After my 10th grade, and my decent performance, came the vacations before the 11th standard's commencement. This was a blissfull time, the only thing cooler than vacation is going on vacation with the knowledge that you kicked ass in the exams. The family went to our favortie getaway, Goa. First however we stopped for praying at the Mookambika temple in Karnataka. After this we drove to Goa and it was as beautiful as ever. The beaches are great and so is the food, and there is so much to choose from. I am sure that if you find just the right place they might even offer to serve to you the loch ness kebab made from....yes...you guessed correctly a local vegetable called hness from a plant called the loc plant which grows only in the line of control (Mega ouch..!! that attempt at humor was so horrible that I just got a call from down below telling me that this single joke had offset all my good deeds till now....DRAT!!). My family and meself, we had always really enjoyed Goa, the place has this relaxing aura about it which affects everyone. Even for a master of the uptightness school like me it is impossible not to chill.
After spending a few glorious weeks in Goa we headed back, me still basking in the glow of my academic exploits, my mom basking in the glow of her slave driving skills, my dad basking...well he was pretty much focused on driving (which is good..) and my brother, much younger at that time, calling out "Veerappan.....Veerappan....." even though we had expressly asked him not to do so. We were travelling through a ghat area and it had been known to harbor brigands of whom the aforementioned and now deceased Veerappan had been the leader. In short the drive back home was good.
Eleventh standard was interesting mostly due to my inner turmoil. I never had , didnt and most probably wont ever consider myself an intelligent student, and I knew for a fact that I was not at all hardworking, in fact I was one of the laziest out there (Not a few times have I been likened to a sloth..). Keeping the above deficiencies in mind I had no clue as to how I had scored the marks I scored in the tenth, but I was determined to duplicate the feat since it seemed to keep everyone happy. Well.....almost everyone, the kids who had been scoring good marks until then looked at me with venom in their eyes and I could almost hear their thoughts going 'He does not put in a tenth of the work we put in yet how did he do this? Could our calculations have been wrong?' and so on. It was funny to have 'foiled' their plans (and kinda satisfying).
I did not do anything wrong in particular it was more like an inevitable occurrence. About which I shall speak in a bit, first I feel I ought to justify the title of this post. I joined for entrance coachin in my eleventh standard. It was this one institute called Talent Sindia which I joined finally (I say finally because I had tried two other places before this, both of these quite interesting stories in themselves but for a later time..). At Talent sindia I ran into this one guy called simon, and this one other guy called Arvind (there was a fourth dude, who kinda vanished after two years and never really came back into the picture). I got along famously with these guys, they were similar in attitude and the presence of an all encompassing confusion as to what in the nine hells they were doing going to classes for entrance exams. Our classes used to get over at around 745PM and then we would all walk towards the spot from where we could catch the buses back home. Simon and Arvind would go in one direction and me and the other guy, Arjun would go in the other. It was so nice, walking and talking with them after a class which none of us really understood but had to pretend to have comprehended to the utmost extent since anything less and the sir would visit his divine wrath upon us by way of mocking us in front of all the others.
This sir is one of the few people whom I respect to the maximum extent possible and I shall always want to impress him since it would only be something worthwhile which could do so. Along with his amazing knowledge and communication skills he also had the word fighting skills of a champion. Using not a single obscenity (kinda obvious since hes a sir) and not even once getting angry, he could decimate any persons verbal responses or even queries in a few cases. And for all the others in the class it would be impossible not to laugh at the poor bloke who is being subjected to this verbal onslaught. More about the sir later.
The four of us became fast friends, not of the usual sort with a lot of heart warming activities, and standing together hands clasped heroically as some smooth and encouraging song plays in the background. No, we were quite different from the Hollywood definition of friends, we were more like soldiers hunkered down together in the same trench under heavy enemy fire. We either lost or never had a sergeant who could have directed us so in addition to being scared crapless we were lost without a hope. People under these circumstances develop a kinship which is uncommon in strength and resilience. Just the other day I met Simon, and even though we rarely hang out or even chat, we were able to spend an enjoyable time together. And just like soldiers, veterans who get together, we revisited the times we had spent.
More in this stream in part 2....
if anyone is reading this, hope ur havin fun...
for the others...well theres really no point in me tellin you nethin is there?
Magus.
