Chapter
2
Billimoria’s
office overlooked the gate. Some of the faculty were already at the window,
highly amused as they watched the clerk at the entrance. With the familiarity
of old colleagues, they smiled Dr. Naakwaa a quick greeting and shuffled to
make room before turning their attention back to the gate. Not wanting to miss
out on the action, Dr. Naakwaa hurried across to join them.
Good old Jayaram. He had been with the college since
its inception, almost thirty years ago. Thin, neat and small, with an ego
inversely proportioned to his stature, he was their very efficient, one man
admin department.
Jayaram disliked students, tolerating their very
presence at the college with grim determination. He found their exuberance loud
and brash, unless they were quiet, when he labelled them dumb. As expected, he
was being perfectly disagreeable with the new comers. Seated on a hard chair
just outside the gate, he watched crossly as a queue of sorts approached him.
To get a better view of what was transpiring at his desk, each student moved
slightly to the left of the one in front. After a point, having reached the
furthest distance from which they could see his desk clearly, the sideways queue
of students doubled back on itself. Soon they were standing two deep in front
of him. As the second row slowly started snaking out rightward, Jayaram glared
with irritation.
"Line, line," he yelled in his thin, reedy
voice.
The youngsters shuffled obligingly, almost aligning
them-selves behind each other. He ignored the young lady standing at the head of
the queue for as long as possible. Assuming a grave expression he fussed with
his list. With great deliberation he removed the doily from his glass of water
and sipped it before carefully replacing it. Bent in concentration he polished
his glasses with a large handkerchief. His eyes fell on his watch. “Tch,” he
said with an accusing glance at the young woman who tried not to look ruffled
or guilty about wasting his time. Running out of things to do he finally
deigned to look at her, barking out in Hindi, "Which line?"
"What?" said the poor, baffled thing,
darting a quick look at the line behind her and wondering if she ought to be in
another one. "Arré Arts, Science, Commerce?" he said,
enjoying himself hugely as he glowered at her. The four professors, safely out
of sight behind the reflective glass couldn’t help laughing as the luckless
sixteen-year-old mumbled, "Commerce".
Jayaram, unable to resist a final well-aimed jibe,
raised a bushy eyebrow high above the rim of his thick glasses and wondered out
loud how she would go through five years of college if she couldn’t understand
a simple question like his. Having scored his victory, he pretended to lose interest.
Glancing at the young man behind her, his next victim, he cleared the formalities
with the young woman and dismissed her.
The hopelessly disintegrated queue took one step
forward en masse.
And so it was for much of the next hour as Jayaram,
eyebrows high, barked at the youth in his thin, high pitched voice. The new
students shrugged off his mocking tones and disdainful superiority.
Chalta hai
yaar, they seemed to say, never mind. There isn’t much we can do if the man
wants to extract full mileage from his moment by being rude and obnoxious.
Within no time, at his insulting best, the
impossible yet indispensible clerk had efficiently despatched six hundred new
comers to their rightful classrooms. The faculty on the first floor breathed a
sigh of relief.
Excerpt 1 from the book.
Excerpt 3
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