Problems of having a Fictional Name

Inspired by everybody’s favorite Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie stories, I too plan to write some mystery tales, but not this time. Now, I think, to mark my presence in the Blogger world, I have to go back to my school days to recollect some funny incidents. I don’t know, whether the incident that I am going to narrate was of a funny nature. To tell the truth, it had made me smile pretentiously, and obviously had turned my class mates into uncontrollable laughter.

It happened when I was in the sixth grade, and ‘fortunately’ the class was formed only of boys. We had our Malayalam teacher, who had some disabilities in speaking – was not able to deliver words properly due to some lisping problems.

That day, she was taking us a story titled ‘Reunion’. It was the story of two princes, the sons of a king. Due to the Fate's mischievous play; one was separated in his birth and was brought up amidst the jungle by some uncivilized people there. Orson – by the name he was called – grew up as the most terrible and uncultured fellow of the country. Meanwhile, the other one, named Tom was brought up in the palace as a gentle and handsome boy. He was gifted with all good qualities such as bravery, kindness, knowledge, etc which were commonly found in the heroes of all classics.

When matured, Tom happened to hear about the terror in his country, named Orson. He decided to go in pursuit of Orson and to punish him at any cost. The brothers met and they fought each other till they found that none of them could claim victory over the other. In the end, from some identification marks, they found that they were brothers. The story ends with the reconciliation of the brothers.

The readers might have noted that my name and one of the princes’ names (Tom) is the same. As the teacher narrated the lesson, I was attending the class with full pride as if she was reading out my own story to the class. When she explained what a valorous and adventurous fellow was Tom, I looked at everybody in such a kinglike pride.

In the end of the lesson, the teacher asked me to read out the entire lesson to the class. Usually, the teachers preferred me to read out the lessons to the class as they had confidence in my loud voice. An overjoyed me, after stepping to the front, began to read the entire story loudly facing the students. The teacher was watching me keenly standing behind me.

When I read, ‘Tom was a handsome and brave boy’, the teacher announced to the class pointing me, ‘compared to the Tom in the story, this Tom is a good for nothing guy’. The class went silent for a moment.

‘What this teacher is saying?’ I wondered and continued reading, ‘Tom was gifted with all good qualities, he was muscular, charming and gentle.’ The teacher accompanied, ‘compared to him, our Tom is a stupid ignorant boy’. A roaring laughter from the class was the reply. I looked at the students and joined with their laughter.

‘Tom was well liked by the courtiers and he was a favorite of the people of his country,’ with a diminished confidence and voice, I read again. But the students again started laughing even before the teacher saying a comment. I heard the teacher saying, ‘who cares for this foolish boy, he will be overturned if a wind strikes him’. I embarrassed again and a monkey smile was the reply from me.

I thought, ‘why the class is laughing, they have to support me, because the teacher is doing wrong, I have committed no mistakes’, but the students’ laugh was increasing in terms of pitch and time span.

I read the next quality of Tom hesitantly. ‘He was brave enough and was so sharp that he could have shot an arrow exactly at the eyes of a flying bird.’ The students started to roll their heads on the desk laughing. Looking at everyone, the teacher said after tapping at my head with a hilarious smile, ‘Do I need to tell about this Tom’s quality?’

I understood that I could no longer continue my awkward pretentious smile as it had been causing muscular pain at my mouth. I stopped laughing and went on with reading the passage. The teacher continued her irksome comments accompanied by the uproarious laughter from the class. I glanced at my close friend who was sitting in the front row and saw that he was struggling for the breath amidst laughing.

After the class, during the interval, my close friend approached me and mocked me for the pathetic incident. Though at first I kept a laughing mouth, I could not conceal my bad feelings. He asked, ‘how could you have suffered such a humiliation? If it was me, surely I would have boycotted her class!’

Tales of Name Slips, Forgetfulness and Golden Wrist Watch

Sequel to ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’

I believe that my last post, through which I exposed some of my dark sides as well as the good side, can serve the purpose of an introduction to this post as this time also I am dealing with the same subject with a minor deviation. If I had evaluated my own character from three different angles in the last post, here I am trying to recollect the incidents in which other people were being respectively ugly, bad and good at me.

The ugly: Tale of Name Slips

I would like to compare my childhood days, especially the school days with those of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, not because of we share the same name, but simply because my friends and I too had some fascination towards certain objects during the school days. If the fictitious character and his friends were attracted to one eyed cats, carcasses of animals, pebbles, yellow cards etc, we had a special affinity towards name slips. Despite of a name slip’s usual purpose of denoting the ownership of notebooks, we used to collect them in bundles because they used to carry pictures of our favorite celebrities. Besides, the kids themselves had developed certain crazy games that they could have played with the name slips.

I also had a special craze to re

ad children’s literature, especially comic books usually in the pictorial forms. Once seeing a very famous comic book in my friend M’s bag, I asked him to lend it me for one day. With no objection, he gave it me and permitted me to keep it till I read it fully. An overjoyed me, after putting it in my bag, kept on peeping at it even amidst the teacher seriously taking the lessons.

In the interval time, M approached me and asked me to return his book. I wondered, “Why, haven’t you given it me to take it to home?”

He said, “Err..yes..But see, S wants to take it to home and you know he has given me some name slips in return. So give it him. I will give it you on another time”

A big bargain. I suddenly checked the pockets of my shirt and trousers and finally displayed some of the name slips I had. “M, I can give you all these name slips. Please give me the book. I will return it on tomorrow itself.”

M looked at my face and the name slips on the table. Suddenly S intruded, “hey M, he can give only paper name slips, what I can give you are sticker name slips. Here are mine, a total of 11. Look the colour,” It was true. S had all sticking and glazing name slips, while I had only name slips made on plain paper. I finally produced one more name slip from my pocket. ‘Hey M I can give you this one also. Look it is also a sticking one with glossy plain.”

But M had decided to give it to S. As I was not rich in terms of name slips, S won the bargain. But with no loss of hope, I again pleaded to M, “Please give it me, I will give it tomorrow morning itself.”

Finally M shouted at me, “Give it him, give it him, I say, GIVE IT HIM,” I saw some of the joyful images of the reading pleasure shattering in front of my eyes.

The Bad: Some Forgotten Tales

I had claimed in my earlier post that human nature is 51% good. So, it is better if I forgot all those incidents in which people were bad at me. If I still keep the revengeful mood towards them in my heart, how can a human being be good at least that 51%?

The Good: Tale of the Golden Wrist Watch

Mentioning all those people who were good at me will be a Himalayan task. Countless number of people, including relatives, friends, and even strangers were good at me, most possibly without expecting a reward in return. I take this opportunity to show my gratitude towards all of them through this ‘vanity-filled’ blog of mine.

Remember the journey that I made with my photographer friend Shyam to Kovalam beach on my sincere bike to interview the graceful Bulgarian singer Dyana Dafova? Well, reading it here would give you knowledge of the background of this incident.

It was on such an occasion, I went to Kovalam beach to meet an entrepreneur there. This time I was alone on my bike and it was a noon time. After the meeting, I returned to my office in an easy manner as I loved riding through the unoccupied paths humming my favorite tunes or talking to myself. I had to travel some 24 kilometers an

d after passing some fifteen kilometers I doubted whether I had been hearing the horn of some vehicles from my back for a long time. Since I was wearing the helmet and I was preoccupied with my own thoughts, I had missed the incidents in my surroundings.

Suddenly, a bike overtook me and blocked my path. They were two young fellows of the same age. I wondered, “What these fellows are going to do?”

“Brother, is it your watch?” producing a golden wrist watch, one of them asked.

I suddenly pulled up the jacket on my left arm and found that my watch was missing. With a sigh, I said, “yes…yes…it was actually presented to me by my father a few years back”

“We were chasing you for the last some six or seven kilometers, we blew the horn many times, but you were not listening,” they said.

“So, brother here is your watch. Next time take care of your belongings,” with no delay, they accelerated their bike and left within the lapse of a few seconds.

An astonished me looked at my watch and a speeding bike at a distance one after the other.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

A question that likely to have haunted the intelligentsia as well as the unrefined people alike could be whether human nature is good or bad. Philosophers say, human being is basically good, though the virtue in man does not exceed his vice in a measurable amount. If we would say, human nature is 51% good and the rest 49% is bad, that could be somewhere near the truth.

In this post, I make an attempt to analyse myself as a good person, bad person and also as a contemptible character (ugly) citing incidents from my own life.

The Ugly

When I was a school boy, I had a habit of writing children’s stories along with my sister. We used to start writing during the study leave time and continued it till the end of holidays except a short break during the exam days. This time, I presented my sister one of my finest note books for writing stories. Either as a job or as a leisure time activity, story writing requires a special mood and no one can predict when this said creative mood would provoke us to write. Unfortunately, on the previous night of my sister’s exam I had an unknown temptation to deliver my creativity. But, as a custom, we wrote stories only in the company of the other. So, I asked my sister to give me a company. She hesitated, as she had to write her exam on the next day. An infuriated me then threatened her saying, “you write the story immediately, or I will get back the book that I gifted you” – well, this incident examples my ugliness to a certain extend.

The Bad

Look, I am on the way to my office on my bike. I am in a hurry. The road is full of heavy traffic. Cars rush there and buses block other vehicles here and the bikes find their way penetrating through the narrow gaps between the bigger vehicles. Then there the signal shows red. Every vehicles stop. Impatiently I keep on raising my accelerator waiting to see the red changes into green. Then there is a man, a stout middle aged well clad one, draws near me with a shy smile, perhaps finding me as the most approachable for him. In the most polite way, he asks me whether I would be able to give him a lift till the next junction. I look at his face and then I continue looking at his eyes till he feels that he has committed some formidable crime. I watch his face and seeing an embarrassment there, I reply in a loud and offensive sound, “NO”. He feels humiliated and walks away with no word. The red changes into green, and I, the Bad, move forth with no change in my decision to pursue my routine practice.

…and the Good

It was a holiday and I went to the theatre to watch Shyamaprasad’s ‘Ritu’ (Seasons). At the bike parking launch I met the person in charge for collecting parking fee. The fee was Rs. 3 and I had no change except a coin worth Rs. 5.

“No boy, give me exact change for Rs. 3. If everybody comes and give big sums, from where I can give them balance,” the elderly man said.

“Let me check”, I said while pulling out my purse from the pocket. When I found a one rupee coin I said showing it him, “what I have is only this one”.

He kept silence. I continued, “Ok…I think I have no change, do one thing, you keep the money and don’t mind if I forget to ask you the balance when we meet the next time,” I saw pleasantness at his wrinkled face. Both of us knew that nobody would care about such a small amount. But, perhaps, he might have found Rs. 2 as somehow a big amount. His lighted faces showed it.

I suddenly thought about a Rs 2 coin which I put in my bike’s pouch some two days before.

“Wait…wait…I think I have the change in my bike’s pouch. I believe I put some coins there,” while inserting my palms in my bike’s pouch I said him. Suddenly my fingers got the hold of some coins, a two rupees and some other coins, “ah…here it is,” I murmured. I turned my head to look at his face and I saw a pathetic elderly face keenly watching me hopefully. It seemed to me that he was silently hoping for if I could not have found any coin in my bike.

I pulled out my hand from the pouch and said him, “what a pity, no coins there as well,” his face again showed the same light.

He left me for continuing his job of collecting parking fee. The Good one moved to the ticket counter.

NB 1: It seems that now this blog has become suitable for bearing the title ‘Vanity Moments’. A platform for me to show off!

NB 2: Title Courtesy goes to Clint Eastwood’s 1966 Italian cowboy film, ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’.

Enigma of Familial Relations

From the last post onwards, I started a campaign to create short, yet all-inclusive posts. I hope that this post would also end up as a short one. But here the problem is that the event I am going to narrate deals with relationships and the customary ways to address respected elders in families, which normally demands lot of space. Thus, I feel that the best way to describe the relationships is drawing a chart. To describe this post, I have to add the names of two prominent hospitals of my locality, viz, Marygiri and Marian.

(Click on the image to see the bigger size of the family tree)

One day my father tells me, “Your Ammachi (the traditional way to address grandmother) is in Marygiri, go and pay a visit to her”. I obey and go to catch a bus. On the way I meet my second cousin (called Chechi, means elder sister). I say her, “Ammachi is in Marygiri. I am going to visit her”. She corrects me saying, “Ammachi is not in Marygiri, but in Marian” Thinking that my father might have made a mistake, I go to Marian.

On reaching Marian, I embarrass seeing there my second cousin’s grandmother, who is the ‘wife to my Grandfather’s Brother,’ whom I address with a term meaning ‘younger grand mother’. But using my pretension skills, I successfully impress her by claiming that I actually come to visit her. She does not need to suspect me as it is one’s duty to visit relatives in hospitals. She is very happy for my visit. I think that my father might have mistakenly said ‘Grandmother is in Marygiri”, instead, he should have said that ‘Younger Grandmother is in Marian”.

But suddenly my younger grand mother says, “I heard that your Ammachi is also in hospital, she is in Marygiri”. Suddenly, I understand that my father is also right. Again I use my pretension skills, saying with no change in expression, “err…yes…I am going to meet her also”, so, that fixes it.

I go to Marygiri, meet my grandmother (Ammachi) and laugh with everyone there narrating the funny incident. When I reach home, hearing my account of the day’s incidents, my father asks, “Did not you embarrass seeing ‘younger grand mother’ instead of ‘grand mother’?” I answer with pride, “no, I simply used my histrionic tactics to cover my embarrassment.”

So, the only trouble was the one when I met my cousin sister (chechi) on the way to hospital. When I said ‘Ammachi in Marygiri’, referring to my grand mother, she said ‘Ammachi in Marian’, mentioning her grand mother. Admitting both the Ammachis in hospitals at the same time could only be coincidental.