Karmic Carousel-Part 2

(Where tables are turned and stuff comes around)

Where I work, we have something called “assessments” to assess (what else?) the learning that has taken place in a given academic year. The word is only a euphemism for “exams” so kids are lulled into a false sense of security and they don’t panic about these as kids normally do when they hear the E-word. But I think the kids we teach are smarter than that. They panicked anyway.

As an assessor, I went to a younger learning centre which had 5-year olds who were being assessed (damn, too many Ss in that word. No red squiggly line from Word, which means I actually spelt it right. I’m deeply worried, therefore). I recently read this piece about how children get deeply scarred emotionally after traumatic experiences in their early childhood and are socially maladjusted as adults. I didn’t really want to perpetrate such “trauma” and have these kids reclining on couches years later pouring their hearts out to shrinks who would squarely put the blame on me. So, I was understandably jittery.

Following are the excerpts from my assessing experience.

(Enter Kid1)
Me: (Making my voice and general bearing as cloyingly sweet as possible) Hi K1. My name is XYZ. How are you doing?

K1: (not making eye-contact, stares desultorily out of the window as if looking for an escape route)

Me: (smiling still, while my brain tells me the assessment is already going downhill since I haven’t established any warm rapport with the kid, as the training manual had sermonized) Good. May I ask you a few questions, then? Is that OK?

K1: (nodding mechanically and turning limpid doe-eyes towards me)

Me: (already feeling like the wicked witch of the West. Hell, I will probably be the prominent feature in this kid’s nightmares. And I look at the window and wonder if it’s too late to make my getaway, job be damned) OK. Good. Can you count from 41-55 for me?

K1: (stares at me silently. There is obviously no recognition of the words coming out my mouth. I bet his thought bubble would have said, “Why is this crazy woman talking to me in this high-pitched voice? I want my mommy.”)

Me: (Adjusting my hair, nervously. I rattle off all the questions on the list and still no answer)

Me: (at the end of 15 interminably long minutes during which I had been talking to myself. I now realize how difficult it is for actors to deliver monologues. I will never, ever deride them. Never.) Thank you K1. It was nice meeting you.

K1: (walks away without so much as a glance in my direction)

(Enter K2)
Me: Hi K2. (still talking in the retarded voice) My name is XYZ. How are you doing?

K2: (flashes a brilliant smile and my spirits lift) Hi didi.

Me: (silently thanking K2 for being born. I love her already) Is it OK if I ask you a few questions?

K2: (Still smiling, nods vigorously)

Me: Ok, Can you count from 41-55 for me?

K2: Yes, didi. 1,2,3,4..

Me: 41-55 K2, not 1,2 etc.

K2: 1,2,3,4…

Me: (my soaring spirits crash to the floor) How about 81-95?

K2: I don’t know didi.

(The rest of the interview goes pretty much in the same vein. After K2 leaves, I take a little break to check on Conifer to see if it’s just me or is everyone going through the same. Conifer seems ready to cry. Better not aggravate matters, methinks and I withdraw silently)

Of, course there were some really smart ones who got all the answers right and I owe them my sanity. And there were a few gems of the other kind. Sample:

Q: Can you count from 41-55 for didi?
A: 41,42,43…49, forty-ten, forty-eleven, forty-twelve… (sigh)

And for the written questions, we had quite a few hilarious ones. And this was from older kids:

Q: Write a 300 word essay about life in 2250.

A: In 2250, because of global warming, fair people will turn wheatish (sic) and there will be no difference between blacks and whites. And everyone will be equal….
(So global warming solves racism. Is Green Peace listening?)

Q: Who is the most influential person in India, according to you?
A: According to me, terrorists are the most influential people in India.
(move over Gandhiji, LeT is here to stay)

Kids say the darndest things.

Karmic Carousel- Part 1

I don’t know if you have heard this song by Justin Timberlake, but don’t judge me unfavourably for knowing of its existence. It’s just one of those annoying songs that stick in your head steadfastly until another equally or more annoying song substitutes it. I was listening to FM Rainbow (107.1 in Mumbai, to the uninitiated. The only station worth listening to if you ask me). They were doing this one-hour Elvis special on the King’s birthday and I was glued to the station much before the special began, lest I missed my favourite tracks. That’s when this Timberlake song assailed me (right before Blue suede shoes assuaged my wracked nerves). I have never liked Mr. Timberlake and have never bothered to follow his career graph; in fact I thought Timbaland was just Timberlake misleading people into buying his music by changing his screen name (I don’t listen to Timbaland either, come to think of it). Anyway, the song had an eerie, prescient quality to it- in a totally different context though. It was something of an omen, a forecast of certain events about to unfold in my life.

(Following are the excerpts from my recent B-school interview.)

I was interviewed by a panel of three- a middle aged lady, flanked by two youngish people-one male, the other female. The Holy Trinity, ha. The lady in the centre looked oddly familiar and just as I was about to say “Good Morning”, realization dawned- she was in the interview panel last year when I had made a thorough fool of myself. Dear G, please let her not remember me, please, please, please. Even if she did recognize me, she wasn’t letting on much. Deep breaths, deep breaths, deep breaths. May be she doesn’t remember. Yeah, not everyone has a good memory. Just get me through this G; just this once and I promise that I won’t ask for anything ever again. Having got the obligatory social niceties out of the way, we proceeded towards the raison d’etre of the panel- the grilling of JD.

(All three started at the same time. Sheesh, there was such an enthusiastic, violent alacrity to grill me that they were all vying for first place. Anyway, the youngish female (YF) won by dint of a high pitched voice)

YF: So what made you switch from IT to an NGO?

Me: (smiling inwardly. I had rehearsed this answer at least a zillion times)
Blah, blah and blah, blah.

YF: (confused into silence at the profusion of words that came out of my mouth. Hoo-ha, take that! Score: Panel -0, JD-1)

OF: But you left a high-paying job for a pittance?

Me: (High-paying? Ha, hardly. Yeah, like the simple arithmetic never occurred to me. Duh.) Blah-blah. (Some noble, self-righteous jazz. And then some more. God I hope she buys it.)

The Only Man (TOM): So, which was your favourite subject in college?

Me: (Holy &@!%*$. It’s been two years since graduation and they still expect me to remember stuff that my memory retained only for exams. I don’t even remember what I had for lunch three days ago. Jeez!) Er, (smiling sheepishly) I don’t remember very well. But, I’ll try to answer. OR was my favourite. (I said tentatively, mentally gauging the depth of the shit I was in)

OF: (Finally in her element) Ah, ok. What is Linear Programming? Give me an example.

Me: (Phew! Easy-peasy. I knew this.) Blah-blah.Bl-

OF: (interrupting me with an imperious wave of the hand) You are complicating things unnecessarily. Give me an example.

Me: (the cockiness waning a little. Good thing I remember) Blah-blah. Blah-blah. And that’s how we solve it.

OF: But why only the points of intersection? Why is that the optimal solution?

Me: (stumped) Blah-blah. (Squeamish, tentative answer. 1 all)

OF: (leaning back in her chair, purring satisfactorily. She had had her fun with me.)

TOM: So, tell me. Do you remember anything in Thermal Engineering?

Me: Sir, not really. (again hoping he’d buy the smile. JD-1, Panel-10)

TOM: Ok. Can you tell me about the Narmada Bachao Andolan? And which side won?

Me: (Won? What was this, a cricket match?) Blah-blah. Blah-blah.

TOM: (not too pleased at my answer. Panel-15, JD-1) But, I though you work in the social sector. So you must have more than a lay-person’s opinion about the issue?

Me: (Damned ignoramus. Social sector, yes. But I work for children’s education. And it’s not as if we have a secret network of all NGOs and are totally up to date with the details of each and every NGO. Gawd) Sir, my involvement is with the education sector.

TOM: (silenced. As if education was not as meaty as dams and bhook-hadtals. Damnation. JD-0, Panel-20)

OF and YF: (In a ghastly jugalbandi of sorts, tag-teamed to ask me questions. One fired and the other glared. Then the roles were reversed) But why an NGO? What compelled you? What was your motivation? What are your plans? Why MBA? Where do you live? Why an MBA after working in an NGO?

(Good thing my sex allows me multi-tasking capabilities and a general verbosity. I wouldn’t be badgered. I wouldn’t perish. I’m a survivor played in my head. Damn, why always the songs I don’t like, why never the ones I do like? Why? Why? Anyway, I did manage to out-energize them, but was the worse for wear.)

YF: (the first to recover her breath) So, you are from West Bengal?

Me: (What are you, Raj Thackerey??? I have lived in Mumbai all my life, so what does that make me, huh? West Bengal, my left eye-ball.) Well, Ma’am, I was born and raised in Mumbai. (smiling sweetly) But, yes my parents are from W.B.

YF: So, what do you think of the happenings in Nandigram and Singur?

Me: Blah-blah. Blah-blah. Blah-blah.

OF: (wounded at being left behind at this modern day, B-school version of the Spanish Inquisition.) Which are the neighbouring countries of India?

Me: Blah-blah.

OF: Which is the link that connects Sri-Lanka and India? And what’s the controversy surrounding it? What are your views?

Me: Blah-blah.

OF: (looking very bored suddenly. Maybe I wasn’t sufficiently moronic for her predatory tastes. Sigh.) Ok. Thank you.

TOM and YF: (smiling in unison) Thank you.

Me: (a little unsure. Is it over??? I couldn't believe it) Thank you. (attempting a smile)

I came out blinking at the abrupt ending of the grilling. In fact, it wasn’t even a grilling. It was more like a light sauté, tenderly done- something which ended even before the heat could be turned on. Sigh. I can never evaluate these things. Was I to feel good or bad? Were the smiles welcome-to-our-college ones or hell-no-we-plan-to-keep-you-out ones? I can never tell. Inscrutable humans. Damnation.

P.S.-Panel-?, JD-????

The randomness of JD

I made friends with this really, really sweet American girl, Calamity (ok, she’s not accident prone or anything, but her name rhymes with the word) from California, who finds herself slap bang in the middle of Mumbai slums teaching under-privileged kids. Mumbai slums via war-torn Afghanistan. Well, obviously don’t ask her for holiday destination advice. Calamity and her husband W (who was a journo) shifted base to Mumbai and now live in a non-descript suburb trying to make sense of “mystical” India. Thankfully, they aren’t the tie-and-dye hippie types, or ISKCON adherents, or Rajneesh/Maharishi XYZ spouting weirdoes, or the white-blubbery, stringy clothes wearing Goan tourists whose major draw is cheap booze and other things we don’t mention in polite conversations- they answer to no stereotype, but are normal people who believe in this cause we are working for.

They shop for refrigerators and furniture and rush to Pantaloons’ “up to 50% off” sales, eat in Indian restaurants by pointing out to the waiter the unpronounceable food items (much like we would in French restaurants), go to the local darzi to alter their clothes and relish onion and tomato uthappa, well, atleast Calamity does. She digs the accompanying sambar and the coconut chutney. She joins Conifer and me for our “Five-star fruit and nut after lunch” ritual. She digs the “Five star” too. Yes, they are that unremarkable. But, it’s so cool to see her discovering everything in India for the first time- the Mumbai local trains, BEST buses, kirana stores, udipi restaurants, speaking Hindi, the unavoidable Roadside Romeo gaze- things which function in the background or are like second nature to us Indians, but must be so novel and exciting and even bewildering to her.

But the woman stumped me. We eat lunch in this small room called the “pantry” (a misnomer, considering it has no food). The sink in the pantry was clogged because someone forgot to unplug the metallic cap thingy from the sink-hole. So, Calamity thrust her hand in the murky, yellow coloured water of the sink and unplugged the cap- when I just wrung my hands daintily in the background. But the stumping part came when she told me that the tiny black ants which swarm her living room through crevices in the walls freak her out. Apparently, groping about in a filthy, putrid, clogged sink is harmless, but black ants mean the bubonic plague or something. Go figure.
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Learnt an important lesson in the adage “Practice what you preach”. Only about .003% of all the humans to have ever walked the earth follow it. And they are all dead. I realize that it is very easy to pontificate and power-point your way through to instant office stardom, and have people ooh and aah at your wisdom and spirituality at the seminal slides with seminal messages that you show. But, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. So, dear pseudo, “example is better than precept”. You don’t read this blog, but if you ever do, I hope this makes you blush. I can’t believe you could meet my outraged stare after your abominable behaviour. For all your revolutionary ideas, you aren’t even worth the corn in Che Guevera’s dead and decaying left pinky toe. Yes, I’m naïve enough to think this is revenge. Ha. So, I should just stop expecting civility? Yeah, I bet you’ll quote The Bhagvad Gita about expectations. Guess what finger I’m holding up?

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Wunderkind is a sweetheart- a sensitive, discerning male of his species with an exceptionally high EQ and a silver tongue to boot. We loves him, my precious. But, platonically and all. (Nothing scandalous please.This is a PG-13 blog, states my priggish antaratma). He was nice enough to talk to me when I thought I’d burst. I owe the averting of an impending brain aneurysm to him.

Ok, so you saved me again from brain aneurysm through some human agency of yours i.e. Wunderkind. But, why did you have to break the mould? Your sense of what counts as decency is appalling. You should go see someone about it. Oh, right. You can’t possibly have shrinks where you live. With the tidy packets they make, they must have got a more tropical climate for their Eternal Rest. You don’t think things through, do you?

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Learnt another important lesson about first impressions and how stupid and simplistic it is to judge someone based on an off day they may be having. I seem doomed to be simplistic and stupid- I never learn from my past wherein I’ve had to change my impulsive judgments of people, much to my mortification. So, here’s what I’ll do- if I don’t know somebody or just barely know them and they are lousy to me, I’ll just be a lamp-post with no opinion, turn the other cheek and smile sweetly. They may just be having a bad day. If someone I know well is crappy to me, God help them.