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That was top-class ragging!
I was ragged only once...on the first day I went to my University at Waltair. My Father couldn't afford to put me in hostel and so I was living in the town, Vizagh, with my MD Uncle who bought a University Bus Pass for one year @ Rs 15 (Rs 8 for ladies), handed it to me, and washed his hands. There was a fleet of a dozen University Buses meant exclusively for the AU students and teachers commuting from Vizagh to Waltair, two contiguous parts of the same city. My commute was about 8 km each way...the Ladies Hostel was in Vizagh close to our house but they had their own bus trips reserved for them....sigh!
I was 14, sans mustache, thin as a reed and 5' 4". As I waited for my Bus APV 6828 tremulously, the long bus arrived and I got up the gate opposite the Driver's seat. And found that the bus had two long padded benches on either side, each good enough to seat 20 boys, and a short bench at the end beside the Exit Gate near the Conductor. Rest of the inner bowl was for standees. And I found there was just one space vacant for me to squeeze in comfortably at my Driver End of the bench. As I proceeded to sit down, the chap just beside moved up leaving the space next to him vacant. And, as I proceeded to take a step and sit down, the guy next to the earlier one moved closer to his chum leaving the next seat vacant....as I proceeded to take a step and sit down, the guy next to the earlier one moved closer to his chum leaving the next seat vacant....
All the 19 guys made me skip from the Driver End to the Conductor End. And as I proceeded to sit down on the last seat, the one who moved up moved down by one space and I was made to rebound all the way to the Driver End step by one damned step. And I understood I was being ragged and stood by the Driver's seat till the next stop when another boy entered and coolly sat down in the vacancy by his chums who reserved it for him all that time. No one was laughing....they were all busy chatting and moving like beads on a ruddy abacus.
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Coming to my dish-washing duties I talked of yesterday, they are a breeze...we are pretty modish...our Nile Valley Township in Hyderabad is a shade more advanced than the original Nile Valley Civilization...marginally:
http://visav.phys.uvic.ca/~babul/AstroCourses/P303/WebContent/egyptian.html
With uninterrupted running water and power in the kitchen (touch wood!) and a kitchen sink that is spacious with a built-in-drain-board and vessels of stainless steel and frying pans that are non-stick and scented liquid cleaners and brushes of the soft and the steel-grip styles and a drain pipe that is largely unclogged, there is nothing to bitch about. I am rather paranoid about keeping the kitchen-sink clean. Most folks, after a hearty meal, would like to rest a while before returning to their overwhelming sinks. I don't rest till the sink is clean and dry and shipshape for my son when he returns to his delicious cooking duties.
The biggest fly in the ointment is milk; and its cousins like curd, butter, cheese and such yummy gooey stuff. Since we have a 4-burner piped-gas stove and my son is rather a Speedy Gonsalves,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDZBzvTDhGU
the vessels in which he boils milk occasionally get sticky black on the insides (and sometimes edges) and to file and polish them back to their original glory is a task that I would happily outsource. Were I alone, I would give milk-boiling a miss and buy curd and cheese and whey and sweetened and scented yoghurt and the delicious Amul Cholesterol that I so love with my sliced bread popping up its toaster, buttered on all its six sides...thick...
Speaking of Amul, I read that a couple of weeks ago Padma Bhushan Dr. Verghese Kurien passed away at 90:
http://worldstuff.net/verghese-kurien-biography.html
So much is so well known of this revolutionary that I don't need to repeat it...only that he got his Bachelors in Physics from Loyola College, Madras, in 1940. May his soul rest in the atheist's heaven! (Mark the lower case for 'h'...wiki tells me he was an atheist somewhat like me when it suits me...with a grandson aptly named Siddharth...the pile of Siddharths is growing like sin):
Siddharth scores 15,700,000 hits on Google:
The thing other than milk that is my bete noire is rice (as far as cleaning dishes goes...otherwise I am a rice-lover unlike my upcountry cousin, Prof RSS, who used to cry, with tears in his eyes, when we invited him to dinner and I pulled his legs saying my wife forgot to make puris...she never forgot of course). Rice gets dried up and sticks like Adam to the sides of its cooking vessel by the time that it is gobbled up. And to tease it out of the embrace with its Eve is misery...you need sharp nails on your fingers...another thing that I am paranoid about...I clip my nails twice a week and bleed. Of course you can soak the rice-vessel in water for an hour to ease it out...but I don't like to wait that long.
Returning to my childhood discomfiture vis-a-vis milk, here is the story:
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"The two girls were beautifully got up --- all lace and silky stuff, and flowers, and ribbons, and dainty shoes, and light gloves. But they were dressed for a photographic studio, not a river picnic. They were the 'boating costumes' of a French fashion-plate. It was ridiculous, fooling about in them anywhere near real earth, air and water...
...At lunch they had a very bad time of it. People wanted them to sit on the grass, and the grass was dusty; and the tree-trunks, against which they were invited to lean, did not appear to have been brushed for weeks; so they spread their handkerchiefs on the ground, and sat on those, bolt upright. Somebody, in walking about with a plate of beef-steak pie, tripped up over a root, and sent the pie flying. None of it went over them fortunately, but the accident suggested a fresh danger to them; and, whenever anybody moved about, after that, with anything in his hand that could fall and make a mess, they watched that person with growing anxiety until he sat down again.
'Now then, you girls,' said our friend Bow to them, cheerily, after it was all over, 'come along, you've got to wash up!'
They didn't understand him at first. When they grasped the idea, they said they feared they did not know how to wash up.
'Oh, I'll soon show you,' he cried; 'it's rare fun! You just lie down on your --- I mean you lean over the bank, you know, and sloush the things about in the water.'
The elder sister said that she was afraid that they hadn't got on dresses suited to the work.
'Oh, they'll be all right,' said he light-heartedly; 'tuck 'em up.'
And he made them do it too. He told them that that sort of thing was half the fun of the picnic. They said it was very interesting.
Now I come to think it over, was that young man as dense-headed as we thought? or was he --- no, impossible: there was such a simple, child-like expression about him!"
......From: Three men in a Boat
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That was top-class ragging!
I was ragged only once...on the first day I went to my University at Waltair. My Father couldn't afford to put me in hostel and so I was living in the town, Vizagh, with my MD Uncle who bought a University Bus Pass for one year @ Rs 15 (Rs 8 for ladies), handed it to me, and washed his hands. There was a fleet of a dozen University Buses meant exclusively for the AU students and teachers commuting from Vizagh to Waltair, two contiguous parts of the same city. My commute was about 8 km each way...the Ladies Hostel was in Vizagh close to our house but they had their own bus trips reserved for them....sigh!
I was 14, sans mustache, thin as a reed and 5' 4". As I waited for my Bus APV 6828 tremulously, the long bus arrived and I got up the gate opposite the Driver's seat. And found that the bus had two long padded benches on either side, each good enough to seat 20 boys, and a short bench at the end beside the Exit Gate near the Conductor. Rest of the inner bowl was for standees. And I found there was just one space vacant for me to squeeze in comfortably at my Driver End of the bench. As I proceeded to sit down, the chap just beside moved up leaving the space next to him vacant. And, as I proceeded to take a step and sit down, the guy next to the earlier one moved closer to his chum leaving the next seat vacant....as I proceeded to take a step and sit down, the guy next to the earlier one moved closer to his chum leaving the next seat vacant....
All the 19 guys made me skip from the Driver End to the Conductor End. And as I proceeded to sit down on the last seat, the one who moved up moved down by one space and I was made to rebound all the way to the Driver End step by one damned step. And I understood I was being ragged and stood by the Driver's seat till the next stop when another boy entered and coolly sat down in the vacancy by his chums who reserved it for him all that time. No one was laughing....they were all busy chatting and moving like beads on a ruddy abacus.
*****************************************************************************************************
Coming to my dish-washing duties I talked of yesterday, they are a breeze...we are pretty modish...our Nile Valley Township in Hyderabad is a shade more advanced than the original Nile Valley Civilization...marginally:
http://visav.phys.uvic.ca/~babul/AstroCourses/P303/WebContent/egyptian.html
With uninterrupted running water and power in the kitchen (touch wood!) and a kitchen sink that is spacious with a built-in-drain-board and vessels of stainless steel and frying pans that are non-stick and scented liquid cleaners and brushes of the soft and the steel-grip styles and a drain pipe that is largely unclogged, there is nothing to bitch about. I am rather paranoid about keeping the kitchen-sink clean. Most folks, after a hearty meal, would like to rest a while before returning to their overwhelming sinks. I don't rest till the sink is clean and dry and shipshape for my son when he returns to his delicious cooking duties.
The biggest fly in the ointment is milk; and its cousins like curd, butter, cheese and such yummy gooey stuff. Since we have a 4-burner piped-gas stove and my son is rather a Speedy Gonsalves,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDZBzvTDhGU
the vessels in which he boils milk occasionally get sticky black on the insides (and sometimes edges) and to file and polish them back to their original glory is a task that I would happily outsource. Were I alone, I would give milk-boiling a miss and buy curd and cheese and whey and sweetened and scented yoghurt and the delicious Amul Cholesterol that I so love with my sliced bread popping up its toaster, buttered on all its six sides...thick...
Speaking of Amul, I read that a couple of weeks ago Padma Bhushan Dr. Verghese Kurien passed away at 90:
http://worldstuff.net/verghese-kurien-biography.html
So much is so well known of this revolutionary that I don't need to repeat it...only that he got his Bachelors in Physics from Loyola College, Madras, in 1940. May his soul rest in the atheist's heaven! (Mark the lower case for 'h'...wiki tells me he was an atheist somewhat like me when it suits me...with a grandson aptly named Siddharth...the pile of Siddharths is growing like sin):
Siddharth scores 15,700,000 hits on Google:
... wiki
Siddhartha gets a mere 11,500,000 hits...sorry Don!
The thing other than milk that is my bete noire is rice (as far as cleaning dishes goes...otherwise I am a rice-lover unlike my upcountry cousin, Prof RSS, who used to cry, with tears in his eyes, when we invited him to dinner and I pulled his legs saying my wife forgot to make puris...she never forgot of course). Rice gets dried up and sticks like Adam to the sides of its cooking vessel by the time that it is gobbled up. And to tease it out of the embrace with its Eve is misery...you need sharp nails on your fingers...another thing that I am paranoid about...I clip my nails twice a week and bleed. Of course you can soak the rice-vessel in water for an hour to ease it out...but I don't like to wait that long.
Returning to my childhood discomfiture vis-a-vis milk, here is the story:
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with my full name the number is a factor of 100 less(113,000)!
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