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How we planned the trip


I guess it was around the same time, many years ago. We 11th graders were very jealous of our seniors who went for an excursion to Ooty. That was when Kerala was just the land of coconuts and not of the Gods. So Ooty was the dream destination of most of the South Indians – be it for honeymoon or even school trips!

Whenever these guys got a chance, they narrated their never-ending stories of the tour and flashed photographs of their monkey faces against the green meadows of Ooty. Yes, it’s universal that seniors love to nag their juniors. So envious we were of the fun they had and couldn't wait for one more year for a similar trip with our classmates.

Through our class teacher, we requested the Principal to allow our batch also to go on a 2-3 days trip to some place. However, it was ruthlessly rejected with no bit of consideration. We were all deeply hurt at the dismissal of our request and were angry about it. However, we were not ready to give up so easily; so we decided to try another route – the Mallu way! Tadaaa…!!!

By that I didn't mean holding dharnas or boycotting classes. Our idea was to submit a memorandum to our Principal stating our need. After all, we Malayalees are good at mobilizing people! So, the core members of the program enthusiastically collected the signatures of almost every student of the batch. Betrayers will be found everywhere and we also had a few among us. We secretly decided to not include them in the trip after we get the permission.

It was D-Day, the Deciding Day! The class leaders approached the Principal with the so-called memorandum presented in a few A4 sheets, neatly clipped in a file. She was at her desk checking some registers while one of them cleared his throat to grab her attention. Not lifting her head, she just raised her eyebrows at them. That one piercing look and our guys almost lost it. Probably, there was something in the air that drained away all the confidence they had gathered from us to put forward the mass request.
 
One of them began, “Mam, this is a memorandum… I mean a request …a humble request on behalf of the 11th graders to go for an excursion this year”. He stretched the file at the Principal. She continued to look at them; her eyes moved from one face to the other. The boy who began still had his hand stretched; they were not sure if they should stay back or just exit the room. 

The Principal put down her pen, leaned back on her chair and removed her spectacles. As she rubbed her eyes with one hand, she pointed towards the corner of the room with her other hand and said, “Dump those papers into the dustbin and get back to your classes.”

Stunned at her response, they stood there with puzzled faces. She continued, “Is that not clear?”

The next second, the glorified memorandum lied in the trash; all of them got back to the classroom and with much difficulty, ignored the heartless betrayers who made fun of them, “**enthokke bahalam aayirunnu… malappuram kathi, machine gun, bomb …olakkayude moodu!!”

However, the drama was soon forgotten as we had lot other fun things to focus on.

** a very popular dialogue from an old Malayalam film, which only my Mallu friends can relate to.


PS: This post is part of the Write Tribe Festival of Words 2. The challenge is seven posts in seven days and this is the fifth one in the series, on the theme Travel. 

15 comments:

Ashwin Kumar said...

lol..! good one :)

Regards,
Ashwin
My Entry

Aditi said...

Haha...good one but at least you tried!! Really curious what that saying means... So you'll not tell your non-mallu readers?

Pratikshya said...

Aw.. sad ...so much effort in vain...

Rajlakshmi said...

hahaha so much drama for the permissions :D school days were fun :D

Mysoul said...

LOL!! wonderful take on the prompt. Oh we did have a lot of drama in our Young lives, didnt we. :)

Shilpa Garg said...

LOL @ the principal's words!! :D
Hope you went for the trip the next year! :)

Anita Jeyan said...

Oh shit. If you guys were granted permission...you could safely exclude the betrayers and flash the trip pics in front of them and see their reaction...! I hate it when betrayers wins.:D

Obsessivemom said...

Oh I love your principal.. How dramatic is that....oops Sorry for laughing at you but it would have been such a sight... Memorandum straight inthe bin.. Still laughing.

kalpana solsi said...

I can understand your feelings when the Principal asked the Memo to be dumped into he trash can.

Dr Roshan Radhakrishnan said...

there will always be those rascals who wont help and then will rub your face in it when you lose also with those kinda dialogues ".. machine gun, bomb, olakkayude moodu!" :D Just typing that line makes me giggle a little :)

we really missed out on excursions.. dont know about Chinmaya but other places have some high-fi excursions!

Anonymous said...

Lovely write up:)

Jairam said...

That was quite the anti climactic ending....:D

Hilarious post, especially the dialog at the end...

Privy Trifles said...

Ha ha ha ha lolz!

Richa Singh said...

we didnt even get a chance to send memorandums or things like that!

Must have been a disappointing end!

Richa

Dr Roshan Radhakrishnan said...

i wanted to be auto driver.. i used to love those circular metallic pics of God that they would have in the autos in the 90s... figured it was a cool job because of that :p

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