Liar!!

"I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera."

• Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the rye.

The alarm bells are ringing. But I can’t see it. Its way too dim and the spiraling path makes my head reel. The smog that engulfs me is maroon and the dead bits of flesh lie everywhere, squashed by speeding trucks on the highway. I can hear baby Newton cry as the white rabbit jumps down the well with his apple. The alarm bells keep ringing and I spiral down to an abyss that I can’t comprehend. White rabbit catches up with me and shoves the apple down my throat, choking me. I can’t breathe. Alarm bells are ringing.

“Shit!!” I wake up with a jolt. 7:40 AM. And my classes start at 8:00.

I’ll be late again. Man, I gotta learn to crash early. My prof won’t excuse me this time. It has been like this the whole semester. At this rate I won’t have enough attendance to appear for the end semester.

I hurriedly brush and wear trousers and report to the class in the same T shirt that I slept in. Breakfast is no longer a necessity. It is a luxury reserved for the weekends and Sundays when we put night outs doing nothing.

Chennai heat. It saps the essence of life out of you. Sultry, wicked heat baring its bony, yellowed fangs at you in the early morn.

I am drenched in sweat by the time I reach the department. The prof is taking attendance. Late again!!

“Ah! You never learn do you? I think you better come for the next class.”

“No sir! I started off early. But my friend met with an accident. I had to take him to the hospital and then rush to class. Please sir. I wanted to come on time.”

First lie of the day. It worked like a charm. What a great way to start.

After a helpless frown at such a plausible excuse, he continues to drone on about how to convert a particular partial differential equation into ordinary differential equation in order to solve a wave equation.

"We start off with the Helmholtz equation…. “

Heck who cares. Being the least bothered to learn, I take out my note book and scribble some of what he had written on the blackboard in an astonishingly beautiful hand. He is a good professor and has an irrefutable hold over the subject. I wish I were a tad more interested. But no matter how much I try, it just seems too impossible for me to concentrate.

A couple of monkeys play outside the window. They are just too naughty and cute when they are babies, carefree and safe within their mothers’ cautious range of vision. One of the babies gives me an indifferent look as it ambles past the window sill. It makes me wonder what it might be thinking, i.e., if it thinks at all. How much do wave equations and acoustics matter to him? He was comfortably placed with nature taking care of his needs until man encroached upon his kingdom and built the biggest institute for engineers in the land. We took away his food and his home. Education needed sacrifice I guess.

Gibberish talks of mine in a boring class room.

The class is finally over. I am hungry. I decide to run over to the nearby staff canteen and grab a bite and therefore I turn up late again for the next class. Thankfully this prof is lenient and doesn’t bother much whether the students attend his classes or not. He knows that we can manage. Besides, his assignments are made of killer stuff and take weeks to sort out without cogging. Of course, in the end of the course, junta end up copying from each other anyway. He doesn’t care. All he needs is that the students should be able to explain what each one has cogged and thereby convince him that one has gained a reasonable understanding of the course.

One by one the classes pass without much happening and lunch time arrives. We break for our hostels. Unlike last year, now we have a new common mess for all the hostels. It has been named Himalayas. Grand as it may look, the food there still is pathetic.

Mom calls up right then. I complain about the food, the weather, the wretched place, how I have to hog at some better place everyday and how exorbitant the price ranges are. She consoles me in her usual cooing voice that I have grown up hearing and tells me that money is not the issue. And I don’t hesitate to ask for more. Then I am off to the mess to have food. I don’t usually waste cash for food. There are other requirements that I need to cater to that I can’t yet reveal to my mom.

Ah!! I did it again! The second lie of the day.

“Hey Jim! Can you lend me your cycle for the afty? I have just one class at one.”

“No man, I need it. I have to go and meet my BTP guide.”

My BTP guide is abroad attending a seminar. I giggle within at the thought of going to meet him Germany on a bicycle.

RG. Relative grading. It takes first year students by the scruff of their necks and beats them into submission to the prevailing system and makes cynics of many of them. How good you are would depend on how bad the other person is. The system is such that one has to kill or be killed. We call it RG’ing. Now that I am in my fourth year, I am a formidable RG God, as the lingo would phrase it.

But then, there are many who, unlike me, do not give in to circumstances and retain their better selves. Kudos to those guys.

I am back to my tiny room. Someone knocks immediately after I enter. He begs for a fag. For once I don’t lie. Nicotine promotes common brotherhood. We discuss the heat, the food and the courses we are doing as we share the last fag I had. This guy has a high CGPA of nine point something. It makes me shrivel with shame sometimes that I am a six pointer. But then, it is just a passing phase like a wave of the breeze of realization in the sweltering madness.

Two hours pass by since the last cigarette. I start craving for another. But the scorching heat of the sun dares me to show my vulnerable face to it and it seems to know that I am too lazy and laughs away at my plight, unchallenged by the cowardly scattered clouds. It bugs me. And I decide to brave the heat and get fags.

“Hey Annie!! You got some change on you? Just five bucks. I’ll return it to you in the night.”

“Sure”

Heck, I had no intention of repaying. Whoever bothers to remember five bucks loans?

A five minute walk takes me down to “Gurusami cool bar”, a tiny shop that sells cigarettes, cool drinks and stationary.

“Anna, naalu regular kuda.” (Brother, pass me four regulars.) J

“Saar, your account already is two hundred and thirty eight. Give money saar.”

And I make him the usual promise of repaying every rupee the next week.

What a pathetic life I am leading. Jesus save me from the fires of hell. Even if He doesn’t, hope they have such gullible devils there too.

The evenings in the campus are beautiful. I love playing football. The thrill of tricking another player and taking the ball past him gives me the kicks. There are many sports one can play here. Badminton, tennis, table tennis, basketball, swimming, cricket and even ball baddy. I stick to football, because it doesn’t need a membership card for which one needs to pay. I am a freeloader to the marrow.

After a refreshing game, I am back to my room. The messenger on my comp screens messages from my sister. I reply immediately saying how I was hurt while football practice today. It wasn’t a lie. Just an exaggeration.

It feels good when people who care for you fuss over you. I am a spoilt brat. It wasn’t that the rod had ever been spared. It has had its use too frequently. I am too thick skinned for it to have had any effect. Knowledge is power. The fact that I knew that the whipping cane was just a momentary disciplinary tool made me fear it less day by day as I grew up. I learnt to bear it through as the consequences of my being foolish enough to have got caught doing something wrong. One of the most important lessons of life I have learnt so far. You are not a criminal until you get caught. So you just need to be smart enough to not get caught.

Dinner was a sordid affair. I was almost tempted to pack off to some good eatery. But it was the middle of the month and I was broke. My best friend’s girl friend calls up crying about how badly she wants him to get off his marijuana addiction. Even I do it once a while. But she knows I am not addicted and trusts me that I can help her. I reassure her the zillionth time that he is trying and has succeeded in reducing with an amazing show of will power. I add colorful stories about how he has started jogging early mornings and how he refused a fag I offered him yesterday.

God!! Just a few white lies to make her feel better. Please don’t add them up to my account book. I will repay you next week. That’s a promise!

I sit down in front of the computer, finishing up my term paper on evacuation systems in airplanes. Some work completed at the end of the day and I congratulate myself. It is eleven already and people start buzzing me to join the game server. I totally lose myself to the game and time flies. It is four by the time I quit.

“Shit!!” Classes tomorrow. Same prof. Man, I never learn. Gotta find some new excuse tomorrow.