White underpants with bright red hearts!!!

After a long 3 weeks with no sign of it, sanity makes a comeback at office and its time for another wacky post. God speaks people. There is this trick I use to keep my spirits from sagging under some of those rotten tomatoes that comes my way. I did not intend to make it public but for some reason, I have had signs which I believe is God telling me to share my wisdom with poor wretched souls in desperate need for a smile. I remembered this in the midst of a mail to my friend across the seas. But alas, before I cud finish the mail, the wicked pumpkin of a client had me work on a lot of jobless jobs…U know , the kind they give u to keep u busy just when u have managed to get urself an hour to write a post.Ok…am rambling here. What had me sit down in the midst of my cooking and write this post, is an ad that just came up on the TV with a female prancing around in a red bikini swimsuit with white polka dots on it. hats when I told myself like the Goblin told Spiderman “God speaks,Anupama” and now u are being treated(or rather subjected)to this post. Now u may wonder what a “ female prancing around in a red bikini swimsuit with white polka dots” has to do with God speaking to me.
Well, here is the tale….Long long ago…Ok…that makes me sound terribly old which I assure u am not. So not so long ago, when I was in college, we had this absolute terror of a professor called TK.Now don’t ask me to expand that cos I don’t know. What I do know is that this absolute sadist of a prof came up with another scary idea to torture whatever itty bitty bits of our lives were left. He came up with this absolute brilliant idea of giving us a circuit each and having us figure out what it was supposed to do and as the topping on his dessert , we were to take a seminar on the circuit in front of the class. Now unfortunately, as much as I love my name, it was my name which had me come in as the first to be subjected to the experiment. I duly went and collected my circuit from TK and promptly took it to my brainy friend to decipher. Together we pored over the circuit. We stared at it from every conceivable angle, turned it upside down and even held it up to light hoping the secret would reveal itself like the treasure map in the movie National treasure. Fat chance. To this day I suspect that the circuit really did not do anything except provide TK a means to torture us.

I had just one night to prepare or rather resign myself to being skinned. After running from pillar to post asking ppl if they had the vaguest idea of what the circuit wud do, I cud feel myself panicking. That’s an understatement. I was freaking out and badly enuf to worry that I may ….um…pass out some funny smelling wind in terror in the class. (ok! Ok!!fart!...was just trying to be dainty) Oh boy. That is just not good. That’s when I put on the brakes and stopped the snowballing. I pulled myself up and trying hard to breathe evenly ,told myself that I had got myself out of worse scrapes and cud handle this. The trick was not to be intimidated by TK.Intimidated?More like keeping myself from turning into a blithering blubbering shivering mass in front of him. So I put aside the circuit and put my brains to work while my roommate looked on in pity. She ,by the virtue of her name ,had 23 souls standing in line before her before it was her turn to be up on the chopping block. And voila! I got it.
The guy was really dark...so I decided that I wud mentally undress him and pop him into a pair of nice white underpants with red hearts all over it...I know, I know. am horrible...but if u knew the guy then u wud think I was pretty sensible...and so I practiced a few times and then turned in excitement to my roomie.Here’s the plan……

The next day when I walked into class, I seemed to be walking into a huge wall of sympathy which was almost tangible….Everyone there was quaking on my behalf while I remained as cool as a cucumber ,confident that I cud pull this off. My friends were terrified for me and were even more worried when they saw that i was not worried...When my gang questioned me on my preparation, I told them I intended to make up the purpose of the circuit as I went along.Cos anyway it wud be wrong .So why bother. There was quite a long shocked silence during which my loyal friends wondered if I was cracking under the pressure or was plain stupid. Am sure they came to the conclusion that it was not possible for me to crack any further since I was certified crazy. But I was planning to make things up? That was dangerous. There was no predicting how badly TK would rip me apart with his questions. When they asked me I told them coolly that if the man asks me a question I will simply strip him and pop him into white underpants with red hearts...Needless to say, the gang was rolling with laughter...
The second period, TK walked in and my palms turned cold and clammy. But there was nothing for it but to go up there and get over with it. For all my bravado,I just hoped my knees wud not give away. With 29 pairs of eyes on me I get up from my seat and walk towards the black board and am heartened to find that my knees seem to be working.TK looked around for a chair, sat down and squirmed around a bit to get comfortable .I took a deep breath, called upon God to give me the nerve to carry it thru, and started. I confidently went thru my idea of what the damn circuit was which i knew was nowhere close to the real thing....I knew the worst was yet to come...i looked at everyone in the eye, including TK and took a good 25 min on my explanation. Then when i finished i turned round and there the guy was staring at me. I looked at TK and he stared back at me with a totally unfathomable expression. For one wild moment there, I wondered if by some really big time fluke I had got it right. Then decided that was just not possible. It took me every bit of my iron will to hold that gaze.

TK turned round to the class and asked if anyone had any questions. No one had. Truth be told, all of them just wanted me off the podium so that I wud not get ripped to pieces. I was and still am touched by their concern for me. And then the wicked man says”Ok.Then I will ask some”. There was a collective gasp from the class and sounds of people shifting uncomfortably in their chairs. I cud feel myself beginning to panic. TK proceeded to ask a question in which all I understood was the word "What”. I stared at him in sheer horror and felt my knees shaking.
I tell u...at the last possible moment I remembered my trick and used it on him...and at the second question, I gave him a helmet with ostrich feathers too... (It was pretty easy since I had seen a ridiculous head gear recently in a movie).and so there he was...the terror lounging sideways in a chair, sitting elegantly with one leg slung over the other, wearing a pair of white underpants patterned with bright red hearts and a nice wavy headgear overflowing with ostrich feathers. I managed to keep myself from grinning widely but I must say, it really took away the terrifying effect TK had on people, atleast for me. I heard a twitter and glanced at the back row. My friends were sitting with stifled giggles and funny wooden faces.TK followed my gaze and I flashed a quick reassuring smile at the gang. That cracked them up even further.TK apparently thought that they were laughing at my answer which made as much sense to me as his question did. But I knew better. The rest of the session was a breeze…

A lot of stuff we have gone thru in college or school wud have seemed overwhelmingly important then and funny now. But the terror that TK inspired in all of us was real and still is. If I had not done what I did then, today all I wud have been left with what wud be an absolutely humiliating memory of how I became a shaky shivery dead loss. But as it is, a sense of humour and a wacky imagination served me well and all I have is a funny memory and feelings of having trumped one over TK.There are friends of mine who broke down and sobbed for an hour after their seminar. So u can imagine how ruthless the man was.
I used that trick several times later in the direst situations of my life where my sense of humour was at an all time low but I was still required to smile. And this trick has never failed me.
White underwear patterned with bright red hearts…fond memories…Chuckle!