How smart am I?

I have talked enough about being dumb and you need to realize that we all have our share of moments. You can be smart for an instant and be a fool the very next! Let us take a leaf out of cricket here. “Form is temporary, class is permanent” is a famous adage in the cricket world. In general, I believe smartness is temporary, intelligence is permanent. I am telling you all this to make a point that dumbness is not my predominant personality trait. Not convinced? I am not surprised because that is what I have been talking about for quite some time on this space. But read on….

Buses in Chennai, represent a very sad state of affairs. At Kennedy Space Center, I went inside a rocket that was about to be launched. Although I would love to leave that sentence there without any further explanation, I have to admit that it was only a prototype for simulation purposes and not a real one. The simulation began and got over with no effect on me whatsoever, unlike the thrilled and grinning faces around me thanks to my experience with buses in Chennai. The rocket just rocked, twirled, groaned and vibrated. Not what I had in mind for I had seen all that and even more back in Chennai.

Whenever, the driver shifted gears in the bus I almost threw up, not what I ate but my heart itself. He would try to change the gear but the damn rod would not budge. He would use his fist, forearm and even his elbow to move it and all this while racing the green light along with people driving as if they were all escaped convicts with cops right behind them. That is not even the worst part. That credit goes to the lovely passengers I travelled with. It was always so crowded that at any point you either had at least four people sharing all the parts of your body or air gushing against your face while your feet were suspended and your entire body supported by your hands which clung on to a flimsy bar of rusted iron in one of the windows. Since I had no interest in finding out the tensile strength of the rusted iron rod at the cost of my life I always chose the former.

Anyway, I was travelling with my friends to a book store to return some books in one of these buses. We had had a rough day at college and were on our way to a very far off book store. All the seats were taken as usual and the fact that we were carrying books made us even more vulnerable. We desperately wanted to sit and take the burden off our shoulders. So we just went ahead asked the ladies in the last row to get up and make way for us as we were carrying a lot of books. We damn well knew it was reserved for ladies but hey, try following rules when you cannot feel your shoulders anymore. Of course, the ladies said no and that it was reserved and blah, blah, blah… I told them to have some moral values and follow the rules in spirit and not in letter.

Enter Conductor: “Stop bothering the ladies you rowdies”

Me: What is it with you moron. It is not as if you are a director and this is a casting couch reserved for beautiful girls, is it? Wake up! You are just a conductor. Of course, this went on in my mind.

My Friend: Get Lost!!

People usually don’t talk to conductors like that. And he immediately stopped the bus and got some cops who usually come in so late in the movies and so promptly when you don’t need them in real life. The cops looked at us seriously, and this is where I played smart! They were asking us where we came from and things like that. I tried answering them but I kept my voice so feeble that they did not think for one second that I might do some eve teasing of which we were all being so unjustly accused by our conductor. I was on song and played a little trick and opened my bag and told them with all the innocence in the whole world that I was on my way to the book store.

The cops refused to believe what the conductor was saying looking at our innocent faces and the books and just left. The conductor did not speak any more and nobody in the bus made eye contact with us anymore. Of course we did not get space to sit but we had plenty to stand because nobody dared to come near us. With so many people in the bus they did not hear our conversation with the ladies, or the conductor or even the cops. So they just knew that cops had come and interrogated us and left. Most of them probably assumed we got away with some eve teasing because one of us was a gangster.

Whatever, I did not care anymore for we had plenty of not just space in the crowded bus but respect out of fear too!

Now, wasn’t that extremely smart?

Right Place, Wrong Time

Nicholas Cage’s interview appeared in the Reader’s Digest when I was a kid and that was when I first came across the expression “It is all about being in the right place at the right time”. That was his answer to the question what his secret to success was. I instantly fell in love with the expressions as it made sense. Ever since I read that interview I have had dreams about people asking me what my secret to success was and me using that expression with all my charm. (Don’t start laughing your head off about the non- existent charm. It was a dream, okay?)

Four years later…….

It was that time when the vacation was coming to an end. I was a 16 year old kid and hated every second of the day as I had to leave my aunt’s place to go back home for school. I was looking at the train ticket that my Dad sent me through mail with an empty look in the eye. I started packing and knowing that in just a day’s time I will be going back to reality. It was time for me to start yet another year of unfathomable course work, astronomical home works, painfully slow commutes to the school and text books making you want to hunt down the author and kill.

I carefully placed my luggage under my seat and sat with all the sadness upon my face. An old man interrupted my gloomy thoughts and told me to get off the seat rudely. He claimed it was his seat and that he had it reserved. I was already extremely irritated and this old man was talking to me as if I had stolen his house. He was so loud that the little girl sitting next to me and enjoying her samosas almost fell off her seat. Well, if you could shout using all your intestines at 60, then I’ll show you what decibel levels younger material can generate.

“I respect people based on merit and not age. So don’t expect me to let go off the seat just because you are older. I reserved this seat two months in advance, just leave me alone!”

The little girl probably did not see this coming from the petite 16 year old kid that I was, because she started choking on one of her somosas. I had beat the old man at his own game, 1-0.

The old man took out his ticket and showed me the seat number. It was 15A, the seat on which I was sitting. I was utterly shocked. He was waiting for me to show him mine. I was terrified and started having all the doubts just like I do when it is time for some class test results. I slowly took out the ticket and even before I could look at it the old man grabbed it out of my hand victoriously. His face turned pale and I thought he was having a stroke. I looked at the seat number and it said 15A. The scores were even this time, but overall I ruled 1.5- 0.5.

Enter ticket collector, “What is going on here. Let me look at your tickets. The train will leave in about 5 minutes and you guys are still fighting about the seats?”

Old man: “The whole system is corrupt. How could you give away two tickets for one seat? I’ll take this to the press.”

I was sitting there calmly because I knew that if you pissed the ticket collector off you hit a dead end. It was very simple; there had been a miscalculation about the seats. So they gave off two. But only one had to get the seat. This means that the ticket collector will chose one of the two to stay. Since I was calm and not pissing him off I would stay. Game over: 2.5 – 0.5

Ticket collector: “Look here boy. Today is 11th and your ticket is for the 12th.”

I don’t know if it has ever happened to you but sometimes your brain just shuts off and you start doing things without thinking. It happened to me at that instant. I just took out my luggage and got off the train without thinking anything except this: Old man: ticket on the train, me: getting off the train. So the game is indeed over!

My Aunt started scolding me for being so dumb and she asked me how I managed to be so dumb. It was my moment. Considering my dumbness, I can never live my dream and use that expression, so I might as well try to improvise the expression and use it in this nightmare.

“Well, it is all about being in the right place at the wrong time.”

The Eventful Flight

Until that point in my life there were very few moments when I was hyper active at 2a.m. I had left behind my family and was for the first time going to be away from them for a long time. I know you would expect me to be sad about it. But, hell no, I was all excited about my first flight ever! It was my first flight because I prefer not to consider the 50 minute domestic flight I took along with my family when I was 12. Anyway, I was comfortably sitting in an aisle seat waiting for the plane to take off and exploring the interiors of the flight.

I was stretching my neck to get a glimpse of the air hostesses who were talking among themselves behind the curtains. As if that wasn’t inconvenient enough, the lights were turned off because at 2a.m. the world usually sleeps. I turned my neck, well I had to turn it or break it and so I chose the former, and bingo there she was sitting right next to me and looking at me with a glitter in her eyes which no air hostess would have matched. I smiled at her and she returned it courteously. I looked away because if I talked to her right off she would not have maintained her interest in me.

I dreamt on for some time about her, or should I say about US. Both of us would go to the same university, become friends, fall in love, get good jobs, get married and have kids. I looked again at her. Oh no, that was the objective but she had buried herself under the blankets. She fell asleep I assumed, or was my smile so scary that she hid herself in those blankets? So much for the dream.

I woke up in the morning and the journey continued without much ado. About that girl, well I kept my distance because I did not want to scare her again. I changed flights and parted ways with her. To get to my connecting flight I had to walk so much in the airport that I felt like I was walking all across the continent. The whole point of flight travel seemed to be lost. Well they make you pay exorbitant prices and make you walk almost all the way to your destination.

I finally came to this airport after another boring flight. Again I had to walk miles to get to my connecting flight, only this time, to make things more exciting I was lost! I wandered the airport so much that they would have arrested me because I was sure I went back and forth their CCTVs a dozen times. So I gave up and went to this security guard for help. She took my boarding pass and told me “ Walk down the stairs on your right, go straight, take a left, keep walking and take the last right. Board the train that you will find there in five minutes.”

Me: “But officer I have the flight ticket, why do you want me to take a train”.

Officer: Laughing out loud……so much that everybody started looking in my direction. “Well the train will get you to the terminal not your destination”.

Everybody around realized what had happened and before I could see them roll on the floor and laugh I ran away. But the officer was still shouting “You don’t have to run you still have five more minutes”.

Me: Not slowing down the least bit….. “THANK YOU” but please leave me alone.