A Long One but Blame it on the Rains

Wonder if someone questions you about the merit of the decision to pursue a course in a B School. Will you feel hurt? Terribly disappointed to hear it from ‘that’ person and decide to change the course itself.

Blame it on emotions or that particular rainy afternoon. Some people get too emotional about small things. No wonder that ends up changing their life quite a bit- because outcomes of Rainy days are never known. But for good or for bad- rains are special.

As a kid I remember reaching the school on a rainy day with barely 5-6 of my classmates present. It was such a sad feeling, the school was not declared closed on the rainy day. I remember, I had ran out of the rear gate of our school, bluffing Peter who used to guard it, shouting “Mera Tiffin rikshe pe rah gaya! Mera Tiffin rikshe pe rah gaya!” As if I was going to get my Tiffin back.

‘Hurrah!’ Full six hours of roaming around the streets in a torn raincoat, which prevents your identification and creating one of the most relished days of your life.

Some people have this travelling bug in their horoscope, some say ‘Chakra on the feet’. Mine is such.

I remember having once accompanied my elder brother to ‘Nai ki Mandi’, to buy some vegetables. I was about two years old and still a liberated soul. This area of Agra is the first (and the worst) to get affected in communal riots. We had to buy vegetables from shops right at the entrance of the market and the reward was a kite we had bought from the adjoining shop.

As true and responsible siblings would do, I was warned never to go beyond in that market.

Everything had been fine until one day, ‘Nitu Ki Dadi’ saw me, may be a two and a quarter year old- all on his own- buying kite from the “Ustaad Patang Wala” - a kite shop in the most interior and dreaded area of that market. One would need to cross numerous crowded crossings and innumerable lanes to reach there, over two and a half kilometers from home.

While the old lady had kindly ‘escorted’ a ‘small’ kid ‘safely’ to his home, what could a weeping mom say? I used to take permission to buy kite from the shop in front of our house :). At that point of time Mom used to co-author text books for Agra University with Papa, giving good opportunity to me to escape her attention.

Her getting the job of a lecturer in the university and the follow up admission of mine in the School had occurred as a chain of events soon after.

In the kindergarten, when I was still amongst the shorter kids, I remember having taken a ‘knife’ to the school to impress the girl who sat next that I was also a grown up. As not expected, the young lady had informed the teacher about it. ‘Bechara Romeo pita to koi baat nahin’, the teacher had also confiscated the knife.

It could only be recovered after the teacher realized that this student of hers will not let her go back home after the school was over without taking his knife back. That knife, forever used as a paper cutter by Papa, still occupies its respectable place on dad’s reading table.

Moral of the story is- This event had also occurred on a rainy day :)

It was class one when I had run away from the school on the rainy day. And why from school alone?

In those days, during the rainy season with the falling of first drop of rain from the heavens, the city electricity would go off creating a black out (Generators and Invertors were not common then).

As ‘wise’ the elder kids normally are, in our family too, they had managed to let the lit candle fall on the newly purchased dining table, got an edge of the table burnt and merrily blamed it on me.

In the follow up of events a class one kid was rescued by his father far off from the house on a pitch dark rainy night, surrounded by a lot of angry street dogs, as he was leaving that house ‘forever’ for being wrongly blamed for damaging the table.

I wonder what could have happened had not Papa heard a lot of barking dogs that night from one direction and rightly thought I could be with my best buddies.

In class first, I had scored a “perfect zero” in “Recitation” in the first term exam. The second term recitation exam was even better; the nun was naming one poem after the other if I knew how to recite those.

Recite those??? I had never heard of those. And then the poor teacher had asked if I remembered any poem on earth. I had responded happily that I had learnt one of the poems from the first term because during the first term examination she had told me that she would make me recite the same poem again in the half yearly exams.

With the combined effort of the teacher and the pupil, the poem was completed and the student was given 6 marks out of 10.

Teachers are magicians; they can draw rabbits out of hats. Atleast I was never sure if I would come first in the class or flunk in half a dozen of subjects. Ok, you got it ......... I was ever so inconsistent.

But first time I had hit the Jackpot was in Class Two, first term exam and I had got second rank in the class.

I was the only one in the class who was collecting his report card himself and had to wait till the time my parents came from college and pick me up, so I had luxury of time to ‘flaunt’ my achievement to every newcomer. And that too happened to be a rainy day, so in a way I was trapped in the school.

The boy who had come first had committed a tactical blunder of sitting next to one Mr Aziz (who was bossing around there), by far the richest person in the class, and also the most ancient sculpture of class II. The Mom of the first ranker was also there and was more than keen to welcome every mother that entered the class and enquire how well her child had performed.

In the situation so generated and the cocktail that thus got prepared, every mom and her child that entered would run away from that boisterous lady. All the duty bound moms would desperately look for some ‘bright’ student who could help their child, so that she could get them to shake hands and seek atonement.

In the unfolding events someone conducted massive recruitments in his ‘TEAM’ and by the end of which half of the team of Mr Aziz had been shifted to a new team. And all this was taking place ‘officially’ under the supervision of the mothers of the new recruits.

No doubt the recruitment was about 50% of the class size. Mr Aziz was phenomenally rich; he used all imported stationary and was known for his generosity, he could organize large Ice cream treats. Obviously, the fairer sex did not shift loyalties.

All big things in life happen on rainy days. The team formed that day was to rock the school for the years to come.