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I have to now place on record the efforts of the many individuals who tried to civilize me during my long life.
It all started with my move from my beloved high school in Muthukur to the college at Nidubrole for my pre-university year. I started then living with my Shakespeare Uncle who was the Principal of the said rural college. He tried to be nice to me for about a week at the end of which he told me rather abruptly:
"You are no longer in school, dear, you are in college. Shed your khakhi knickers and ask your father to get some full pants stitched for you"
This was said in a benevolent manner but I was hurt alright. Fortunately I was back home within a month for my Dasara holidays and I had to relay my Uncle's message to Father through my mom. I could by then guess that they were hard up but I had no way out. With the result that I acquired a couple of full pants, and my knickers became my night dress then on.
And I had no belt, and Father seems to have asked his tailor to spare no effort and cut the cloth so that he wouldn't have to give me a new set of pants within a couple of years. So I was caught holding up my roomy pants all the time by this or that hand whichever happened to be free. Luckily the newly married husband of my cousin happened to visit Nidubrole soon enough and saw my plight and gifted me a brand new belt...I hereby thank him for his kind deed and wish him well up there...he passed away last year.
Next year I graduated to my university in the city of Vizagh and started living in my MD Uncle's house. It was all new and forbidding for me, especially his smart personality. He was always dressed in a full suit sans coat (no one can wear a coat in the humid weather of Vizagh). He spent a good five minutes adjusting his tie before he left for his hospital.
He never bothered about my dress but one day he caught me brushing my teeth with my forefinger using the cheapest tooth powder in the market and ordered me:
"Buy a tooth brush and Colgate tooth paste!"
Easier said than done...the kit cost my father all of Rs 5. And paste vanishes faster than powder and brushes wear out faster than forefingers.
I then moved to IIT KGP which was then ruled by left liberal intellectuals whose motto was:
"East is red...East is red...East is red"
...It is a different matter that their East comes now in white bordered with blue...
So, no one bothered about my dress except my friend and mentor BK Mohanty (of the Ukridge fame). He was exceptionally well-dressed...suited, booted and tied up. He gifted me a necktie in return to food for a week as my guest in our Faculty Hostel. And taught me three different knots none of which I could master. So that was the end of my neck-tying efforts...I never wore a suit nor a tie in my life.
He also made me buy a pair of Chinese shoes which were so pointed that they hurt my toes and so I had to give them away to Chinta, our hostel-boy, who promptly converted them into ethanol.
My would-be wife ordered me (via snail mail) that I have to attend her wedding in what she called bell-bottoms. So I had to get 4 new pants stitched with the said bottoms. I wore them all during the 2 days of my wedding ceremony but never after that.
She then abandoned her efforts to make me 'smart'.
After my retirement I started living with my son who was then a young software pro in the vast city of Hyderabad. He gifted me what he called a cell-phone and taught me how to use it. I learned it quick enough once he said:
"It is like your PC man! Center button is for Enter!"
But I was scared I would lose it and asked him to buy me what was then a fashion...a slim belt-like thing that goes round the neck and is tied to the ear of the cell-phone that goes into the shirt-pocket. He was unhappy since it made me look like a child in the womb with its umbilical cord. He tried to teach me how to dispense with the belt and push the cell-phone into the shirt pocket and yet be aware of it like those ladies dancing with pots on their heads. I protested and he demurred...it is a different matter that he lost a couple of new cell-phones lying in his shirt pocket while riding his scooter on the bumps of Hyderabad.
But he put his foot down when I was attending his marriage, and snatched away the umbilical cord of my cell-phone asking me to shove it into my pant-pocket. Then on I got used to it somehow. Nowadays I have learned to carry my cell-phone in my shirt pocket securely, while he in one of his ten jeans-pockets. For the record, I have never lost a cell-phone. Incidentally, the umbilical cord has disappeared from the market...at one time every goon was using it.
It is now Ishani's turn to civilize me. She takes offense whenever I say:
"Girls"
in my Muthukur way. I say it rhyming with 'curls' and 'furls' and 'hurls' and such.
She says:
"No, granpa! It is not gurls but girls!"
And she tries to teach me how to pronounce 'girls'. She makes the 'g' a soft guttural. And the 'i' is not 'u' nor 'i' but something in between and very enchanting.
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I have to now place on record the efforts of the many individuals who tried to civilize me during my long life.
It all started with my move from my beloved high school in Muthukur to the college at Nidubrole for my pre-university year. I started then living with my Shakespeare Uncle who was the Principal of the said rural college. He tried to be nice to me for about a week at the end of which he told me rather abruptly:
"You are no longer in school, dear, you are in college. Shed your khakhi knickers and ask your father to get some full pants stitched for you"
This was said in a benevolent manner but I was hurt alright. Fortunately I was back home within a month for my Dasara holidays and I had to relay my Uncle's message to Father through my mom. I could by then guess that they were hard up but I had no way out. With the result that I acquired a couple of full pants, and my knickers became my night dress then on.
And I had no belt, and Father seems to have asked his tailor to spare no effort and cut the cloth so that he wouldn't have to give me a new set of pants within a couple of years. So I was caught holding up my roomy pants all the time by this or that hand whichever happened to be free. Luckily the newly married husband of my cousin happened to visit Nidubrole soon enough and saw my plight and gifted me a brand new belt...I hereby thank him for his kind deed and wish him well up there...he passed away last year.
Next year I graduated to my university in the city of Vizagh and started living in my MD Uncle's house. It was all new and forbidding for me, especially his smart personality. He was always dressed in a full suit sans coat (no one can wear a coat in the humid weather of Vizagh). He spent a good five minutes adjusting his tie before he left for his hospital.
He never bothered about my dress but one day he caught me brushing my teeth with my forefinger using the cheapest tooth powder in the market and ordered me:
"Buy a tooth brush and Colgate tooth paste!"
Easier said than done...the kit cost my father all of Rs 5. And paste vanishes faster than powder and brushes wear out faster than forefingers.
I then moved to IIT KGP which was then ruled by left liberal intellectuals whose motto was:
"East is red...East is red...East is red"
...It is a different matter that their East comes now in white bordered with blue...
So, no one bothered about my dress except my friend and mentor BK Mohanty (of the Ukridge fame). He was exceptionally well-dressed...suited, booted and tied up. He gifted me a necktie in return to food for a week as my guest in our Faculty Hostel. And taught me three different knots none of which I could master. So that was the end of my neck-tying efforts...I never wore a suit nor a tie in my life.
He also made me buy a pair of Chinese shoes which were so pointed that they hurt my toes and so I had to give them away to Chinta, our hostel-boy, who promptly converted them into ethanol.
My would-be wife ordered me (via snail mail) that I have to attend her wedding in what she called bell-bottoms. So I had to get 4 new pants stitched with the said bottoms. I wore them all during the 2 days of my wedding ceremony but never after that.
She then abandoned her efforts to make me 'smart'.
After my retirement I started living with my son who was then a young software pro in the vast city of Hyderabad. He gifted me what he called a cell-phone and taught me how to use it. I learned it quick enough once he said:
"It is like your PC man! Center button is for Enter!"
But I was scared I would lose it and asked him to buy me what was then a fashion...a slim belt-like thing that goes round the neck and is tied to the ear of the cell-phone that goes into the shirt-pocket. He was unhappy since it made me look like a child in the womb with its umbilical cord. He tried to teach me how to dispense with the belt and push the cell-phone into the shirt pocket and yet be aware of it like those ladies dancing with pots on their heads. I protested and he demurred...it is a different matter that he lost a couple of new cell-phones lying in his shirt pocket while riding his scooter on the bumps of Hyderabad.
But he put his foot down when I was attending his marriage, and snatched away the umbilical cord of my cell-phone asking me to shove it into my pant-pocket. Then on I got used to it somehow. Nowadays I have learned to carry my cell-phone in my shirt pocket securely, while he in one of his ten jeans-pockets. For the record, I have never lost a cell-phone. Incidentally, the umbilical cord has disappeared from the market...at one time every goon was using it.
It is now Ishani's turn to civilize me. She takes offense whenever I say:
"Girls"
in my Muthukur way. I say it rhyming with 'curls' and 'furls' and 'hurls' and such.
She says:
"No, granpa! It is not gurls but girls!"
And she tries to teach me how to pronounce 'girls'. She makes the 'g' a soft guttural. And the 'i' is not 'u' nor 'i' but something in between and very enchanting.
...Posted by Ishani
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