Gone Are The Days

After blowing the last trumpet over the exams with a mixed bag of emotions, I began the long haul back home. While commuting to my place, I found a strange lamp. Always a believer in fairy tales, especially if you count in The Arabian Nights, I rubbed the lamp with a zip. Nothing. Once more, followed by twice more. Still nothing other than my hands getting soiled with the dirt. Drenched with disappointment, I resumed my journey. Half an hour more of mulling over the exams, and the loss of the three wishes that should have been rightfully mine, I enter my house hollering, " Khaane mein kya hai? (What is there for lunch?)"  throwing out the question to anyone who could pour out an answer for me. Mother of all surprises, it was my mother who answered, " Roti, daal, sabji (flat-bread, lentils, and a plethora of vegetables which could make a dead man jump out of his grave in fright)," she threw back at me. And poof- all my excitement bobbed under the ever-present sen...

An eight pointer in English can inflate one's ego pretty well. Reciprocating that, a deflating pinch delivered by History leaves one feeling like a collapsed balloon. Take it from one who knows. I started things off well with the curvy lady- Number Eight. She is a great seductress, funny- the frequency with which I am using this word lately (courtesy the pairing up of seduction and Mark Antony by a certain someone which kept me rolling all over the floor, laughing, till I was called on the carpet by my mother), and kept me happy for quite a while. But as they always do, she too grew old, a bit too quick for me, and left me bereaving after her. Replaced by others, of which none could keep me happy for long, she, at the same time, stood irreplaceable. I am, at the moment, gearing up for the coming Tuesday for I know she is there, concealed within the fingers of four professors, all of them showing their penny-pinching parsimony, reluctant to give away marks quite contrary to the ...