develops quite suddenly that pulls Hassan and Amir into a quagmire that would change their lives forever. This pivotal part is exceptionally well written by Hosseini who weaves in a plethora of emotions finally leaving you aghast. It breaks your heart reading it and you end up asking the “why God why” q. Here readers get the first taste of Khaled Hosseini’s genius. I must warn you that from then on, it is no longer a “feel good” book.
When a person reads a book he or she is affected differently from another person reading the same book. But the differences would be small (I am guessing a lot here). What is special about reading this book is that people seem to be affected in totally different manners. Most people relate to at least one character in the story. The characters are so completely original and different from each other that readers automatically gravitate to one of them and get affected as such.
Amir the cowardly writer is the protagonist. Hassan is his servant, innocent to a fault, naïve and completely loyal to Amir, he is the character which shapes the story of Amir. Baba, Amir’s all conquering father is the third character. Other characters worth mention are Ali, Hassan’s father and Rahim Khan, Baba’s friend.
I personally related to Amir, while I would have loved to be like Hassan and aspired to be like Baba. The whole damn this is “haunting”. You keep thinking about the characters weeks after you read the story.
At each point of the story, you are left wishing that something different happened. But the story has a mind of its own. It does not pander to the audience except at one point when Amir takes on his childhood nemesis, Assef and for once sheds his cowardice. Come to think of it, Kite Runner is almost like the antithesis of a “feel good” book. Fortunately, Hosseini does not fall into the trap of making it into a tragedy. The ending is not a tragedy, but then it is no “lived happily ever after” either. If I were to rate best endings I would rate it third after “The city of Joy” and “The Alchemist”.
To me, this story underlines two things, one that “nobody is completely bad or incapable” from Amir standing up to Assef and two that “great good can come out of evil” as explained by Rahim Khan to Amir regarding an incident in Baba’s life that I will not enumerate here(It would take the sting out of the story if you haven’t read it). The whole story is about atonement, about the evil things in your life causing you to do good.
Dialogues by Hassan really take one’s breath away “for you, a thousand times over” being one of the classics. “There is a way to be good again!” uttered by Rahim Khan being another.
The moment I saw the movie at my local DVD rental store, I picked it up. when you see a book you read, made into a movie, you always feel something is missing, that some important things are left out etc. I have the same gripe against this movie too. The biggest being that the way I imagined the characters like Baba and Hassan was not the way they turned out.
The movie also tries to catch a lot of childhood scenes but loses out in coherence since they are all small “flashes”. Character building is another thing that it misses out on. Except for Amir and to some extend Baba, the characters are not built up properly. Hassan is a startling example in that the movie almost completely misses his significance.
I don’t want to sound like a girl here but “Baba isn’t tall enough!” From the novel, he is said to be a huge person with an imposing personality. Homayoun Ershadi in the role of Baba is good but not great. And the heart breaking scene regarding Hassan is nowhere near heartbreaking in the movie. A bit of special effects like slow motion, total silence etc might have helped this scene.
The camera work and the background hue given to the film are fantastic. Afghanistan looks like Afghanistan should look. Thankfully, the characters in the film use native language, which greatly adds to the “originality” of the story. Overall it is a good movie by Marc Foster but I guess it won’t touch your heart the way the book does.
P.S: If you don’t want to lose out on the suspense, don’t read wiki.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Philosophy*
Most days, I have the emotional depth of a teaspoon (blessed are those days!). But then, once in a blue moon, I do have my philosophical jaunts. On such days, instead of spending time on normal fantasies related to wet mallu aunties, my mind wanders into a higher plane of thought regarding such mundane details like “what is the meaning of my life” etc. Fortunately, these spells are short lived and I come back to self in no time. The simple reason(s) being that
1) There are no mallu aunties
2) I don’t get any answers.
3) It leaves me depressed and I don’t like being depressed.
But here goes the questions and train of thought, just so that other buggers out there like me know that they aren’t alone!
1) Why do I think that I am I? Why don’t I think I am you?
I got a brain. So do you. I got a body so do you. But what tells me that I am the “owner/individual/soul/whatever” residing in my body? See I told you it is depressing stuff! I am already confused.
2) How did this world begin? Ok if you are a religious you will say God made it, but who made God eh? “God was just there” doesn’t satisfy me.
3) What if we make the matrix? Do we become God?
4) Do we live inside the matrix?
5) Is God megalomaniac?
6) Meaning of life and its purpose?
Of all the other trashy philosophical questions that pop up, 1 to 3 are those that bother me the most… though not necessarily in that order.
Like, for the life of me I don’t understand why I don’t think I am Bill Gates i.e. after he made his fortune and not for criminal tendencies
Is it the “soul” that tells you, that you are you and not me? Well if you do find out, tell me!
Coming back to the age old chicken or egg question, frankly it gives me a pain just to think about it. Moses once asked God “who are you?” and pat came the reply “I am”. Pretty smart answer, but what happened before I am?..... I was? Or I am coming? Bah! It sickens me no end.
The latest bout of my philosophical over-anxiety was brought about by a bus journey. Lonely bus journeys, beautiful sunsets, a walk on the beach, deathly calm/silence, they all conspire to make me philosopher. Ignorance is bliss, but knowledge that you are thoroughly ignorant and you can’t do anything about it is frustrating. The fact that I will not find out the answer to any of these until death weighs on me….:(
Living in a country where the Sadhu’s chant “this world is baghvan ki maya, an illusion” I was not very surprised by the matrix concept. We are already creating virtual worlds out there on the net. It will only be a short while before science comes up with true artificial intelligence. Now for a moment assume that we can create a virtual universe inside a computer. The entities inside the program believe that they are really living in a world.
What should their morality be?
Who should they worship? Us, Or our God(s)? Should there be a friggin chain of command too?
Can I go in as the burning bush and tell a Moses “I am” (Hey! that would be cool!). Should they have a heaven and hell? Or will the despots and tyrants of this virtual world also get away with it, just like they do in our world?
Which brings me to the megalomania of some higher up entities (I won't drop any names here due to... let us say ah.. "superstitions"). Say, I create a virtual world; I might(read will) want to go in once in a while and have drunken wild sex orgies with an actress. But I just wouldn’t want people bent on their knees praying to me! (Well maybe that is why God is God and I am I)
The last of the questions bother the greatest of men (and women! for politically correct people out there). Maybe coz I aint that great or maybe coz I know that the purpose in my life is plain old debauchery; I am not much bothered by that q. What bothers me is the plain old lack of it…:( Hey! Did I hear somebody say “teaspoon”?
*Please dont blame me for the post, I was bored and I just finished counting my fingers for the nth time!
1) There are no mallu aunties
2) I don’t get any answers.
3) It leaves me depressed and I don’t like being depressed.
But here goes the questions and train of thought, just so that other buggers out there like me know that they aren’t alone!
1) Why do I think that I am I? Why don’t I think I am you?
I got a brain. So do you. I got a body so do you. But what tells me that I am the “owner/individual/soul/whatever” residing in my body? See I told you it is depressing stuff! I am already confused.
2) How did this world begin? Ok if you are a religious you will say God made it, but who made God eh? “God was just there” doesn’t satisfy me.
3) What if we make the matrix? Do we become God?
4) Do we live inside the matrix?
5) Is God megalomaniac?
6) Meaning of life and its purpose?
Of all the other trashy philosophical questions that pop up, 1 to 3 are those that bother me the most… though not necessarily in that order.
Like, for the life of me I don’t understand why I don’t think I am Bill Gates i.e. after he made his fortune and not for criminal tendencies
Is it the “soul” that tells you, that you are you and not me? Well if you do find out, tell me!
Coming back to the age old chicken or egg question, frankly it gives me a pain just to think about it. Moses once asked God “who are you?” and pat came the reply “I am”. Pretty smart answer, but what happened before I am?..... I was? Or I am coming? Bah! It sickens me no end.
The latest bout of my philosophical over-anxiety was brought about by a bus journey. Lonely bus journeys, beautiful sunsets, a walk on the beach, deathly calm/silence, they all conspire to make me philosopher. Ignorance is bliss, but knowledge that you are thoroughly ignorant and you can’t do anything about it is frustrating. The fact that I will not find out the answer to any of these until death weighs on me….:(
Living in a country where the Sadhu’s chant “this world is baghvan ki maya, an illusion” I was not very surprised by the matrix concept. We are already creating virtual worlds out there on the net. It will only be a short while before science comes up with true artificial intelligence. Now for a moment assume that we can create a virtual universe inside a computer. The entities inside the program believe that they are really living in a world.
What should their morality be?
Who should they worship? Us, Or our God(s)? Should there be a friggin chain of command too?
Can I go in as the burning bush and tell a Moses “I am” (Hey! that would be cool!). Should they have a heaven and hell? Or will the despots and tyrants of this virtual world also get away with it, just like they do in our world?
Which brings me to the megalomania of some higher up entities (I won't drop any names here due to... let us say ah.. "superstitions"). Say, I create a virtual world; I might(read will) want to go in once in a while and have drunken wild sex orgies with an actress. But I just wouldn’t want people bent on their knees praying to me! (Well maybe that is why God is God and I am I)
The last of the questions bother the greatest of men (and women! for politically correct people out there). Maybe coz I aint that great or maybe coz I know that the purpose in my life is plain old debauchery; I am not much bothered by that q. What bothers me is the plain old lack of it…:( Hey! Did I hear somebody say “teaspoon”?
*Please dont blame me for the post, I was bored and I just finished counting my fingers for the nth time!
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Exam Fever - The Other Side
You can’t pick up the morning paper in the month of March without hearing news about a student’s suicide due to exam pressure. What drives parents, relatives and so called well wishers to put such undue pressure on their children is well beyond me. Is it a seat in a good college, a better life for their wards or plain “my son ahead of his son” mentality?
As humans living on earth which is pretty far away from utopia, I can understand parent’s sentiment. But I cannot for the life of me understand their actions. Life should be fun for kids not pain and tension. By that, I do not mean to say that children should not know about the harsh facts of life. Life is tough and being prepared for the rat race is good. But not great! After all it is a rat race and even being in the lead will be costly!
Much has been said of kids and exams, but little done to change anything. For once the government and politicians can’t be blamed, the buck stops with a sickening thud at our own door steps. It is an attitude, an evil culture that we have none but ourselves to blame. On the lighter side, one way to help students overcome their fear of exams is to have them do engineering. You get so many damn exams every other day that by the end of the course one starts showing withdrawal symptoms if there isn’t an exam scheduled for the week.
The solution I feel lies in counseling… not for the students (who should be out playing, not attending some crummy counseling) but for the parents. One needs to put this idea into their heads that exams are not everything…. In fact by my standards they are nothing. You win some and you lose some, then again if you got Indian hockey in your genes you lose all, but what the heck? The richest people in the world aren’t educated in high degrees nor did they pass any big exams. One of the criteria to being obscenely rich is to be under-educated. Those guys are just plain resourceful.
But then, if your kid was like yours truly, who ain’t resourceful and who ain’t good at studies. Hmm.. you got a problem there. But that is when being like my dad was helps you out. Turn a blind eye and hope that everything turns out to be good. If you are struck by the distinct lack of viable options/solutions to make your kids perform better at exams… fact is, I don’t have any…:D. But then I can explain one way of how NOT to put pressure.
Parent: Beta, study hard or you will fail your exams
Child: Yeah.
Parent: Don’t worry even if you fail, I will still be proud of you.
Child: Thank you pop’s
Parent: Yeah, I will be proud and you will be lacking your mobile, pocket money, cultural allowance, inflation allowance, petty allowances and all this with no debt waiver.
Child: Uh-oh, I will try hard papa.
Parent: Try, my foot!!! If you don’t get at least one more mark higher than our neighbor’s son, I will ground you for life.
Now, ten years back, if my father told me something like this and assume for a second I needed to suicide. Can you imagine how tough it was??? The shopkeepers knew me and my family and my whole lineage up to my great-great grandfather. Buying a rope, rat poison or any other such ingredients that I thought necessary for a decent suicide would be looked upon with grave suspicion, especially during March. Believe me, in those days one had no privacy, not even to suicide in peace!
Fast forward to today and you got Google…. You guessed right! I don’t want to explain anymore and anyway, a picture speaks a thousand words.
My syllabus was ICSE, which was on the tougher side as syllabuses go; so then; it was no wonder that I flunked at least 2 to three exams per term. What was however unheard of, was for me to get every question correct i.e. a humble 100 out of 100. But one bright summer day, when I was in the fourth year of torture called school I felt that I had achieved this unbelievable feat.
I knew every single question in my q paper. I finished writing the exam far ahead of schedule(which in itself was not surprising!) and even read all my answers to make sure that I didn’t make any careless mistakes. Everything was just perfect.
Much elated by this sudden turn of fortune, I raced home beating my brother by a foot and a half and shouted to Chedathi (our ayah) “I did great in my exams today Chedathi, I am actually afraid I will get the first rank”. Old Chedathi was of strong constitution and hence averted a joyous heart attack at this surprising good news.
That is when Amma walked in from her day at work. Chedathi was the first to break the good news.
Chedathi: Molae, Aby is telling that he did the exam so well that he is afraid he will get the first rank.
Amma(With a wide unbelieving smile on her face): anno? that is very good news… where is my darling little boy?
In true drama style, I jumped on to her lap, handed her the q paper and commanded “ye of little faith, ask and I shall answer”
Amma looked me over to make certain that it wasn’t my long lost twin of Bollywood soap box fame. I answered in style to each of her questions and my confidence grew as I answered each one correctly, so did my mother’s smile.
Finally all the questions were over and I had answered each one correctly. I was so puffed up with pride that I nearly missed the next question… uh-oh.. next question?? But I thought it was over right??
Me: Hey, where are you reading from? That question was not there for the exam
Amma: What??? Did I read wrong, I will read it once more
Reading once more did not help, the question still sounded unfamiliar. I snatched the question paper from her hands and looked….only to see that there were questions on the other side of the paper as well!!! I had completely missed seeing these questions. There went my first rank!
Amma laughed so hard that day that she nearly cried. I was happy too, I didn’t know the answers to the questions anyway and this gave me an iron clad alibi for the low performance. And for my father…. I doubt it if he has ever heard this story at all. So God, Thank you for my parents(you could have made them give me more pocket money but then, I ain’t complaining…:D).
As humans living on earth which is pretty far away from utopia, I can understand parent’s sentiment. But I cannot for the life of me understand their actions. Life should be fun for kids not pain and tension. By that, I do not mean to say that children should not know about the harsh facts of life. Life is tough and being prepared for the rat race is good. But not great! After all it is a rat race and even being in the lead will be costly!
Much has been said of kids and exams, but little done to change anything. For once the government and politicians can’t be blamed, the buck stops with a sickening thud at our own door steps. It is an attitude, an evil culture that we have none but ourselves to blame. On the lighter side, one way to help students overcome their fear of exams is to have them do engineering. You get so many damn exams every other day that by the end of the course one starts showing withdrawal symptoms if there isn’t an exam scheduled for the week.
The solution I feel lies in counseling… not for the students (who should be out playing, not attending some crummy counseling) but for the parents. One needs to put this idea into their heads that exams are not everything…. In fact by my standards they are nothing. You win some and you lose some, then again if you got Indian hockey in your genes you lose all, but what the heck? The richest people in the world aren’t educated in high degrees nor did they pass any big exams. One of the criteria to being obscenely rich is to be under-educated. Those guys are just plain resourceful.
But then, if your kid was like yours truly, who ain’t resourceful and who ain’t good at studies. Hmm.. you got a problem there. But that is when being like my dad was helps you out. Turn a blind eye and hope that everything turns out to be good. If you are struck by the distinct lack of viable options/solutions to make your kids perform better at exams… fact is, I don’t have any…:D. But then I can explain one way of how NOT to put pressure.
Parent: Beta, study hard or you will fail your exams
Child: Yeah.
Parent: Don’t worry even if you fail, I will still be proud of you.
Child: Thank you pop’s
Parent: Yeah, I will be proud and you will be lacking your mobile, pocket money, cultural allowance, inflation allowance, petty allowances and all this with no debt waiver.
Child: Uh-oh, I will try hard papa.
Parent: Try, my foot!!! If you don’t get at least one more mark higher than our neighbor’s son, I will ground you for life.
Now, ten years back, if my father told me something like this and assume for a second I needed to suicide. Can you imagine how tough it was??? The shopkeepers knew me and my family and my whole lineage up to my great-great grandfather. Buying a rope, rat poison or any other such ingredients that I thought necessary for a decent suicide would be looked upon with grave suspicion, especially during March. Believe me, in those days one had no privacy, not even to suicide in peace!
Fast forward to today and you got Google…. You guessed right! I don’t want to explain anymore and anyway, a picture speaks a thousand words.
My syllabus was ICSE, which was on the tougher side as syllabuses go; so then; it was no wonder that I flunked at least 2 to three exams per term. What was however unheard of, was for me to get every question correct i.e. a humble 100 out of 100. But one bright summer day, when I was in the fourth year of torture called school I felt that I had achieved this unbelievable feat.
I knew every single question in my q paper. I finished writing the exam far ahead of schedule(which in itself was not surprising!) and even read all my answers to make sure that I didn’t make any careless mistakes. Everything was just perfect.
Much elated by this sudden turn of fortune, I raced home beating my brother by a foot and a half and shouted to Chedathi (our ayah) “I did great in my exams today Chedathi, I am actually afraid I will get the first rank”. Old Chedathi was of strong constitution and hence averted a joyous heart attack at this surprising good news.
That is when Amma walked in from her day at work. Chedathi was the first to break the good news.
Chedathi: Molae, Aby is telling that he did the exam so well that he is afraid he will get the first rank.
Amma(With a wide unbelieving smile on her face): anno? that is very good news… where is my darling little boy?
In true drama style, I jumped on to her lap, handed her the q paper and commanded “ye of little faith, ask and I shall answer”
Amma looked me over to make certain that it wasn’t my long lost twin of Bollywood soap box fame. I answered in style to each of her questions and my confidence grew as I answered each one correctly, so did my mother’s smile.
Finally all the questions were over and I had answered each one correctly. I was so puffed up with pride that I nearly missed the next question… uh-oh.. next question?? But I thought it was over right??
Me: Hey, where are you reading from? That question was not there for the exam
Amma: What??? Did I read wrong, I will read it once more
Reading once more did not help, the question still sounded unfamiliar. I snatched the question paper from her hands and looked….only to see that there were questions on the other side of the paper as well!!! I had completely missed seeing these questions. There went my first rank!
Amma laughed so hard that day that she nearly cried. I was happy too, I didn’t know the answers to the questions anyway and this gave me an iron clad alibi for the low performance. And for my father…. I doubt it if he has ever heard this story at all. So God, Thank you for my parents(you could have made them give me more pocket money but then, I ain’t complaining…:D).
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