It was a hot summer in May. The season is famous for its succulent mangoes and sweltering heat. It is famous for another reason – the disappearance of children in the age group of 14-16 years from open spaces / playgrounds.
Dahiya, the local Indian writer, was enjoying his afternoon nap. The fan provided no respite from the heat, other than to help circulate hot air. From the background, in a staccato fashion, similar to an AK-47 shot, came the sounds, ‘sine theta’, ‘cos theta’, ‘tan theta’ and its variants.
Little Ramu, not so little anymore, a stocky 16-year-old boy, was sitting on the floor, preparing for the multitude of exams, to enter the medical and engineering faculties of India.
The whole family (father, mother and company) had moved, baggage and baggage, to the training institutes in Bandigarh, to take advantage of the ‘best training facilities’ in the country. This would help Ramu secure a ‘deserving seat’ and a ‘secure’ and ‘stable life’.
Ramu’s father snapped out of his now disturbed sleep. “Ramu! I’ll spank you. I didn’t hear your ‘thetas’ loud enough. Don’t you want to pass the exams? In my field, which is SEO copywriting, they talk about ‘keyword density.’ times a word has to appear in my writing, to be noticed by the ‘search engines.’ I’ll coin a term for you, ‘study density/theta density,’ which is the number of times your ‘sin thetas’ and ‘ because thetas’ shows up when you study out loud, during my one hour nap. If it doesn’t show up well enough, your effort will be rejected, meaning you won’t be selected by colleges. But before that happens, another search engine , that’s my hand, I would have made a resounding smack on your rosy cheeks. Your cheeks would then turn into Mussoorie apple like red variants.”
“But dad,” Ramu answered, “this engineering and medicine thing doesn’t interest me. I want to be an actor.” “You want to be a what!” Dad said, “what will people say? They’ll look down on me.”
“But Dad, I want to be famous, you know like… Battu Khan! I wish the world would kiss the floor I walk on, honor the space I occupy, and… sigh when I give them a long look.” “.
“Sure,” Dad replied, “for now, you’ll be rubbing your nose against the pages in front of you, romanticizing with the formulas in front of you, and sighing with delight at the completion of a chapter, get it? Your ‘theta density’ should be so dense and jarring, that wakes a sleeping gorilla from his deep sleep. You know, Ramu, if you get into one of these colleges, you’re ‘settled for life’ and ‘settled down’.”
“Ah!” said Ramu, “you mean dad, you sit on a sticky chair from 9 to 5 every day, until you put holes in them, or until you reach retirement age, whichever comes first. Then, produce more of your own in peace, and return like carrier pigeons with your progeny, to the training workshops in Bandigarh. Right? Now I understand. But this ‘being stable’ part, I don’t understand. Does it mean that all the others who don’t get into the university of their choice are ‘unstable’, ie do they need to go to an Institute for the Mentally Ill for treatment?
Dad said, “Enough now! Stop arguing with me and get on with what the others in your family have been doing for generations, before I spank you!”
Ramu then went on and on… ‘sine theta’, ‘cos theta’, ‘tan theta’… until the cows came home, like him fueling the engines of the ‘Coaching Mills of Bandigarh’.