Wedding receptions...

Wedding receptions have an unwritten rule- “Never show up on time”. If you are on time, you may be roped in to put up the decoration. The norm is to reach a couple of hours late.

Receptions follow a template. The bride and groom take center stage. You wait for your turn in the queue to congratulate them.

Men and women dressed in all finery, shine like glitterati! Some carry an enormous bouquet, while others hold gift-wrapped parcels. Some of us are not as well prepared. Also, it is a matter of principle. Let’s face it- ultimately, “cash is king”. There is no better gift than loose cash. You fish out an envelope and fiddle with your wallet. Regardless of how unobtrusive you try to be, you invite attention. As luck would have it, the first note that comes to hand, is a demonetized note, still stuck in the wallet. Only when you see the shocked expression on the neighbor’s face, do you realize the error! Sheepishly, you take corrective action. You borrow a pen, scrawl the name on the envelope and now, you are ready.

When you are about to hop onto the stage, you are gently restrained. The previous group is yet to vacate. You go through the throes of stage fright, like a drama actor who cannot wait for his turn.

Your mind is cluttered with multiple possibilities. If you hold the envelope, you cannot shake hands. If you give the envelope first, the groom’s hands will be full. Remember, you cannot use the left hand for anything. If you keep the envelope in your pocket, you may forget it. There is a chance you may bungle up the lines. You wanted to be funny and ended up saying “marry in haste, repent at leisure.” You realized the blunder a little too late!

As you pose for a photograph with the couple, you receive conflicting orders from the photographer and the videographer. One person wants you to be still, while the other asks you to move about.

Soon, you are escorted to the dinner hall.  It is a sea of humanity, like a packed Mumbai train. Buffet dinners are messy. The food counters mill with people, cutting in and out at will, with soiled hands and used plates. It is a delicate balancing act, holding in one hand, the plate with multiple side-dish bowls. Children run helter-skelter like comets on a definite collision course! Any careless move can send either your plate or your neighbor’s crashing down. Over and above all this, is the steady din and babble of conversation.

You head to the curd rice counter. It is totally free. You gobble up a plateful and make a quick exit. 

On the way back, you glance at the hoarding with the names of the bride and the groom. To your horror,  you realize that you got the name of the bride wrong on the envelope!  Absent-mindedly, you wrote the name of the groom and one of his earlier college friends! 

Some mistakes are indeed costly!

Summer vacation begins.....

You could hardly wait for the summer vacation. As the annual exams came to a close, you maintained a daily countdown. Two more weeks for summer vacation, just one more week and finally, it was the day of the last exam! The excitement peaked- you could barely write the last exam. The moment you submitted the answer booklet, the euphoria was indescribable!

Only a convict incarcerated for decades would know the value of that freedom. Emotions overflowed. Some shouted, some cried, some laughed, and some scattered the desks into complete disarray! School authorities stood out of harm’s way and allowed the emotional catharsis to empty out. Shouts of “happy holidays” rent the air. A notable feature of the celebration was to squirt ink on the unwary bystander! Even the Principal, looking immaculate in his white cloak, wasn’t spared.

Students took out a procession shouting, “We want holiday!” It could not be more incongruous. You already had the holiday, and two full months of it! The freedom fighters had got so tuned to protesting, they overlooked the vital point that freedom was now attained!

The rowdy celebration spilt over to the school compound and beyond. You said goodbye to your friends and hugged them. You wouldn’t see them for 2 months.  You vowed to write letters to close buddies and made grandiose plans to meet midway through the vacation. 

Neither of it would materialize- students went off to their native places or spun in different orbits. Once you reached home, it was a complete anticlimax. There was nothing to look forward to. It was like the vacuous feeling a mother experiences after childbirth. After touching an emotional high, you hit a plateau- an endless, trackless plain that stretched to eternity.

That very evening, you complained repeatedly, “I am bored! I don’t know what to do!” It was the height of absurdity. For months, you had waited for these holidays. And now that you had the holidays, you suddenly wanted school. The rat had got so used to the coziness of the cage, it refused to stir out, even when the door was flung wide open! You missed the routine of school. You missed your friends. You missed even Mathematics- at least you could express your irritation at something!

The next morning, you woke up with the same tasteless feeling.

But my sister was up and about. “Where are you going?” I asked her as she looked overly busy. “I am joining a circulating library to get some books to read!” My eyes lit up. That looked a fun thing to do. “Wait for me. I will also come!” I insisted.

“What a copy-cat you are!” she commented. I grinned and put on my chappals.

The examination hall!

They say, come December and Christmas is in the air! Likewise, come March, and exam is the air! Decades have passed. Still, every March is a reminder of school and exams, that palpable tension and that brooding apprehension!

Only 20 minutes to the start of the exam. The classroom resembled a fish market. Students went on an overdrive, trying to cram as much as possible. It was ironical. You had the entire year- filled with days and weeks and months. All along, you procrastinated like that Delhi monarch- “Exam is too far away!” And now, there was so much to learn and so little time! The last few grains of sand trickled down the hourglass!

In one corner, Dinesh was “mugging up” the formula, “X plus A…into X plus B… into X plus C is equal to…”. At the other end, Rajesh asked, “What is this BODMAS? Is it “Body Mass” or some kind of “badmash” or the eatable "podimas" ?” Karthik tried to clarify, “No silly! It stands for Bracket-Of-Division….” Another boy bit his nails, “I studied. But I cannot remember a thing!  Not even my name!”

Only 7 minutes remained. Sridhar, the brain of the class, entered. He started with, “Was Chandragupta from the Gupta or Maurya dynasty?” Someone overheard this and panicked. “Is it History exam today?” he stuttered. Obviously, Sridhar was joking.  He was almost beaten up for his ill-timed prank!

He now faced a barrage of questions- “How do you solve this sum?” Is the area of a square same as that of a rhombus?” Sridhar answered the questions with ease. Clearly, he was on another plane! The rest of us were on a plane that could nosedive any time!

Students stayed irreverent the entire year. They suddenly turned intensely religious. God’s bounden duty was only to rescue drowning students in exams. Once the exams ended, he was conveniently forgotten.

Only 5 minutes remained. The teacher entered the classroom. She exercised her authority immediately, “I want you to leave your books and take your place!” For a change, it was the teacher who tried to snatch the book, while the student pleaded to hold on. The last few seconds were priceless. It was as though Destiny had giftwrapped and sent you a lifeline, to look over that last problem. And that was certain to appear in the exam!

At the nick of time, someone wanted to go to the toilet, or drink water or borrow a working pen!

There was now dead silence. You waited with bated breath for the question paper. You heard the whirr of the fan and felt the rush of blood in the head.

Meanwhile, Dinesh was still reciting- “X plus A into X plus B into…”!

The entire class giggled!

 p.s:

People may recall that old verse on exams. "Examination is a great botheration to the population of this nation, and so, the only solution is the abolition of this examination! Yours truly...Adi Seshan!!"

The raddiwala

The raddiwala was at the door. He promptly stopped at each home once the annual school exams were over. That’s when he made money collecting old newspapers and the books of the previous year. A maniacal urge seized you- to throw anything and everything and declutter the house.

Old newspapers were fished out from the attic. The bundle fell with a thud.  An enormous cloud of dust arose triggering a paroxysm of sneezing. Now, you sifted the newspapers to hand them over to the raddiwala.

Old newspapers were irresistible- especially the sports page with scorecards of matches played many moons ago. A picture of Gavaskar caught your eye. Surely, this newspaper could not be thrown away. Soon, I had formed a second pile of newspapers.

“Why are you saving up all the newspapers?” my sister asked. “There may be a quiz competition next year. I need to prepare.” I responded. “You did not read the newspapers the entire year. Are you going to read them now?” she asked. “That’s because there was no quiz competition this year!” I answered. The argument went around in circles and ended in a stalemate.

However, there was consensus on one point- school books were not needed anymore.  Gleefully, I rushed to the bookshelf. I placed the Mathematics textbook at the top of the stack. I wanted to send it off with a goodbye note that read- “Serves you right!”

My sister was appalled. “You are giving off the Mathematics book? You will need it!”  “What do you mean?” I asked, all perturbed, as though she was doubting my ability to pass to the next grade!” “Until when will I need it?” 

Sister replied, “You will need the Mathematics books throughout life!” This was too much. I imagined the prospect of spending the rest of life solving the same profit-and-loss problems. It was like enduring a toothache with no end in sight.

My sister now used an obtuse line of attack. “How would you feel if you were sent off with the raddiwala? Won’t the Mathematics book feel the same way?” Imagination ran riot- I was filled with images of going off with the raddiwala and sitting in the corner of his shop along with other newspapers! Admittedly, it felt abandoned and lonely. However, it was tough to imagine the Mathematics textbook having any feeling. If at all, it was one of utmost sadism, terrorizing generations of children.

Sister’s argument had a major flaw. “If the Mathematics textbook had feeling, so did other books and newspapers.” I argued. Eventually, we were back to square one. The newspapers were restored their rightful place in the attic. Grudgingly, I put back the Mathematics textbook. Suddenly, there was nothing that could be thrown away.

Caught in this verbal crossfire, the raddiwala asked a pertinent question, “How will I earn my livelihood and feed my children?” 

Sister and I blinked back, for want of a coherent answer!

The Sunday night syndrome!

The hands of the clock showed 9:20 on Sunday night. How did Sunday run away so quickly? Mentally, you ran through the day’s proceedings. There was the nail-biting Cricket match on TV. And then, the Hindi film in the evening. You tried to break away, but the absorbing plot centered on smugglers and stolen gems and the cliffhanger ending, dragged you helplessly.

Only now, you remembered school- that gathering gloom looking forward to Monday morning. So much was left to do- 2 exercises in Mathematics, an entire History chapter, the moon’s phases to be drawn and finally a test in English grammar. You were yet to begin on any of them.

There was a sudden panic attack. You rummaged through the school bag in a frantic hurry. The flutter of activity invited unwanted attention. Elder siblings were a nuisance especially when they played by the rulebook all the time. “You had yesterday and the whole of today. Only now you remembered to do your homework?” my sister questioned. Your gut reaction was to snap back with, “Mind your own business!” However, such an attack would be too frontal. It could escalate into a full-fledged war. The retort had to be stinging and yet tactful. “Since when did you become my mother?” you shot back. And then, threw a rider with a hint of blackmail, “The next time, you forget to do your homework, wait and watch!”

You had to stay cool and calibrate the next move. The History class was after the lunch break. Food can be gobbled up in 7 minutes. The rest of the lunch break was enough for the History homework. It did not deserve any more time or importance.

Only the morning classes had to be taken care. Provided the school bus reached on time, you had 45 minutes before school started. Sridhar, the brain of the class, would have surely reached. In 20 minutes, the mathematics answers could be copied down. That left you with 25 minutes. That was more than adequate for the moon’s blessed diagrams.

The English Grammar test was the stumbling block. The topics were transitive verbs, intransitive verbs, Gerund and Participles.  Anger bubbled up. “Who invented grammar? It is as dry as toast!” and stuck the tongue out to demonstrate its overwhelming sweetness! There was no hope in hell English Grammar could be mastered on Sunday night.

As you went to bed, you shut the eyes tight, knitted the eyebrows, and prayed feverishly. “Dear God, please save me! I promise to do my homework on time, from now on!”  Mentally, you braced yourself for a hostile Monday.

Sometimes, God answered a child’s prayer. On Monday, the English teacher was unwell, and the Grammar test was canceled.