Copy-cats!

God created Man in his own image. He had a reference... Himself. It  begs the question, "What about women?" By elimination, we are left with little choice but to consider women as His "original" work. Needless to say, it is left to each person's interpretation whether this original work turned out to be a masterpiece, a caricature or simply a disaster!
That He used Himself as a model and copied it is a given.... and in doing so, He set the trend for copy-cats in his creation as well.

Lord Shiva must be particularly relieved that copy-cats exist. In a moment of indiscretion, He had granted the demon Bhasmasura the boon to reduce to ashes, whosoever's head, the asura touched. Matters came to a head when Bhasmasura wanted to test the efficacy of the boon by touching Lord Shiva's head! Shiva was on the run. It required the guiles of Mohini,Vishnu's enchanting form to extricate Shiva from the crisis.
Taking a cue from Bollywood, Mohini engaged Bhasmasura in some mindless dance sequences. Bhasmasura was a copy-cat and smitten by Mohini's form, aped every pose and step. At one point, Mohini touched her head; so did the asura who had fallen head over heels. In doing so, much to Shiva's relief, he brought about his own doom.

Cats have reason to be miffed that humans have sullied their name when it comes to copying. Nothing can be farther from truth, the cats mew. After all, cats are curious and curiosity even killed one cat. Isn't curiosity the seed of originality, of invention? The curious never copy. In fact, it is the humans who strut around on cat-walks and copy each other in dress and step.

We're told that there are 64 art forms. Surely, "copying" has to be the Queen of Fine Arts. Students devised ingenious methods when it came to copying- always a step ahead of the invigilators in this perennial cat and mouse game!

The formulae would be scrawled in the smallest possible font on the "examination pad"- with a picture of Lord Hanuman to cover the crime.
Sometimes, they wrote out lengthy answers on reams of paper and neatly tucked the papers underneath their full-sleeve cuff. Once the invigilator was out of sight, the paper would be pulled out, perused and placed back ever so deftly!

At times, the notes would be stuffed into the socks or even the shoes. The modus operandi was simple, yet effective. Drop the compass box below the desk- get down to pick up the scattered contents, refer to the notes, rise up.. to write more. Some students were forever dropping something or the other- at times the pencil or the pen or the eraser and simply taking too long to pick up the contents!

Another common method was to slowly creep very close to the partner so that the two soon sat like siamese twins..... or surreptitiously glance at the paper ahead of you. Teachers did their best. They warned students- "Sridhar! Your eyes are shifty!" or they made students of different classes sit next to each other or in adjoining rows; but never quite matched the originality of the students.

The little devils timed their toilet visits with their pals. Once in the loo, they would discuss the answers and get back to their seats as saintly as ever. Suspicions were aroused when students suddenly wanted to go to the loo more often, at the stroke of the hour and always in pairs. Soon, the toilets required a sentry as well, but by then, the students moved onto other ideas, leaving the sentinel marooned in the smelly toilets!

Multiple choice question papers offered greatest scope for copying. All that was required was an oral recitation- 1-A, 2-B, 3-D etc. The method was error prone though. B and D sounded alike when whispered. Also, several such recitations went around the examination hall, rendering it difficult to latch on to the correct frequency. Some students got the entire paper wrong. They had carefully recorded their benefactors answers, only got the sections completely wrong! It was tough for them.

"Got you! Trying to be over smart, kyoon? Come to the Principal.. At once! Out!" thundered "Pandey sir" as he caught Valentino red-handed with the sheets of handwritten notes right in the examination hall. We felt sorry for Valentino as he was pulled by his ears and roughly marched to the Principal's office- a proverbial lamb for slaughter.  The remainder of the story was filled in by Valentino himself much later, to a delighted audience!
Apparently, Pandey sir was exultant that he had finally nabbed the culprit with undeniable evidence to boot. "Father (Principal), this boy was shamelessly copying! Father, here are the papers where he has all the answers written down!" To his horror, Mr Pandey found that the papers were missing. Valentino had the papers just a moment ago, Mr Pandey swore, now they were gone- clean as a whistle! We were told Valentino was strip searched, but the papers were never recovered. Pandey sir shook Valentino violently and many times peered down his throat and even other orifices, but the case of the missing notes was never solved. Valentino had apparently gulped down five full-scapes of paper in a matter of seconds! The Principal now doubted Pandey sir's sanity and detained him in the room. Valentino was back in the examination hall... cool as a cucumber!

Abacus and the 8 minute competition

"Why do you sign up for exams like these? Can't you spend your time like we did.. when we were kids... plucking guavas from guava trees?" I complained to my daughter. "That's because there are no guava trees in Bangalore!" pat came the answer.
If you grow up on Ruskin Bond's novels, you get a feeling that childhood is well spent only if you steal and eat "litchis" on the sly, walk the forests of the Shivalik foot-hills following a leopard's footprints, have oodles of time on your hands to stalk a solitary ant or follow the trail of a raindrop trickling down your window! At least, you should stand in the blinding rain (with no one questioning your mental balance) and sing- "yeh kaagaz ki kashti, yeh baarish ka paani" (Jagjit Singh's famous ghazal on childhood- 'this paper boat... this rain water')!
Anything less- and you have been robbed of the innocence of childhood! Unfortunately, I didn't do any of these when I was a child and neither will my daughter. But I turned out just fine (I hope!), that's the only consolation.

We had just emerged from the Abacus competition and I couldn't resist a comparison between my daughter and many of Mr Bond's protagonists. This is not the first time that I've seen this competition, neither will it be the last. But the experience is always mind-numbing each time. It's a little like a trip to Tirupati. After each trip, you swear that if God exists everywhere, you don't need to risk a potential stampede to see Him for those 10 seconds. Still, you're back the next year and the next- such is the mind's resilience or its innate amnesia.

For the uninitiated, abacus is by far the most effective method to do calculations mentally. Children are roped in as early as kindergarten and by the time they are in fifth grade, they can navigate through arithmetic with the ease of a Shakuntala Devi! In fact, we are not even competent to verify their answers!
Initially, they use  the abacus- a primitive device with beads strung to it to add and subtract. Soon, they can visualize the beads and their movement mentally and don't need the contraption any more. The method is proven and works like a charm.

If there is a flip side (or is the flop side?), it is the path- if the path to education is bitter, the path to "abacus fiefdom" seems worse- karela, neem and castor oil rolled together! The child has to spend two hours of a Sunday in class and a few more hours during the week to complete the homework. If the child can sit still and not complain, you are set. If the child is a free spirit, abacus can be a sentence in solitary confinement- he will revolt and rightfully so, till you finally free him from his shackles!

Abacus exams are not for the faint-hearted. That there are many who are heart-wise strong, headstrong or simply heartless is evident from the far flung places they come from! For the competition in Bangalore, folks troop in from Gulbarga, Raichur, Hubli, Shimoga and Sagar to name a few. For the competition in Chennai (the nationals), wards and parents come from Rajasthan and Jharkhand. All for a "8 minute" competition! You heard it right- 8 minutes for the higher levels of abacus and exactly 5 minutes for the lower levels!! A little like your hundred meter dash- you run like crazy and hope you'll win.

All you see at the venue is a sea of wards- in yellow color T-shirts and double the number of over-anxious parents. After all, this is India- staggering numbers and the anxiety to outdo the other.... go hand in hand. One parent has to wait in the make shift shamianas at the venue. The other (typically the father) accompanies his ward to the examination hall.
The hall is enormous- row upon row of desks and chairs into which children are stuffed like sardines. A barricade all around the hall separates the children from their parents. Parents click away using their cell phone cameras at anything and everything. Trying to spot your child is an impossibility. She is hopefully somewhere there- one grain in that sackful! If you do catch your ward, the parent has the most enlightening last minute comment screamed from the side-lines - "Don't forget to write your hall-ticket number"!
Children- in first grade and second grade blink at complicated instructions blaring over the microphone in English and Kannada alternately- "Z- category students: if you don't use the abacus, you will be disqualified". Parents run helter-skelter trying to verify which category their ward falls under. Invigilators have a tough time reining in the parents.

The question papers are distributed and placed before the child face-down. Parents are told to switch off their cell phones. The competition is about to begin and the organizers want silence. A child who is really late has to be accommodated. "Children... are you ready? Take deep-breaths!"- is the instruction. Children hold on to the end of the question paper... to flip it over.... exactly at the whistle! A nervous excitement takes over everyone. A huge electronic clock shows the 8 minute stop-watch ready to count down!

And then.... a shrill whistle punctures the silence sending shivers down your spine. Like a Mexican wave, on the dot, the question papers are flipped over by your seven year olds and ten year olds and they start solving the questions like mad. They are truly possessed by some spirit... definitely not human! Some of them punch the air with their fingers and fists with one hand, others with both. At the end of the pantomime, they scribble something on the question paper and get back to more action. Some cannot sit down and write; they stand up, write, and again break into a percussionist's tremble with an imaginary ghatam! A grimace is seen on one child's face, a scowl on the other, an involuntary jaw movement and a sudden gnash of the teeth in the third. All our eyes are on the electronic display... like sand trickling down an hour glass, it drains away.
Eight minutes are over in a trice, the whistle rings, the pencils are down and the papers are snatched away! Parents use all kinds of sign language if they spot their child- how many did you solve? 60, 100, 120? The answers and reactions are varied.
For a parent who has not followed his child closely, it is all too bewildering to say the least.

At the end of it, I had a one simple agenda- be sure to pick a child..... my child and head home.
I leave it to you to decide- what would you do?... pluck guavas or add-subtract-multiply-divide in eight minute competitions? Don't vote for the guavas... it will give you a stomach-ache!!

Practical exams

"Examination is a great botheration to the population of this nation. Hence, the only solution is the abolition of this abomination!
yours truly,
Adi seshan!"
We don't know who Adi Seshan was or when he lived. Like the savant Adi Shankara, Adi Seshan's precise position in the annals of human history is yet to be determined. But, we need little confirmation that he was a tormented spirit and examinations in particular contributed to his pained state of mind, which he vocalized so eloquently!

Examinations in India are not new. Though we would like to lay the blame at the feet of Lord Macaulay, examinations existed in ancient times. We hear that Kanchipuram had many centres of learning called ghatikas (or ghatikaa-sthaanaas). A lot of research has gone into the origin of the term- ghatika, which has ghata or pot as its root. Was it an institute which specialized in pot-making or perhaps teaching the ghatam (clay-pot used as percussion instrument) or did it churn out the Harry Potters of those days? We can take pot shots all right, but we're told that the term had a lot to do with the style of examinations conducted. To keep the examinations fair and square, all the questions were written on chits of paper and dropped into a pot. The student picked up one such chit from the pot (ghata) and answered it. Probably, the term pot-luck originated from this system. Hence, the word ghatika for these centres of learning.

Examinations come in different flavours- written, viva-voce, open book, multiple-choice, quiz, "surprise-test" and "practical" exams. Some examinations are etched in our memory; they hang on like the proverbial monitor-lizard and refuse to leave us- this one was a practical exam in the Electronics Laboratory.

The details have been thankfully blurred by unforgiving time- it involved setting up an elaborate circuit on a "bread board" and have the output displayed using an "oscilloscope". Some of us were challenged in this activity. To us, the resistors with their red-green bands, the quaint-looking capacitors and silvery transistors were but colourful toy-pegs to be inserted in various slots on the board, connnected or soldered to wires and have that entire tangled mass finally hooked to the oscilloscope. 

The three of us were particularly pleased with our progress this time. For once, the oscilloscope answered our ardent prayers and displayed the most delightful waveform! Professor Sinha surveyed our creation with childlike curiosity. Nattily dressed in a tweed overcoat, corduroy trousers with suspenders, he twirled his pipe around his mouth. "Indeed! Most interesting!" he remarked, while we were cocksure and beamed with more than usual pride.

He carefully removed one of the resistors and commented, "Aapka output ab bhi aa raha hai!" (the oscilloscope still shows the same output). It was difficult to react to that comment- a little unsure whether it would be correct to say, "Sir, that's expected" or "Sir, we can't believe it either!". Thankfully, he didn't wait for an answer. Next, he stepped back a bit, knitted his brows, surveyed the bread-board like a chess player... and with precision, selected a capacitor for a change and kept it away. "Aap ka output ab bhi aa raha hai!" he casually mentioned and got back to more work.

One by one, many resistors were removed; several transistors lay prostrate outside the board and the bread board looked sparse and particularly uncomplicated. "Dhyaan deejiye! Aap ka output ab bhi aa raha hai!"- ("May you please note- the output still hasn't changed!") Clearly, something was amiss and we sensed it. Our creative invention elicited attention from all the adjoining benches and soon, quite a crowd gathered. We shuffled our feet, cleared our throat, wiped the sweat from our brows, but clearly, there was no escape. Professor Sinha was still his meticulous self.

Suddenly, Sinha was transformed into a fiend and seized with a fit of rage, dug his nails into the bread-board and in one brutal sweep- uprooted the entire remaining contents and flung it away. The oscilloscope still wouldn't budge and mocked us further by displaying the same pattern. Looking at us straight in the eye, he thundered- "Aap ka output ab bhi aa raha hai!"
He shook his head in disbelief. Our expertise or the lack of it rendered him incapable of finding appropriate words. He stormed out of the hall and asked his apprentice to take over!

"It happens; don't take it too seriously!" Krishna tried to console us. There were several theories on what went wrong- Kamlesh felt that we had "shorted the two wires of the oscilloscope" so that the oscilloscope was cocooned in its own world and hence displayed the regular sinusoidal waveform that was its trademark signature!

Some practical exams leave us practically dumb in speech and numb in mind!

A predator in the post-office premises!

Tha catterpillar wriggled and crawled its way under his collar. The postmaster gave his shirt a little scratch and twitched his shoulders. Something obviously irritated him."Where is the pincode on this letter? You please fill it. No! No! We can't find the pincode for any Dhamtari district here. Where is it ? Chhatisgarh ? I have no idea. You please fill it and come back. Next person please....." His attention was on the next customer. My attention though was on him and the catterpillar. Beads of perspiration drenched the postmaster and his ebony skin gleamed like a well-oiled granite idol in a temple. The catterpillar made more headway and gnawed at him with greater vengeance! The postmaster glanced at his shirt pocket, half squinting his eyes. But the catterpillar was within the "least distance of distinct vision" and eluded him. He rotated the left shoulder blade clockwise a couple of times and again anti-clockwise, rubbed his collar too but didn't find relief.

I was still a few heads away from him. It was time to act. "Hello!" I began and watched all heads turn to me. I pointed a finger at him and shouted "Insect! Keeda! Poochi!" in three different languages. In a mock imitation, I pretended to scratch my chest with both my arms. To my horror, the postmaster took offence and didn't pay attention to the words "under your collar" which somehow didn't have the same volume. He was under the impression that I was calling him a "keeda" (creep!) with monkey-like mannerisms to boot! It was already resembling the spat between Symonds and Harbhajan Singh with a distinct possibility of snow-balling into a brawl. He briefly stood up, removed his spectacles and postured aggressively- "Saar! I hope you are educated! I can't do any faster. You have to wait for your turn."
Nasty stares met my eyes and silence appeared a preferable option in the circumstances. I left the postmaster to his fate and surveyed my surroundings.

Like most post-offices in this part of the globe, it hadn't seen a broom for at least a quarter of a century. Over us was a false ceiling made up of frayed thermocol sheets supported by a grill and home to many generations of spiders. One of the sheets was missing and made way for a low-hanging ceiling fan which whirred away lazily, more ornamental than utilitarian. Shelves were filled with envelopes, parcels, magazines and several files with oversized paper sticking out of them and yellowed with age. Hopefully, these were not undelivered correspondence! A picture of Gandhiji was stacked over one such bunch with the words 'customer is my God' scrawled on it. Evidently, no one had found the time to nail the picture to the wall.

On one side was a table, the top of which looked like a collage- inlaid with a million  tiny paper strips, perforated corners of stamps, some badly torn stamps and copious glue stains which gave the table-top a nice, shiny facade. A conical, blue bottle of gum stood on one side. The cap was missing and so was the swab to apply the glue! In its place was a makeshift twig to serve the purpose.
It takes a lot of dexterity to use the glue. One gentleman struggled with the twig, gave-up and made the fatal mistake of tilting the gum bottle in full over his envelope. An oversized blob of gum plopped on his envelope and completely disfigured the address that he had so carefully written. We heard a swear and a hasty retreat and the man was not to be seen thereafter.
The episode convinced another to use saliva. It appeared a safer alternative, though a trifle disgusting for an onlooker especially when a dozen stamps have to be stuck this way! The after-taste must have been particularly awkward judging by the way the chap continued to hang his tongue out!
Someone made the mistake of having excessive adhesive on his hands. He stuck the stamp onto the envelope and slammed it with his fist a few times to double-check that it was stuck nice and well. At the end of the pounding, to his dismay, the stamp had latched onto his fist like a leech and refused to travel with the envelope!

Another youngster carelessly leaned against the table laden with glue so that when he extricated himself, he found that the table had pinched away a part of his pant at the back and had probably drilled into his underwear as well!
On the other side of the table lay a pen chained to a peg to ensure that no one walked away with it. The effort seemed quite unnecessary for it was a relic from another era- no nib and incapable of writing using normal methods. At best, it could possibly be used to etch letters on palm leaves.

"Your turn saar"- announced the post-master, twisting his torso, still in discomfort. "Sir! There is an insect under your collar. That is all I wanted to convey!" I said calmly.
"Where? Where?" jumped the post master, skipping animatedly, jerking his shirt off and ruffling his trousers as well! An attendant ran for cover as if a snake was in the premises! A few others in the queue backed away in the ensuing commotion. "There sir, right below your chin!" The postmaster soon spotted the predator and flicked it away with his thumb and forefinger to finally free the hapless creature from his person.

"Why couldn't you tell me earlier?" he began. "I tried sir," I protested, only to be cut short curtly. His tone irritated me and I silently wished it had been a scorpion instead!