Love love me do.....................

I’m a pretty old dude now. I’m 53, come 19^th January 2005. How time flies!

I was surfing the net this evening. I somehow stumbled on to a music site. Somehow got to a Beatles section. The site was full of midi files.

I click on one at random. I listen to the music. It transports me away silently, on a magic carpet.

Imagine two dimensions to my situation. There is a “here” and there is a “there”.

“Here” is my bedroom, in Bangalore. It’s 1.09 am on a cold night as I write this. The night is very silent. You could probably hear a pin drop if I didn’t have carpeting. There’s no one awake at home except me. I promised everyone that I would sleep early today. But I cannot. The music has woken something that has lain dormant in me for a long time. Sleep eludes me. I am filled with a deep emotion. I am transported back in time…………………..

“There” is Calcutta in the late 1960’s. I am back there in a flash…………..

I was a teenager back then. Having a difficult time. I was helplessly adrift in a sea of loneliness. There was no friend that I could identify with. And in those troubled times the only solace that I took was in music.

The Beatles, to be specific. They looked deep into my soul and gave me the strength, the confidence to live in that vast desolation that surrounded me.

The environment those days was hostile. My father hated me. If I could have had some secret genie come to my aid and have him removed from the scene, I would have gladly done so. But there was no genie to my rescue and my everyday life was hell.

I haven’t ever heard of anyone just going from place to place…………taking a tram or a bus to nowhere…just to be away from home……….but that’s exactly what I did in those days. I tried to stay away as long as I could. Places drifted by in a blur…………sometimes I was in Kalighat, sometimes in Rash Behari Avenue……but the important thing was that I was away from home.

My only “friend” in those days were the Beatles.

I derived the strength from their music that helped me pull on with life.

When my hostile father told me one day, at the breakfast table, when I was all of sixteen years old that he wouldn’t leave me a penny, I just sat there stone faced. I couldn’t care less.

His exact words were: “Son, my money is my money. I will never give it to you." Why he said that, without provocation, I don’t know. In hindsight I should have responded with some statement. I just sat there silently. His barbs bounced off me. When I cried, I cried in private. On the shoulders of Paul and George and Ringo and John.

When I was in college the Beatles were by my side. That was the time their "Abbey Road" album had released. We used to 'come together' quite often.

I was growing up and part of growing up is forgetting one roots. I slowly forgot the Beatles. Others came by to woo me, to gain my attention. Boney M, Abba, Neil Diamond, Cat Stevens, Paul Anka, The Bee Gees……………..

I married. I had kids. The kids grew up and had kids of their own.

I had almost completely forgotten my old friends, The Beatles till this night; this emotional night when I stumbled on their music on the net. I sat and listened. It had been over thirty year since I had heard really listened to my old friends

In a flash I was transported back into time. There I was, the 16 year old lad, in Calcutta. In a hostile environment. Struggling to retain my sanity.

Their pain of their music pricked me like a thousand barbs. The pain of the memories was excruciating.

In that split second I realized that whilst all the other music groups were just acquaintances, The Beatles were family.

They were a part of me that would never go away.

It took me 30 odd years to realize this simple fact (how dense of me!).

And now, the old man is no longer ‘dad’…..add an ‘e’ and you get it. “He’s dead”.

He never left me anything, like he had promised to. I didn't care. I would have been surprised if he had.

We hadn’t even spoken to each other for the past twenty years.

I thought I had everything under control – my emotions and all.

And then my old friends arrived from nowhere and threw me out of emotional synch.

No one else can do that today. Except my wife.

The Beatles are dead. Long live the Beatles.

BQG Stuff: Ouch! MY shoulder hurts!

A man goes to the doctor and says, "Doctor, wherever I touch, it hurts." The doctor asks, "What do you mean?" The man says, "When I touch my shoulder, it really hurts. If I touch my knee - OUCH! When I touch my forehead, it really, really hurts." The doctor says, "I know what's wrong with you - you've broken your finger!"

This morning, on an instint, an impulse, a premonition, a sixth sense a whatever I called Goldie.

I can't recall the last time I called Goldie. But a voice kept telling me "Call Goldie". It was a fairly loud and insistent voice and wouldn't go away.

So I called Goldie.

That is: I dug out his business card from a large pile of business cards, read the fine print (namely his cell phone number) and called him.

The phone rang several times but went unanswered. I hung up.

Minutes later, Goldie called back.

He was in bed, he told me. Alone, it transpired. In Pune, of all places.

Now, why would our energetic Goldie be in bed, in Pune, all alone, at 11 am? Something was very wrong here.

"I had an accident" he told me. "A freak accident".

Seems a scooter came out of nowhere and fixed Goldie firmly in its sights. Maybe the damn scooter saw red (and Gold) but whatever be the reason Goldie was firmly, forcefully, forcibly struck.

He now goes around saying "Ouch my shoulder hurts".

No, his finger isn't broken. His shoulder has a chipped bone and has been immobolised.

Just thought I'd tell you dudes at BQG about Goldie's hurting shoulder just on the off chance that you may wish to send him a "Get Well Soon, Dude" kind of message. If you'd like to do that, just send it to me (by replying to this mail) and I'll send it to Goldie.

Ouch! My shoulder hurts (too much typing of BQG stuff). The bed looks inviting. Let me get in to bed.

Alone.

At 12.40 pm.

Cheers,

Prakash

PS: BQG stands for "The Bangalore Quiz Group".
http://www.bangalorequizgroup.com

The Silly Schoolboy Series: The day I shot Rana in the head

The three of us were were close friends during school days - Rattan Dutt, Rana Das and me.

Rattan Dutt was my classmate at La Martiniere. Rana was from another school. How did we meet? Through “Squeaky” a smallish sardar and classmate of mine who stayed near Rana’s house in New Alipore.

Rattan Dutt had a large house, also in New Alipore, where we played a game of cricket or two. His father, or uncle (I forget which) had just returned form abroad and had brought him an indoor cricket game that was just “fab” (as we used to say in those days) and so we alternated between outdoor cricket and the less physically challenging but equally exciting indoor game.

Rana was plump and overweight even then; he and physical activity just didn’t go together. He and I invariably played ‘Monopoly’.

It must have been 1966 or thereabouts. My father had just bought me a cycle. “It’s a Robin Hood” he told me. “With an oil bath gear case”. What an oil bath gear case was, I didn’t know but I loved my cycle. I traveled all over the neighbourhood on it. Every gully, every by lane was explored on this all terrain vehicle.

Rana was fascinated by my cycle. He wanted to ride it whenever I went to his place. But this wasn’t in my best interests because it left me alone at his place with nothing to do. So I generally refused.

One day his father got him an air rifle and Rana used it as a tool to bargain for my bike. You take my air gun and shoot birds with it and I’ll ride your bike. What says?” he asked one day. “It’s a deal” I replied.

So there I was, on that fateful day, perched on my “machan” a.k.a. “the balcony” of his second-floor flat. I shot at anything that moved – Rana had left me with an inexhaustible supply of ammunition in the form of lead pellets. After each “shot” I would crack open the barrel of the gun and insert a pellet. Then I would fire again.

As I kept firing at all and sundry I wondered where Rana had vanished to. He had been gone for quite a while.

A few minutes later he wobbled into view, his face flushed with the exertion of riding the bike.

Almost involuntarily, I looked down the long barrel of the gun at him. I gently pulled the trigger. I plead insanity.

What happened next was hilarious. Rana fell off the bike. He jumped back up on his feet and looked all around him, trying to fathom why he had fallen off. “I felt as if I had been hit by a brick” he later told me but since he was not able to accurately pinpoint the reason for his fall, he jumped up on the bike and pedaled off with out a backward glance.

A little later he noticed, with alarm, a thin trickle of blood down the side of his face, behind his ear. He rushed back home. That’s when I broke the news to him that I had shot him.

He took it calmly. Being a very practical sort of bloke he realized that if he implicated me, he wouldn’t be the beneficiary of my friendship nor would he be able to ride my bike for that matter. The “shooting” obviously had to be blamed on some one else. But who?

The likeliest candidate was Rattan. It couldn’t be anybody else. That poor, mild mannered Rattan.

The problem was that Rattan stayed next door literally. Just down the road, about half a kilometer away. If one implicated Rattan, Rana’s mom would charge over to Rattan’s house like a bull seeing red and all hell would break loose. We realized with a sinking feeling in our stomachs that we wouldn’t be able to pull off making Rattan a fall guy without first taking him into our confidence.

Rattan listened intently and silently to the sordid tale. Then, seeing that there was no alternative to his being the fall guy, he agreed. But on one condition. That we delay breaking the news to Rana’s mom till he could make his getaway plans. The two of heaved a sigh of relief. Rattan was in as a collaborator. My scruffy neck was saved.

Rattan and his parents left for Murshidabad where they had their carpet factories – Rattan having successfully convinced his parents that he just longed to see the looms at the family factory. They would be gone for a week. We all figured that this would be time enough to calm troubled Rana’s troubled mom and secure the safety of Rattan’s life.

But we had miscalculated. I’ll get to that shortly.

As expected, Rana’s mom saw red. As expected she charged over to his place. Murder was definitely on her mind, to put it mildly. The Nepali durwan or chawkdidaar or watchman or whoever took the brunt of her almost physical attack. But the villain of the piece was obviously not there and so there was nothing to do but retreat, to live and fight another day. On this note, Rana’s mom pulled her formidable forces back.

The next few days were spent by both us lads listening to her terrible threats of what she would do to Rattan when she met him. If she met him, we mentally amended. The thing to do was to keep Rattan and Rana’s mom at very safe distances from each other.

Shortly after the Dutt family arrived back in Calcutta Rattan’s father had, luckily for him, gone out one day when the phone rang. It was the very irate Mrs. Das demanding to speak to Mr. Dutt (Rattan’s father). Rattan had the presence of mind to deepen his voice, pretend that he was the good Mr. Dutt and patiently listen to Mrs. Das’ tirade, every now and then interjecting that his naughty son would be the beneficiary of a sound thrashing when he returned. “I will even drag the rascal by his ear to your house so that he can fall at your feet” Rattan shouted into the phone, relishing his new role of an angry father. “That won’t be necessary” a mollified Mrs. Das’ murmured. And with these famous four words the crisis was over.

Almost.

What we didn’t realize was that the pellet from the air gun was sill lodged in Rana’s skull, just under the skin. He soon started developing a lot of pain. An X-Ray was taken. It showed the offending slug with great clarity. The doc removed the slug after a minor surgery. However, a four inch diameter around the wound was shaved so that the wound wouldn’t get infected. To Rana’s mom, it was a stark reminder of Rattan’s homicidal attack on her son. Every time she saw that little bald patch she saw not only red but the entire spectrum of the rainbow flashing in front of her eyes. Rana kept pleading with her to drop the issue. I took up the cause too. “Please forgive him” we chanted, often in unison.

This time Rattan was taking no chances. He had pulled the telephone wire from the socket so that his phone was dead. We informed Rana’s mom that Rattan’s parents had gone abroad and wouldn’t be back for weeks. “Rattan is with his grandma, we don’t know where she stays. We think he isn’t well. He isn’t coming to school these days” was our tactic. The strategy slowly won the day. The hair grew back, the painful reminder of the attack ceased and Rattan breathed easier day by day.

Rana’s mom never learned who the attacker was. She recently passed away and maybe she checked on Rattan’s little black book in heaven and was astounded to see that there was no black mark against his name on that score. Maybe she learned that I was the culprit and maybe she smiled and forgave me. I like to think that I was her favourite. She certainly was my favourite alter-Mom

Next: Rattan’s revenge................coming shortly.

CRAZY COLLEGE CAPERS…….

A good look at the baaaaaaaaad times we had………

_______________________________________________

I passed the old alma mater the other day. It had been several years since I had seen her. I smiled at her. She smiled back. “It’s been a long time, baby” she seemed to say. I agreed.

Too long a time.

For us, college was a time of great fun with a bit of education thrown in. The learning was incidental.

We soon found that lecturers failed to be amazed at the sudden drop in attendance just after they took the wretched thing. One moment there were 66 dudes in the class. The next moment, the figure had dropped alarmingly by almost 50%!

Slinking out was an art. It was initially performed in the blink of an eye lest the stern eye of the prof catch you in the act. Later, as prof and pupils got more familiar with each other, familiarity bred contempt and guys became slovenly in leaving. The prof chose to look the other way while the dudes dawdled their way out of class.

Still some more familiarity later, the prof announced with a resigned sigh and the droop if his shoulders that he would give attendance to any one who chose to leave. This announcement was made when things had started to go out of hand. However these announcements were generally made by unpopular profs who were heckled in class and wanted the unruly elements out. Such profs enjoyed 100% attendance and 0% peace of mind. But more of that later.

Our class room was a short distance from the canteen……that venerable institution where attendance, though not formally taken, was mandatory. It was at the canteen where plots and plans were hatched; plots against profs and plans to attract chicks.

In short “them were interesting days”.

The canteen, being close to the classroom, was the spot where my classmates parked their bikes. In those days the bikes consisted of mainly “Vespa’s” – the Bajaj’s hadn’t been spawned yet. And these valiant Vespa’s were vanquished without a fight – any old key would fit and start them.

I had a classmate called Yeshwant who had a Vespa. He was a studious sort of bloke initially and a nice guy to boot. Hence his Vespa did the most running around town without his prior permission when he was in class. One day, he decided that he wasn’t feeling too well and needed a hot college canteen coffee to perk him up. As he sauntered towards the canteen a little cry of horror left his lips. “My bike!” he screamed. “It’s been stolen!”. We had to quickly dissuade him from calling the cops and explained the facts of life to him. His Vespa had become wife to many a classmate who rode the wretched thing hard and fast. He was shocked. Thereafter he started bunking class just to keep an eye on his beloved Vespa. Still later, he made me its guardian, giving me a spare key and asking me to keep an eye on it. Thus when he attended class I wheeled around on his Vespa. My canteen attendance fell. No one complained.

There was a particular lady prof who taught us maths. Her initials were VKD; Vasanthi was her name. She was good looking in a kind of way but her English accent was atrocious. Our gang, though mildly attracted to her looks was repelled by her tongue. Overall we gave her a neutral rating and she likewise chose to peacefully coexist with us troublesome dudes and things drifted along. She cast a jaundiced eye, however, on a fellow classmate called Bhupendra Reddy. What incurred her wrath, we shall never know.

Bhupenda was a very quiet guy. One of those stinking rich but studious Reddys. He had cat grey eyes. Maybe she didn’t like that. Maybe she had a hidden hatred of Reddy’s for reasons unknown. In any case she targeted him with her icy wit and ridiculed his lack of knowledge of things quadratic, equations included.

In addition to being stinking rich, Reddy was also an extremely calm and unflappable guy. We had never seen him ruffled. Ever. This irritated VKD no end.

One day, matters came to a head. The beautiful Vasanthi was getting increasingly irritated that she was unable to irritate Reddy. And in her extremely illogic irritation she asked Reddy to get out of her class. “Why?” he mildly inquired. “Out!” she screamed hysterically. There is no arguing with a hysterical math teacher and so Reddy outed. With great calm and dignity. He may perhaps have taken a few extra seconds to exit just to irritate her further but she stood there, teeth clenched, hands clenched red in the face.

Five minutes after Reddy’s exited in disgrace, all hell broke loose!. People were running screaming helter and skelter. The slightly beautiful Vasanthi, screaming in fear ran down the corridor sans her textbooks; sans her hand bag.

What had caused all this? Yes, astute reader, it was Reddy. How did you guess? (Don’t scream at me! I am not deaf! Contain your impatience! I will tell you).

Rejected by VKD and dejected because he had been exited from class without sufficient reason, Reddy brooded over a cup of coffee in the canteen…….that vile place where anti-establishment plots are hatched. As he looked up, he saw with interest that a troop of monkeys was in full strength near the canteen. (In those days in Bangalore, our simian cousins were not an endangered species and made their presence felt most often than not). Reddy also noted that the monkeys were making attempts to steal peanuts being sold by a vendor who was sitting outside the canteen gate. Monkeys and peanuts, Reddy mused. In a flash the quadratic equation fell firmly in place in his over heated mind. He later says that all kinds of differential equations also passed before his eyes in dazzling technicolour. Dy/dx, where dy was the speed at which VKD exited the classroom…….dx obviously being the function of time. In that split second a plan was hatched.

“Give me all your peanuts!” Reddy ordered the bewildered vendor “I am buying your entire stock!”. The stock was in a sack, obviously. So there you have Reddy, lugging a heavy sack of peanuts with one hand, tossing peanuts to monkeys with another and inching his way towards the classroom. Slowly but steadily, like the Pied Piper of the college, he made towards the class with around 40 monkeys in tow.

When he reached the class, he lifted the sack in one swift motion and threw its contents into the class. Before you could say "Hanuman" there were monkeys everyhere in the class room. Before you could say "Ravana" there were super-excited-almost-hysterical guys acting like monkeys and jumping from bench to bench trying to avoid the already excited monkeys.

Picture 65 of us screaming dudes plus 40 excited monkeys plus a screaming VKD. Picture also, a beaming Reddy, standing outside the class, arms folded, a smile playing on his lips.

There was bedlam.

VKD swore that she would never take our class again. She kept her word in this regard. A huge huge person, ugly as hell but (we later learned) with a heart of gold, became our maths teacher. He was so incredibly intimidating that there were actually moments of regret that VKD was no longer in our midst.

But that’s the way the cookie crumbles, as James Hadley Chase so succinctly puts it.

Keep an eagle eye open for the next episode of “CRAZY CAMPUS”. Bye for now!