Straight Lines

“Why doesn’t the dashed bus come?!”

Like the ticker tape that runs at the bottom of every news channel nowadays, that was the sentence flashing across my mind every few words the bleached septuagenarian uttered. It was a grand morning, a light mist hanging over the dew-frozen earth, the sun’s rays coming in fine lines through the clouds and all that. The bus stand was alive with people doing whatever they do at the bus stand at that time of the day. Let’s go back a few minutes to understand what the hype was all about. One innocent question.

“Sir, Adyarku poganumna endha bus pudikkanum?”

Subtitle: “Sir, which bus do I take to go to Adyar?”

Out came various combinations of numbers and alphabets. Places never known were thrown about here and there; arbitrary bus stops under large banyan trees were given as landmarks. Even the conductor standing next to me was listening with a look that told me he was flabbergasted, too. Twenty minutes went by, still no bus and the wrinkled being had already swallowed saliva twice, shifted his bag of vegetables thrice and was in the midst of telling me how people in those days never stood on the footboard and got up from their seats only when the bus rolled to a full stop, when the much wanted bus rolled in. I turned to him with a smile, waved a cheery thanks and was about to board the bus when the bus behind came to a screeching halt and a red-capped teenager shouted”F@*k!” The old black-&-white, who had just started on a very rare bus that came only when the shadow of a light pole near his house was at some particular angle, stopped as if hit by that same light pole. The expletive uttered by that pimple of humanity took me back to a day I will never forget. Imagine if you will, a smaller-framed me wearing half pants hitched up well above my navel, with hair like a shoe-brush and a toothy grin that was the nemesis of every teacher who taught me.

Recess in school was always a fun affair. There was the rich kid who used to flaunt his burgers and sandwiches, the kid from the North with tasty Achar, the kid from the South with awesome Chutney, the kid who perennially brought Maggi, the girl with her fork and spoon to eat a couple of Dosas, the girl who utilized precious time reading up for the next class amidst mouthfuls of some dish we never knew what, the guy who ate nothing but Uncle Chipps, the kid from the next section who always dropped in to give us the dough on the latest happenings in exchange for gum and of course, us last benchers who finished our boxes well before recess and foraged for food elsewhere. After a sumptuous lunch, I trudged back into the class only to see that the teacher was already seated. I escaped her glaring eye and strode noisily to my place.

The teacher needs no introduction. She was easily the strictest teacher around, and everyone from the peon to the principal had to gaze down to escape her glare. She was one of the best English teachers around and if anyone worth more got less marks, he was sure to be a student of Ms. L… Wait. I said she needed no introduction. Here’s a question, cleverly introduced at this point of time so that you rack your brains over it before we proceed: what happens to a fattened goat that walks haughtily into the lair of a lion?

And so, we were asked to get our dictionaries out on the table, along with our text books. English is and was a subject I loved and the moment I laid my hands on that year’s English text, I read it from cover to cover, leaving just a poem in between that pondered over the meaning of life. I wasn’t ready for the harsh realities of life, you see. So, the tattered text on my desk was nothing to be excited about and worse, we were reading the same poem that, under the pretext of feeding us pearls of wisdom was actually pushing down large oysters of unwanted advice down our throats. Large words and poetic license used to a good degree only dampened the spirit. The girl with the large mouth and heavy accent was asked to gush forth the words in the poem and that was the ticket. That’s when my conscience with the red horns, evil grin and all that took the dictionary and walloped my forehead right between my eyes.

It’s a funny thing about dictionaries. Its usage depends on the age group the chump belongs to. Let me elucidate, as I have nothing better to do. A dictionary in the hands of a toddler would be as useful as anything else in the hands of a toddler – he either pees on it or uses it as a scrapbook to record, in eloquent squiggles, what he feels are fascinating. Taking the case of a 10 year old, if he is an avid reader, he might use it for what it is, if not, he will keep it neatly covered in brown paper with a sticker suggesting that the book belongs to him, that he is designated by a particular number and he belongs to a certain section of a certain class of a certain school. During the years of pubescent growth, the usage depends on whether it is a boy or a girl. A boy goes all out for the definitions of male and female genitalia and how differently they can be used, while the girl interests herself in various uses of the words like pimple, wart, tan, etc. Post puberty, the males who read books go for words that interest them and those who don’t, keep it covered in dust and tucked away in a corner where spiders dare not tread. The girls at this age would have mastered the thumb-tuck procedure, where if someone looks at what they are looking at in the dictionary, they change pages with the speed of light. A dictionary given to a college going student would be laughed at, as he or she would have gone over GRE word lists about 3 times. Post college, no one has the time to look at dictionaries and ignorance is considered bliss, ergo, skip. Pre-retirement, when one returns to newspapers whose editorials contain words that take a full 10 seconds to read and register, the dictionary you used 40 years ago would be extinct. Post-retirement, searching for a word in dictionary is equivalent to taking a walk around the neighborhood, and you’d rather go for the walk because of that hot 28 year old next lane. It indeed is a funny thing about dictionaries.

I didn’t have to think twice as to what my conscience wanted me to do. My bench-mate was clearly irritated with the girl, who swirled her tongue so much that she would be a girrrzhl if she pronounced it herself, reading out the lines and I decided we’d look for interesting stuff in the dictionary. 4 letter words were clearly the rage of the day and by pure chance, we got around to F. We looked at the meaning and examples and snorted. In that silent class, it sounded as if a rhino had just asked for a drink of water because it had a sore throat. And since I snorted more than my mate, the teacher asked me to stand up and come to the front of the class with my dictionary. I obliged. Obviously. With a fiery glare, a red nose that showed tell-tale signs of temper, eyebrows that looked like angry waves, flaring cheeks, shaky, angry hands and a voice that would have an ex-marine wet his pants, she asked me what word I was pointing out to him and laughing about. Thrice. I didn’t buckle under that tremendous pressure. I could feel all eyes looking at me, some in awe, some blanching. She then took the dictionary and with strength that I would not have believed of her, threw it right out of the class. Then, in cool tones, she asked me to follow the book and stay there for a couple of days. I legged it out and stayed put.

Everyone has a story about how they first were introduced to the well-used and famous word. I just told mine. And Ma’am, if you come across this, you now know the word we were amused with.

p.s.: It’s been a long time since I blogged. Thanks for your patience.