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:
lol..! good one :)
Regards,
Ashwin
My Entry
Haha...good one but at least you tried!! Really curious what that saying means... So you'll not tell your non-mallu readers?
Aw.. sad ...so much effort in vain...
hahaha so much drama for the permissions :D school days were fun :D
LOL!! wonderful take on the prompt. Oh we did have a lot of drama in our Young lives, didnt we. :)
LOL @ the principal's words!! :D
Hope you went for the trip the next year! :)
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
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.
I can understand your feelings when the Principal asked the Memo to be dumped into he trash can.
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!
Lovely write up:)
That was quite the anti climactic ending....:D
Hilarious post, especially the dialog at the end...
Ha ha ha ha lolz!
we didnt even get a chance to send memorandums or things like that!
Must have been a disappointing end!
Richa
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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