CHAPTER 15 - The Strange Case of Miss Lady Scootywali, part 2

Arindam Moulick

Leaving Trishule Park

Leaving Trishule Park residence was imminent and when it was time to leave I had heartbreaks. I never recovered from the shock of shifting out of my beloved homestead. The fact that we have to leave one day was unimaginable to me. I took it to heart and broke down many times when the dreadful day came and we found ourselves in the act of relocating to nearby Paliwall Estate. It was inevitable. We were about to lose our living garden of Eden.

Guess what is supposed to happen will happen; no matter whether your life as you know it remains the same or will never be the same again. Hard done by the whole business of actually relocating to someplace else, I became an emotional wreck forthwith. The shifting choked me even as I realized to my great misery that Trishule Park residence was so important to me, psychologically and emotionally. I got everything to lose. It felt like I was being duped for life. 

With Trishule Park gone, I had lost my fair share of living my reclusive life. Nobody from the God’s Abode above in the all-blue still-born April skies bothered about my great personal loss. Now, who'd that be? Am I kidding myself that God will descend down or something? Do you see it now? Ain't I a wreck for real? The loss of a life I had lived long ago took my heart aggrieving a great deal. Shifting to Paliwall Estate was inevitable and Oh God! there was no escaping it. Trishule Park will forever remain my soul beloved.

Whither the Starry-Eyed Teenybopper?

In the autumn of the year 1997/98, just within days after Neetu completed her graduation and shifted to Paliwall Estate from her Trishule Park residence, an incredible thing happened. She fetched herself a job at none other than the great Satyam Computers and bought a nice new metallic-green two-wheeler, a Scooty. And I thought that was a brave thing to do, getting a job at Satyam that is. This was a few years after the infamous The Dopeynath Pundy Affair.

Getting a job at Satyam was considered as a major feat and for the first time when Sunel and I had heard that Miss Lady Scootywali had indeed landed one there recently, we found ourselves looking at each other rather in disbelieving wonder. Sitting on our favourite culvert we wondered if it was really possible for her to find a job so quickly or the entire thing might be plain bullocks. I had not opined on anything just yet.

Strong Selvejar and Sateesh Eloor were hardly willing to avert their gaze fixed firmly on the much-frequented local bakery store even as they listened – uninterestedly, it seemed to me – to what Sunel and I were chatting about. Then Sunel just said pointlessly, “Woh scootywali…? Aho!”

It was my turn to treat them all at the locally-famous Ganesh Bakery, including the sulkiest of our group Sunel Goan-Kalay. Needless to say, Strong and Sateesh were giving me impatient looks! Helloow…. A bottle of manly Thums Up and a solid rock of black chocolate coffee cake for each of our lads here, please!

Not that we doubted Neetu’s abilities or anything…, but she was barely a just-out-of-college grad riding her Scooty – by now she’s become a pro – into many a hearts of Dopeynaths-in-waiting! One knew for a reason or two that it needs a proper elapse of time, not to mention always-in-short-supply Dame Luck before one gets something of value. No, it seems not. In Neetu’s case, we were clearly mistaken. Her lady luck smiled more often on her.

Neetu pulled off nothing short of a miracle; we kept kidding about it – What did she do to get a job like that? Wasn’t she, till yesterday, roaming around with her mom pillion riding on her deep metallic-green Scooty her father bought for her just a few days ago? So Miss Lady Scootywali grew up already? And her kid sister? Wasn’t she still supposed to be doing her Bachelor’s degree? O Krishna! How fast the world moves!

Neetu rode on like a typical starry-eyed teenybopper with not a care in the world; she’s seen always astride on her Scooty with her jovial mother like clockwork, who (her mom) I am sure used to keep prodding her beloved child to achieve just a bit more in life. Her mom, as every loving mom, knew what’s best for her daughter, and that was the end of it all. Many a time she gave the impression that ‘naturalness’ was not a facet of Neetu’s life; if it were there we didn’t see it, and for that reason, we jumped to a convenient conclusion: that her life was tightly packed with some kind of inescapable ‘mechanical artificiality’ that she – luckily for her mother to feel proud of with this apparently a character trait of her daughter’s – almost always was found excelling in. Neetu’s life was close to being a mechanical doll that talks when talked to, smiles its plastic smile as if plastered on its face, and is permanently on a leash/key which her mom had a tight grip on. Neetu’s life… was always about her mother than it was her own.

Miss Lady’s High High

To keep up the tempo of one’s aspiration is, I think, tantamount to getting half of the life’s existential problems solved: whatever the problem might be, the other half can perhaps being in the act of smiling about it, regardless of whether the circumstances are dire or not dire. Strict aunties like her mother knew better when firing such salvos of wisdom at their own promising wards. Never mind Neetu’s sinewy bike almost disappearing under her pillion-riding mom’s majestic proportions of terrestrial grandiloquent weight. And that’s that.

The fact Neetu had excelled in professing her capabilities and got herself a particularly prime placement must have been a highly rewarding experience for both Neetu and her over-protective mother, and why not. But for us to acknowledge an ‘OK’ for what was nearly as good as Neetu being a True Professional was that she made no bones about her great ‘Satyam feat’. The fact that she exuded one of confidence and being perennially 'systematic’ to achieve what she wanted to achieve does make for a case of much appreciation and lauding from us; it doesn’t really matter whether she got a job at Satyam or anywhere else. If she had any ill-sounding high high feeling, she didn’t know and she didn’t show. She was dexterous in her own way and it makes a lot of sense for anyone to get appreciative of it. Okay, okay, maybe a weary semblance of an innocent girly vanity cat was now and then let out of her bag, but that was quite OK. Nothing apart from what we already knew good things about her could deflate the wind out of the sails of her professional triumph altogether. She was found enjoying her success to the hilt and therefore should be left alone to do so, we figured.

Neetu Scootywali was unmistakably a little high high about the fact that she had a great job at Satyam. But we culvert-squatters, appreciation givers, were amenable to her ways because we have been appreciative of her uncommon career-orientated, personal 'systematic' femineity. Not being overly critical about any high high issues was our group’s way of life; we as complete outsiders, merely bystanders, even appreciative spectators, didn’t mind poking around a little for some harmless fun at the cost of Neetu’s Satyam feat. But that was that. Not a penny more or not a penny less. We took it as they say – lightly. After all, a Satyam job (back in the late 1990s) was considered cool, and yes no less than an achievement. Therefore, where’s the harm in throwing a little high high at the world and make merry at the cost of other people’s (read us) amazement. Tables turned! That was so cool.

I remember my friends looking at me and saying, “When’s your turn, Arinvan?”

Well, at the outset, I wasn’t really keen to do a ‘job’ and Satyam was not even on my list of things I was considering at that time. It was as though my job aspirations were keeping a low profile and I couldn't be bothered much about it. I had other ideas, never mind whether I could depend on them or not, to bring into fruition or foray into some more academics if I could as I had always wanted to. Getting a job is fine enough, but it inexorably brings an end to all other interminable, lesser-known altruistic subjects of life such as deep and desultory afternoon siestas and day-dreaming in my own little ivory perch/lair, among many others.

A Friendly Banter

Sateesh Eloor, Sunel Goan-Kalay (aliases Saadu, Tom Hanks), and Strong Selvejar were not exactly in awe of Neetu Scootywali – but only as far as her chic ability to secure a job at Satyam was concerned, they were. While Strong and Sunel, both clever geniuses in their own right, did make it a little too obvious with a show of their phony sounding 'wowww’ when this girly loveliness in the form of Neetu zoomed past astride on her famous Scooty (and yes with her mother hauled at the back), I was deeply blushing away for no reason at all. Their nitter-natter continued for quite some time until it was time to bid goodbyes for our Dinner Departure to our homes and while we were at it I, Arinvan, continued to sit there mysteriously blushing away in the midst of their full-blown ha ha has and ho ho hos.

Sateesh showed no intimate concern with their overtly friendly banter that issued forth from out of nowhere. Instead, with a smirk-like grin on his bulbous face, he continued to look the other way towards our good old meeting-point Ganesh Bakery, and began salivating hoping to swish down a bottle of cold Coke or a Thums up, with a sinfully satisfying chocolate Cake-Rock thrown in! Meanwhile, Sunel and Strong went on regardless of whether it would be possible for them to treat Sateesh to a bottle of cola today. Whose turn is it to treat today?

Just for the record: Of course, Strong was already a working professional in a financial division of a large multi-state business house. Same as Strong, Sateesh too had a Commerce educational background and handled financials at a different company. Sunel having started quite early in life, immediately after graduating in Botany, Zoology, and Chemistry subjects went on to work as a medical rep, and he was doing well in a pharmaceutical company. So, that leaves me; I was the odd one out as far as the job department was concerned. I was yet to find my foothold as a ‘working professional’ as I was still educating myself: up to the brim, near-about collarbones!

One evening, when we met at our usual watering hole, Sunel immediately began exclaiming in his inimitable colloquial lingo that only he can manage to mouth and no one else:

     “Satyam mein karri naukri? Aisah kya? Arre mast hai re!”

I knew where this was going. Starting off a discussion on Neetu’s new job at Satyam, he turns to me and says in chaste Hyderabadi lingo replete with hilarious hau’s, kaiko’s and merekoo’s:

     “Tu kab Satyam jata mama?”

To which I playfully retort:

     “Kaiko re? Light le, main nahi jaatoon” and laugh lightheartedly by imitating his style of Hindi slang. Oh yes, I was not as good as he was. I could never manage that hulloo-hulloo style of speaking.

     “Are yaar Satyam jaa re, kya karra tu…? Kaiku neyee jata tu? Mast rahitah! Main bolroon teroku soonn. Dekh logaan jaare. Scootywali jaree na. Tu bhi jaa,” said Sunel. He made it appear as if Satyam was a tea vendor where one can go have tea.

Sateesh Eloor speaks up suddenly as though waking up from his usual slumberous quietness to self-importantly eject from his mouth something that means to save the world from some impending catastrophe.

     “Jata re jata... Uskoo kya hai... Uneh pakka jata.” 

Then turning towards me he said, “Arinvan, tu apply toh karr miltah tereko. Main bolroon tereko milta,” commanded Sateesh.

After a round of his dialogue-baazi, he sagely announces to every one of us sitting on the culvert – on which some naughtier-than-you-and-me youngster had charcoal-marked with ‘Ass-Parking Only’! – an evening of high-tea, egg puffs, and some bindaas gupshup.

When impatience gets the better of him, Strong Selvejar butts in with gusto that only he can muster.

     “Haun haun…Tum logaan sab Satyam mein ghoosoh re! Ek potti kya gayi ki tum bhi shuru ho gayeh yaron!” said Strong. For a long time, we reeled with laughter. The way he ferreted his stock of colloquial lingo at us was hilarious. But it has to be said that Sunil still is the undisputed king of colloquists.

Afterward, the evening slowly wore into the night in Paliwall Estate. It was an evening to remember.

END OF PART 2

(To be continued...)

By Arindam Moulick

Click here for PART 3 of the story.
Click here for PART 1 of the story.

- This article has also been published on ezinearticles.com. Following is the web link:
http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Strange-Case-of-Miss-Lady-Scootywali,-Part-2&id=8723588

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. All incidences, places, and characters portrayed in the story are fictional and entirely imaginary. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. No similarity to any person either living or dead is intended or should be inferred.