The Other Side of Life

Kids, Gather around, for I have a tale to tell. A tale of bygone days when phones were dumb, not smart. When only one family member had an email address, and that too on, *shudder*, Hotmail. This tale is of the days of yore; before I had won $250,000,000.00 from my dear African friend who mailed me to inform me about this exciting development. This tale is of the days before I was lucky enough to win the BBC Lottery of $1,000,000,000.00, every single day for 1 whole month. This was even before my Sheikh friend had approached me with "an interesting business proposal", which made me "richer by $799,000,000." In those days, the atmosphere was fired up with news about the new millennium dawning upon us. It was the December of 1999. 30th December, to be precise. Winter vacations were upon us and the sole purpose of life was the warmth that came from snuggling into the razai and munching peanuts. The air was rife with excitement about Y2K. For us kids, it didn't...

I was always a geek in school. Teacher's pet. My favorite teacher could have told me that the earth was flat and that Microsoft does no evil, I would have fought against the world to uphold her statements. My Dad often teased me that my answers for most questions began with, "My teacher said..." And I would close my ears and run away before anyone could counter what Ma'am said. But I loved my teachers. I really did. Except when I was in Kindergarten. KG-D. I remember distinctly. I had passed Nursery with flying colors (and alphabets and fruits and whatever it is I was asked to name) and found myself in KG-D. The new class-teacher entered and I started crying. She looked scary to me, just because she was fat! I would cry every morning while taking the bus, "I don't want fat mam!". But relief came when the Nursery teacher would come, sit with me, make sure I was engrossed in coloring and then leave silently. I would have never passed KG had it not be...