logikal’s blog

I was wooing Kamaljit- 16, PYT

Prelude

She stood there adamant- a little unhappy at my arrogance. No, I won’t let her into my car! Now, I must tell you, I, KB, am 17, a little bit of a snob, and she is a pretty young thing, with blinking eyes, tall, and enamored of the town scallywag, me! I am, just being me, TDH to her petite beauty, and admiring her bobbing breasts as she played badminton, and with that, rose immortal poems in my heart… she was worth it!

I

Let me describe my predicament. From the beginning, for that is the place to begin! That is what Confucius says!

I played badminton at the stadium, obviously. Otherwise, this story would not have begun…

My desire grew… within the fortnight, I was lost knee deep in the quagmire of calf love, of Kamaljit’s calves… (two of them in fact- she had lovely legs) as she swung the badminton racket. It was intoxicating.

One day, in fact- Day One, I saw Kamaljit playing badminton. I too was playing badminton in the next court with a fat gent- with a pot belly and a cheap wooden racket- no- the racket was in my hands. I was winning my first point while he was at his 18th.

I was serving the next point when Kamaljit began her swing to serve. I was admiring her, when the pot bellied gent yelled, how long does he have to wait? I served, rather absent mindedly. The shuttle cock stayed in flight for a vertical drop. The racket handle stayed within my grip. The rest of my racket flew headlong into Mister Pot Belly Gupta bellicosely!

Kamaljit lost her point. She was laughing away to glory. She smiled at me…
Since her partner too was choking with laughter, I knew he would not notice my stealing at the laughing heart-throb. Mr. P B Gupta was laughing too. I grinned at Kamaljit! I could make out she was in love!

Or was it? Her irate partner yelled- “Kamaljit kudiye! Service!” (Kamaljit girl, service!)

He glared at me. Which adoring and protective father would not, especially if the predator is a handsome Bengali Brahmin boy, certainly unwelcome in a Sikh girl’s mind? He was also thinking “That too the boss’s son” in addendum to my own thoughts- this I learnt much later, the hard way!

I picked up my regular racket, a Slazenger! I won the game, the next twenty points in a row, while Mr. P B Gupta was clutching his tummy.

What the hell! Love makes tigers of the mice! You know the Chinese saying? A good fortune may forebode a bad luck, which may in turn disguise a good fortune! Good fortune? That was Kamaljit’s presence in the next court. Bad fortune, my wooden racket broke. Good fortune- I won the game!

Kamaljit’s father, Mr. Channey, hence KFC in short, was annoyed in matter of minutes. His daughter won the next three games… as I watched the Kamaljit-KFC match in real earnest.

I liked her!
And her father looked like a wrestler.
I disliked him!

I was thin too, much thinner than him, but weighed a healthy 60 kilos! And I was then a diminutive 5’-6” tall, quite Ok for my age!

II
A month went by, and then two months. I did not break any more rackets.
I had changed my residence, and became a temporarily permanent denizen of the stadium trying to figure out when Miss Kamaljit would come to the stadium, and go back, unescorted, a big if though! I was stationed outside, to see if Kamaljit too went to the gym. Unescorted- sadly, the answer was no! She had a hunk or two with her whenever she went home, barely three hundred yards away.

And it was here that I met KRRK while in vigil at the stadium. Wise beyond my years, he was adopted as my mentor. He was short, 5 feet and a half inch, and squat, a young lad of thirty to my 17 winters. He was unemployed as the rumors were, but in fact he was a sailor on frequent shore leave from Mckenzie McKinnon or some fabulous shipping company! Somewhat impecunious, seamen are acceptable. He lived with Mr. Doraisami Velayudhan, an office superintendent in my father’s office. My father was the boss!

I adopted Mr. KRRK as my mentor. Stories of his exploits with girls at every port of call, as narrated by the one and the only KRRK, had made me admire him!

In short, I asked my mentor, Kottali Rama Rao Krishnaswamy, KRRK in short, how to tackle the situation… he readily adopted the suggestions and endorsed me into his august school- KRAKOW- The KRRK Academy of the Knack of Wooing! In short, that is!

He, not Mr. Doraisami, but KRRK, asked me if I had money for a cup of tea and a cigarette too! Assured, we went into a huddle at Faujdar’s Tuck Shop! Of this gentleman, a pock marked face and a very dark, lanky body were his distinguishing features. Besides, he was an avid story teller- he claimed to be in service in the MES during WW-II as a laborer for two months, but claimed that he had seen action in Japan, where the British Army planted hydrogen oil bombs in Haridwar and Nagapura and burst it with a pair of kamikaze Bangalore torpedoes. He however had a good hand in brewing English tea, and used to serve it with dollops of sugar and milk in somewhat old glass tumblers the size of thimbles of which the bottoms were apparently glued with chitin and gum. The tea was wonderful.

KRRK took a sip, and finished the cup of joy in a blink of an eye! He looked expectantly at Faujdar… Faujdar looked at me. I nodded, and stretched out my fingers- two and took them to my lips. The two WD&HO Wills Goldflake cigarettes materialized on that cue. I had counsel ready to talk, but he raised his palm as if to say wait!

“So you want to impress that scrawny small blinking idiot?” rasped KRRK. I nodded.

“KRRK, she is a perfect girl for me. I want to marry her as soon as I can!”
KRRK considered that for a few moments… he had not spoken for about thirty minutes now. “And how will you feed her?” he asked. I said I would find a job somewhere… or sell tea at a tea stall, and she could make the eats there!
“Boy!” he said, “that is an interesting idea- I guess you would get plenty of customers that way… tell me what is she like when you talk to her?”
I went numb… I had never talked to her before.

KRRK asked me where she lived- I told her she lived in my heart, oops 221 Baulia Colony! KRRK started laughing- “Boy, you have sunk! And, what does she do?” I said, she plays badminton at the stadium. I was lying, she lived near the Stadium complex itself.

KRRK looked at me, a mad gleam in his eyes. He said sternly that one should not look at girls from the same section of the railway colony- this was spread over five kilometers in length and two in breadth. I said I would like my in-laws to stay close to my home. KRRK grinned. And why would I love that? I answered that her father was a National Badminton coach, and the union has prospects for me.

KRRK laughed his demoniacal laughter- “Have you seen her brothers yet?”
Now that was something I did not know. KRRK explained- her two brothers, both elder to her, were dreaded toughies- they played all games and were worked out at the stadium gym too. And the damsel I wanted so badly was dominated by them. They never visited the FTS, “Faujdar Tea Service”. The first was a demoralizing piece of information, a setback obviously! The second was common knowledge!

KRRK puffed his cheeks to spit out an imaginary piece of dental muck! He said in a deep meditative voice, “Tomorrow”. Hope swelled in my heart… I was to get some good advice tomorrow. I was in fact about to woo Kamaljit, at long last!

I walked home with a song in my heart- that merry song on a train ringing in my ears “Oh Queen of my dream when will you come thou, come on come on!” you know the Hindi version of this song, by the late K Kumar from that movie “Prayer”, released in 1969. The events belonged to 1966, 1967, 1968, and has traces in 1972, when she got married off! Was I still wooing her? Make a guess!

I felt good. I was Clint Eastwood chewing a stick in what was that movie? Makhanaz Gull!

Oops!

III
By now we have three characters and the protagonist himself with a K or two embedded in their name! The plot thickens- it is a K- Kitchen, what do you think? Fate was playing cat and mouse, rather, K for kitten, K for KB, K for KFC, K for KJ, K for KRRK… oops that is too many K’s- I lost count- I was in love! The kittens were growing up in a remote corner of the massive Badminton Hall just outside the Stadium, next to the swimming pool

KRRK had told me to write a love letter to the lady with the K in her name, and keep it stored in a sweat proof plastic cover, with a rose petal for effect, in my pocket. I also kept a throbbing heart not in my pocket! It may happen.

I also had my car with me- borrowed of course from the garage in our bungalow. I was ready to elope, just as KRRK had said. They say the wait has sweet fruits in Hindi, which in my native Punjabi ooops, Bengali means Sabre dah Fall Meat Ha Honda! I was playing with wet tresses in my mind…

I was wooing Kamaljit!

FTS was gaining in prosperity as KRRK Consultancy service prospered. I was exhausting my pocket money. And learning history as told by Faujdar! He said he was captured by the Japanese as Singapore fell. After learning that he was a volunteer for the INA, now stranded without money after the British ran away or were capture, they let him set up a chow-mein and tea shop in distant Mandalay POW Camp. When he was about to commit suicide, out of sheer boredom- after too many Burmese girls in the Burma Trail had ditched him, he jumped into the high seas, and was rescued by Captain- one Mr. Jeorgio Hrrisanvsky from Prague and a deemed mercenary, aboard a Yellow Submarine belonging to the Chinese Navy, and dropped off in the Andaman Islands, yes, a mercenary for sure. Then he swam home to Lake Chilka near Balasore! I found KRRK smiling as if it was… what?

This was the ninety seventh day since I had set my eyes on Kamaljit. She still played badminton with her coach and father, the fat Mr. KFC. I kept having nightmares in fear of the two body guards that escorted her home every day!

And I beat the district and state champion in badminton. He left in disgust to join the Film and Television Institute of India, on Karve Road in Pune. My field was clear. He was the boyfriend.

I was elated, for the probability of gaining a toe-hold in Ms K’s heart had increased. My pocket allowance was over each day, KRRC had not told me about the Methods of Wooing Badminton Girls for Dummies as yet! But he had promised… soon!

What? There was an interlude.

Gur Shorn and Gur Tarpaul, brothers and bodyguards to KJ, started using my car to ride home. They were totally happy with me… and once, just once, I went into the Loin’s Den. She was there, kneading wheat flour, and her mother stood just behind the curtains. She had a rolling pin in her hands. Kamaljit did not appear. She was in love!

IV
One day, Mr. KFC failed to escort Ms K to the stadium. He was in fact sick and at home! And Ms K was smiling. There were no other players in the badminton hall- except for me, and her! I had it made.

I pointed to the rackets and to the court. She nodded, yes!
The game began in earnest.

She was serving…

We had not spoken as yet!

The door opened. The bodyguards moved in and led the screeching girl away.

Don’t ask me. A mirror shattered in the distance!

KRRC ate an additional biscuit that day. Faujdar told me a new story, but I cannot narrate that- I was not listening to anything- the screeches of the girl as she was led away… sorry, she was smiling at her brothers- she had gladly gone away, breaking my heart!

And I wanted to woo Kamaljit! I could wait… till the Graf Zeppelin lands in this town? Perhaps!

Hey Buddy, a new story?

How I wooed Kamaljit?

Oh come on- I never wooed her again! And she is perhaps a granny now, but this is a piece of legitimate guess work!

I must write a book called My Truth with Explosions! Or, perhaps, Fred Hoyle’s Muse!

It is Diwali Time… and time for a confession or two- may be a series of those. These also explain how we, the kids of a long gone by era, bloomed as engineers these days!

1

He was six years old, and keen to graduate as an engineer at that ripe old age. He was in class 2, rather prematurely, but topping school! He had heard about James Watt’s invention, and knew these were part of his father’s profession, and he was occasionally travelling in railway saloon cars, sometimes attached next to a steam engine. His father was then a Joint Director in Rail Bhawan, New Delhi, but he never took his child to his office, so mean of him! Anyway, most of his toys were railway trains, precious… but he wanted to know what made actual steam engines work. He liked the tracks and a MECCANO #000 set, but beyond that, not much! So he decided on his experiments with the Truth, once in a while.

It was Diwali, 1956!

The small boy in knickers with big eyes and a tousled head held the toy with a wistful look. He had “taken” his Dad’s screwdriver and pliers- he really knew how to play with those. Sometime ago, he had broken his three year old brother’s arm with a hammer… story censored!

The house was busy. The father was busy providing the finishing touches to a paper hot air balloon in the first floor drawing room. Seeing his opportunity, the boy slipped upstairs to the second floor roof top, and opened the railway engine, a year old beauty- he had no use for it. He picked up a piece of coconut peel from the open box containing coal, and placed it daintily into the engine. And then he struck a match, borrowed from the kitchen, and lit the coir. It caught- a smoky fire was exactly what was needed. The boy rolled the three and a half (one wheel lost) wheeled steam engine on the floor, when he heard his named being called by his father. Promising himself that he would return soon to play, he left the engine… in the coal box! But then he was made to eat his evening snacks- milk and biscuits and bananas!

Twenty minutes later, the neighbors called, the roof top had a blaze going!

Though pleading innocence, it was rather hard for the boy to explain how the toy engine, with remnants of coir was found in the coal box… and why was he upstairs sometimes back…

No, I won’t tell you what happened next!

 

2

This time the boy was almost eight, and going to a school 500 yards away from home. He still topped his class- and his father was the boss of the railway district in Samastipur, a sleepy little town. The boy still wanted to be an engineer, and had decided he would major in electrical engineering, after his mother’s cousin, who had just graduated and was talking of valves and positive and negative and coils and… of course the thing worked on electricity from the plug point.

Coils? Plug?

Fine! He picked up the nice looking table lamp from the drawing room. With scissors borrowed from a drawer below his Mom’s Singer, he cut the lead and stripped these… now for the coil? Cut the kitchen door wire-mesh! Coil it, and the two ends of the plug and lead, tie it to the ends of the former wire-mesh component.

What is there? Marconi plugged in his invention, and turned on the juice!

Fred Hoyle was absent when this big bang took place… alas, there was darkness in the District Traffic Superintendent’s bungalow in Railway Colony, Samastipur!

And a very discouraged scientist, nay, engineer, sulked- he hated people who did not experiment with truth, nor admired his spirit of experimentation.

3
 Hg(CNO)2, Mercury fulminate is now banned as a common man’s explosive, but it was freely available in the 60’s. I remember peeling off toy pistol caps and collecting the brownish delight in a, holy s**t, empty match box! Our car mechanic, Abdul Aziz, had opened an electric pump and had left a six inch shaft of about one-fourth of an inch in diameter, for me to admire… and I had a matching iron cylinder, two inches in diameter and height, but it had a cylindrical hole, closed at one end… and I was wondering what was the best use for it… what else? Take off the powder from some match heads and stuff it into the hole and ram it with the rod? Nyah, it had no effect…

Being a 17 year old Junior college student of science, offers a great advantage- it is that the imagination really works, with vague help from PK Datta’s Chemistry book! I had fulminate, also used for the “atom bombs”, also banned, and I could see the fireworks. So I rammed the mix of match head powder along with the fulminate, and then placed the shaft in the hole. It was a perfect fit.

I always admire Thor’s hammer, for I was soaked to my ears in Norse mythology. I remembered Loki and Logi, and Friga and blah! Did you say Ragnarök?

Odin hammered the hammer on the shaft’s head… blam!

The shaft pinged off the roof, the hammer departed from my hand rather wickedly, and both landed safe inches away from me- I was horizontal on the ground… the room was echoing.

Fred Hoyle may have learnt his Big Bang theory about this time! I was temporarily deaf for thirty seconds- I realized it was prolonged because of my dad twisting my ears.

There was a patch of plaster lying next to the hammer!

4

After the Bangladesh war, many friends and seniors took away small and big mementoes- actually trash, from Bangladesh. I carried away with me a copy of the Holy Kur’aan in Arabic lying wrapped in a green cloth by the road side, and a belt of 200 Pakistani machine gun bullets. Perhaps some Pakistani soldier had found religion was a burden while escaping advancing soldiers!

In December, 1971, after the War was over, I did not want to keep the bullets. In an idle afternoon, I stripped away the bullets and collected the cordite and kept it in a tin. I threw away the brass (imagine!) and the lead.

My young batman, all of 19 years to my 23, was very perplexed about the cordite I carried with me. He wanted it to burn it for heating water for my bath! I was worried and did not want an accident. To guide him, I, then a 2/Lt, told him to create a long fuse near the intended place of fire. He made the fuse, of cordite, what else- laying it like a trail of sugar to entice the ants! As he was about to light the match, I noticed that the tail of the fuse-trail of cordite, just 4 feet long… 8 milliseconds, time wise, were it solid, was almost at the place where he wanted to use cordite as a fuel, a mini dump of about 400 gm of it!

Before I could say Jack Nicholson, he lit the tail, about 4 feet in length!

The fire was brief, smokeless and almost invisible. The reaction time is rather small- cordite burns in excess of 520 feet per second when compact, though the loose powder does not. I was the more surprised at the new man standing by the fire that never was… the features were however very familiar. I guessed that my man Friday had undergone a rapid depilatory experience. He had lost all facial hair, eyebrows and eye lids included, though not his sight or wits, for he had none to lose! He had perhaps rejoiced in the pyrotechnical methodology adopted but was still grinning in a dazed stupor!

Also in attendance, two yards away was the Doctor, a young captain, totally without exposure to war and war like stores.  He grinned and then developed an unexplainable paroxysm of laughter! We poured water on the Doctor!

When I went home in March 1972, I left the Kur’aan in my father’s custody, and four years after his death- the Holy Book finally found repose with a Muslim family in 2007! It had a special place in my heart!

I bought an immersion type water heater.

5

Much later, I had learnt the theory of the Devil in a DRDO establishment! I know the devil that Mercury Fulminate can be… the rest? I won’t tell you!

I did become an engineer…

Oh, did I tell you how I fixed a glass window in Jan 1973 during a snowfall, after a stone flew off my hands and broke the Major’s window? Another day!

Wish You a Happy Diwali…

The apple tree shook as if it was hit by lightning and thunder. Below sat a young man, distraught, since time immemorial, he was so disposed.

The apple alighted upon the Earth  like Venus by Botticelli, narrowly missing the head of the young man, deeply engrossed in philosophy. Engrossed? Why do things fall?

And the apple spoke, after changing into a maiden, rather haggard, but pink and yet smiling… Hi Isaac, I am Gravity, and you can call me Gravvy! That was the rule then, everything must fall. Isaac fell. Towards Gravy’s open arms, in love in that momentous moment, an impulse… sadly, Gravvy took two steps backwards, and Isaac fell a little more, on the grass and the anthill…

Alas, that night when he tried to write a love letter to Miss Gravvy, he debated why to fall in love was so mundanely universal and instead, past midnight, when the oil being burnt was at its nadir, flickering and smoky, he realized he would be forever in love with Gravvy, and wrote his epic love story, The Laws of Universal Gravity. Gravity Attracts. Isaac Falls. Apples Rot!

Elsewhere, the light of love went off!

Gravvy was not a trifle bit in love- she was into the philosophy of dancing. She danced the minuet for a while, and thought it over… the next day, she told Isaac, I am going away.

Betrayed, Isaac stood by the Thames, contemplating suicidal love poetry again. He then wrote, the three Laws of Emotions.

1.             Everybody remains in a state of depression unless and/or until he or she is acted upon by an externally unbalanced woman or man.

2.             Everybody remembers his Mom, whenever he or she is jilted. The more the shock, the greater the call- but the Uffs equal Ma!

3.             And finally Isaac said he and she attract and/or repel each other equally.

Having said this, Isaac sat on a newt, but to the latter- a little later, Isaac’s calculi like weight made no differential! The newt Isaac sat upon was transformed integrally into a calculus itself! It was dead.

Miss Gravvy went to Gottfried Leibnitz, a contemporary Hun with ulterior motives. The two lovers fought jealously for Ms Gravvy’s hand, and as to who invented Calculus!

Who was it that said “An Apple a Day keeps the PhD away”? Not me!

don’t get any ideas about me!!!- keep your foot off me too!

BUZZ OFF PAL!!!