23. Transvestites on exhibition

LISTEN U GOT TAGGED !

This is the first time that I’ve got tagged, lets see how I fare at this Tag-xamination ;) So, as Janani (my tagger) would say, lets get down to business..... This TAG is gonna be all about the MOST embarrassing moment/s in ur life.... so here we go....

Well, it’s quite tough to choose just one u know, coz there are so many worthy contenders for this prestigious accolade. But at the end of the day, there can only be one winner. So, here’s my winner tale.

Title : Transvestites on exhibition

Venue : St.Joseph’s High School
Day of the week : Thursday
Day Temperature – 30 degrees C
Forecast – Sunny

Rewind – 9 years back, when being in Class 6 was a matter of pride. The reason, because among all the Classrooms only the Class 6 ones had a separate balcony for themselves, each section had it’s own balcony (this was possible because there used to be one Class 6 Section on each one of the floors of the high school building). Oh, we had our own space, the breeze blew right into the classroom and we always had that much extra time to cover our tracks of mischief whenever the princi made his rounds coz ours used to be the last room in the corridor. Wondering why the excruciating detail on the location of my classroom, you’ll soon see why.

Well, Thursday is the one day of the week when we students are supposed to wear whites. Thursday is also the day when our class Leader or Prefect( a stern female, Miss S ) checks the whiteness of our shoes and chucks us outside the class right at the beginning of the day. Our class teacher (Madam C), an eccentric female, was quite famous to give ingenious punishments to students. Well little did I know that I would be on her hit-list today. On our return from the assembly back to the classroom, S stands at the front door, and doesn’t allow me to enter the class coz of unpolished shoes. I don’t mind, coz I’ve got quite a few others as company, and am quite sure that Madam C would let us all off because we were like 20 guys standing outside. She enters the corridor, sees the 20 of us, and looks at us keenly, as though we are some Mongolian tribals who have accidentally stumbled onto a Catholic missionary school.

Then S comes and whispers something in Madam’s ears and then she shouts “Today’s hair checking day as well”. I am like “Oh Shit ! I haven't even combed my hair today. Haven't cut my hair for 2 months now. Should have atleast oiled my hair.Bloody, keep sitting and watching that stupid WWF all morning and forget polishing and combing, now pay the price, Idiot !”

I somehow keep praying that she passes by me without noticing, but then, all wishes don’t come true you see. She halts, catches me by the hair and says “Abhay, what do you do with all the money that you save by not going to the barber?” I want to say “ Have spent all of it on bets in our gully cricket matches” , but end up giving her the stupid innocent bent-head smile. She takes me and a friend Arvind to the side and yells at the others - “Remove all your shoes and socks and leave them in the balcony, you’ll spend the whole day walking bare-foot”. Looks at the both of us and says, “The same applies to you two as well”. So we do as directed and remain standing in the corridor while the others rush into the classroom before Madam thinks of a harsher punishment. So this leaves the two of us at her mercy. She calls the Leader and yells “Oh S***a , get me the two frocks that I have kept in the bottom shelf of the cupboard”. Arvind and I look at each other, stare blankly at Madam C after hearing this. “Holy cow, she’s really gonna make us wear frocks !!!!”

Arvind and I try to reason it out with Madam C but she isn’t ready to listen to anything we gotto say. Says “You boys should be taught a lesson. You should look like students , not hooligans. You have to wear these frocks all day” . “yeah right ! like having a little extra hair was the one and only qualification to look like a hooligan…..Agreed that we students needed to be taught a lesson, but why just make the both of us the ‘bakras’, this is so unfair :(( ” S goes to the cupboard, does some searching and returns with a couple of cute looking frocks. One of ‘em a maroon one with grey stripes, the other being a fluorescent yellow one patched with marigolds and sunflowers all over. But they looked so small from a distance, I began to wonder whether I would fit in them? “Worst case, if I have to wear a frock, I’ll jump and take the maroon one, coz wearing a dazzling flowery frock all day will make the top headlines for the next few years to come.”


To be honest, I wasn’t in the best shape back then, with nick names like “motu-seth”, “gol-matol”, “laddoo” , you can get a rough idea , cant you ;) Madam C gives me the frocks to choose from, I grab the maroon one and try wearing it on. All this while, the other students of the class are peeping outside the window and watching us getting humiliated. “Please let this be a dream , let this be a dream, I cant bear this humiliation”. Turns out that the maroon one is too tight, I barely squeeze myself into it, while Arvind looked kinda cute sporting the yellow frock :) Then we are made to enter the class, bare-foot, wearing frocks and hair-clips on our head. Hear huge laughter from all directions……boy that was so so embarrassing. But this was just the beginning. My friends start to ask me out - “You are a pretty girl in a frock, will you go on a date with me ?” and then there are the other dim-wits who come up with lines like “ Mast lag raha hai mama….Anna, yellow frock main chamakra …….hair pins mast fit hai”.

Every teacher who walked in that day mocked at us, one of ‘em told “Who are these two new admission girls in my class, can you introduce yourselves? hahahaha” I had this overwhelming urge to jump off the top of the building that very instant, wanted to get out of school and rush to the barber to get my head clean shaven, may be a Michael Jordan look or a Mohican style ala David Beckham. Arvind was feeling even worse, his frock got him more attention, while I was struggling for survival in mine. “Arey, this frock is too tight, my whole figure is getting revealed, as it is I am no hunk to look at…..Damn, it’s suffocating!”


And to complicate matters, it started raining. It poured like anything for about one hour, enough time to soak up all the shoes out in the balcony. My wretched luck, am in a bloody frock and now my shoes are soaked, can it get worse. Yes, it did get worse. By lunch time, I had had enough of it, so me and Arvind decide and start to remove the frocks when Madam C makes a surprise entry, catches us red-handed. She makes us swap the frocks, so now, I am the one in the fluorescent yellow marigold-y frock. At least it fit better, poor Arvind had to struggle with the maroon one now. With five minutes for the lunch break to end, people from all classes start to rush towards our room, apparently news had spread far and wide that the notorious (I was quite famously notorious) Abhay Krishna was wearing a Yellow frock. So, now me and Arvind are these ‘transvestites on exhibition’ and students ranging from kinder garden to class 10 come to pay us a visit. Man, we couldn’t even eat our lunches that day. And our wet shoes dint make matters any better…It was one of the most embarrassing days of my life, an integration of many “Most embarrassing moments”.

Ps:
To this day I am remembered as the guy who wore a frock for not having a haircut, it’s a legend in my school. The story goes “Once upon a time, there was a boy who dint care for a haircut……………”

Time for tagging – I tag the following people

PSR

Pavan

Puneet

Mohan

Satish

June