I had a dream….hmmm a wonderful dream as far as I could recall….that I was on a
holiday and I had no work, no early mornings, no classes..where you can sleep
as long as you want, eat as much as you want, laze around as long as you
want…it was beautiful…at last I had ‘peace….inner peace’… Suddenly the truant
alarm clock rang and woke me up. I saw the time, it was 7.15 am, which meant
the running water has just started coming and the daily morning
‘ceremony’ has began. I dismissed the alarm telling myself that it’s not
my time yet and I will be up in another 5 minutes.…as I again slipped back to
my dream, where I was sleeping…..
All of
a sudden, something inside me told me “Wake up, it’s late!” and I hurriedly
opened my eyes…I saw the time on the clock. It was 8.05 am, which meant as
usually I was late and
God only knew if the running water was still there or not!!! I opened my door
to check out my doubts. The door next to my immediate neighbor also opened at
the same time and I saw the insider also curiously checking out the same. When
we both realized we are on the same boat, we grinned sheepishly at each other
and went back inside the room to prepare for the ceremony. We both had almost
finished brushing our teeth, when Chota Einstein came out of the bathroom. We
both stared at each other with the intent of a Mexican standoff….we both knew
it was our hair wash day, which meant we both needed the most precious water
and the sacred time to do the needful.....we both generally take ‘some’
time to finish our ceremony and most importantly we both were Late!!!
At last
I budged in...I still had not ironed my clothes and the OCPD side of me can
never go out anywhere without my dress being properly ironed, which meant
Disadvantage me!!! I politely told my ‘mate’ “You go. I will go after you. Just
fill up my bucket meanwhile.” The ‘mate’ smiled graciously at me and said “Of
course…I will be back soon.” By the time she returned back, I was already
fidgeting in anxiety…I had exactly 20 minutes in my hand, before the 9 am class
begins!! I hurried through the motion, cursing myself under my breath for being
late again and promising that next day onward I would definitely wake
up early etc etc..(by the way, promises like these are always meant to be
broken). Finally when I had reached the canteen for breakfast, I saw my mate
had almost finished the breakfast and we were the sole denizens of that
room…which meant the rest must have already left for the class and I was
officially going to get coronated as the Princess of Latecoming!!!!
I
gobbled the tasteless food with such ferocity that our Mess-wala Bhaiyya even
got scared looking at this view and perhaps reconfirmed his suspicion about my
diagnosis! As I ran like a sprint runner towards the teaching block, I saw near
Manokamna the dreaded white ambassador car with Baba inside. He had already
seen me late twice this week and I knew it very well that if he catches me
again I will truly be gone to seventh hell!!! So I ran Bolt-speed and reached
the teaching block in record time (The Olympic committee was not there, else
they would have declared me the fastest human on earth). The class had already
started, but thankfully the class was full…which meant I could very easily
sneak in unnoticed and took my seat among the back-benchers (i.e, the
latecomers). I was still in my transcendental state and after a while when I
could not control my disobedient eyelids, I dozed off.
When I
woke up the class was almost over. I tried and act like a pseudo-intellectual
throughout the rest of the class, taking down all what was been shown on the
slides. Nobody could tell that I was sleeping few minutes back, as my unruly
hair falling over my face, was protecting my sleeping face from being detected
and the right hand was scribbling down something on the notebook in its
autopilot mode. Only those who would have been a keen observer would have
realized that all that was written was more indecipherable than any lost
language.
After the class got over I started walking
towards the ward where I was currently posted. Unlike the rest who rushed to
the respective wards or OPD after the class, I was in no hurry. The artistic me
was enjoying every sight and sound of the nature around me, while walking...I was
almost on the verge of making some poem revering the beauty of nature....as if
Mr. Wordswoth's spirit was getting invoked inside me as "I wandered
lonely as a cloud..." when the stupid stray dogs roaming in front of the
ward started barking at me and the poetic mood vanished in the thin air. I was
going to scold the dogs about their insolence and stupidity, but their remarkable
show of the canine teeth, got the better of me and I left the scene as soon as
possible, realizing that right now escaping would be the
best defense.
It was our all patient round day...my
dreaded day....it meant I had to stand upright on my feet and follow the
entourage as we would move from one patient's bed to another, which meant poor
me cannot even sleep!!! Added to that was the horrible stink in that
dormitory,which acts as a sleep deterrent!! As I was lamenting about my
pitiable state, I smelled a nice perfume or a deo nearby....it was coming from
my 'mate' who was also posted in that ward. Me and Maggie hair looked at each
other....we smiled...we both were thinking the same...and gradually moved near
the 'mate' so that we can fight the stinking odor in the room with the use of
the fragrance of the 'mate's' deo....she did not look behind....she was too
busy explaining ERP to our Consultant who was looking at her with pride. As I
basked in that life saving fragrance my mind again diverted to my poetic inward
eye and my heart also started dancing with the daffodils, when Mr. Fish brought
me down to reality with a big thud. Naye, it was not Mr. Fish himself, but it was our
Consultant who started asking us definitions of delusion and overvalued ideas
from Mr. Fish's psychopathology book. Aye my friends consider my condition
once....here I was.... a fish lover...who would gorge on fish twice everyday since her childhood, forced to read Fish for the last one month instead of eating one....will any definition of delusions and hallucinations allure me...when I myself was
having visual hallucinations of seeing dishes of fish in front of me???? Nobody
understood... at least our Consultant who himself was a Bong like me did not...so
there I was looking blankly as the questions were being bombarded at us. Hence
I thought of taking a shield...very slyly I was whispered into the ears of my
'mate'...."Tell me the definition"...My 'mate' did not disappoint me
and she also whispered back something in my ear...Aye!!! But she did not
consider my ear ailment while doing so...well....errr...I'm little short of hearing
in my right ear (actually still undecided about which one is the worse than the
other)...and as 'right'ly described it literally fell into the deaf ear....So I
again whispered back to her asking her to repeat again. What I did not notice
that while we were carrying out the short distance call...our Consultant joined
in it, making it a Conference call. I was embarrassed...but put up a brave face
acting as if it was just a wrong number dialled. But our
Consultant was intelligent enough to catch my bluff and so he directed another
question at me, which I had no clue about. I scratched my head hard and finally came up with an answer of my own...I
daresay it was particularly innovative...an open ended question itself!!! But
aye! He did not appreciate my innovation and after the disastrous end to my
innovation one senior chided me for giving 'air and water' (Hawa Pani -
courtesy CIP dictionary)...and there went my momentary ambition to
follow Mr. Jobs..."Think Different".
I was pretty disappointed at this and was
visualizing imaginary dialogues with the then Apple CEO, about how thinking different is not appreciated everywhere, as I started having my
ultra ultra rapid cycle of transcendental phase once more. I got alert....in
that delicate condition where I was presently, I could not afford to slip back
into it...so I looked around me for help. Maggie hair was busy telling some MSE
while Sleeping beauty looked as if she was in a much high state than mine in
achieving the transcendental phase (actually we both were fierce competitors
till the end of 1st year, but she won hands down by the end of 2nd year in this
category). So in utter despair I explained the situation to my 'mate' and asked
her to poke me as hard as possible...repeatedly with variable interval in
between. I guess she had never seen anyone achieving such high state of
consciousness while standing...so the first few pokes were soft..more out
of curiosity than anything else. But mine was an emergency state...it
was no time for trial and error...so I asked her to pinch me harder. She
did comply and aye it was indeed hard!!! I mildly screamed...alerted my
Consultant once again of some suspicious activity going on under his nose...he directed a question
towards me which I half knew...but as they say "fortune favors the brave"...so
luckily my 'mate' whispered the rest of the answer into the right ear
(in this case the left ear) and I got duly saved. I smiled gratefully at my
'mate' for this and from that moment we stuck up a weird kind of a
friendship....She was supposed to poke or pinch me whenever I would pass into
the transcendental state of Consciousness and whisper answers into my
left ear whenever I would not know any answer during the rounds.....and in
return I would save her from lizards of any size whenever they would knowingly
or unknowingly venture near her vicinity at any time of the day!!!
And thus we pledged ourselves to be 'Bodyguard's of different genre.
We continued honoring our pledge even after we were made apart by our 'zaalim'
department, as soon as we finished a record 7 months duration of postings
together in different wards in the first year. And people have come and gone,
but nobody can awake me via pinches and pokes like she did and I guess it is
the same for her...(sob, sob)
This 'mate' is none other than my beloved
'Saat saal'...my sole partner in crime during my CIP days when it came to Non Veg
food hunting (read eating)...and I know whenever she will eat hot pakodas at
4.30 in the evening, she will surely miss our memorable days.............(can't
sob anymore...it's gonna flood soon)
P.S. An appeal to the makers of 'Ek thi Dayaan'...please don't show witches turning into lizards any more...it just reinforced my 'Saat saal's' 'Chipkali phobia'...