The Four Vedas

Yes, it is 2:31 am right now. And I don't suffer from insomnia. And after this post, I'm probably going to watch a movie or so. I'll start off with stuff from my 9th grade, when crazy was a word being chanted all along. 9th was the time I came across a lot of weird people in my life, from teachers to friends and foes. Since I assume we're going to have youngsters read this, I'll stick on to the weird "teachers" part. 

Starting with my Physics teacher, who apparently knew the Four Vedas and was also the vice principal of our school, this man was well.. umm... yeah, weird. From having weird footwear combos, like "bathroom slippers with socks", to half tucked formal shirts, he introduced to us absolutely new terms in Physics; terms which the world wouldn't have even dreamt of hearing of. Yes. For instance the symbol "ω" was introduced to us as JUMBOO, when all along I'd known to pronounce the term as O-Megha. Yes O-Megha. For one thing, it definitely sounded way better than JUMBOO. Seriously, jumboo? It reminded me more of a name for a dog in Eastern Africa. He insisted on using that term time and again, which really got on many of our nerves. As for me, people like this tend to be targets. Yes, I was a criminal. A heartless one. A criminal who commited crimes not in vengeance or sadism, but crimes at the so called "cute" level. Along with my partner in crime, Nitin Roy, I accomplished crime. Now that I've used the word "crimes" a little too many times, let's skip on to the details of the "crimes". 

Let's get back to the soul who knew the Four Vedas, or the "Jumboo-man", the name by which he shall be known henceforth in this post. Not only did he introduce to us the divine "Jumboo", he found an explanation for the word "Attendance". When this happened all I asked God was, "Why?? I mean, why?". The weird part: He split the word into three parts: At-Ten-Dance. None of the three words have even the most microscopic relation with the original word, but Jumboo-man was apparently an ambassador for Adidas, with the tagline "Impossible is nothing, bachon" For those of you who don't know, bachon in Hindi means Children. And yes, he did derive a relation from At-Ten-Dance to Attendance. I faintly remember the relation, as he'd explained it in a very matter-of-fact way. I don't know, something to do with the students coming  AT TEN o' clock and doing the SALSA DANCE. I swear, I will never figure out how he related this to the word Attendance, and I don't want to.


I remember one late evening when Nitin and I ended up at the doorstep of his house, and asked for his daughter's hand in marriage, without having the slightest clue as to whether he had a daughter or not. And not so surprisingly, he agreed to the proposal. Echoes of the loudest forms of laughter filled the campus where we stayed, and the rest was history, and it should probably remain a mystery. We figured that he had trouble pronouncing words with the letters "V" and "W", when he explained to us all that light is an electromagnetic "BABE". He sure made the subject hot, didn't he?

My birthday. What a special day it is for me. When in school, we had the habit of wearing casual clothes on our b'days, and distributing sweets to the staff and our classmates. Nitin accompanied me while I gave away sweets, going from class to class. Finally we reached the principal's chamber, where Jumboo man was sitting alone. I went up to him, proudly wearing my brand new Blue Peter England Shirt and Levi's jean to offer him sweets. He looked up at me, AND Nitin, who was of course in his school uniform. And yes, he looked up at me, and the subsequent words that came out of him were enough to make my day. He gave me a calm and hypnotising look, and asked in Hindi, "Kiska birthday hai? (Whose birthday is it)?". This question jammed my brain, and Nitin probably ended up half dead behind me. Curiously, I believed that I'd made it pretty obvious to the whole school that it was MY birthday, since I was wearing the blue shirt and holding the candy box in my hands, but jumboo man drowned all that belief with a single, yet subtle question. But that single question was enough to stun both Nitin and me to an apparent coma.

Such was one of the characters who I came across in life, and I cherish these memories.

Wait. The most harsh way teachers find to punish students is to beat them or cane them. But jumboo man was different. It wasn't physically impaling, yet it was venomous.  He did just one thing, and that one thing was enough to make you regret doing the mistake you were about to get punished for. He did not beat, he did not cane, he did not slap, neither did he shoot a bullet.

Just one little thing, and the area of impact was the forehead. Just one little thing he did......

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He kissed. 

Later.