On a Ride

You will notice that in my blog posts I use fictitious names for my friends. I do so for a reason – I don’t want them to feel embarrassed for the embarrassing situations we went through. In this post I will continue this trend, I hope it does not spoil the fun. As for the friends whose incidents I am going to narrate – I apologize if I offend you in any way, but come on! It was fun, right?

This incident relates to the time when I was staying in the hostel at Panjab University. We were a group of eight people, and we had three vehicles between us – a Bajaj Priya scooter, a Yamaha 350, and an Enfield Bullet. In addition I had a bicycle, but for obvious reasons I could not count it among the fleet we had.

Three vehicles, eight people. Which meant that typically two of those vehicles would be carrying three people. It also meant that transport could become a real problem if one of the owners decided to go home using their vehicle.

That was the situation we found ourselves in one November evening. Both the motorcycles had gone home and had taken four of the eight people with them. So the equation now was one scooter and four persons. The situation was going to the sector 17 market to hang out. Now if it was one of the motorcycles it may not have been a problem, but a scooter it was definitely a challenge. But you cannot stop four desperate men from getting their weekly dose of eye-candy, so we decided to four-person it to sector 17.

Getting on to the scooter was the first challenge. You see, unlike the motorcycles, the Priya had two distinct seats, and there was a spare wheel at the end of the second seat, held securely in a vertical position through a combination of nuts and bolts. It was meant for two people, not four. To compound the situation, the rear seat had these bulging body parts on either side, one of which would hide the engine and the other the boot. So seating became rather uncomfortable for the third person.

Somehow, Kamal (not his real name), Guppy (not his real name either), and King (DEFINITELY not his real name) managed to stash themselves on those three seats. That left me, and I managed to park myself on the spare wheel (I was quite thin back then) when we realized that we had missed out on one thing – Kamal had forgotten to start the scooter. After a round of curses to him and the scooter and the guys who had taken their motorcycles home (well they could have taken the bus, couldn’t they?) we got off. Kamal started the damn thing, Guppy sat behind him, behind him King, and behind him yours truly. The scooter protested as it began to lug its weight and the combined weight (must be over 200 kg) of four people on it, but it stayed on course.

It happened as we took the lane down the Maths department. Those of you who have studied there will know that the place is dotted with speed breakers which you need to watch out for, for two reasons – one, they are not marked, and two they are not designed to ensure that four people on a Bajaj Priya make it securely, leave alone comfortably.

And so as we crossed the Maths department, we saw this stunner of a girl. They say that Helen of Troy had the face to launch a thousand ships. Well, this one definitely had the face to turn four faces.

I don’t recall who said what, but I do remember some of what was said. Here is an edited version (flowery language omitted).

“O soniyo, makhan de doniyo!” (Hey beautiful, buttercup!)

“Tota, oye tota” (Literally – Piece , man piece. Actually – what a girl, man!)

A whistle. I don’t know which one it was.

What I do know is what went through my mind. Who is this girl, and how come I never saw her in my department?

While it may appear that these events took a long time to happen, actually all these expressions/thoughts came out in less than two seconds. A second later what happened seemed like ages – our scooter went over a speed breaker, which we were anyways not looking at.

Over the next 5 seconds, what happened and if my memory serves me right is as follows:

• I came down from the spare wheel and was on the seat.
• King moved forward one place.
• Guppy was on the driver’s seat.
• Kamal was on…oh wait, he had nowhere to go.

So Kamal was off his seat, the trouble was he was also driving the scooter. And when you are not on your seat and driving your scooter, let’s just say that it is not easy. In this case with three people screaming at him, and his foot nowhere near the brake, and his mind too confused between looking at the girl and salvaging the situation, for Kamal it was impossible.

CRASH!

The scooter struck the footpath, with the ferocity of a raging bull. Bear in mind, Kamal had cranked up the accelerator to compensate for the extra weight, and that force is mass times acceleration, but of course physics was the last thing on my mind as we were hurled in different directions.

Kamal got it the worse. The scooter tilted to the left as we fell and its sharp edge landed on his ankle. Guppy escaped with a few bruises, as did King. Me, well nothing happened to me physically, except for wounded pride; the thought of facing that girl in the department did not seem very appealing now.

As for her, she was nowhere to be seen. Trust me, I have not seen anyone pull off a disappearing act this fast.

Well, the “hurly burly” was done and as we paused to pick up the pieces, each of us made a solemn vow that we would not mention a word of this to anyone. Thankfully, the scooter was okay, except for a broken mirror (!), and since I was the one with only the wounded pride, I got to take Kamal to the hospital. His ankle was fractured, and he came back with a cast. By the time we reached, the other two had taken out the liquor and waiting for us to get started. If you think that I escaped with only a wounded pride, you got it wrong. I don’t drink, and because I don’t drink I get to listen to ridiculous things people say when they are drunk, and because these were (ultimately) drunk people with wounded bodies and egos, it got only more ridiculous. Let’s not go into the details of what was said that night, suffice to say it was not studies that we discussed.

Kamal’s plaster took two months to take off, and we maintained that he had a nasty fall down the stairs, which most people did not take at face value. Kamal on the other hand, went and bragged how he fought three thugs who were being impolite to a girl. It won him a number of female admirers, and of course we kept it a secret, till today it is.

As for the girl, I only saw her once more, and that was at the university fete, but she did not seem to recall anything, and I was kind of reluctant to go to her and tell her that I was one of the four people who fell when we saw her. My take was it would not sound charming, given the circumstances.

I never saw her again, and because it would open a Pandora’s box, I kept quiet about seeing her.

OOPS!

“You know, I am really impressed with your command over computers”, she said.

“I must say I am flattered”, I replied.

“I must ask, how come you know so much about computers?”, she asked.

---

I was in college (and I attended quite a few of those in my life, so I am not telling you which one), and it was February. It is a time of the year when the cold of winter flirts with the pleasantness of spring, eventually giving in to the latter. It is also a time when a cup of hot coffee is just as welcome as a fruit juice without ice, or for that matter cold coffee without ice. It was exactly for that reason that I strode into the college canteen – a cold coffee without ice, when I happened to see them both. There was Yasmin (name changed), my classmate, next to this gorgeous female, and they were chatting away like long lost friends.

“Hi Yasmin!”, I said, as I walked up to them.

“One cold coffee for me, one dudh-patti(tea leaves and milk) for her (Yasmin), and what will you have?”, I asked her companion.

“Uh, I am not sure”, she replied.

“Perfect, let me help you decide”, I countered, “what do you like the most?”

“Actually, I am not sure if I want to order anything”, she said.

“Why not? It is a beautiful morning, and it may look bizarre me just butting into your conversation, but me and Yasmin are just good friends. So much so that I know what her favorite beverage is.”, I said.

“Turns out I just had my favorite beverage”. It was Yasmin’s turn to speak.

“Yes”, said she, “Also it is time for my class”.

And they left me at the canteen with a cold coffee and a dudh-patti. I am not telling you what I did with those.

---

I caught up with her a few days later in the computer lab. Those days, computers for me was just about one game: Digger. That and helping pretty ladies out with their problems, such as the one sitting with her head in her hand.

“Problem?”, I asked.

She just looked up. “You?”

Me: “Yeah! Problem?”

She: “I forgot my password.”

Now, there was a time when I was pretty good at cracking passwords and hacking into networks. But at one point I had to stop myself. There was a very thin line that separated right from wrong in these matters, and I did not want to be crossing it very often.

But, this was different. This was a woman, and she was in trouble. What kind of a coward would I be if I did not help her out? How would I look at myself in the mirror after that? No! there was a time for respecting rules, and there was a time for bending them. This was definitely not a time to be worrying about a stupid college protocol about misusing computer systems. Nor was it time to be remembering a ridiculous promise I made to myself. This was a time to help someone.

This was also a time to know her username, and possibly her name.

“What is your name?”, I asked.

“What?”, she asked, with a mix of ridicule, disgust, surprise, anger, grief, and shock.

“I mean, your username”, I asked.

“Why?”, she asked with all of the above feelings mixed with intrigue.

“Just tell me your username”, I persisted, “and I will see what I can do.”

“What can you do?”, she asked, back to her previous set of feelings.

I wanted to tell her a lot many things, how my computer teacher at school was always mad at me, how my principal (God bless his soul) threatened to throw me out of the school if I was found in the lab again, of how I managed to…never mind.

But this time I just said, “Just give me the username, please?!”

She was confused, and she was on the verge of crying, but she did manage to utter, “JaskiratB” (not her real username).

Me: “Okay Jaskirat, just relax and give me some time”.

So saying, I disappeared behind the other row of computers.

Let’s just say that those were the days when password encryption was not very common, and I could retrieve an encrypted password in 15 minutes. What chance did an unencrypted password stand, then?

I was back in five minutes, only to find her with this scrawny dude with a twisted frown that seemed to come in the way of him giving a decent smile for the rest of his life. And he did not seem happy.

“How could you forget your password? I cannot expect that you of all people could forget her password! I am going to create a new account for you, but you will have to enter all your data again, yourself!”

So saying, he stormed out of the room.

She was literally in tears now. “All my dissertations, everything! I will have to do them again!”

“No you won’t!”, I replied, “not while I am here”. And I handed her a piece of paper.

“Your password”, I said.

“What?”, she said. Then she looked at the paper.

“How did you?”, she asked.

“Shhh”, I said, “try logging in again”.

It worked. It was supposed to work.

Scrawny was back again.

“What is your username?”, he asked.

“Don’t bother. I remember my password”, she shot back, and gave me the most beautiful smile I have ever seen.

---

“Lunch?”, I asked her, “I am going to the mess anyway. So figured I could skip that and we could go to the canteen?”

Every now and then we would meet in the computer lab. We would discuss things like programming, data structures, RDBMS, algorithms et al. She was obsessed with computers. I thought that knowledge of computers only enhanced the beauty of the beautiful.

“Well okay”, she said, “I guess I owe you one after the help you gave me the other day”.

The self-respecting, chivalrous side in me came alive.

“Oh come on, if that is the reason then I am better off having lunch in the mess”, I said.

“Excuse me?”, she asked.

The self-respecting, chivalrous side in me subsided.

“Let’s just go for lunch”, I said.

---

And so we were sitting in the canteen. She ordered idli-sambhar, I ordered an utthapam.

“You know, I am really impressed with your command over computers”, she said.

“I must say I am flattered”, I replied.

“I must ask, how come you know so much about computers?”, she asked.

“Well, as a matter of fact I AM studying computers”, I replied.

“Really, where?”, she asked.

“Here.”, I replied as I gulped another bite of the utthapam.

“Here?”, she asked.

“Here”, I answered.

“Where here?”, she asked.

“Here here”, I replied, and gave her the name of the course I was taking.

“Really? Then you should know who I am”, she said.

“Sweetheart, trust me, I have been trying to do that ever since I saw you with Yasmin here”, I replied.

“Hold on, Rupinder it is, right?”, she asked.

“Of course!”, I replied.

“There is a reason you should be knowing me. I am the one who takes your computer science classes. And I have not seen you even once in my class!”, she was literally screaming now, and the rest of the canteen was looking at us.

I was holding a fork in my hand, and at the tip of the fork was a piece of utthapam, awaiting its fate. At that moment, sitting there in the canteen, with Jaskirat looking down on me, as were a group of other people, and as was the canteen staff, I was wishing that the Earth would open up and swallow me whole!

Only if wishes were horses.

“Please finish your food”, she said, “and don’t bother paying”. And she got up.

She came back. The piece of utthapam was still in my hand.

“You better finish that food fast. You have a class at 3. And I want to see you there!”. So saying, she stormed out of the canteen.

Don’t bother knowing what happened to the piece of utthapam. And don’t even bother asking if I attended the 3 o’clock class, because I attended every one of them afterwards.

But to little avail. She was too pissed off at me to give me any marks in the practicals. In fact, I barely made it through computer science that semester.

I do remember cornering Yasmin almost immediately the 3 o’clock class.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”, I thundered.

“Tell you what?”, she asked innocently.

“That she is our teacher”, I was livid.

“Oh that! Well, I did not want to miss the fun. But hey! I did not tell her you were a student, either”, she replied, rather amused.

Let’s not get into how the rest of the conversation went.

---

How many of you had a crush on your teacher in school or in college? Well in my case, I almost asked mine out. I could not help it of course that she looked too young to be a teacher, and I looked too old to be a student.

PS: I did score a perfect 100 in the next semester. But as far as Jaskirat and me were concerned, let’s just say things did not work out.

The Damsel in Distress

“Rupi, come downstairs. NOW!”, shouted Kamal from the ground opposite my room.

“Why? What happened?”, I asked.

“Come down now! Jeet is in trouble!”, said Kamal.

“On my way!”, I said as I struggled to find my footwear.

Before I get further, a bit of a background here. Kamal and Jeet (not their real names) were hopelessly in love with each other, well at least they seemed to be at that time. Jeet’s dad caught wind of it, and he was dead against them being together. And both of them did not exactly endear themselves to the old man with their antics. Sample these behaviors:

• On her birthday, Jeet thought it would be a good idea to tell her dad about the cool boyfriend she had at the university. Her father, who already had served time for assault (it was rumored to be attempted murder or murder), was not very pleased, and he beat the poor girl up.
• As if that was not enough, Kamal decided that it would be a good idea to call Jeet up that very day and wish her a happy birthday. Only her father picked up the phone. Kamal should have kept his mouth shut, instead he said something like he was her boyfriend and that no power in the world could stop him and her being together. Let’s just say that her father was not happy, and he let it know verbally to Kamal, and with blows and kicks to his daughter. Happy Birthday Jeet!

Any sane person would think that that would be the end of that, but there is a thin line that divides guts and stupidity, and you might have figured out by now that these two had long before crossed the realm of guts. They continued to communicate, sometimes through phone (those were the days of STD and ISD booths, no mobiles), sometimes through clandestine meetings (Jeet lived at her aunt’s, Kamal was in my hostel), and yet other times by exchanging gifts and/or cards (which is what brought about this crisis).

Jeet probably needed to realize that living at her father’s place did not mean that he would not enter her room. Nor did she realize that keeping a bag under the bed was the best hiding place for the bag. And she definitely did not realize that aside from the bag, there were better places to contain gifts/cards that were testament to her boyfriend’s intimate feelings and/or wildest fantasies.

So when her father stepped into the room and happened to look at the not-so-little black bag lying at the bottom of the floor under the not-a-very-good-place-for-hiding bed, to put it mildly, his curiosity got the better of him. And perhaps it was the influence of alcohol that converted that curiosity to rage when he looked at the contents of bag. And if it had not been for her mother, he was all set to kill his daughter with a sickle.

They say love is blind, I think it is physically and mentally disabled. Why else would Jeet, even after her father tried to kill her, go to an STD booth and call up Kamal saying that his life was in danger? And why else would Kamal decide on traveling 125 kilometers to go and save her?

And that was what Kamal called me down for. In the bone-chilling cold of December, he wanted to ride to this quaint little village Bansian, just so that he could keep his girlfriend safe from that murderous beast of a father.

Me: “Let me see if I get this right. You want me to go with you to that village, so that we can save her from her dad?”

Him: “Rupi, you are not listening! Every minute that we spend discussing here, the closer she is to death.”

Me: “But what the hell are we going to do? What if he decides to kill her? What if he already killed her? What do we do, if the entire village turns against us?”

Him: “Rupi, you are the one who says we tackle problems one step at a time. Let us take the first step. Let us reach there. THEN we will see what we need to do.”

And it went on. Suffice to say, it was pointless reasoning with him. I pushed him too hard, and he would start crying. I tried to tell him alternatives (to be frank at that moment, the alternatives were very few and very lousy), and he would go into that rhetoric of how her blood was going to be on my hands, should anything happen to her.

And so it was on that cold winter night, two guys who ideally should have been tucked up in warm quilts and blankets decided to go to this quaint little village called Bansian, two knights in shining armor to save the damsel in distress.

We left at about 10:40 pm and we were at the village by 12:30 am. No sign of life in the village, except the dogs that went after our bike, and no light in the village except the headlight of our Yamaha 350. And no warmth except that offered by the jackets and the cloaks we were wearing.

Finally, we were outside her house.

Me: “What now?”

Him: “Now we wait.”

Me: “That’s it? That is your plan?”

Him: “No, I am thinking about the plan.”

Me: “What if he killed her already?”

Him: “You say that again and I will kill you myself, before I kill him.”

I was not very keen on getting killed in some remote village in Punjab, where I was not supposed to be in the first place. But I was also very reluctant at the prospect of spending the entire night in that remote village.

Me: “Okay, we know the place. Lets come back to check in the morning.”

Him: “No way. If he is going to do anything, he will do it in the night.”

Me: “And what will we do then?”

Him: “You will do nothing, because I will have killed you, and then I go kill him.”

For some reason, I decided to give up. There was no point arguing with this man. And there is little to argue, when you have undertaken a journey of 125 kilometers, just because your friend had taken hold of this crazy apprehension that his girlfriend was going to die because he sent her gifts/cards which she did not make a good effort to hide. I was there, and so it would have to be.

He spoke after about half an hour: “I love her man.”

Me: “Yeah, I figured that.”

Him: “You think I am crazy to come here in the middle of this dark, cold night, don’t you?”

Me (wanting to say – of course you idiot!): “I am not the one to judge!”

Him: “You will understand, someday.”

Me: “Yeah well, hopefully not anytime soon.”

Him: “Listen, if you want to go back, you can. I will come in the morning by bus.”

Now there are many times in life, when something inside you tells you that you should do it, only for you to decide against it. This was one of those moments.

Me: “No, let’s see what happens.”

Him: “Thanks Rupi. I know this sounds stupid, but one day you will understand and maybe laugh at what we did tonight.”

Me: “Laugh at it? Probably. Understand? You expect too much!”

Silence for a while. Then he spoke again: “I think I will sleep for a while”.

Me: “Whatever!”. At that moment, anything that could shut him up would do.

Him: “Wake me up in an hour, okay? Or if you hear anything.”

Me: “Just sleep dude.”

And Kamal stretched himself out on the motorcycle and went to sleep.

You can imagine what was going through my head on that cold dark night. Here I was in a situation I could have easily avoided had I decided to stick to my guns. The reason I was there was on a motorcycle, sleeping and probably dreaming about his girlfriend. And as for me, I was standing there on the street, with nothing but a wall to lean against and a full night of self-cursing ahead of me.

I decided to take a little walk, maybe I could find something I could sit on. At least that would make the going easier. This was 1993 mind you, a time when terrorism was at a high in Punjab. And there was hardly a village that was not infested with gun-toting young men, or policemen only too eager to pick up young men like me. All of a sudden, a chill ran down my spine. What if I actually died there? What would folks at home think? The police could easily put it down as an encounter killing, and my folks would be left with years of visit to the court trying to convince the judge I was innocent.

Well Bobby, I said to myself, you are here. And if you are supposed to live through this long and treacherous night, the best you could do is find a place to lie down. At least sleep would be something you would not want to deprive yourself of, even on a cold night like this in this godforsaken place.

When Einstein was asked to explain relativity to a novice, he said something like: “If you sit with a nice girl for two hours, you think it is two minutes; and if you sit on a hot gas stove for two minutes, you think it is two hours.” Replace the hot gas stove with a cold winter night and the latter was absolutely true for me. Time was crawling right now. It was only 1:50 am in the morning.

Never before have I been more happy to see a wooden board. And never before have I ever been more inclined to believe in fate any more than I was that night. It was the perfect length and breadth for me, and it was there, innocuously leaning against a wall. It was almost as if it had been placed there for me, like an answer to my prayers for a good night’s sleep.

Moving the board was going to be a challenge, and moving it without making a noise was a near impossibility. The miracle of the human brain is that once it latches onto a solution, it also traces a path to it. The board was about six feet long and four feet wide. It was going to be impossible for me to carry it on my shoulders but if I could get my head, somewhere in the center, then maybe, just maybe, I could lift it resting on my head and with my arms as support.

Easier said than done. For a start the board would not move. Eventually it did, after I lifted it off the ground, and using the wall it was resting on for support, I managed to get my head underneath the damn board.

Turned out that hoisting the board on my head was the easy part. Walking with the thing precariously balanced on my head and supported by my hands was a different ballgame altogether. Every step I took, the board would threaten to come off, but also meant I was getting close to where Kamal was.

It was a cold winter night, but I was perspiring by the time I reached where Kamal was sleeping, still sprawled out on the motorcycle. Gingerly I placed the board on the ground next to the motorcycle. Then I woke Kamal up. He woke up startled.

“Has he killed her?”

Me: “No dude! I have been up for over an hour. Your turn to keep watch.”

Him: “Sure! I will wake you up in an hour. Where did you get that board from?”

“Long story”, I said as I prepared to lay down on the board.

I have no recollection of what happened afterwards. But I was the first one to wake up. It was about 6 in the morning, and the sun was just about to make its presence felt. I woke up Kamal, who was asleep on the same board, his head at my feet and vice versa.

“Did he kill her?”

Me: “I don’t know. I was asleep. Did he kill her while I was asleep?”

Him: “No idea. I went to sleep after you.”

Me: “Okay, let’s go find something to eat.”

We made our way through the village till we came across a tea stall. Only a person who has had a hot cup of refreshing tea after the night we went through, can appreciate the value of the tea we had that morning.

He decided to check once again at her place. Having been through so much, I could only agree. As I started the motorcycle and we made our way to her house, I was feeling a strange kind of joy. I had done every stupid thing in the last one night. On a cold, dark night, I rode 125 kilometers to control something I had no control on. Then, I spent the better part of that night carrying a board that could have broken my neck. And then, sharing my makeshift bed with Kamal. And all this for what?

A glimpse of Jeet bringing fodder to the cattle.

Yup! There she was. Bright as the morning, she was feeding the cattle. She was some distance away so she never got to see us.

“What now?”, I asked.

“Let’s go home.”, he said. I smiled as I put the motorcycle in gear. For once, Kamal was talking sense. He made no attempt to attract her attention as we went around the periphery of her house, nor did he say a word till we were on the road to Chandigarh.

“Rupi, not a word of this in the hostel, okay?”

Me: “Are you nuts? I don’t want to be the laughing stock there!”

And so our stakeout came to an end. Now, I am sure that you think I was nuts, and I probably was, but tell me this – what is the wackiest thing you have done and lived to tell? This was one of those moments. The look on Jeet’s face was that of shock and awe when I narrated the incident to her. She was furious at Kamal. But more so at me. She blamed me for her boyfriend having to spend a cold dark night outside her house. Never mind that if she had not made that phone call, we would not have been there in the first place.

So what happened in the end? I wish this could have a fairytale ending, but Kamal and Jeet broke up six months later. The breakup was painful, more so for Kamal as he took to alcohol in a big way. Jeet got married to some rich dude in Canada, and I have not heard from her since.

I did meet Kamal about 12 years later. He is married and has two kids. Our first topic of discussion when we were alone was about THAT night. He laughed it off as a “stupid thing to do”. Funny, it took him 12 years to realize it.

But he was right on one count though, that I would find it funny when I looked back at it.

My Introduction to Hostel Life

The year was 1991. I had just joined Panjab University, Chandigarh in the Department of Mathematics. And, I also took up boarding in a hostel. It was also the time when there was no law against ragging (not that the present one is any good). So a hosteler used to get the best of both worlds – you would get ragged in department during the day, and then your hostel seniors would have a field day during the night.

Sometimes it was fun. Most of the other times it was a pain.

This was one of the "most of the other times". I was going to sleep at about 11:00 pm in the night when I got a knock on my door. It was as usual, my seniors.

A sadistic senior: Going to sleep, huh?

Me: Yup!

Another sadistic senior: Shouldn’t you be saying good night.

Me with a feeling of This is not good: Good night Sir!

Yet another sadistic senior: What about me?

Me with a feeling of This is definitely not good: Good night to you too Sir!

The last sadistic senior: And me?

Me with a feeling of This is going to get worse: Good night Sir!

The first sadistic senior: You never said goodbye to me.

Me with a feeling of I am so dead: Good night Sir!

One of the sadistic seniors: There is a whole hostel, waiting for you to say goodnight.

And so it was that on that eventful night, I went to each one of the 300 rooms in my hostel to wish everyone a good night. Not a very happy time. When you knock on the doors of every person in various stages of indulging in sleep/booze/fantasy/whatever, let’s just say that the answers you get range from understanding (You getting ragged? Good luck), cryptic (See you soon – Explained later), and abusive (I’d rather not mention what they said).

Needless to say, it would have been futile, not to mention even more embarrassing, to not do what they said, and it would definitely have been suicidal to do something smart. It was like kissing a frog – just get it over with already!

Alas! The frog wanted more of my time. It so happened that by the time I returned it was 1:14 am in the morning. You don’t have to ask why I remember the time. My seniors were there in my room, boozing and immersed in the worst imaginative debauchery.

“Ah Rupi! That was a long time to say good night”

Me: “Uh yeah”. I knew better than to say anything this time round.

“So, what time is it?”

Me: “It is 1:14 am in the morning, Sir”. Oops!

“Morning huh?”

Me (with a feeling of GOD NO!): “Yyyeesss?”

“Well you should be saying good morning now to everyone, shouldn’t you?”

Needless to say, that night I got to know a lot of people in the hostel, or should I say a lot of people got to know me. It definitely was not the kind of introduction I was hoping for.

That night was embarrassing, but it was not the most embarrassing. The most embarrassing was the one… well let’s just leave it at that. Funny thing about hostel life though, all that embarrassment feels funny now, and it brings a laugh thinking about it.

Rupinderujan...

That I have a way with numbers would be an understatement. I do not wish to blow my own trumpet, but considering that my father is a mathematician, and his father too was no rabbit with the subject, I would say that some of those genes have passed down to me. I can see traces of it in my brother also, and the lineage continues with my son, who at the age of grace 5 has amply demonstrated his penchant for numbers.

This incident relates to the time when I was in class 4. Now those were the days when you would get thrashed for so much as raising your hand in the class. Or, if the teacher did not like your face, she could turn you out of the class, for seemingly no reason.

A bit of a background is important here. Throughout my educational career, I was the archetypal "bright but lazy" and "the wandering mind" with a bit of a "mischievous character" kind of a "good boy" thrown together. I was considered bright, apparently because I could conjure solutions that no one else considered, though this was more viewed as a "spanner in the works". I suppose the "but lazy" part is self-explanatory. "The Wandering Mind" was my teacher's favorite. I never took pride in this fact, but I think I was a cause for consternation for many (well almost all) of my teachers. I still think that of all the people in this world, I have let down my teachers the most, just mention my name and they will go in a "what could have been rhetoric". The "mischievous character" was more of an effect rather cause. Bear in mind I was lazy by nature, and being mischievous requires one to be active. So, I played more of a passive role in mischief, often with disastrous consequences.

Back to class 4. The teacher was teaching us teaching us that any number when divided by itself yields the number 1. Now I also have this habit of taking nothing at face value. So, the moment the teacher uttered those words, my mind was racing to find an inconsistency in the teacher's statement. It was not that I was nitpicking, but something did not sound right. You know the feeling when you feel that something is inconsistent, it keeps on playing at the back of your mind until you find out what it is. My mind had gone into the same train of thought, trying to bring out an inconsistency into the teacher's statement, before it was rudely interrupted.

The slap on the cheek was unexpected, but by now I had grown so much used to them that humiliation was a thing of the past. And anger was an emotion that I was becoming more used to.

"Rupinder Singh. Are you listening? Or is the outside scenery more interesting?", the teacher asked.

Now I have always been fascinated by airplanes, and I was watching one of them fly, while contemplating what was wrong with the teacher's assertion, when the teacher decided that the contours of my chubby cheeks come into violent contact with her rather rough fingers, well they felt rough at that time.

"Huh?", She was pulling my delicate ears now, "What was I just saying?"

"You were saying that, a number when divided by itself, yields the same number", I said. I should have stopped there, but then I am not known for keeping quiet at crucial moments. "But I think that it is not always right."

I don't know what upset her more, the fact that I recounted what she was teaching or the fact that I challenged her assertion. Whatever it was, I was dragged out of my chair and while being thrashed, was sent to the back of my class to stand.

"That will teach you to pay attention in the class", my teacher said and started to return to her teaching.

“What happens when you divide zero by zero?” I shot back.

She froze in her steps. “What?” She asked.

I repeated the question. She repeated her slap.

“You cannot ask a question when you are punished.” She reasoned. And that was the end of discussion, at least from my side. I did not want any more than the number of slaps I already had.

-------------

Years later, I visited the same school in Dehradun. Sadly, that teacher had passed away in the meantime. I never got to know whether she knew the answer or not, but by then I had learned that zero divided by zero can be any number.

PS: I also learned that Ramanujan asked this question when he was in class 2.

Of Days Gone By...

In this blog, I recount the moments I encountered during the years of existence, in no particular order. Since I consider fun to be an integral part of life, I am trying to limit this blog to incidents that were funny in one way or other.