Discovering India ...

I studied abroad (ok…ok…. its gulf) till my tenth standard. After that I convinced my parents that I had to go to good ol’ Kerala and study 11th and 12th there so that I can start preparing for my engineering entrance. I still remember the little drops of tears rolling out of my mothers eyes ( santhosha kanneer fellas..) thinking that how responsible a boy I was. Fast forward 2 weeks…Mission accomplished…I landed in my maternal grandmothers house. And this grandmother is a typical Xtian GM who thinks that its ok to serve Panam Kallu ( toddy – from our own thengu ) to 15 year old and that an evening snack means beef fry and a glass of munthiri kallu. I was so happy … a new found freedom and I went up and met all my childhood friends. There was B and P my best friends and a lot of other guys. B was all ready to try his luck at SSLC for the 3rd time. It was his English exam that day. Since I was the only one who knew all the alphabets at least…I decided to teach him some English. He tried to discourage me…but I was adamant that I will help out my best buddy. I asked him several questions … and was appalled to see the English standard of a 10th grade student. I told him that there was no point in wasting his time writing the exam next day … but he insisted that he will give it a try. I was really shocked when the results came…he has passed SSLC with minimum required marks on all subjects.

Me: Eda…how the f*#k did you do this?
B : I learned from my previous mistakes ..
Me: ??? Explain …please
B : Last 2 times I left the answer paper blank …
Me: And what did you do this time…shit on itttttt
B: No…I wrote the question backwards ....
Me: ! speechless !

A sample of his answer paper might be like this.

Question : What are your hobbies ?

Answer : hobbies your are what ( or most probably “ ? hobbies your are what “ )

The evaluator might have been very happy..atleast the guy displayed his knowledge of English alphabets, his creative thinking and his view on socio-economic problems that India faces in that one single answer.

And till then I thought that my hobby had to be stamp collection ( even though I had seen stamps only on letters from Kerala )