Eat You!

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"Rather an amusing thing happened while dressing that morning. I was very cold when I got back into the boat, and, in my hurry to get my shirt on, I accidentally jerked it into the water. It made me awfully wild, especially as George burst out laughing. I could not see anything to laugh at, and I told George so, and he only laughed the more. I never saw a man laugh so much. I quite lost my temper with him at last, and I pointed out to him what a drivelling maniac of an imbecile idiot he was; but he only roared the louder. And then, just as I was landing the shirt, I noticed that it was not my shirt at all, but George's, which I had mistaken for mine; whereupon the humour of the thing struck me the first time, and I began to laugh. And the more I looked from George's wet shirt to George, roaring with laughter, the more I was amused, and I laughed so much that I had to let the shirt fall back into the water again.

"Ar'n't you --- you --- going to get it out?" said George between his shrieks.

I could not answer him at all for a while, I was laughing so, but at last, between my peals I manged to jerk it out:

"It isn't my shirt --- it's yours!"

I never saw a man's face change from lively to severe so suddenly in all my life before."

.....From: 'Three Men In A Boat'

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Place: IIT KGP, Physics Dept

Date: August, 1981

Time: 5.30 PM

DB and myself were gossiping in our common double room C - 239 and preparing to call it a day. There was a knock on the door which opened and revealed our Office Assistant saying that the HoD, Prof M, wants both of us urgently in his Office.

We were a little mystified because this sort of a common invitation from a HoD who had ever been rather cold to us meant that it wasn't exactly a Love Call. Prof M was under the opinion that we two, being students of (Retd) Prof SDM, were not exactly his admirers...he fancied that he was a competitor of SDM. And he had, earlier on, tried to inflict what he loved to call 'Police Cases' on me twice before...as you see, I am still out of jail ;-)

So we two walked downstairs full of curiosity as to what was up his sleeve this time.

And found that his door was open and a small crowd of onlookers had already gathered there. As soon as he saw us, his face beamed (at last) and he opened the top drawer of his Table, plucked out an answer-script and practically flung it on our face. And gloated:

"This is an answer-script of the just concluded  M. Sc. (Final) End Sem exams of the outgoing batch. Prof G found it in the Tech Market Shop while this was about to be torn and made into thongas (lifafas or paper bags). And you two are the joint scrutineers of M.Sc. And the bundles are supposed to be in your safe custody for at least three years. Kindly explain to me how this script found its way to the marketplace within three months. As you know, it is a serious matter...the prestige of our Department is at stake. It could very well be a Police Case."

DB and I were stunned by this attack. I coolly picked up the script and we both walked back to our room. And were followed by two of our senior colleagues who were supposed to be our well-wishers. As soon as we entered our room and closed the door (a rare event) to find our feet, these two gents opened it and advised us to go back immediately and apologize to our HoD.

And we looked daggers at them and they fled.

DB smoked three cigarettes one after the other trying to calm his nerves. And I examined the top page of the script closely and found it was that of Varsha Prabhavalkar. And the signature of the Examiner revealed that he was Prof. R, a senior colleague. And the space above the 'Signature of the Scrutineer' was blank. 

Then and there I breathed easy since both DB and I had this unfailing habit of signing on the scripts we scrutinized.

During those days, the answer-scripts first went (naturally) to the Examiner who was by default the Paper-Setter. After he checks the scripts and awards the marks, the bundle went to the Official Scrutineer, who re-checks each script in the bundle for any omitted marks, and tallies the totals and signs on the top of the script as well as the Mark-Sheet below the signature of the Examiner. Below that the HoD would sign and the mark-sheet alone goes to the Tabulator, the bundle remaining at its last port of call...the scrutineer(s).

But once in a rare while when the Examiner delays his job and finds the last date was over and the scrutineers went to the canteen, he would catch any other prof in sight and get the scrutiny done in a hurry and his signature taken on the mark-sheet.

Fortunately I had worked as the Time-Table-Maker for a couple of years prior to that and so had the names of all the M.Sc courses on my fingertips. So, I told DB to go home and relax and I would return to our room with my wife and infant son to do a thorough Sherlock Holmes job.

Which I did. There were about 40 bundles lying on the floor belonging to the last four semesters of the first and second years of M. Sc. rather haphazardly. I gave my wife a piece of paper on which I had listed all the courses one after the other, and asked her to merely put a 'tick' mark against each as I read them out aloud (with our son in her lap) from the bundles present and counted.

And, after a good hour, we discovered that all the bundles were there except this one which went missing. I roared triumphantly. For, I knew then that this bundle NEVER came to our room. 

We shut shop and went to DB's place and had Tea and Singaras to celebrate the event.

Prof G was senior in age and service to us by a decade but was still a junior lecturer. Everyone knew that he was under the protection of the default HoD, like Raja Ambarish was under the protection of Lord Vishnu...with this difference that Ambarish didn't have to spy for Vishnu.

Next morning, we were waiting for the HoD's room to open and as soon as he keyed himself in, we barged in and told him that this bundle that went to the marketplace never came to our room for scrutiny. And he gloated:

 "It is nonsense...how can you prove that?"

"Please open your Godrej almirah and fish out the relevant Mark Sheet"

"Why?"

"We just want to check if either of us scrutinized this bundle, in which case, one of us would have signed it above your own signature."

He grudgingly opened his almirah in style and threw the entire clip of mark-sheets on our face and pretended to immerse himself in his 'official' work.

Within a few minutes we flipped through the thing and fished out the relevant mark-sheet and we both fell to the floor roaring with laughter like J in the quote above when he discovered that the wet shirt belonged not to him but to the laughing George.

For, the signature of the scrutineer was of none other than:

"Prof G!"

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