Shy Guys

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Whenever I don't find much to blog about, I blog about myself...a safe, if boring, topic.

So here it is...my best-kept secret:

I am a shy guy.

I don't mean I am modest...that is altogether a different thing.

A shy guy wants to be the Seer rather than the Seen.

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When they announced in my school that a pre-NCC thing was taking off, I was all for it, but backed out when they said I have to wear a uniform and a cap with feathers in it (the whistle was ok).

When it was announced that I came second but not first in our school-leaving exam I was relieved that I don't have to walk up a stage and bow to the Chief Guest's Wife and then turn to the Audience and bow again, my HM Father watching me critically all the while.

Then I had to live for 2 years under the roof and care of my maternal uncle (M.D.) who was notorious for his tongue-lashing. He took the high road and I took the low...we exchanged about 20 inane sentences in all those two years.

When they said I stood first in the Main (Physics) in my B Sc (Hons) but missed all the medals which took the Math and Chemistry also into account, I felt relieved once again...my friend KLM proudly went up the stage, I was told, because I skipped the Convocation when they said I have to wear rented black gowns, hoods and caps...

I got my Ph D when I was very much a member of the Faculty at IIT kGP. And I was wondering what pretext I could invent to skip it...fortunately I was dragged to Madras to assist my Father who was hospitalized for a surgery.

And on returning to KGP, HNB asked me to quit my single room and join DB in a double room.

Very soon I found DB to be equally shy, if not more.

I am reminded of the joke where two crazy prisoners are asked to share a cell in NYC. For six months neither opens his mouth. Finally one of them says: "I have decided to buy NYC"; upon which the other quips: "Sorry, I have decided not to sell it".

At the end of our six months of silence, DB said something about Lamb Shift and I contradicted him at once. There was a bet then and there and we walked defiantly side by side to the Central Library and opened the Phys Rev Volume.

Fortunately we both were wrong; and that paved the way for 20 years of fun and frolic, since we discovered we were wrong for the right reasons: I was wrong in the theory part and he in the experimental part. So we discovered that our interests and 'skill sets' as they say sillily (there goes that red line again...what is wrong with 'sillily'...just checked Webster and he allows it) are mutually exclusive and complementary, happily.

I was thirsting to get married ever since I remember but they said I had to appear in several interviews. I told my mom that I would appear in one and only one and quit if I am rejected...thank God I wasn't...these blogs would have been morose Kafkaesque reflections otherwise..."Confessions of a Deprived and Depraved Soul" instead of sexy.


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Tail Piece

That my roommate DB turned out to be shyer than me reminds me of the following family joke:

That mother of six naughty kids was asked:

"Who is the most well-behaved among your six kids?"

"Look out there! That one who is standing legs astride at the cleft of the top branch of that neem tree and peeing and watching the parabola trying to maximize the horizontal range"

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