The Story of My Experiments with Sex, Lies and Video Tapes Part III: College and Beyond!

I am back!

I know, 5 months is a long time to spend thinking about writing a new post! But then again, if only the world had a few more thinkers and a little less doers, we would have been a better place.

On the one hand, there is the biggest doer (do gooder?) there could be. Uncle Sam! Compulsively obsessed with setting things right! Half the worlds mess has been created by our dear Uncle. Be it Afganistan or Iraq, or Pakistan, or the Gaza strip, our dear uncle has a footprint everywhere a.ka. Godzilla! It has done absolutely no one any good, transforming the World into arguably two completly muddled Bipoles of the "Wronged and the Wrongdoer" who keep exchanging places.

On the other hand there is this group of thinkers, the United Nations, whose perceived usefulness in life is to undo the done, unravel the ravelled, and basically sit around and think!

We are having earth summits to cool the earth which is suffering from the physical manifestations of Global Warming. Another example of Man's obsession with the Physical! Size does not matter dude! We are anyway hell bent on killing each other off on socio-political grounds, and at the rate we are going, Global warming is going to find only leftovers!

But, this isn't about any of that! This is about the Story of my Experiments with Sex, Lies and Video Tapes! College and beyond!

Since most of you have been wondering, where the fuck (pun completely intentional) is the sex in this 4 post story. So here goes my tribute to Choubey!

Who?

Choubey, was a friend of mine in the 5th standard, there were Rahul and Anup and Kautuk and Choubey!

Rahul, Anup and Kautuk remain the closest of friends till date. Choubey, I Believe, was God's idea of injecting a banal version of Cupid into our lives.

Well, Choubey was the one, in the 5th standard, who let it be known, that before Salman Rushdie or Amitava Ghosh or Arundhati Roy etc, Indian writing in English was not so famous precisely because we were too busy reading Indian Writing in Hindi beneath the covers. MastRam, did not win any Bookers, but "they", since it was most definitely not a Singular, but a plural entity which initiated us into "Bhabhi ka pyar" were too busy making Men out of Boys to really care!

Choubey vanished from the scene long before he could leave a lasting impression on us. Instead of being the Viagra of our initiation into the virtues of sex, he became the quintessential premmature ejaculation!

So we remained, as our parents would sigh in relief, mostly untainted, arguably pure, from the vice called Sex, till a little after we entered college.

Who is we, you must be wondering. It's me and my little John Abraham I am talking about!

College left us with no choice, either you knew about the topic, or you did not!

Well, well, well by the time I entered college, we were no more just a small group of friends but a motley gang of adolescents hell bent on breaking all the rules.

So yes, we smuggled VCRs-yes those large monsters carried around in VIP Suitcases, renting at 60 bucks a day, each tape additionally costing another 20 bucks - under the noses of our parents and learnt about Big Boobs Betty's Quest for Long Dong Silver!

And yes, my brothers stash of Porn was, once upon a time, discovered and very publicly burnt under the able supervision of Ma, but not before he had had an opportunity to hide some of the more graphic ones!

Hey! Sweet Victory of Good over Evil!

But for the rest of the month, he was the butt of all jokes in the circuit.

The advantage of having a elder brother is that you don't have to worry about creating from scratch, your own stash of porn. You can always take a loan! Sometimes by deceit, if necessary.

To be continued...

The Story of My Experiments with Sex, Lies and Video Tapes! PART II

PART II: How I Sleepwalked through School

My schooling started long before I started school. My mother used to teach me alphabets while she cooked food - on anything from an old fashioned electric heater (of the coiled variety) to a Coal fired one - this was the era of License Raj and a "Q" for everything including a Gas Connection.

We got our Gas connection much later, perhaps in 1984 (That makes it the same age as my formal education), that too because a friend of my father's was kind enough to pass on his connection to us - to this day we use the same one back home! It was my first lesson in friendships and relationships.

I joined school is a rather odd fashion. Due to my mother's ability to school me real well, I scored great marks in my Entrance Test. Unfortunately, no one told my parents that I needed to also prepare for my Viva! I remember a very British-Stiff-Upper-Lipish Mr Richard Ian Thornton (Our School Principal from 1983 to, I believe, 2003!) asking me question after question in his charecteristic, difficult to understand, soft and suave voice, and me the dim-wit-village-idiot looking on Blankly! (I remember - This is a Pencil is the only answer I could barely mumble out!)

Well, well, well - my father was not too happy for it. The apple of his eye had just bungled his chances of boasting about his kids (Big B did well for his entrance) studying at the most prestigious, possibly the snootiest school in town! Guess what - a mad rush at top speed standing in front on a second hand Bajaj Super followed - tears (Due to the cold wind dumbos) flowing down my cheek and as if this was not enough, an hour long session of "Nude Sunbathing" - yes this was before they decided that it was illegal for parents to suitably punish their kids deviant behavior - followed. Surprise, surprise, my school still thought I was good enough to be admitted, the only side effect of the entire episode being a slight denting of my ego and the near permanent tan that I got( Yup, I am tall, dark and handsome - just like them Italians - except the nose bit, which I inherit from a rather unimpressive set of ancestors!)

Despite my personal sleepwalking act through school, it was actually fun at Westcott Boys' (Bishop Westcott Boys' School for the uninitiated). It was actually more fun reaching school than being there - we used to get up at 4am and get ready for school which was close to 40-50Km from home (We were in a Hydro Electric Power Station whereas school was in Ranchi Town), we would take an old fashioned Jeep to School, Sohra, the Driver or Sohrai as his parents named him, being his usual cheerful self. We used to barely manage to reach just before morning assembly to recite our "Holy God" bit. Sometimes we would stop on the way to pick raw mangoes - and were resourceful enough to keep shaving blade and salt handy in the Jeep - and get late.

I joined 1A in westcott uner the able and subsequently ample presence of Mrs. Bawa, uneventfully got promoted to 2A - shit, don't remember who the class teacher was - and got rather unceremoniously passed on to the care of Ms. P D'cruz in 3A - I still remember toiling to "By Heart" the "I Saw a Ship a sailing, a sailing by the sea, I was it was laden with pretty things for thee" under her watchful eyes. Then I was moved to 4C - possibly due to my complete disinterest in studies - and do not remember the class teacher obviously because of my complete lack of interest in him!

5C and 6C was spent in the able care of the ever lovale Mr. Hansen and his booming voice, the admiration was mutual, that is why he requested to be promoted along with us to the higher class! My mother used to call him the "Lal-coat-wale-Sir" for his obvious love for the same Red-blazing jacket which he used to wear for all important occasions! 5C was also when Choubey - a classmate - first showed me a genuine, mint copy of western Porn - Long Dong Silver was truly well endowed!

7C was under the competent care of Mr. Sanyal and we all liked him, except for that one occasion when our only assignment over the weekend was to write "I won't do mischief in class ever again" a thousand times!

8B and 9B was spent under obviously forgetable teachers and by this time "Chakra" short for Chakravarty also had his strong and inept grip over the school administration and standard of teaching, but more importantly standard of Student-teacher relationship was definitely on a downward spiral.

10th Standard (Combined strength of 9A and 9B) was a saving grace spent under the able guidance of Mr. Mazumdar.

I went mostly un-noticed, except on those numerous occasions I scored a near perfect 99 in English Language and and Literature (Making complete sense of even Julius Caesar - complete original work of shakespeare, not a synopsis! A lot of my ineterst in Literature could be attributed to Miss Walker, who went on to become Mrs Kerketta, much to the collective dismay of a 60 strong class of -just-into-puberty-boys!- She was definitely good with her subject and also had a near mesmerising effect on us, especially with her habit of twirling her locks with her Index Finger - Left hand, to be precise). The other occasions was when an assignment I wrote for English (I remember it, it was a short story which necesarily was supposed to end with the line "..but when I opened the door, there was no one there.") got returned with the comment "Next time write an original short story." Well, Mrs. Kenswar, it happened to be well and truly original. Thank you, genuinely, for making me believe in my ability to one day, truly focus on, my writing, which that one sentence of your proved, I had in me. I wish someone pointed you to this Blog, despite all references to Sex, I am sure you'd be proud!

I scored a rather respectable 79% for my ICSE exams and decided to give up the "Never give in Dear Westcott, Strive to the set of the Sun, though you may not win, but you'll yet come in, if you will stick it through, thats the way we have in Old Westcott (1927 was when it was setup) - The best school of all, and we will strive (unsure about the exact word here) to its motto's power, till the last bugle call!" school song and move on to college - but that's another story for another day!

Non Nascor Mihi Solum - Live not for Self Alone! I don't know how far I have been successful in living upto that motto of my school.

The Story of My Experiments with Sex, Lies and Video Tapes!

This is a 4 Part Series where I talk about my life.

Part I: Executive Summary

Part II: How I Sleepwalked through School

Part III: How I Screwed my College Education

Part IV: My Life as as consequence of my MBA

Part : Executive Summary

I began going to school in the summer of 69! Well not really, it was more like the summer of 1984. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times - I scored a perfect "100" in Mathematics in my first term exam and an equally perfect "0" in English reading and recitation. Who said I had a way with words - more like I had a way with figures! Never mind, since that first term exam, my tryst with figures was on its way down the curve and my tongue was put to the job! I started scoring in the steady thirties in Mathethatics by the time I hit 5th Standard.

I sleepwalked through most of school before I realised that enough was enough - I did not have it in me to become a doctor, my maths score was dismal and Indian Writing in English was still not fashionable.

That's when I rekindled my fascination with Figures - of all varieties - if you know what I mean.

My ICSE scores were quite telling, a cool 86% in Mathematics - my guess is they cut 14 marks for jumping steps- this was before MCQs were part of 10th Exams and you were actually expected to follow sequential method of problem solving - no quickies, ensure enough foreplay!

My English score, much to the dismay of my English teachers who were secretly seeing the new Salman Rushdie in me, was a dismal 72%.

Well, I promptly opted for PCM, went on to crack NDA exam after NDA exam, despite the armed forces consistent failure in digging out a single Officer Like Quality in me!

Around this time I realised that there was a significant shift in my thinking - suddenly the only figures I was concentrating on were those between the pages of Playboy and heavenly bodies no more meant asteroids! To hell with Physics and Mathematics, it was all pure chemistry!

I went on to take Physics as my major subject in graduation. God only knows why - by this time I had absolutely lost all interests in deriving special theory of relativity a 100 yrs after Einstein did it! Most of my Physics Professors had not a single research paper to their credit, nor had they sired a single legitimate child - equivalent of a Boson - but they toiled on - fueling IIT dreams - mostly empty, of an entire generation.

I went on to do my MBA, topped my batch - accidentally, most likely - at least thats what half of my batchmates would have you believe! Then started my 7 year tryst with the two key discoveries of the last decade (1) The Seagull Effect and (2) The Carpenter Phenomenon! More about that later

To be continued...