There's a reason I loved some of my classes

Scene: BA English Semester III Classroom
English lecturer limps into class after an absence of 4 days.
English lecturer has sprained her ankle.
English lecturer's usual mode of travel is the suburban electric train from Tambaram to Chetpet.
English lecturer is recovering from a fall on the railway platform at Tambaram.
English lecturer explains her absence to the girls with this sentence:
And you know what, Giiiiirlsss, I sprained a tendril!!!!!

This is the same English lecturer who explained to us that Samuel Johnson suffered from a dreadful disfiguring disease which caused him to have lumps all over his face. The lecture ended when she said:
Oh, I just can't get the name of that disease,what was it called? Oh yes, I remember now, Giiiirlssss, Samuel Johnson suffered from a dreadful disease called the scrotum.

And while I'm on this subject, let me not forget the time she got really agitated at what she called our unruly behaviour and threatened us:
Girlssss, now you are making me upset and while I do not like scolding my students, if you go on like this, I will be forced to castrate you.

Believe me, we adored the lady.

P.S. It should have been tendon, scrofula and castigate.

Jurassic bathroom

I just realised (mostly because a lot of people who know me and to my eternal surprise, still love me, called me up and yelled - "TEN things and you didn't mention that you almost got us arrested for child abuse?"), that I should have mentioned that I am mortally scared, terrified, petrified, horrified and frightened of all things reptilian. I can stand to be in the same room as lizards, as long as they're at the other corner of the room, where I can keep an eye on them. I shudder when garden lizards and salamanders cross my path. Snakes have me running for the trees. I'm not even getting on to the subject of crocodiles and alligators. I can't watch movies which are shot on or around rivers because I'm always dreading a huge ugly crocodile lumbering out of the water. But just like a moth is drawn to a flame, I watched all the Jurassic park movies and Godzilla. It is now part of the family&friends lore that I didn't sleep for weeks after each of these and when I did start sleeping, my dreams had me sobbing through the night. I am not proud of this. I generally tend to keep this a deep dark secret. And I will shortly close this blog and start an anonymous blog so that certain unnamed people (much as I love them and am grateful that they still love me), cannot force me by blackmail to reveal certain so-called-truths on my blog.

This phobia of mine affords great entertainment to my family. I have tried hard to gain the respect of my nieces and nephews, but dropping your parcels and running out of a store because you saw a lizard does not generally engender respect. Just the opposite. And as to what the sight of a three year old laughing at you does to you, his wise, kind and altogether wonderful aunt, I leave to your imagination. My mother, the one kind and understanding soul in my life, is the only one who at least tries not to laugh at me. I love her for this. I love her for lots of things, but for this, she will be enshrined among the angels.

She saved me once you know, from a salamander attack. Well, she and my brother (the small big brother) and the maid, and half my father's office staff, and the corporation sweeper, and arbid people who were walking by on the road, and the neighbours, and I really have lost track of how many other people were there.

It all started on one quiet Saturday morning many many many years ago at about 11 a.m., when I drifted out of sleep and into the bathroom. All I was doing was standing by the wash basin with a toothbrush in one hand, and a tube of toothpaste in the other, when I felt the weight of an evil gaze on me. I looked all around, and found nothing. So I put it down to my overactive imagination and turned my attention back to the task at hand. But the feeling just wouldn't go away. So I turned around again. And there at the trap at the head of the drain, stood the scariest salamander I have ever seen (And I have seen quite a few, believe me). For those of you who have not seen salamanders, I have downloaded a sketch.

It was large, with a deep brown black body and a deep red back. And as I stood there petrified ( yes, I did turn to stone), it slowly started to advance towards me, stepping over the grating that it had knocked down in order to get at me. And it was really large. As salamanders go, it was humongous. Do you remember that scene in Godzilla, where they're down in the tunnel with the creature and they're almost caught under it as it lumbers away down the tunnel. Well, that's the kind of stride that it had. At this point, I came to my senses, and with one bound, I had leaped on to the relative safety of the closet. I say relative, because I am sure that if it had stood upon its hind legs, it could have pulled itself on to the closet with ease. While I was getting my balance by grasping the flush tank, I was wondering what the wailing in the background was.

It was only when I heard the pounding on the bathroom door and my mother's agitated voice that I realised the wails were coming from me. And I just couldn't stop. It took about 15 seconds longer for my small big brother to come hurtling down the steps shouting agitatedly. He told me later that he thought I was being murdered. Once he realised that I was not in immediate danger, he tried to figure out how to get me to 1. stop that infernal noise 2. come out of the bathroom 3.behave like a human being. Now, we lived in the house that my grandfather built, and he built houses to last. This meant that bathrooms had doors which could easily have repulsed the barbarian horde. Breaking it down would have meant bringing a battering ram into the house. SBB realised that that only way to get me out of there was to get me to open the door. And that involved my getting down from the closet. I am not going into the details of how my small big brother talked me into quietening the wails into deep shuddering sobs. All I'm telling you is that it took him a long time. All this while our maid was standing by my mother and singing what she thought were soothing songs to quieten the wild beast - me, not the salamander. But since they sounded like funeral hymns, it just didn't help.

It took them a couple of hours, but finally they did rescue me. And as soon as I was out of the bathroom, I bolted out of the house and careened into my father, who had been recalled from one of his work sites (where concreting was in process) and since he had come rushing back because his office had informed him that his darling daughter was being attacked, his first action was to hug me, and then ask me very suspiciously what had happened. I'm not stupid; I know when I'm really in trouble, so I immediately started wailing again, and refused to get back into the house till I was sure the "arana" was dead. It definitely distracted everybody. They now had to kill, or at least catch the salamander. It wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. Our maid did it with ease, actually. And that's when I went,"but this one is too small, it's not the same one....waaaaiiiiiiillll".

My father, already on a short fuse, gave me a look that would have incinerated a small animal and since even my angel mother had stopped sympathising, I decided it was better to shut up. Of course, for the next few days, until my father forbade the mention of the word 'arana' in his house, I kept muttering under my breath that it had been MUCH bigger.

AND on one Saturday morning three weeks later, the family woke up to the sounds of my screams again. And that's when we figured out why the salamander was so much smaller when the maid caught it. It was no longer pregnant. The cunning creature had laid its eggs in a crevice in the wall. And they had begun hatching. The floor of my room was covered in baby salamanders and there were millions of them. Okay, thousands. Oh okay, hundreds.

But anyway, I had been vindicated. It had been bigger. MUCH bigger. And I was insufferable for the rest of the day.

"arana" is the malayalam word for salamander.

Steam on a train

Circa 1984. I am seventeen. A WCCite. A hostelite. Confident. Travelling by myself. Very grown up. Full of illusions (should be obvious to anyone reading the previous statement).

She is seventeen. Travelling alone. Naive. Trusting. Travelling alone. Sometimes quite an idiot. Spoilt, protected, youngest daughter. Travelling alone. Travelling alone. Travelling alone. (Thoughts running through my dad's head as he stands on the platform and peers suspiciously at my fellow travellers.)

I have to hand it to him for understanding teenagers (and/or me) pretty well. No lectures on being careful, not talking to strangers, or anything on those lines. Just a casual wave and a 'take care'.

I settle myself in and look around. Hey, pretty cool set of people. One guy, around my age. Hmmmm... nice smile, very nice smile. But hello, why is he smiling at me? Does he know me? Do I know him? Should I smile too? Well, it was such a nice smile and it would have been so rude to ignore it, so I did. Smile, I mean. At the nice smile. That was enough encouragement. He shifted seats immediately and started chatting. Turned out to be from MCC and we turned out to have a lot of common friends. So... good that I smiled back, wasn't it?

Together, we check out the rest of the passengers. Most of them are nice. The guy sitting opposite me makes me kind of uncomfortable, though. He just stares and stares and keeps smiling. Very rude! You don't just smile at some strange girl and make her feel self-conscious. I ignored him. Am good at this cold chilly front thing. Most guys I don't want to talk to get the message in about 2 seconds when hit with just a single below-freezing glare (my dad stopped worrying about me travelling alone after he saw one demonstration of said cold glare). Doesn't work with this one, though. Must be wearing thermal underwear. He keeps smiling and smiling and staring and staring. Makes me really uncomfortable. And just as I am about to turn and ask him what on earth he meant by the staring, he starts to talk.

The staring was preferable to "Hot water is the beginning of modern civilisation. Discuss." No, I am not making it up. I am not exaggerating. This is really what he said. Well, now it's the two of us who stare. And stare. And stare. I don't smile but MCC does. I just stare and think to myself. "Oh God, why me?" The conversation, if you can call it that, continues.

WC ( Weird Chap): My name is Honest Abraham Lincoln. I am from Salem.

WCC (me): (Stare. And stare. Not out of rudeness. Out of shock. Stare.)

MCC: Hi, I'm Martin Luther King.

WCC: (Eyes popping out of head and thinking) Okay, so now that's TWO crazy guys. And I, like an idiot, have started talking to one of them. And he knows my name!. Oh #$%&*!

WCC: ( Piteously looking at other travellers and sending out thought waves) SAVE ME SAVE ME PLEASE SAVE ME!

Other Travellers (OT) blithely unconcerned, continue with their activities - changing into lungies, eating thayir sadam and so on...

WC: What is your name?

WCC: (Cold glare)

WC: Why you will not talk to me? ( pointing an accusing finger at MCC) You were talking to HIM!

MCC: That's because she's my sister-in-law.

WC: Huh?

WCC: HUH?????? (Thinking, worriedly, very worriedly) Maybe I should get off at the next station and catch the bus home BOO HOO!

WC: (Pulling a packet of biscuits out of his pocket) Have one.

WCC: (shaken out of shocked stupor) Thanks, but no!

WC: (Louder) I said HAVE ONE.

MCC: You can't give her biscuits. My brother will not like it.

WCC: (Thinking out loud) His brother? Where did his brother come from?

MCC: (under his breath, to WCC) You idiot. you're my sis-in-law, remember?

WCC: (audible sigh) (under her breath to MCC) You're not nuts?

MCC: (Smiles. Shrugs) Nope, but he definitely is.

WCC: Totally loony.

WC: Why whispering? Say loudly say loudly. We also want to hear.

WCC to MCC: What are we going to do?

MCC to WCC: You are going to climb up to my top berth and stay there.

WCC thinks it over and decides it is a very wise course of action. Gets up from the seat.

WC: (Aggressively) You have not discussed my topic.

WCC: Huh?

WCC says this a lot during this journey, but so would you have done if you had been me.

MCC: (laughs out loud) I'll discuss your topic at the next station. In fact, I'll give you a demonstration on the platform.

WC: (very interested) Really?

MCC: Really.

One OT who had by then been listening to the exchange : Sounds interesting. Can I join the discussion?

WC: Yes yes of course, anyone can.

MCC to WCC: You can't.

WCC: I wouldn't dream of it.

WC to WCC: Which college do you study in?

WCC: (caught off guard blurts out) WCC.

MCC to WCC: ARE YOU CRAZY?

WC: (with a smug smile) I know you girls. That means you are in Stella Maris.

MCC: You are very intelligent. (under his breath to WCC) Top berth. Now.

WCC very meekly climbs up and stays there for the remainder of the journey.

MCC, one OT, and a couple of OTs whom he invites for the discussion, discuss 'hot water' with WC in great detail.The rest of the journey is uneventful.

MCC goes on to become one of my greatest friends and still bails me out of trouble in a pinch.

An old dream

This happened early one September morning twelve years ago. I woke up sobbing from a really bad dream asking for my brother. He had gone on a trip somewhere and was due back home that day. I didn't even know that he was not around. For about ten minutes I couldn't speak and I know I really scared my parents with my unceasing sobbing. My father did the only thing he could do and prayed with me. By the time he finished praying, I had calmed down and it was almost as if all the earlier drama had not happened, because suddenly I felt really calm. And then, I described my dream to them.

My brother was driving his car down a coastal road. Two other men were in the car with him. I remember the details of the road even now. Somewhere near a milestone or a culvert, a truck travelling at tremendous speed crashed into the car, killing my brother instantly. Some passers-by took them all to the Alleppey Medical College Hospital. An uncle of mine was the principal. He, of course, recognised my brother, and called home immediately. I heard him tell my father that my brother was very badly injured. And I wondered why he was saying that, because he was lying there, with no life left in him. That's when I woke up sobbing.

My father went and looked out into the front yard and told me - 'His car is there, so he must have returned at night.' ( My brother lived next door with his family.) Anyway, we prayed again and I went off to work a little later. At around ten in the morning, my brother walked in and told my mother that he had had the strangest experience that morning. And my mother replied that if he was talking about strange, there was quite an incident at home that morning too.

My brother's strange story was that when he was returning home from somewhere south, driving down the Alleppey coastal road, he suddenly had this very strong feeling that he just had to stop the car. So he did. And then he told his friend who was with him that he wanted to get out of the car, so they both got out and sat down on a culvert by the side of the road. It took about ten minutes for the strange feeling to wear off and when he felt all right, they resumed their trip back home. But his friend insisted on driving. This ten minutes coincided almost exactly with the ten minutes that I spent sobbing and calling him.

He had planned to take his car and another friend was to have joined them on the trip, but when the finally left, they took his friend's car and there were only two of them. So when my father looked out and saw his car, and we assumed he was at home, he was actually sitting by the roadside.

I have never tried to find an explanation for this. When you love someone, can the connections be that strong? Did my crying reach him and make him stop the car? Did that prevent a possible accident? I don't know. I'll never know. I still remember that dream vividly - as if I was an unseen watcher and I'm just glad, he got home safely that morning.

Dipso!

We're having a class reunion. Another one. For this one, most of the interest is on the booze and how sloshed everyone's going to get. I couldn't help thinking back to the first time I had a drink, which was also the first time I got sloshed.

It was the night before my sister's wedding. A whole bunch of her friends were down and since one of the houses my father gave out on rent was empty, that's where they stayed and that's where 'the' party happened. The house was empty except for a fridge :-) and a lot of mattresses on the ground. The fridge wasn't empty; it was filled with bottles of different sizes, shapes and colours. Those were the days when Coke was banned and Pepsi hadn't even been seen in India. So it was Thums Up and Limca and some orange thing which I've forgotten the name. There were people sprawled on the mattresses, there were people holding forth on a lot of things, there were people singing, dancing and of course, people drinking. I was drinking Thums Up or so I thought. Turned out it was Rums Up. Since the next bottle I picked up had 'Ginca' and since I had never had a drink till then, I must have been already flying. That's when I decided it was time I had a real drink. So I talked one of my sister's friends into opening a bottle of beer for me - I drank it, but thought it tasted vile, so I returned to downing bottle after bottle of Thums Up.

Somewhere close to midnight, it dawned on my brother that his younger sister was spouting off about the stars and re-birth and being totally incomprehensible, so he took a closer look and realised that he had one very very drunk teenager on his hands. I don't remember the conversation that followed, but I do remember that between my favourite cuz and him they managed to convince me to go back home. They had plans of sneaking me home through the side door, but what with the wedding and having ornaments and silks at home my father had checked and bolted every door. Nothing else to do, so they woke him up, and my brother chatted to him while my cuz dragged me up the stairs and dumped me in my room with strict instructions to 'go stick your head under the shower'. When I came out all wet, bedraggled and miserable, it was to find my brother waiting with a cup of coffee; which I refused to drink. He spent a long time coaxing me to drink it.

The next morning I had the headache the size of our house. And I couldn't even be miserable in peace. I was the bridesmaid and had to wear a heavy silk saree, have make up on my face, wear high heels and smile, smile, smile. Boy, talk about an initiation!!

It didn't put me off alcohol, not by a long shot, but it did make me a sensible drinker - most of the time, anyway:)

Summer Ice Cream

I'm so in the mood for a huge helping of ice-cream, thick creamy vanilla with swirls of chocolate sauce in it, just soft enough so that a spoon will sink into it and oooooooooh, the ice cream melts smoothly on the tongue.

I'm not really crazy about sweets and can go days without any at all and then a craving like this will hit. It's mostly an ice-cream craving and sometimes a chocolate cake craving.

Oh to be ten years old again and have as much ice-cream as one craves and not to have to worry about 'a moment on the lips and a lifetine on the hips'. To be ten years old and not have to worry about anything much, especially during the summer. When we were kids, during summer holidays our house would fill up with cousins of myriad sizes and shapes - you had the long thin ones who were good for lifting you up on to the parapets or getting the cake tin down from the top shelf in my grandmother's store cupboard or for lifting you down from wherever you were stuck,the short small ones who could run between everyone's legs and snatch a handful of the day's snack from the kitchen table, there were the greedy ones who would eat anything, even the poisoned egg put out to kill the rats - this ended in a trip to the hospital and a stomach wash for the unfortunate one and a lifelong label of 'the greedy one', the 'oh god when will this child return home' ones who smoked the bidi stubs my father's office manager used to throw out of the window, or jumped off the first floor terrace to see if they could survive the fall or hid an older cousin's rhinestone-studded "vaaaairrry expensive' stilettos on the roof or played dart board using our compasses and dividers and tore up my mother's cushions in the process, there were the girl cousins who played house quietly and there were the girl cousins who fought the boys, there were the perv cousins who liked to stand in the doorways and pinch your cheeks everytime you went past, there were the strong cousins who turned the handle on the ice-cream bucket and so on...

Summers were fun, with a lot of noise and stuff and a lot of going and coming. We used to make our own ice-cream - not me, the guys, the older ones and it was the best ice-cream ever. I don't really know what they used to do but it involved a churn with ice in the outer bucket and cream in the inner one and a lot of hard work turning the handle, the end result being glorious glorious ice-cream. I searched for the bucket all over the attic beore it was dismantled, but it's lost. So I did a search on google and found a picture of the original ice-cream churn. It looks a lot like the one we used to have.