Monsoon's Sly Companion

                           
The monsoons have arrived and so has our dear mosquito. I can write long poems on rain. Even a six-year old child can do that. The pitter-patter of raindrops, those lovely puddles that we love to jump into, and the fragrance of wet mud….the child in me is dying to be poetic. Unfortunately, I cannot. An eighteen-year old with all the practical knowledge she has gained over the years, whose textbooks have taught her that rain is caused due to the evaporation and condensation of air cannot cling on to her childhood fantasies. Hence, she gradually shifts focus to something ubiquitous, but extremely important.

It’s nearly 6:00pm and the sun is still reluctant to go away. Meanwhile, our most unwelcome guests have arrived and the whole neighbourhood is all prepared to shut the doors on them even before they come knocking on the door.‘Athithi Devo Bhavah’ doesn’t work out here. But friends don’t need a special invitation, do they?

One small mosquito bite shall inspire you to fight till your last breath. We Indians are not very much into the game of tennis but mosquitos encourage us to indulge in this ‘sport’. Losing in your home ground is a bit humiliating. The mosquitos are aware of this. So they voluntarily decide to undergo the electric shock. Most often they end up sacrificing their lives. (A moment of silence)

Sleepless nights would have been an unknown thing if it weren’t for them. A doctor is required only so long as there are patients to be treated. My dear mosquito repellants and liquid vaporizers, understand the truth that necessity is the mother of invention. You wouldn’t have been invented if they weren’t foolish enough to barge into rooms filled with you odour. You make us feel drowsy enough so that we lapse into a deep sleep. But they come to our rescue and sound the bugle in our ears just so that we aren’t poisoned to death.

  Like I said before, mosquitos awaken us from deep slumbers. My mother woke up a few minutes ago to see me writing paeans for an insignificant creature.  There are big red marks all over her face and she is planning to wield the racquet once again.  I only hope that a deuce is possible. Then, there won’t be any hard feelings.

I was burning the midnight oil unable to keep my eyes open, let alone study. That was when you bit me on my hand and I discovered my lost creativity. Thanks buddy for being such an inspiration to me.

A Classroom and some fleeting memories

 
Having studied in a co-ed school from kindergarten to high school, never in my wildest dreams did I think that one day I would join a girl’s school. The broiler chicken in me waned off over time after I moved to Kerala from Chennai. Chennai was my first home and indeed it was a painful departure. But neither was it the Partition nor the Stone Age that you could never see your friends ever again. So I slowly tuned in to my new settings.

My learning process spanned over three educational systems. All of them have one thing in common --- academic bulimia, where you simply throw up whatever you learn from textbooks. However, you can’t blame the schools because our modern education system is hell-bent on teaching us that way. But apart from this, one thing that makes life after high school exceptional is the natural ease that comes along with the academic bulimia.

Normally, an average class is a mix of the class clowns and pranksters, nerds and all-rounders—more like mixed vegetable soup. But my class is a blend of just one variety – the naughty ones and the multi- faceted characters. Of this, the naughty ones make up an overwhelming majority—an extremely spicy dish where chilly was the main ingredient. I still wonder how Ceema Miss even managed to stand between us.

 Humanities is a pretty dull subject to opt for. If a story of kings and queen could be made so vibrant with Mini Miss’ unpredictable jokes, we realized that politics was not just a story on Indian elections. It was also about Shiny Miss who never once suspected us of all the mischief we’ve done in her class. Then comes Gisha Miss who is also a child like us—a child who can be both naughty and nice. English wouldn’t have been fun if we didn’t get to listen to our Jilsy Miss find herself at a loss for words to speak Malayalam—a language that had cast a spell on her tongue.  When it comes to our Malayalam teacher, she is what the name suggests, literally. Seena Miss can be a Malayalam dictionary when she wants to.

Forgive me if I’m getting carried away. But I’ll feel myself guilty if I don’t write on our Economics teachers --- Ceema Miss and Sr. Annjose. If one was the innocent wide-eyed pussycat, the other was its stoic-faced mother, and a person who cracked jokes like normally.

In this rat race called life, it is these uncommon characters that splashed colour to my otherwise dull canvas. If my previous school dug out the writer in me, Sacred Heart’s  unearthed the woman of substance buried inside me.