Eating out

( A hasty caricature)

I was just returning from my walk in the morning, yes I keep perfectly fit. You know, I am fitter than some of the students that I teach. Fit like a fiddle, but no one to play it other than my poor wife. Yeah she was good some time back. Now the age is catching up with her and with the children around, it is difficult too. Well that is life.
The College is on a hill top. It is a good walk to its ground and back. I never could understand this policy of having colleges on hills. Does people require rarefied atmosphere to study. But then what are they studying? Only those things that we teach them, is it not?

Well we don’t know half of what we teach. Oh I teach literature. And I am not bad at covering up my mistakes.
To tell you the truth I never cared about the language in the first place. But my father was adamant. It was those times you know, when children can’t oppose their parents.

The old man had studied it at collage and had become a professor. He wanted me to follow suit. I would have liked to do something else, take dance lessons for example. Well I had a supple figure and pleasant face. Some of my students still call me kamalahasan. My fantasies were all centered on becoming like him.

You know the first part of the movie in which that song is Mounam polum madhuram (even the silence is sweet). I regularly dreamed of Jayaprada then. Had sent a few letters to her too without the ken of my father. She never replied, even to the letter with my photo in it.

Tell you what; my wife is not like Jayaprada at all.

Luckily my children take after me. The younger one is not all that great. But may be it has some thing to do with what we did at his birth. Fourteen years is a long time. How young I felt then. I could have taken the whole world alone. How time passes.

We did have some good times, me and my wife, even after the birth of the first one. She is studying for law now, the first one, not my wife, her choice. I did not interfere. New age, new rules. But I still do not understand what she is going to do with it.

There is no future in law, all the children of my friends are studying for either medicine or engineering. That is not very difficult to arrange really. Every village in this blessed land has a medical college and every ward in the village has an Engineering college. All of them are in the privet sector. One needs to pay good money to get the children in.

But I could do that, you know with the introduction of the ***scheme we do get good bucks now. Fortunately we did not have to sweat for it too. Yes there was some talk of making the PhD as the criteria for getting in to the pay scale.

Let me ask you who can do that at the age of fifty? Even if it could be done, what purpose would it serve?
None of us were crazy enough to even think about it. We still got the raise.

Well that is what is wonderful about this land of mine. We went on strike and that was that. The government acted tough for a few days to show the public that they are against it. But in the end they caved in, that is the real strength of organized struggle.

Every segment of the society supported us, for we have been teaching them you see, and nothing worse has happened other than what we see around now.( what more could possibly happen?)

Did we not send something to the moon recently? Well most of those guys belonged to an earlier generation, yet the ones we teach are not bad are they. They would make good politicians. And every one would agree that that is what this country needs the most.

Well I did not watch the launch of the Chandrayan, who bothers, but I would like to buy some land in the moon though. Otherwise the children may call us short sighted.

As I said this place is as bad as when I came here some twenty or so years ago. It is showing no signs of improvement at all.

I am now at the gate of my house. There she was lying in the early rays of the sun, (Not my missus my new car). I am quite proud of it.

I had an old rickety thing, which was alright, but you know the children thought it was old. This one is from the same company but is the best model around. Worth the money every bit and luckily I had enough to spend on it too.
Not that I use it a lot. Rarely goes out. But of course we do visit the restaurants in the evenings. That is inevitable. Don’t make anything at home you see, why bother; can feed five families with what I earn now. I don’t bandy about it, but you know you have to spend some of it.

There is this restaurant that we love. The food is great; we don’t eat much for that matter. We are conscious of our weights.

We are pioneering the eating out movement in this place. There would be others surely in our wake. That is how the society progresses.

Well I have to take leave of you for a little while. Has this time to spend at the collage you know.
Has to keep the wolf off my door.