E for... English !

I’ve completed my entire school education in the same institution…for which I take credit (I don’t know how the school sees it)…anyway, the full sentences I write in English these days, with or without errors, are wholly attributed to this school and to my English teachers (and Microsoft Word spell check).

‘Talk in English within the school premises’ – was a discipline of this highly established Convent school, and this made us first grade inherent chatterboxes remarkably reserved and insecure. Hmm. Already we were busy with other routine activities like wasting lunch, losing pencils and other stationery, and tearing paper from text books(of other students, of course). Now see what a burden had befallen us. At 60, the Principal had nothing to lose to execute a discipline like this. But she did have something to lose. Her image. Once one of my English retarded friends wished her ‘Good Morning’- in the evening…and she also graciously returned her a good morning! So we aren’t talking about anyone’s image here anymore.

During our primary school days the struggle was topped with embarrassment. Although our parents were well versed in English, we spoke in Malayalam at home. So, one can equate ‘talk in English’ = ‘stop talking’. This eventually resulted in comparatively calm classrooms, and the class leader would have limited or no job, much to the delight of teachers.  This was a period when passing of messages in folded papers was invented. This enabled free and full fledged communication between us friends, in Malayalam. Later, full notebooks were attributed for this purpose! But remember, all this happens within my circle of friends only; class leaders and studious girls were carefully avoided. Papa had advised me not to be in the company of bad girls, you know?

As we grew older, the ‘talk in English’ rule was prevalent, but we dint care anymore. This was a time when we had become fully grown brats and walked the corridors with heads up, and both hands in pocket… even when a teacher passes by. The same teachers at whose very sight, once upon a time, we used to wish, bowing our heads so low with humility and respect, that after she leaves we get a head rush and can’t see anything for the next few seconds. But the good thing was that all the English grammar, poetry, short stories, and the articles in the Hindu newspaper which was forced on us by parents, had borne fruit. But then the Indian Council of Secondary Education dint like what had happened; they dropped a bomb called 'Merchant of Venice' on us in the tenth grade.

Shakespeare lessons rewrote all our fundamental concepts of English grammar. ‘Aside’ and ‘Soliloquy’ became the order of the day. Oh my…and the turtle pace at which the ‘Merchant of Venice’ classes were going…! One paragraph or four lines in an hour!

Hidden meanings + Most likely other meanings + literal meaning + what the critics of the 16^th century thought + what Shakespeare meant + what we are supposed to infer = five 200-page notebooks for Merchant of Venice.  It’s likely that Antonio and Portia wouldn’t have been aware of a sea of meanings attached to their casual conversations. Or maybe they meant something else. Ah who cares? We want marks.

Essay type questions demanded original Shakespearean sentences to be reproduced in answer sheets with quotations marks. And the teacher enlightened my friend N that ‘Even if you don’t quote, please don’t misquote’. So the bad news was that, we are not supposed to write our own sentences, beautify them with ‘thou art’, ‘Thine’ etc, topped with semicolons, commas and tildes, enclose them within quotation marks and expect teachers to award marks. They actually read these. Sigh.

Anyway our teachers, in the days when Google was not so popular, gathered enough information from the British Library to change our lives from miserable to pathetic. How we all overcame it all without tainting the image of our then teacher is another feat, and I hereby dedicate it to the sweat, BP pills, prayers, hypertension and support of our parents. *bowing head in gratitude*.

But the battle was not over yet! Picture abhi baaki hai mere dost ! HAMLET happened!

Shakespeare’s Hamlet began in the 11^th grade with a conversation of the ghost of Late King Hamlet. The characters which were living had already done enough damage. If a Shakespearean character had to appear after death, it means that it had something earth shattering to say. God what on earth did this guy miss to say during his lifetime, I wonder! We’d be immensely grateful if this ghost silently murdered an existing complex character. But this was no ordinary ghost. It went on to utter a few passages which made integration, differentiation, and Physics theorems look like nursery rhymes. Misery and more misery awaited us.

That’s when she came. Our new English teacher, Ms.Lakshmi.

She had big expressive eyes, and an unbeatably excellent vocabulary. Her style of speaking English…mode of teaching…and how she loved and enjoyed what she taught…was definitely a class apart. Sometimes we even felt the urge to make mental notes of her casual conversations! Oh for the impact she made! It was so perfect. Come what may, we never missed her classes...not even me. Well, if a teacher can keep people like me engaged in a subject for an hour then I needn’t explain any further. She made us realize how we Indians had customized the sound and pronunciation of certain words to our convenience…and ventured out of her way to teach us how it really had to be pronounced. Wow. She could read the confusion in our eyes and the wrinkles on our foreheads. She captured our concentration with smiles and not frowns. She talked, and did not scream. And finally, she walked us through Hamlet like a dream… and one of the many things I miss about school are these Hamlet classes. We virtually watched the entire play of Hamlet unfold before us…the effervescent voice, and the expressions that kept changing on her face. Live. And that’s how we loved English. And why we still do.

 Thank you, teacher…because of you, I have a blog today.

Follies of 2010 - (Second and final part)

The second and final loss whose full responsibility I accept is that of a theft, which could have been avoided if not for my carelessness.

I’ve always been notorious for losing umbrellas at school, some of which were retrieved from lost property boxes, and some, which were misplaced and later forgotten from public transport buses and the like. However this was a different case, and it made me extremely spiteful of myself.

We stayed in a beautiful locality in Bangalore. The parallel road to ours, was another residential area and there were a row of apartments, one of which was occupied by a friend. However this road was dug up for cables and the friend was unable to park his car in the garage, as the cable maintenance guys left for the day without covering the dug up area. So the friend called us and we let him park the car in our garage. Hubby came late that day and parked our car behind the friend’s car.

By 10:00 a.m the next fateful day, the friend came for his car. He had to move our car first, take his car out and park our car back. As hubby was not home, I came down and handed over the keys to him, and while he left, he said “remember to lock your car”. I nodded and waved to him, closed the gates, patted little Tommy Hilfiger (the neighborhood dog) and went upstairs. I had completely forgotten to lock the car.

By evening, we got into the car to go to a friend’s place and found the display panel of the car stereo missing. The ipod, some USBs, a sunglass, and car papers were all in place; just the display panel was missing. It was stolen.It looked like someone tried to pull out the entire stereo, but due to lack of time or some reason, couldn’t pull it out completely.

My eyes welled up, seeing the expression that was now on my hubby’s face. I told him that I had forgotten to lock the car… but he did not say anything. This car stereo was a result of weeks of intense research on the net, reviews, review comparisons with other models, direct user reviews from colleagues, ratings on websites and so on. 

Later the following week, we checked with the shop from where we bought it, and came to know that the stereo could not  be used anymore, as its display panel was the most expensive one, and if it was to be ordered from the U.S, it could cost more than another car stereo.

I hated myself. I wished if someone could just thrash me for being so careless, irresponsible and absent minded…but no one did, and that was in fact, the biggest punishment I could ever get.

To helplessly watch the expression on his face.

Follies of 2010 - Part I

2010 had been a happening year, both in my personal life as well as in the losses contributed by me in the family income-expenditure virtual sheet.

Well, major losses include two incidents, one for which I am fully responsible, and the other, for which the responsibility is primarily shared by my better half .

My husband’s home in Cochin is situated in the middle of a large hectare of land, the boundaries of which exist beyond the reach of human vision. Due to this reason, there was a necessity to replace the existing watch dog which had grown old and weary (probably in its attempt to find the border of the land adjoining the house). So on one weekend, the mission to find a new watch dog was kicked off, and we set on our way to various private pet centers.

We visited a couple of pet centers, from where we couldn’t find the right candidate, but I thoroughly enjoyed the whole trip, trying to attract the attention of my favorite pug pups(which is ruthlessly considered ‘useless breed’ by everyone else in the family )… apparently pugs do not fall for flying kisses and eyelash fluttering.

Finally we reached another private pet place, which was situated roughly 23542354 metres away from civilization. Now we positively have to find the pet from here…as there were no signs anywhere saying that we’d require a hummer to reach this place, and the second hand value of the mediocre hatchback we were using, was cut in half by the time we reached.

On reach, we were introduced to a pack of cute little Labrador pups, eight to be precise. The owner opened the cage, much to the excitement of the little devils and soon they were all over the place. One or two were extremely lazy and found solace under a flower pot, while others were busy running around pulling on shoe laces and grabbing the car tyres (ya that’s exactly what the car wanted, to go back all the way through the jungle). Soon the pups were carefully scrutinized and we zeroed in on one, which looked ‘proactive’ ( a term my project manager uses to describe people who volunteers to initiate confusion and chaos in the team ).

Now came the payment part, and the owner guy said that the breed is very pure, and the parents and grandparents of this pup were champions at various dog shows (oh my…the pup was so humble for its credentials..), and that it had all injections done promptly and had a certificate also. Soon the li’l jovial pup jumped happily into the boot space of the car and stayed in an open card board box all the way up to civilization and then to our home.

The pup showed good signs and traits later.

However, this descendant of champions grew up to look exactly like the common street dog, with no signs of a Labrador anywhere.

That guy dint precisely mention in what were the ancestors of this pup champions in..may be a show for street dogs !@#$%^&*()
Now that’s a few thousands down the drain.

To friendship !

I saw this wallpaper in a website..
                 .... presenting another humble attempt at pencil sketching.

Click on image for an enlarged version :-)

The "Husband Material"

Flipping a few chapters backwards to Bangalore. It was a particularly hectic week at office. We decided to escape the hustles and bustles for the weekend, this time with my sister and family. At daybreak, we made ourselves comfortable in our car, and vroomed to a very particularly quiet and serene hill station near Bangalore. The drive was not less than seven hours, and hubby drove all the way with just a breakfast break in between.

 Driving is a passion for him, and any long distance drive doesn’t make him impatient, weary or irritable.After long exhausting drives like these , he usually appears cool and fresh for photo sessions ... but  me…who’d be sitting idle in the car end up looking like I'd been dragged all the way. 

We reached our destination by noon... the resort cottages were crispy clean and cool. The men bought us Chicken Biryani for lunch. I collapsed into bed for a short afternoon nap, conveniently ignoring comments that if it was to sleep I could’ve slept at home…why drive all the way and pay for a resort. Zzzz.

By evening I was almost sure that what we ate was Biryani, but it was not chicken. The rumbling sounds in my stomach was almost audible to myself and eerie thoughts clouded my head as I began guessing what it could have been, having seen many dogs and monkeys en route. A trip like this one doesn’t happen every weekend, so I shushed the sounds to myself.

Soon it was dinner time. I ate a bare minimum, popped a Lopamide, drank warm water, restored myself and we lay down to sleep. The seven hour drive had begun to show now, and hubby retired to bed and fell asleep soon after. However the dogs and monkeys had no plans to let me. I was unable to sit or lie down. I walked up and down the room, visited the loo like 25 times, popped another pill, and by now the growling and rumbling had given way to unbearable pain in the abdomen. I sat by the window side, shut my eyes tight and prayed. Tears were flowing down my face.

By now, hubby dear was sleeping peacefully, with an expression which told that he was pretty amused by his dream. I had one hand on my stomach, whose affairs had gone way out of my control and sat on the bed next to him. His dream had gotten so entertaining that now he was laughing aloud.

Ignoring it, I switched off the lights and got under the covers…I don’t remember when I slept, but at least I could. In the morning I couldn’t wait to tell everyone of the  scariest night of my life, the pain, the laughter, the helplessness and the action that could have happened if he had laughed some more.

Putting more thought into it…what would I have done if it was a room mate, a sibling, a friend or relative, who laughed when I was miserable? Either a kick on the ass or waking them up and making them stay awake with me throughout the night. But I never even thought of waking hubby up considering the long drive especially after a shift the previous day at office.

Husband is totally different from the rest of the world. Ain't he ? J

Lost and Found !

Just a few weeks after we landed in Muscat, I lost a mobile phone. Not just a mobile phone, it was the ONLY phone in which the facility to make ISD calls was enabled. All extensive searches and raids were unsuccessful. My better half has known me for more than half a decade now, and I should say that he wasn’t very surprised, but I convinced him to not tell anyone at my home. And it was done.


However Papa started checking with me about this mobile, as he called on that number a few times and continued to receive a message that it was switched off. I gathered some courage and told him about the loss. The courage was not to present the situation to him, but it was to get enough self-control to listen to the reactions and conclusions that was to follow. Anyway he told me to make some alternate arrangement to connect with home and that was done too.

Five months later. This time I was searching for a doctor’s prescription in my laptop bag. And yay, there it was! Not the doctor’s prescription, but the mobile phone. My better half was again witness to this, was least surprised, and again I begged him to not tell my parents that we got the mobile phone from MY bag. And it was done. I’m sure Papa will come to know from here. And I am not calling home for a week: D

This reminds me of another incident at school. A and N were my friends. A was a dancer and she had lost a quintessential dance accessory during a competition at school. All 3 of us set out to search. A was in tears. We went to the school office and requested to see the Lost Property Box. We also explained what exactly we were searching for. Ma’am returned with a huge card board box. We identified a little more than what we intended to.

N’s pencil box.

N’s umbrella.

N’s notebook of the previous year.

N’s costume for fancy dress.

And, N’s text book for the current year.

A dint get the dance accessory, but the search in the lost property box was a fruitful one. N wasn’t even looking for these items, as she dint realize that these were missing. Unfortunately N’s name was there on all of them. (Otherwise we would’ve pretended that it was not hers). The Ma’am gave her an ‘I was waiting for you, Miss. N’ look and an evil grin.

It was also the first time ever, that A and N was in trouble and I wasn't !! I celebrated the rare event to pacify them.