The Unfurling of a Cherished Episode

I've always wanted to write on this. I'd have no qualms in saying that a miniature version of this story was unceremoniously dumped by my dearest friends when they went on to make a CD on our days at school. Well that’s over and done. It hurt me a lot and that hangover lasted for a few days. But friends will be friends and I forgave them. And they perhaps did enough later to warrant forgiveness.

Let me now draw you to this event which occurred in the summer of 2003---specifically October 2003. You won't call that summer will you; well it was hot and perhaps it qualifies to summer thus. We were back at school after a rather eventful Onam 'holidays’. There was this buzz going around the four classes which constituted Std.11.We were supposed to conduct a food stall on the Sports Day, something that has been a tradition at Marthoma Residential school for years. We decided that if we did not plan soon, we might be ill-equipped to deal with the contingency. So we did. We were hell bent on bunking classes---exploring a new avenue hitherto unexplored—which gave us the all new freedom. There was this hysteria all over the batch particularly among Jacob (john), aswin, sabari and gishin (then newcomers), nithin gopi, anand, jeev, sam and a lot of others. We convened a meeting one day and decided unanimously that Vinay must be made convener of the enterprise. We decided to do away with the committee system that made power and privilege the preserve of an ‘elite’ few. So there was just this one guy to give us direction. Many artistically competent guys were placed in charge of designing the posters. That was when everyone chipped in—right from cutting and drawing to painting. A lot of waste paper was needed for being used as coupons to be given away when the customers came. Prathip and Chacko and surprisingly then, a lot of girls came including Liya and Dincy and then girls from the hostel, worked on a Saturday to get things done. I am sure I am leaving out a whole lot of names. But then for people who don’t know these boys and girls (Ladies and Gentlemen now) it might appear monotonous.

In the meanwhile Vinay, Vishal and I had gone around Tiruvalla “buying and testing the best food available” to be ordered for the stall. We finally ended up buying food from a bakery which we hadn’t certified. We would leave school and the rest of the evening would be spent in Tiruvalla. We ordered ice-creams from an Amul outlet. We were really exhausted that day—we had sampled ice-creams from Amul too and probably that was showing. We decided to have lemonade from a nearby shop. We were really impressed with the “quality of lemonade” being sold there. We couldn’t use colas for our stall since the CSE had just brought out their famous pesticide report. Thus we made our acquaintance with Prakash Food Products, via Jitu and Bachu who knew them because they had their lemonade ‘factory’ on the Kuttapuzha-Muthoor road, who were the proud makers of these ‘high-quality’ lemonades. They even coaxed us to buy some mango juice(which we were sure wouldn’t sell much and they didn’t eventually).

Our batch is known for its flamboyance. But we know ourselves for complacency and last-minute-planning. So much so that we didn’t release our price list except on the day of the stall. In fact we had to bunk classes the previous day. That day will probably remain as one of the most memorable days of my life. I had to report to Sreeja ‘miss’ to offer an explanation for having bunked off her Physics classes. She didn’t quite digest the explanation. She asked me if I thought that I had grown so much (she taught me in Std 9 too) as to miss classes without having obtained her permission. Needless to say, I bunked again and again. The very next hour, Jowin (chaks), Deepak (deeps), Vinay (bugao) and I were at my home trying to get my printer to print the price list. My efficient printer wouldn’t budge. Finally it did and we got a distorted price list. Now we’d have to do it again. Deepak and Jowin went back to school in an auto while Vinay and I took 2 bicycles. We had to go around the school telling everybody that we would be holding a stall the next day. So we had to call Jinta, our official spokesperson from Adeline miss’ English classes where Prospero the magician had just called Caliban, a “hag-born". We finished our rounds quite quickly. When the bell rung for the day’s last class we had a train of comrades coming out from Susamma miss’(SUP’s) Chemistry class. The excitement showed. Someone jumped the walls of the school to get photocopies of the price-list. I think it was Sam—but he returned without them---I don’t seem to remember why. Vishal and I took the cycles back home after the bell had rung. That was no mean joke. For a person of my physique, cycling a total of 6 kilometres was heavily demanding. Vishal and I had to come back very quickly. Unfortunately the others had tuition classes for Maths (the [in] famous PAJ classes). I waited for Jowin to be back. And finally when he did (Vishal went home by then), we hurried to an internet café which also offered scope for DTP and printing. The final price-list was ready. We needed at least a dozen copies. But by that time, the photocopy shops were downing their shutters. So we had to revise plans. We would do it first thing in the morning. I reached home by 7:20pm.Vinay gave me a call. He was on his way to Tiruvalla (from his home@Chengannur).He asked me to be in Tiruvalla by 7:30pm.How the dickens was that possible? I gulped down my dinner (I hadn’t eaten anything since morning)and had a bath. To add salt to (deep) wounds it started raining. There wasn’t an auto neither was there a bus coming my way. I finally got an auto to Tiruvalla. It was dark and it was raining—no it wasn’t, it was pouring. Could the Sports Day be held tomorrow? It had already been postponed once. At 8:30pm Vinay was standing all alone at the Tiruvalla bus-depot. It had been an hour since he was there. He stared at me. I gave him sheepish look which made me look guilty, when I really wasn’t. We went around the town looking for shops that sold ribbons. Almost all of them had closed for the day. We finally did find one. We were introducing identity cards for our fellow students from Std 11 so as to “integrate ourselves and differentiate ourselves form the rest of the school”. That was why we needed ribbons. The ID cards were almost ready—they were being prepared by the girls in the hostel. We fell short of these ribbons. I later felt proud when these ID were acknowledged because the idea was a sort of a personal contribution which initially faced stiff resistance from Vinay and Chacko. We went back to school where Thomas Samuel sir (Karim Bhai—Terry gave him this name when we were in Std 10), the campus-supervisor-cum-hostel warden had consented to let us stay for the ensuing three evenings. We completed the rest of the cards. And thus a wonderful and most memorable day came to a nyctitropic end. We knew not what was in store for us the next day.

Rest in next.