Saloony tales

//Insert obligatory pretentious prologue explaining absence on the blogosphere as if anyone cares.
With a gap of more than 2 months and the mind being exposed to more work, I doubted if I had the ability to write and more importantly write funny. The faith in my humour and writing was reaffirmed after I wrote my self appraisal. Again, not that anyone cares.


Apart from the fundamental right to education and the right to not put education in practical use, I believe a child needs to have the basic right to a monster truck to carry the bookload to school and the right to choose their own hairstyle. Yes, the idea is from my own harrowing experiences of being denied the right to choose a hairstyle. Story slightly melodramatic for the faint hearted and actors from Karan johar movies.

I have vague memories of my trips to the saloon in Kannur when I was a kid. Childhood trips to the saloon were accompanied by my father whose mindset was on the lines of the typical Indian middle class i.e more hair cut for less money or 40% extra hair cut for the same amount. He had a philosophy that after a haircut, the hair should be so short that you should'nt be able to pull it by hand. Of course as a child, anyone would hate that. The trip to the saloon was on my dad's bajaj scooter, the quintessential middle class mode of transport, which can cleverly accommodate even a horse in the front. The entire journey to the saloon would be spent by me writing an obituary to my hair. "Dear hair, Thanks for being there with me for so long. We had a good run so far. I would love to be with you, but the society does not want us to be together. Hope you become a wig and land on the head of a hollywood superstar,maybe that old grandpa who built Jurassic park(That was the only English movie I had seen until then). Bye."



The relationship with a barber is as crucial as a relationship with your doctor or the peon who knows of your illicit affair with the secretary or a cricketer;s relationship with a bookie. You need to trust him completely. However my barber at Kannur(Kerala) was slightly eccentric and Sreesanthish( except for the fist pumping and dance). My father narrated instructions to him as if he was going to launch a GSLV into a geo-centric orbit. "Korachu cut seyyum" ('less cut do' in google translator language), said my dad and he went off to catch a smoke.


Apparently barbers take kids too lightly and he was all engrossed in Lal Etta's comedy clip while cutting my hair. The ugly elf in me was slowly getting unraveled and I started resembling Gollum more and more. As I imagined the pointing and staring that I would have to endure the subsequent day, the barber neared my scalp enjoying Lal etta's antics onscreen. The worst thing during a haircut, however, is that it itches under your nose and with hands under the sheet, you are as helpless as a bollywood policeman. I try to divert my mind to thinking about various things from Baba Sehgal to Uncle Scrooge trying to forget the nasal torture I was going through.

Finally after cutting the hair, shaving the sides with a razor , re-cutting the hair , re-shaving with the razor and finally giving it a thorough inspection , he takes the sponge which had all the hair from South Kerala and rubs the back of my head to make it more dirty. Then he removes the sheet and it is freedom finally. I instantly rub the area under the nose to gain some quick nasal pleasure. My dad was back in the saloon and he surveyed my head like some kind of forensic expert. After final approval my head passes the official approval for external display. I look at myself in the mirror and I see a recursive display of myself between the two mirrors.

By the way, there is a world of difference in mothers before and after a haircut. When I enter home after a haircut my mother treats me like I just returned after committing a triple murder. I am not supposed to touch anything in the house until I have a bath. I doubted if she torch me to flames if I disobeyed and hence I never took the risk.

The next day at school, there is a lot of pointing, staring and enquiries about the haircut and I get the feeling of returning from drug abuse rehab. Kids try to come up all sorts of animal names on the Wildlife endangered list(eg: Porcupine, platypus, Vinod Kambli) to compare your haircut to . However it just takes a few hours for people to get used to the ugly haircut(the absentees in class take a few hours the next day). Things finally get back to normal and I am considered slightly human again.

Aaj mere paas housing loan hai, credit card hai,rapidshare premium account hai, mere neighbour ke pass gaadi hai, bank balance hai, lekin hair thoda kum hai. Nostalgia as I get my hair cut at a Velacherry A/C saloon by a barber who owns 3 grounds at Velacherry and is richer than everyone of us.

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The art of examination survival

Things were not looking good for me. A backlog would just outcast me from my family and bring inexplicable ignominy to everyone. The question paper looked like Greek,Latin,Telugu and Marathi to me. My plan had failed miserably. The questions looked as complicated as a boring editorial on Europe's economy in the Hindu. I had read 5 out of the total of 10 chapters, assuming that alternate lessons would be enough for a comfortable score. Some cynical professor who would definitely be born as a toad in his next birth ,thanks to my powerful curses, had messed everything up for us. The first thing I did after getting the question paper was to pinch myself to check if I was in one of those clichéd "stuck in the exam hall with a Chinese question paper in my hand" dream . It was a real paper,not in Chinese, and could not be oil fried to crispy manchurian like I do it in my crazy dreams.And if you are wondering why there is an Anil Kapoor picture, read the entire post.

24 hours ago,my Coimbatore home

I was having a hard time remembering all the circuitry. In fact, the only thing that I found interesting in the entire book of "Linear Integrated Circuits" was the author acknowledging his in-laws who stood by him while he was writing the book. It was frustrating me that I could hardly understand and comprehend even a minuscule portion of the content. Integrated circuits were grating my brain's circuits. This was when I was reminded to use the emergency mugging up technique. The technique was to make relatively easier acronyms to memorize large content . For example when I had to remember chemical equations in the 12th grade, I read CH3COONa as Chatri-Coona and CH3CH2OH as Chatri Chattu Aw. While linear circuits was nothing like chemistry, I decided to make vibgyor like acronyms for answers which had bullet points, by taking the first letters from them. I came up with 'maryBombLeh'(memorized as mary went to bomb the leh valley) , 'marBmwIdle'(after eating idlies, hit and run with your BMW), 'wordPimpdel' (delete and forget whatever a pimp says) and more on the same lines.

Exam hall,Today

A few minutes of sweating vanished the worry in my mind and my blood pressure came back to normal . I looked around for company. Vinoth looked at me and gave me a thumbs down, quite to my relief. Raju however seemed to write something vigorously and that somehow seemed to bother me. I closed my eyes, mumbled hanuman chalisa to myself and somehow convinced myself that I was motivated. I ticked out the questions I seemed to know. With a sparsely ticked question sheet , I started writing whatever I knew. This was when I realized that I remembered the acronyms pretty well, but I did not know the questions to which I had to tag those answers. And for some godforsaken reason, my mind, quite inappropriately, was playing "One two ka four, my name is lakhan' on a infinite loop, which I was unable to stop.

I took a best possible guess and expanded acronyms for questions that I believed were the right ones for the answer that I wrote. For every unknown answer I promised one coconut for lord Ganesha. After an hour, I drank 2 huge cups of water taking all the time I could, for whiling time was also becoming the primary concern. I decided to take on a few unknown questions. To motivate myself, I quoted my past achievement to myself where I had used the sewage disposal system from 9th standard and converted it to a nuclear reactor in 10th standard exams, with just some changes in interior decoration.

Frankly, I seemed to relish the scope I had for my creativity . The first question I had to answer was about something called the Walter-Nelson circuit. I had to narrow things down, both logically and creatively.

I started making a not of all that I could infer. It was invented by two people, it had to be somewhat big. The question has a return of investment of 12 marks, so I had to write 2 pages.

""One two ka four, Four two ka one, my name is lakhan", sang my mind when I reached a moment of oblivion. I had no control over the relentless music and images of a hairy Anil Kapoor slide show played on my mind.

Now, I had to put things in perspective. I tried to remember whatever I could from class about Walter-Nelson circuit.

2 months ago, 2nd year classroom

Something called Water -Nelson circuit was written on the board, double underlined. "Your turn now", said Kavikumar, handing over his mobile to me. I hid the mobile under the desk and started batting. In fact, a circular plain faced Tendulkar was batting for me. I had to score 23 in an over to beat Kavi. When I scored 12 off the first 3 balls, an sms interrupted me . Kavi took his mobile,read the message and said to me, "Nothing important, just Shreya wallpapers message.". I gave a momentary and obligatory glance at the teacher who said,"The reason we have 2 capacitors is ".,when Kavi gave me back his mobile and broke my attention.

Exam hall, today

So 2 capacitors is all we know currently. Maybe we will have a resistor for company. As far as I remembered, 80% of circuit diagrams had at least one resistor in them. I decided to start out with the circuit diagram.

Subconsciousness -" Two people have worked to create a circuit, its got to be bigger. This is too trivial . You had to add something more. Maybe something creative."
Subconsciousness said,"yeah, great impulse of creativity. Drawing a fido dido in a circuit diagram totally makes sense."



Subconsciousness: "Okay, For the love of god, the last comment was sarcasm. Stop drawing junk, and save yourself from a backlog. Probably have a two level circuit or something. Meanwhile, let me get back to my song, "One two ka four, my name is lakhan, mera naam hai lakhan'.

Subconsciousness: "Good. A timer adds authencity. Maybe Walter-Nelson invented the time bomb.Anyway, lets wrap things now. Probably complicate stuff and confuse the examiner with one more layer of circuity."


Subconsciousness: "Great. So genuine and authentic. Moment to take pride on our work, inspite of the fact that we do not know what that arrow thing stands for."

I gleamed with a sense of pride and self-appreciation. I then started writing the text for the answer.I wrote a huge paragraph describing the components of the circuit with excellent description accompanying each component. Then I randomly mixed a 'marbmwIdle' and 'wordPimpDel' to form a 'marPimpDel' , and put them quite pragmatically under the heading 'benefits'.

And there you go.


One month later,street corner Ganesha temple

"Dear Lord Ganesha, You rock", I said, breaking the first of my seven coconuts.

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Read between the résumé's lines

The talk of the town is that the economy is picking up. Most companies are in the hiring mode and job portals now have multitudes of résumés getting uploaded every day. While a résumé is meant to showcase the candidate’s skills, most of them turn out to be as funny as a Khushwant Singh joke book, unintentionally though. While I am no expert on writing résumés, I can for sure tell you what not to write it.

Every CV starts with a bit of your personal details in a letter pad format. The name and contact details of the candidate will suffice in the top portion. Avoid using logos of your previous organization or the political party you support. This is followed by the mandatory and ‘taken for granted’ Objective section. This column is usually meant to describe your career ambitions and preferred career path. Pity though that no one fills it up by them self and just do a Ctrl A, Ctrl C and Ctrl V from a friend’s résumé. This portion is generally filled with lofty statements, no short of an election manifesto. A typical IT professional’s objective would go like this, “To work in a highly challenging and stimulating environment which offers enormous scope for growth, innovation and new ideas”. In most cases this roughly translates to “The ungrateful superiors at my previous organization gave me peanuts for a hike and I want more money to pay the EMI for the home loan I took to buy my apartment located at a missile shooting distance from Bangalore airport”.

The most exploited part of your résumé is the skill set portion. Human nature is such that we blow up triviality into something awesome. A typical IT professional lists the programming languages he has worked on, heard about or read about its existence on the internet. A business person’s skill set would have Microsoft Office all split up and described in detail. Please note that if you know Microsoft Excel, just put it there. Detailing different versions of Excel under your skill only adds to the word count.

Every résumé features the set of projects a candidate has worked on. This is a tricky portion for an interviewer. Most candidates fill it up with execubabble aimed solely at making the content indecipherable. Sample this from an IT professional’s résumé “Worked on a comprehensive end to end project which offered utmost scope for communication with other end users offering immense challenge and space for creative ideas.” My guess is that it meant “I had an active Facebook and Orkut profile, while I was documenting my previous project”. The onus is on the interviewer to comprehend the truth behind the unintelligible text written in Times New Roman. While I am on it, I have a policy of hating résumés in Comic sans font. Remember this is a CV, not a cheap brochure detailing unlimited internet plans asking you to contact 'unlimited Shekar for more'.

Interviewers also have to be wary of self made acronyms by the candidate. So when a candidate says I worked on a NASA project, it could be referring to some Natwarlal and Sharma Agency at Gorakhpur. I sampled one résumé which said that a candidate had worked for ISROO which could easily be overlooked as ISRO.

Another clichéd résumé sham section is “Highlights and Past Achievements”. This section offers space for ostentatious projection of a candidate’s market value. Most CVs bullet point a list that starts with “Excellent Leadership skills” and rambles on. If a candidate does not justify how he can claim that he has the aforementioned quality, I would rather prefer reading a home loan pamphlet .I request candidates to note that 173 followers on twitter does not serve as an example of leadership . Organizing impromptu birthday celebrations for friends or Navarathri Kolu events for the housing colony does not qualify as a proof for Organizational skills either. Also, candidates need to make sure that mentioning trivial stuff in Past achievements adds no value. So a third prize in an intra school essay competition is better left unsaid on a résumé.

It is always better to make sure that your resume is as true to its ‘Times New Roman clad word’ as possible. More the brevity, better the résumé. Remember, the number of pages of a résumé is not proportional to the chances of you getting the top notch job. You are not replying to a show cause notice for heaven’s sake.

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Communication and the internet in India

Year 985AD,
King Raja Raja Chola Puri of Madurai wakes up after his deep sleep. Still yawning, he slowly walks up to his balcony with the twig in his mouth and a glass of Pakistani Inzamambazham fresh mango juice. Sipping juice he checks his balcony rim for new p-mails. There were 2 pigeons holding a chit each in their claws. He opens them one by one. One of them was from TamilPolygamy.com which offered a marriage refferal to add to his collection of wives. The other one referred Queen Shakeelam Devi from Kerala through MohanlalMatrimony.com. Meanwhile 4 different crows appeared on the rim of his balcony with their own chits. He opened them to find out that they were from random foreigners who sold Rolex watches or Performance enhancement herbs. "Maanamketta Spammergal(Shameless spammers)", he abused in pure Sangha Tamil,thereby venting his frustration ,shooing away the crows.

Postal Communication

A few centuries later, particularly in 1900s, people started using the postal means of communication. Letters were written throughout India with bad grammar and language . Auspicious letter had turmeric at the sides. Indians joined the party sending letters like"Send this letter to 5 people or one of your 20 kids will get lost in the Kumbh Mela". The most popular letter format was the inland letter, famously called "England letter" in TamilNadu. Emergency communication was all cryptic and telegrammed to people. A sample death notification telegram went like this, "Grandpa and Anacin expired. Bring Anacin and Ambulance".Because telegrams were charged on the number of words, people tried to squeeze in maximum content like this, "Happy married life,diwali,pongal,thiruvalluvar day.congrats its a boy. Or a girl.".

Vocal Communication

The invention of telephone changed everything. Indians had a telephone operator who used to plug wires and connect to people. STD rates were too high for the average aam aadmi, and Indians had to rattle off the words quickly and loudly to pass information via an STD call. A sample telephone STD call at a telephone booth went like this "Hi, How are you?Are you fine?I am fine?Regards to your family.How is Kasturi and her 7 sisters?Bunty stop pulling my Pyjama. Ok. Bye."(slaps Bunty,then buys him a Melody chocolate).

1990's and the internet

The early and mid 90s saw a lot of technological change in the US and hence it reflected in the late 90s in India. Indians started becoming engineers and landed themselves in US. The first internet connections appeared in India. Internet spreads like mildfire. Everybody got a dialup connection with a modem that produced Vuvuzela like cacophony . People start reading news on the internet and gossiping with others on the internet. Things started changing and even Palkaarans(milkmen) started accepting paypal payments .

Indians displayed their creative prowess in email with some fantastical email ids called coolganesh95@aol.com, jollyprasad@hotmail.com, situl_coolblitzer_terminator@hotmail.com. The patriotic dudes took ids like ramesh1947_india@hotmail.com and sardarpatelfan@rediffmail.com. Now in the current day,most of the email address are already taken and you need to insert a combination of names of your ancestors for 14 generations,your mobile number and some Indus valley civilization characters to get yourself an email id.

Messenger

The growth of the internet paved way to usage of Yahoo messenger for IM. People started using the new internet lingo of shortening words and talking to each other. All the guys disguised as girls with feminine email ids and would ping girls asking their A/S/L. Hence it became a giant cycle of guys in chatrooms talking to other guys ,each one presuming the other one is a girl.

Matrimony

Match making started happening on the internet and facilitated people to apply caste bias in the virtual world. Seperate sites were created for TamilMatrimony, KannadaMatrimony, OriyaMatrimony, SaravanaBhavanHighclassvegmatrimony, MuniyandiVilasMatrimony etc. Later portals were dedicated to modern sub castes like TCSMatrimony, WiproMatrimony and InfyMatrimony. The Khap panchayats started the SameGothraMatrimonyandhounourkilling.com.

The social networking era-Orkut and the Orkutiya

The post 2005 was an exciting surge for the Indian internet user. Broadband connections came into picture in India. 2005 also saw the introduction of Orkut in India. Orkut was a trend in itself with every Indian creating an orkut account. All the stalkers of India joined Orkut and they were quite popularly known as the Orkutiyas. The Orkutiya spoke in bad English,stalked girls and vigorously searched Orkut for fraands. The orkutiya had some profound status messages.

Then he sent girls "fraandship requests" and scrapped them.

He misunderstood what the word testimonials meant.

And he joined some thought provoking communities.

And he succeeded in stalking girls thereby making friends with girls who have pictures of a teddy bear, Koala bear or a picture of a baby.

Facebook

The more intellectual and the Yo Yo guys were on facebook and they shared some really important status updates .

I have a lot more to write about facebook. More about that in my future post called "Deshbook".

Twitter

Like there were'nt enough avenues to waste time on the internet, somebody invented twitter and it has been spreading shallowness all across the internet. Twitter is a micro blogging sites where celebrities talk to themselves, give updates on their gym schedule and give flying kisses saying "Muaaah ma tweeps".

Twitter also has space for retarded child celebrities.

And twitter always had space for bile.

*The End*

P.S: I will finish aloo-tikkipedia and also start writing a series of such informative and wisdom imparting essays. Thanks as always.

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Aloo Tikkipedia-Chennai part 1

Dear fellow Indian who hails from the North,
Greetings. Howdy? First of all, sorry for the fact that your company has posted you to Chennai(chinnai mein posting hai saala, as you say it to your friend on phone) and that you are forced to be here for the heck of earning money. But Chennai is not that bad a place as you presume it to be. I am saddened that you have such a bad impression on Chennai. Ok, I agree the place is hot and the girls are not. I know your mother is sad that you looked as healthy as Rishi Kapoor when you left for Chennai and came back looking as skinny as Ranbir Kapoor . I am amused when you order "Butter Chickaan" at Saravana bhavan and get astounded when you see that there is an item called "14 idlis " on the menu card. I understand your curiosity when you ask if mini idlis have holes in them likes polo, and when you wonder what fried Vada has got to do with the place called VadaPalani.

While I know you have not been liking Chennai and making jokes like these.

Tamilian:Tamil teri ma.

Sardar: Punjabi tera baap.

to which RajniKanth made a reply joke

Seth: Kaun hai

Rajni: Boss da , kenae(fool).

Enough is enough and lets all make peace with each other. There are ways to make life easier at Chennai. As a socially,morally, politically and environmentally responsible blogger and an undercover superhero, I will henceforth write a series of informative essays for you to convinience your stay at Chennai and remove any inhibitions of this place that you have and also help good relations between North and South.

I noticed that the wikipedia page is boring and less informative. Hence here is Virtualjunk's Aloo-Tikkipedia page on Chennai.

The reason why Chennai does not suit you is the fact that people here do not know Hindi as such. The little Hindi we know include "hindi nahi maalum" and "Hum aapke hain kaun". We also use "Kuch Kuch sabji hota hai", when we want extra sabji at the Bihari chat stall. However if you bank on that and try talking to a layman in Chennai , he may only be able to sing "Choli ke peeche kya hai", in response to your hindi rattling. Hence learn the basics of Tamil . Atleast ones like "Taaamil teriyadhu" and"Kunjum Kunjum".



Geography,History and Zoology of South India

Unlike popular belief at your place that anything under Maharashtra is called Madras and people hence are Madrasis, the south is divided into 4 states- TamilNadu,Karnataka,Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. TamilNadu was the place Idlis were invented and great scholars like Sir.C.V.Raman and Ramanujam hail from. Karnataka shares a border with TamilNadu and both these states fight over river Cauvery. Karnataka is a sweet state and adds jaggery to anything that is edible. Kerala meanwhile, is a tourist place and this is where Coconuts come from . Also known for its high literacy and youtube relevance for hot videos, Kerala needs no more introduction. Andhra is where andhra meals come from and where Gongura chutney and Gun powder(not an explosive) were invented. Andhra involves a significant contribution to IITs and Microsoft(do a search at Microsoft and who knows, even Steve Balmer may have been from Nellore or Golconda).


The 4 different languages spoken are Tamil,Telugu,Malayalam and Kannada. A brief example on how these languages differ from one another. Take a sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". Lets now translate that into all the languages.

Telugu
"The quick brown fox gaaru jumped over the lazy dog loo". (*Not that loo)

Malayam
"The quick brown foox jembed, jembed and jembed over the lazy doog. Then it realized it was a strike as usual at Kerala and it stopped jembing. Finally it wend to gelf for embloymend."


Kannada
"The huick hrown hox had Mysore masala dosa and humped over the lazy hog. One and half meter charge for humping after 8.30 pm.

Chennai Tamil
"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog after the morning idly and filter coffee. The lazy dog shouted "Kaide, Kasmaalam. Voottaanda solltu vanttiya"(Tamil version of WTF)."

Ok, Now that you are familiar with the South., let us move our focus back to Chennai's vitals now.


Transportation

Long ago a war was being waged between Deceptons and Auto-bots on the planet of Cybertron. The Auto-bots hid in earth at the eastern coastal city of Chennai since 1960s and were being generally driven by impolite gentlemen. The Autobots are known for their reckless driving and abusive words. Known for mercilessly taking cuts,turns and U-turns at inappropriate locations and charging a sum that amounts to a hijack ransom, the Auto-bots turned pretty notorious and gained bad reputation over time. Evolution kicked in and share-autobots came into picture, which have a deceptively large seating capacity and charged pretty less. Together they are the Transformers. But because an average drunk Indian perceives a Transformer to be a peeing zone, they are too scared to transform themselves at night.

Ok, spoof apart. I know how much you go through the auto menace especially if you are Northy and do not know Tamil. The driver would say that reaching Adyar from the Railway station consists of a sequence of one-ways and the shortest route is via Pondicherry . And then you sell off your mansion in Patiala to pay for the Auto. However once you are acclamatized to the routes , travelling by bus and share autos becomes a routine for you and travelling should not be a hassle.

Climate
Well, as the old adage goes, Cows give out milk powder and hens lay Omlette in chennai. You need to bathe twice in Chennai generally to keep off the sweat. IT companies see a surge in number of people working overtime and on weekends during summer for the sole purpose of air-conditioning. Drainage leaks and low lying zones make the rainy season worse too.


Intersection with the North

Though relations have been strained between the North and South over a prolonged period, things are getting better now. Cultural ties have been getting better since Sridevi danced in the rain with Anil Kapoor in Mr.India,later marrying Boney Kapoor and since HemaMalini married Dharmendra. Out of market actresses from North India have made a mark in the Tamil film industry. In our movies, most of them fall in love with a mechanic who hails from a village and comes to Chennai to avenge his evil uncle and his son, for his father's death(shown in a flashback, visuals all negative).

Kushboo, Simran and Jyotika to name are a few of the pioneers who made a mark in the industry so far. Kushboo even has a variety of idly named after her and the legal process is on to prefix Tamanna before Idiyyapam. Most of them marry and settle down here bridging ties further. Few years ,2 kids and a divorce later, all of them act as the protagonist,bold, oppressed female in Mega serials spanning 8 to 10 years.


Food
Ok, again you might have known how popular Saravana Bhavan is to the food supply chain of Chennai. Saravana Bhavan is Chennai's most popular restaurant and has 20 plus branches in Chennai and branches across Dybai,Abu Dabhi, Chicago,Alaska,North Pole, Moon and Mars. Rumours are that Neil Armstrong had 7 taste Utthapam at Sarvana Bhavan after landing at the moon and then he washed his hands at the basin which said 'Please dont comb hair in front of mirror'. There is a conspiracy theory video which shows that if you listen intently, you can overhear "Saarrukku oru barotta parcel(one parotta parcel for sir)" when Neil said "One step for man and a giant leap for mankind".

A few scientific principles that might help you avoid a surprise at a South Indian restaurant.

Lemma 2.1

Chappathi of chennai = Plain paratha of North India.

Lemma 2.1.1

Parotta of Chennai != Paratha of North india.

Lemma 2.1.(1.5)

Mini idlies do not have a hole in them.

Lemma 2.2

SaravanaBhavan=Pure Veg hotel,no Butter Chicken.

(To be continued. ..)

P.S: Thanks for the great response to the IRCTc post. Also, Complaints that my posts are PG-13, sorry for that. Will write better henceforth so that you can read it with your family and kids.

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Dummies guide to IRCTC

It is never easy to get a railway ticket in India. Remember those days when you had to wake up early, hurriedly brush your teeth and be at the Railway station before 8 am, only to find a long single queue split into four and converging at a tiny window . You endure sweaty people cramming for space,people who borrow your pen and sneak it away conveniently(Even if you gave them the pen without the lid),people who create a brawl claiming they were there in the queue and went away for a pissbreak.You endure all the arguments,make small talk on how bad Indian Railway service is and listen to people suggesting how Sachin should have played the previous night.And finally the moment arrives, you reach the tiny counter to find a worked up,depressed lady clad in dull coloured saree, who looked like she had never smiled since she joined duty. The tiny windows counter is only enough for 3 fingers, and you croon your neck to make sure you are able to speak to the lady whilst you endure loathesome strangers giving you shoulder push from the sides. After all that, you come out and find out that your ticket is in waiting list 220.

Now you can forget all that. Because here comes,wait...hold your breath....IRCTC. So for beginners ,here is the dummies guide to IRCTC.

What is IRCTC?

IRCTC offers a genuine Indian ticket booking experience. There is waiting, there is more waiting, then there is frustration,there is scratching yourself,there is hope and then there is dismay at the end when you find that you are not able to book tickets. Altogether a great emulation of real life ticket booking scenario.

Great. Lets get started!

Ok, Here are the starting steps

1. Open your browser and type irctc in the address bar.

2. If you do not know what a browser means , open another browser and google "What is a browser?". Do not get distracted when google gives you intriguing suggestions like"What is a blouse?". You may end up having a delightful time,in turn forgetting your ticket conquest you set out for

Anyway, the site responds with utmost speed and pukes this.

Nothing to feel disheartened about. Press Refresh from your browser. Now you will get this .

This is as per design and intention. Now keep doing this and after some 2 x 10^20 attempts,during which you might develop arthritis and or become a leper, the page finally loads.

It takes a humongous amount of time for the page to load. What should I do in the meantime?
Ok, Here are some of the things you could do while you are waiting for IRCTC to load.

• Look out for traces of beer in Mars and make sure human life is possible there.


• Listen to Atal Bihari Vajpayee speak.


• Contemplate doing a pHD.


• Repeat Gayathri mantra 10000008 times even though it may not be avani avittam.


• Sue IRCTC in Indian High court and wait for the verdict.


• Watch Jodha Akbar twice.


• Write Sri Rama Jayam on paper. When the website is loaded, you have enough pages written to reply to a show cause notice.



• Take up sanyaas and sit under a a coconut tree for enlightenment. Atleast you may end up rediscovering gravity if a coconut falls on your head.


• Or you could disconnect and get a life and a girlfriend.

The page has loaded now.Finally!
Great! you are getting lucky today. Now you will see something like this.

And another set of options like this.

*Note Clicking on the "Get Laid at Egmore" popup shows this

This lady has single handedly installed malware in several male PCs. By the way, if you thought you could find Jennifer Aniston at Egmore , well, you deserve the virus.

How do I book the tickets?
Ah, yes. Click on 'Plan my travel' now. Until the page loads, go empty your bowels and come back. Now that your intestine is unloaded and the page is loaded, you will find this on the screen.

Here select the source and destination of travel, your gothra, ,ticket type and class.

If you are a mallu, please note that Gelf is not in India and IRCTC does not provide train services there. Also note, if you choose Thackerey express to reach Mumbai, both from and to have to be 'Mumbai'. Thackerey express safeguards Marathi culture and prevents outsiders into Mumbai. The train nimbly takes a U turn from platform 1 of Mumbai CST and reaches platform 6 in 5 minutes. The train timings can be found on Samna .

Whats next?

Select your passengers list now. You can enter only six people in the list .So in case you have a large joint family, daughter in laws are requested to create a rift amongst family members and seperate and then proceed to book tickets. Consult Ekta Kapoor for suggestions.

Note :

Filling up the passengers list as

"Name: Dhanno 22 litres, age 13, sex female " and bringing a cow onto the compartment is strictly prohibited(unless you are one amongst Laloo's nine children or Laloo himself.)

Regarding the choice of berth IRCTC takes care that tall people get Side upper berth, senior citizens get upper berth and infants get rooftop berth. Then,the TTR does a massive swap operation which is as difficult to understand as a Thermodynamics IIT problem.

Right,How do I pay the money and finish it off?
Now that you have got everything right , click on Go and then Make Payment.

You have multitudes of payment options like net banking, phone banking,iPod banking, debit card,credit card, ,sodexho coupons etc. The option "Pluck and debit from my garland" can only be availed by Mayawati.

Now select your bank ,click confirm Payment and select finish. You will see this on your screen.

Make sure you don't press anything or touch anywhere . IRCTC now takes you to a page with sumptuous information and this page stands out as the epitome of end user friendliness.

Confused?? Obviously yes, you do not know what happened to your transaction from the blank page. IRCTC has been diligently designed as a foolproof system,by a team comprising of experienced fools, where the status of the transaction is not visible to the naked eye. There are cryptic codes in the document which are invisible . We consulted noted cryptologist Van Drown who said this on seeing the page

"I have seen this page and have conducted quite a lot of insightful research on it. This page seems to have hidden dots which connect the text "Mama Biscothu" and "govinda govinda". I believe this is a startling revelation and will lead to new discoveries of certain hindu gods being gay. More on that in my next book "Dalda Vinci told".

-Van Drown.

What can I do next?

You could take the author's lead and do this.

Now you are good to go and face the ruthless portal.

*THE END*

P.S:

This post is intended as a mild satire and does not intend to malign IRCTC. As a reader pointed out, IRCTC is the best thing that Indian Railways has done and does work smoothly except at non peak times.

Click to read fully!

6th standard B-part 3, The finale

Read part 1 here and part 2 here

Same Day,7.25pm, My Coimbatore residence

I was in a Do or Die situation. I was pondering hard over whether I should narrate the happenings of the day to my parents and fall into safe zone. With a hazy mixture of thoughts running all over my head, I could not concentrate on my evening dose of Cartoon network episodes comprising Centurion,Swat Kats,Mask and Johnny Bravo. I heard the sound of the Bajaj chetak, and I saw my father reached for the clamp holding the gate. I had a shallow feeling run through my stomach. I quickly changed the channel to NDTV and turned off the TV set(crime with no traces). I sprinted to my room, desperately searched for my bag and grabbed out the first textbook that I could pull out of my bag,which had notes and books crumpled as if it were the aftermath of a drunken pub brawl between the notebooks and the textbooks.



It was my Hindi book and I opened a random page and sat on my chair. The edges of the page were folded out of mishandling(which was called dog's ears) .Some other pages had missing edges, owing to my paper eating habits when I am bored. My dad came inside my room and leaned over from behind. I turned my neck to look at his face. "Did you work out Maths today?", he asked. "No dad. Yet to.", I replied with a pinch of hesitation. "Hmmm. Better start on Maths . If you are good in Maths, you will be successful in life. If you neglect Maths, life will neglect you and you will be begging in streets",he ended in a morbid tone and left the room. I imagined myself begging on the streets. I wanted to beg in foreign countries if I ever became a begger. I opened the Atlas and circled the list of countries where I would beg. 15 minutes of shortlisting and a late realization that Andaman is not a foreign country, I closed the Atlas and got off my chair.




I went to the dining room and decided to let out the truth. "I had a really bad day today at work. There was an audit issue in office",I overheard my dad talking to my mom over dinner. I summoned courage and muttered "Dad". "There is no salt in the Sambar", my dad said in a cribbing manner. Salt in the Sambar is a delicate South Indian male ego issue. He then turned to me and asked,"You wanted to say something". "Err...No. nothing.",I replied ."I have got something for you. Go check it out in my office bag". "Oh Great. It must be cup cakes. ",I thought and ran over to the bag. I opened the main zip and found lots of one sided paper with Syndicate bank letters on the other side. "Its for working out Maths", my dad said . "Great, enough paper to eat for a month",I grumbled to myself.

9 am,Neem tree,Shri Nehru Vidhyalaya

I called for a huddle amongst our suspended gang to discuss the plan of action before we met princi.

Pradeep(hanging along a branch): Chaiyya Chaiyya Chaiiyaa Chaiiyaa chal Chaiiya Chaiiyya Chaiiyaa

Me: Look, We have to plan on something. Our principal 'Nut'(short for Natrajan) is going to 'screw us today.

Sundar: Nut and screw , He He.Nice hardware joke.

Me *snapping Sundar*:Should we forfeit and accept that we all did it.?

Amit: No, That way we all have to bring our parents to school. I don't want to do that.

Sandeep: Amit is right only da. They always threaten like this. But they don't take any action. We will just remain silent and not reply.

Sundar: For how long?? At some point we have to speak only no.

Kuldeep: Hey, Two ants were having lunch on a tree. An elephant jolted towards the tree and one of the ants fell on the elephant. What did the other ant say?

Me: Kuldeep!!!, Shut up!!! Talk serious.

Sundar : I am going to testify and convict Pradeep. Why should all of us get caught, when he has done the wrong thing? I even did'nt know madher**** was a bad word.


PRadeep: No, You wont tell on me to the principal.

Sundar : I will.

Pradeep: I am going to slap you.

Sundar: I am going to....errr... I am going to complain to my mother today evening.


Sandeep: Sundar, You will not speak anything there.


Pradeep turned over to me and said "I think I am going to be conceived by Sundar today." "Did you mean 'deceived today'?",I responded abruptly in 0.07 seconds, emulating what Google made into a feature in a few years. Sundar said in a baleful tone "Pradeep deserves this. He did wrong. He will be punished today and also god will poke his eyes." It was getting serious. God poking our eyes was not as funny as poking your friends on facebook these days. Pradeep tighented the bangle around his arm and said,"Oh , you are cursing me now! Come da, lets teach him a lesson.". I was angry too and the prospect of punishing Sundar was tempting me. Sandeep and Kuldeep joined in. We formed a circle around Sundar. Pradeep slowly lifted his arm giving himself a suitable buildup. I did the same. The deeps followed suit.


We all raised our arm and converged on Sundar. Pradeep and I started tickling him in his stomach. Sandeep,Kuldeep and Amit divided the area of sundar's armpits amongst themselves and started tickling him there. "Guhahaha Guhahaha Guhahaha",Sundar laughed like a monster periodically taking breaths and exuding phlegm through his nose. We continued for 2 minutes non stop, till his laughter turned into hiccups. Sundar screamed,"Ok, I wont. I wont. I wont tell that Pradeep did it.". Pradeep clasped his hands and said,"Enough, we have taught him a lesson".We all walked away from the scene of action.

Kuldeep suddenly said,"The answer is ,the other ant shouted,'Come on, stamp and kill that fat rascal.'". It took us 10 seconds to co-relate what he said. There was a huge eruption of noise,"Guhahaha Guhahaha" and we were all rolling on the floor laughing(abbreviated to ROFL post the instant messaging era.)

10.15 am,Principal's room,

Princi was sunk into a set of green coloured papers. He looked into his papers and asked with sheer contempt at us,"So who amongst you placed the safety pin on the teacher's chair?". We looked at each other. He had forgotten what we were here for. This meant that we could have escaped even if we had not even appeared today. And man, What was he doing with all these investigations, Was he the principal of a school or chief of Crime Branch?

Pradeep replied,"Sir, we are from the bad words group". "Excellent articulation of thoughts. He could'nt get a better name. Urgh, the bad word group",I thought to myself.Princi asked trying to recollect," What bad word?" . Sandeep instantly said,"madher**** sir". I could not believe what happened there. Sandeep had just spoken an abusive word inside principal's room. Pradeep realized this as a rare opportunity to speak abuse at this room and he also joined in repeating,"madher**** sir". Princi gave us all a stern look and said,"Hmmm, the bad word group, Are you?. I am not letting you go today. Who wrote the bad word on the board?"

We were all prepared for this . All of us stayed silent. Sundar kept his finger on his lips and I slapped his hand for that. The deeps gave him a casual look. For them visiting the Principal room was like going for a carnival. Just another adventure in their eventful schooling life. "The bad word was written by whom?", princi asked us again. Changing the question to passive voice had no effect on us and we all maintained our silence. "hmmm, Gangster unity ,eh!". He pointed at me and said,"Come sit next to me in this chair.".

My heart was pounding. I walked slowly towards his chair. Images of begging in India went past my eyes. I was partly worried that I did not even have a plate with me to beg when I walk out of school. I grabbed the chair and sat next to him. Princi said,"This is the TC form. I am going to fill it for you . Everyday I am going to give Tc to one of you until you admit. I will personally fill up this form . Take it to your parents and bring it to me the next day." Kuldeep asked,"Sir, But tommorow is Saturday. It is leave, no sir." .Principal replied in irritation to this logical query,"Next working day I meant.".

Princi asked looking directly into my eye,"Your name??". I replied,"Sir,please sir". Princi mocked,"Oh, is that your name?". Pradeep found it funny and grinned. I was devastated . I stayed silent. Tears rolled out of my eyes. A slideshow of me begging the streets of some town in Himachal Pradesh kept rolling around me. I did not want to get TC and become a begger. My ambition was to become the colony barber. I liked to see barbers cut hair and shave people's cheeks. I could not let this ruin my hairy ambitions. I looked at at my friends. Everyone looked at me intently. Sandeep and kuldeep were trying to tuck out each others shirts from their pants. Sundar looked like he had to pee. Pradeep gave me a grin and winked at me.


I blurted out unable to control myself and burst out saying,"Saaar,It was Pradeep sir. He only writing it on the boaard saar". Emotions and tears choked my voice and vocabulary. Princi got up and clapped for 10 seconds. He was probably applauding himself for the breakthrough discovery . I got up still sobbing. "Everybody except Pradeep leave this room now",princi announced. We all walked out. Nobody spoke anything . I was ashamed of myself. Even Sundar seemed a better human being than me now.

It was two days after the incident and Pradeep had not spoken a word. I was relieved though that he did not tickle and punish me. Pradeep's parents met the principal and they were given some warning and stuff. I tried to apologize to Pradeep in the bathroom , but he just walked away without washing his hands.

No, I did not save Pradeep from a burning building or his family from a car accident for him to forgive me. All it took was one week for Pradeep to forgive me . I got 1 rupee pepsi for him for the next 10 days along with Alpenliebe(called Applensialable by him.)


October 1998,Mrs.Pandian's class.

Mrs.Pandian was patiently drawing a cactus on the board. We, 'The bad word boys' were seated on a single row. We all held the next person's hands waiting in despair. And then, suddenly everyone turned their head around looking outside the window. The noise of a 5000 wala from the bathroom disrupted the entire school. "Dam Dhoom Bus , padaal damaal",the deeps made noise in tune with the 5000 wala. Kuldeep inapprropiately joined in with the "Dhiskoom Dhiskoo Dhishkoom" sound.


12 years later.

Amit S, is a respectable Software developer keen in technology. He works in a company whose name is the anagram of the acronym of "Men In Black". He makes free time at work and during his free time at home writes apps for Chinese DVD players and cell phones which come with no warranty. He blogs here.


Sundar is a fictitious character formed out of all the Dorks you see in school life.

Deep brothers are wonderful people ,really genuine at heart. They now own a computer hardware store called Arihant computers. They give 'yours truly' a big discount on PC hardware. In case you want to buy hardware at Coimbatore , I will refer you to Arihant computers. Beware of bad words or unanticipated ticking during the conversation with them though . :)

Yours truly is also a software developer and also presumes he can write. He serves a huge fanbase on the blogosphere comprosing of 5 regular readers(incuding himself thrice) and others who land up on this blog searching for porn(Blame it on that google thingy).

"All is well"

*The End*

Disclaimer: 40% truth 60% fiction. Many school friends are reading this post(analytics says so) and this post is not meant to offend anyone at school including students and teachers.

P.S:

There is a like button is there now. :)

Next planned is a series of corporate mockery.

My gratitude to those who read my posts and give me great opinions . The 5 hours I put behind each post seems worth it when I get reader opinion(both positive and negative).

Ok, I know what you are thinking. I ll cut the crap in the P.S section henceforth.

Click to read fully!

6th standard B- Part 2, Inside Princi's room

Click to Read Part 1

Disclaimer: For the record, The story is 40% true and rest fiction. Hope that clears it all.

"Dei Amit, thats a bad word ,no da", I asked Amit in a hushed tone. "Yes,definitely it is", Amit said still looking at the board in horror. "Pradeep, rub it da.", I screamed at him ,while he was still decorating the abusive word with a dotted underline . To my horror Miss. Jayanthi,who was walking past the corridor heard my scream and came over to the class. She peeped inside shouting"Whats the noise? Pin drop silence everyone.". We all became still like somebody had said "Statue" to us. Miss.Jayanthi shared baleful glances at me,the deep brothers,amit and Sundar who was standing beside us. She went out of the class without uttering a single word. My heart was still pounding. I kept my hand on my heart and felt it for a moment.

Lunch break was over. The board was rubbed, the bad word gone and replaced by the ovals of set language.Yes,it was maths class. Miss. RamaLakshmi, playfully called Jill Jill Ramamani by us, was teaching us the simplest book examples and writing them on the board,none of which I listened to. I knew there was some impending danger. The biggest problem was that I did not know the meaning of the bad word.Somehow I felt the quantum of punishment would be proprortional to the profanity of the word. Suddenly, there was a disruption in the class. The office boy stepped into the class. Everybody usually heaves a sigh of relief when the office boy comes along, and the teacher reads us some notice about some holiday , Saturday timetable or sports day practise , thereby giving us a much wanted break from the monotony of the class. But this time it was bad news. "Sendeeb, bradeeb, kuldeeb, nerasimhen,amit, sunder. You are wanded at the principel office", Said Jill Jill in typical Mallu accent.


"Shit. I did not do anything. Why should I be punished?" , said Sunder, walking vigourously outside the principal's office. It was a huge office room with low hanging fans ,with ladies sipping tea and doing some monotonous and relentless typing.They were looking both dull and sick with not an inch of enthusiasm on their face. The wall had a few framed photos. One of the men in the frame had a moustache and wore a turban .He looked like a perfect man to be photographed to promote Rajasthan tourism. The next photo was that of a Sardarji who was smiling. I started mentally picturing him in all of the Sardarji jokes I knew. And next to that was the picture of Nehru and Nelson Mandela. The founders thought that putting their photos next to famous people made them seem like world leaders.

"I am going to tell the truth, the deeps did that. They need to be punished " said Sunder. "No . Dont say anything . Nothing will happen", I said trying to reaffirm him. Aarthi our class leader walked into the office room with a huge pile of arithmetic notes. She stopped beside us , looked at me and said,"Say Principal sorry. Only that will save you" and walked past us keeping the notes on the nearby table. Amit said," I think we should write a letter saying we are sorry. That will save us.". "Good idea", sunder seconded. I went forward and asked Aarthi for some paper. She took her Arithmetic note(we used to write landscaped on Arithmetic notes, because each step was long for equations).I noticed a ninja sticker on the front and "Arithamatics" written on it. She gently tore the middle page,seperated it from the thread holding it and gave it to me. "Its arithmetic not arithamatics",I said in an attempt to correct the typo(or rather writo). She gave a dirty look.


"Ok, So amit you write the letter", I said and handed over the paper to him. Amit readily took out his '35 rupees new hero pen' and tried to make a start. He wrote in big letters "Apologization letter" and double underlined it with a pillayar suzhi at the top. "Its for luck", Amit said . "Oh ok . Apply some turmeric along the sides of the sorry letter too",I replied in 6th standard sarcasm. Amit did not budge at that and asked," Should From address come first or to address". I was'nt too sure. Sunder replied,"its from address". The deeps said in unison, "Its to address da. ". "Ok, 3 hands in favour of to address first and 1 in favour of from address first. So to address first wins",I announced the results of my democratic and fair address selection process. Amit continued writing vigorously and stopped only after 5 minutes .I then took the sheet from him and looked at it. His writing was slanted to the left and looked like the big rice grains you get to see in Kerala meals. The letter looked something like this.

Apologization letter

To,

Principal sir,

Principal office,

1st floor, near office room,

Nehru Vidhyalaya,

coimbatore.

TN-641007

From,

6th standard B,

ground floor(near corridor aquarium),

Nehru vidhyala,

coimbatore.
TN-641007

Respected Principal sir,

We are writing this to say sorry about the bad word incident accident. We would to like to apogolise apologify apologise on the accident. We dont know who commited the crime, by god promise .We even dont know the meaning of the bad word. We also have no link to bathroom bomb blast last diwali. Hence we request you to kindly grant us leave forget and forgive us on this.

Your respectfully obiedent obidient students of 6th B,

(signed with a signature saying 6th B students)

Date:18-09-1998

Place:Nehru Vidhyalaya,Coimbatore

"Perfect.", said Kuldeep also peeping in at the letter. Sundar then looked at it and said "You will get only 3 marks for this". Sandeep and Pradeep were busy pulling the chained tumbler at the water filter at the corner of the room. "This is so stupid . Why did you mention about the bathroom bomb incident. This is the worst letter ever.", I yelled at Amit. He fired back,"Oh, if you were so clever why dont you write the apogolization letter". I wanted to call him a dog and cleverly divert the argument, but the office anna came and summoned us"Ulla vaa."(Come the hell inside).

Our principal Mr.Natrajan was looking busy . He had bunch of papers on his table. He signed them one by one and stamped a few of them. I had a sudden desire to become a principal and sit inside a room like that. He then licked his fingers with his tongue and turned the pages. Not for once did he even glance at us. His table had a beautiful paper transparent paper weight with shiny red stuff in it, which looked tempting enough to steal. I looked at his clock, his set of pens on the table, his unshaved stub on his face, the wooden deer with horns, hanging on the wall. It was 5 minutes since we went inside the room and he still did not even acknowledge our presence. I wanted to bring the typewriter from outside with the help of pradeep and throw it at him. "Why is he making us stand this much?", Sunder asked me in whispers. "He thinks we have Piles", I replied in a fit. Sundar gave out a laughter bursting like an empty tap blowing out air, inturn spraying spit of my right cheek. I wiped it with my shirt.

Princi gave me a menacing look through his specs. He finally got up and for some reason I was not scared at all."Do I look funny to you", he put a general question to all of us. I wanted to say Yes, but I did'nt. He walked along the side of his chair and went near the window,looked outside and asked,"So who did it?". Frankly we all thought he was speaking to somebody outside the window and we did not respond. He waited for 15 seconds ,turned towards us, looked at me specifically and shouted "Who did it ? Who wrote that word. Tell the truth, you young fellow with spectacles"and thumped his table. His pen stand fell down from the table making him feel slightly embarassed and deep brothers chuckled on that. In the meantime I removed my glasses. Princi picked up the pens and looked back at us. Nobody had glasses anymore. He looked bewildered for a moment.

"Dont waste my time and in turn your time. You know the consequences will be severe. Its better you tell the truth about who did it.",He said threatening us. Amit kept his hand in his pocket trying to get his 'Shakespearean Sorry letter' . I resisted and held his arm tight. Everybody was silent and Princi went about walking around the room . He restarted,"So looks like you chaps want to learn things the hard way. I ll tell you what I am going to do. Either you tell me the truth within a day, or you are suspended for a week and I get to meet your parents to tell them about this. Take your decision."

The three of us walked out of the principal room and moved towards the stairs. Sundar said,"Look what happened. If my appa knew, he will beat me with a belt. Why should I get beatings for what I have not done". Amit looked at me and said,"See, Thats why you should have submitted my letter.". I replied,"Oh yes Mark Twain!, your letter would have had him all wound up with your beautiful words. Lets talk about the real problem here". The deep brothers looked free from worry . "chalo, leave it. These people will just threaten. Nothing will happen. Remember what happened during the diwali bomb blast? Nobody can do anything",said Pradeep walking alongside me. Sandeep nodded along, he had stolen the paperweight and was playing with it. Kuldeep was walking with us gazing at a tree. Kuldeep suddenly asked out of the blue"How do we find out if that bird is a Koel or Cuckoo?". I thumped him hard on his ribs for that.

Tell the truth or get caught at home and get a week's dose? I was in a fix. I wished I could go 10 years forward in time where I had my own money and I could run out of home .

To be continued...

P.S: Thanks for the kind words as always. :).

Also, thanks Dinesh for making that pic. :)

Click to read fully!

6th B, part 1

My autodriver had driven me late to school and I was pretty tense . I was sitting next to him in the front seat, in an auto full of kids from our school. Driver anna had no space for himself and almost drove with his body outside the auto. As soon as he stopped at the school gate to our watchman's relentless whistle blows, I got down from my auto hurriedly and ran towards my class '6th standard B'(batch stated to be the worst batch ever,for 8 consecutive years now. I don't quite know the parameters to assess the worst class of the year or the judges behind this prestigious award). I sprinted across the main building, quickly reached the corridor which had a giant aquarium and ran into 6th standard 'B'. The class leader , Aarthi had wiped the board clean , written 18-9-1998 at the side and had written "Try,try,try But dont cry " in pink chalk. There was a portion of the board dedicated to the 'juvenile,making no sense' proverb of the day .

"Dei, I am also joining da", I said to Amit.S , my north Indian classmate, native of Rajasthan and settled in Coimbatore for a decade.My school had an equal mix of North and South Indians, with north indians densely populated in the B section, because it was the hindi section. Amit was one of my close friends and partner in crime. Amit spoke funny tamil as expected of any north indian settled in Coimbatore, and was one of the few north indians who studied well(others were sure to land up at their father's business ,and made it a point to enjoy school life). "You came late. Match is almost starting now da", he said shuffling the WWF trump cards. He evenly distributed the cards between himself , deep brothers(3 people) and me. The deep brothers comprised of Sandeep,Pradeep and Kuldeep. Sandeep and Pradeep were twins( age of Sandeep - age of Pradeep=10 mintues), whereas Kuldeep was born two years later. However like the noble brothers of amar,akbar and antony, the three brothers failed at different points in time and finally converged at 6th B for a 'Yaadon ki Baarat' reunion. Deep brothers were the sons of the upper middle class cloth merchants and hardly required to study. And yes, fact- Kuldeep never wore an underwear, a thing confirmed time and again by us when his pencil fell down.

I had got Hulk-Hogan, Hitman and Giant Gonzales today with me. I was guaranteed to win.I sat in reverse on my desk with people entering the class in the background, while others were all talking. Class leader Aarthi got up and went to the front to mind the class. I put my finger on the lips to my gang indicating silence at play. The game was going well, I had the cards for highest height,fights fought and biceps . My win would have almost been certain if only my class teacher, Sharada miss,had not entered the class so soon. Sharada miss taught us Hindi. She had a scar on her face(6th 'A' rumour was that a cooker exploded near her face and she got a vertical scar on her left cheek. We sincerely believed that). She was one of the very strictest(in 6th standard lingo) miss of the school. "Is this a fish market or what?" , shouted Miss.Sharada. If she had an eye patch , her scar and eye patch combination would have made her look like a pirate.By the way, the fish market dialogue is the most banal Indian school cliche.

Sharada miss went to her desk and started taking the attendance one by one. Attendance was my favourite time of the day. My mind used to statistically list down the number of people who said "Present","Yes" with a combination of "miss" or "ma'am" crossed joined. I wished there were 800 students in class and attendance lasted one hour long. Attendance was done, Aarthi took the register and was involved in some flattery with Miss.Sharada. "Stupid dog", amit mumbled looking at aarthi and I nodded along in agreement. First period(ya, we used it innocently call classes periods) was Miss.Pandian's today. It was Biology class. Miss.Pandian was the almost 60 year old Miss who taught us Biology and whose class we would have most fun in. She wrote down a few of distinguish betweens, which got rubbed from the board quickly . I ended up copying from Amit,and Kuldeep to my left copied from me,and Pradeep inturn copied from Kuldeep. Sandeep stood up from the row behind me and copied from Amit and me mixed. So mistakes from Amit's note amplified level by level with every subsequent person, and Pradeep would end up failing,(Unit test 1,he drew something which looked like Devegowda for an Yeast molecule.)

Miss.Pandian made the entire class repeat the distinguish answers after her. "chlamydomonas is a unicelular organism." and "Spyrogyra is a multicellular organism". Sandeep hatched a clever plot. All the boys would whisper the first line and the second line we would all scream like hell. Everybody were a part of this except Sundar kannan , the first ranker. Sundar was the geek of the class. He was the only person in our class who had a Computer and had excellent computer skillsets like MS Excel,powerpoint,Pacman,wolf and Dave.Anyway,It was time for fun. We are all whispering the line "chlamydomonas is a unicelular organism". Some guys even made hissing noises for added effects. All the girls were smiling at that. Now it was time for screaming. We shouted to the top of our voices" Spyyyyyyyrogyyyyyra is a agaabaagaaaraagaaa organism". Pradeep and Kuldeep wohooed at the end adding to the fun, while Sandeep gave a finger in the mouth whistle(He was the only person who could do that in 6th and 7th fully included). Miss.Pandian went crazy and could not figure out who did what. "Stop shouting", she screamed. Sandeep cleverly said,"Miss, you are only shouting now no miss" to which the entire class laughed. "Shut up", Miss.Pandian said . "I am never going to come to the class", she said with a look of contempt at the boys and walked out. "Sorry miss", said aarthi running behind her and trying to do some damage control. "See, Aarthi will now fall downing on Miss's feet ", said Amit in one of the worst framed sentences in English ever.


"We are all gone. Maybe they will suspend us. Already they suspect our class for the bathroom bomb blast last diwali. " ,said Sundar genuinely concerned. "What a baby", I said and patted Kuldeep giving him an indication to laugh at my comment. Kuldeep responded like a faithful dog anticipating a piece of rusk and laughed . Pradeep joined in hooting, and Sandeep too later laughed along, only knowing the fact that we were laughing at Sundar.Sundar shut himself up and turned to the front. Aarthi came back and we did not know what happened at the staff room. We had two periods of history after Biology. Our history miss Gita was very strict and used to hit us on our palms with the wooden scale held vertically if we created any trouble(Sundar used to contribute the wooden scale which had Sundar.S written on it, scratched in an ugly fashion with an old blade from his father's shaving kit).We were all very quiet during the two history periods and I even yawned inside my mouth without opening it, so as not to get a "Stand up on the bench" order, which she issued as freely as home loan pamphlets.

It was around lunch time now. The bell rang and everybody took out their carrybags. Amit and I were the uber cool guys who kept small tiffen boxes in our bags itself and brought no water bottles. Amit brought 2 chappaties for himself, with some potato fry. I always wondered how that would be enough for a normal human being, considering that I could eat ten chappaties (even at that age). Deep brothers brought a triple deck tiffen box with many rotis and a deck dedicated to dal. I brought lemon rice and Sundar would eat his curd rice with pickle all alone in the front. Other gangs used to eat amongst themselves. And the girls, we did'nt care about the girls.

Amit and I had our lunch and went to our school pantry. It was time for having our favourite 1 rupee pepsi. I took out three 25 paise coins from my pocket and realized I was short of 25 paise. Amit took out his purse(He was the only guy who had a purse) and handed out 5 rupees to the shopkeeper. Amit's parents were very rich and kind, they gave him 50 rupees of pocket money every month. I gave 75 paise for my pepsi to amit and promised the remaining 25 paise the next day . Amit said "Chalta hai , Boss" and winked. We quickly headed back to the class after sucking in the grape flavoured pepsi. Free time in lunch was utilized playing pen fight on our desks. We had a tag team match today and so we hurried back to class.

Pradeep and Sandeep were busy drawing something on the board when we walked into the class. They drew a caricature on board and wrote the words below which said something called "MADHER****" with a double underline below it, which turned out to be the reason for our suspension in a few hours.


(To be continued...)

P.S: Again, thanks for the support. Corporate monkey ideas lingering in my head. Will continue with that too soon. As always, do comment.

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