A Beautiful Memory: Learning, Belonging and Other Musings
Piddi and I once decided to have some fun: we decided to steal lunch! For straight two weeks, we ransacked lunch-boxes squirrelled from the schoolbags twice every week and chowed down ‘on the wild berries until the bush was bare.’ Gosh! To think that we were capable of doing such a thing is flabbergasting me by just thinking about it now.
Who said that there isn’t such thing as a free lunch. Ask us!
Peculiarly, at least twice a week, he and I bunked morning assembly prayers every alternate day to achieve our objective. That is, to help ourselves enjoy some varied food treats from the tiffin boxes without requesting permission, as I once put it to my classmate, my partner-in-crime Piddi, “coming from different kitchens these lunches are,” was egging us on to do it.
So, turbocharged into doing what we wanted to do, our tomfoolery lasted for only two weeks and afterward, thankfully, petered out from that point. Exactly why did we think of such a thing in the first place when we could do any number of things that could be fun doing? Well, first thing, pinching lunches from the tiffin boxes looked deceptively easy, but it was not so. Although it offered a challenge of its own, being told-off for indulging in something like stealing lunch, no teacher would encourage or even laugh at your antics, is something one would not bring oneself face to face! Not to mention the ever-present danger of being caught out in the act of stealing lunch from someone's tiffin box, and then you see him/her walking into the classroom! Likewise, hunger or being an optimistic food lover was no purpose behind our daring-do. It was that we wanted to see what happens when, admittedly, a fallacy like stealing lunch from your classmate's tiffin box was committed and never being found out as to who did it! To amuse ourselves to glory catching sight of our classmates pulling all kinds of faces before finding that the contents of their lunch boxes in their hands have strangely dwindled to quite an extent was something we looked forward to seeing. succeeding by funny responses like 'for what reason are my parathas all torn!,' 'I am certain my mamma made me an egg today, but it has vanished now!' and so on. (At any rate, those reactions are better than 'where are all my parathas gone?!')
We were acting as food tasters or samplers while the morning prayer session was on, and we were surprised to know how much tasteful goodness we were missing out on. Nevertheless, we took care not to polish everything off and leave nothing for our fellow kindred spirits from enjoying their grub when lunch-time came. Stealth eaters (or lunch thieves, if you like) like us were mercifully considerate about leaving a good portion in the tiffin boxes largely untouched and intact. Of course, we made sure not to leave any tell-tale evidence behind. Not even a drop of curry on the bench or some residual smell in the classroom lingered before concluding our lunch thieving activity successfully! To ward off food smells, we quickly opened the windows at the back and on the sidewalls of our classroom, hoping that no one would detect anything amiss about the two of us folding parathas eagerly into our mouths.
Often, there was a stack of neatly folded Parathas and Eggplant Curry. (I think it was Hangorag Tarik’s grub to see him through the long day ahead!) Piddi quickly opened it and remarked passionately: “HALLELUIAH!” Smacking his lips loudly with the box opened in his grasp, he tore off a paratha to put into his mouth and started chewing. Needless to say, he chuckled in such devilish pleasure as he munched on it to his great delight and satisfaction. “Whooo Hooo chuckling and Piddi-ling go hand in hand!” - said he between breaths.
No doubt, his schoolboy sense of humour getting the better of him. A mouth stuffed with stolen parathas and baigan masala can make you go down that familiar path where talking, a little eccentrically, becomes unavoidable and profoundly essential sometimes. I gazed up, nodded, and continued to wolf down the stolen foodstuff partaken from the other school bag lying robustly alongside Tarik’s. Friendship and a little mischief go hand in hand!
I would go so far as to say that according to Newton’s third law of motion, stolen lunch is not something to be parted away from thinking that it will come back to you later. It never does. Respects are due to Mr. Prasad alias ReferBooks (of Resonance District or Physics Lab), our Physics sir who liked teaching us the three laws while loosely arranging his four fingers of his right hand from index to little with the thumb jotting out outwardly and dragging them in several leisurely slow upward motion strokes starting from below his neck region up to his chin to scratch the ever-persistent crawling itching sensations that used to ...uffff... bother him no end!
I would go so far as to say that according to Newton’s third law of motion, stolen lunch is not something to be parted away from thinking that it will come back to you later. It never does. Respects are due to Mr. Prasad alias ReferBooks (of Resonance District or Physics Lab), our Physics sir who liked teaching us the three laws while loosely arranging his four fingers of his right hand from index to little with the thumb jotting out outwardly and dragging them in several leisurely slow upward motion strokes starting from below his neck region up to his chin to scratch the ever-persistent crawling itching sensations that used to ...uffff... bother him no end!
(Whenever he stroked his staggeringly itchy skin under his jawline - it was possibly a solid instance of pruritus who knows - he would end up appearing primate-like scratching his tingles. The whole class would guffaw at that frank display of our good-looking Physics sir's funny habit! More often than not, Hangorag Tarik and Ramraj, as though on cue, would burst out laughing seeing our eczematic teacher scratching away under his chin with such gay relinquish!)
Free lunch like stolen lunch has to be eaten (and greedily) then and there, without further ado! What do you do when you have good food in front of you, you eat it right? We understood that Newton's third law of motion was applicably true to motion, force, and inertia stuff, but to abstract things like love, affection, and free lunch, the same darn Newtonian law when formally stated - for every action (force) there is an equal and opposite reaction - was found wanting. Weird analogy? Yes, it could be. In our case, however, stealing lunch helped us learn Newton's third law, all right. Besides, one does not have to wait for someone of the calibre of Newton to deduce the law for abstract things: one of which is stolen lunch, which should be devoured, without thinking much about whether it is right or wrong to do so. Not getting caught is the key to taking up such an adventure! Beware! If you get caught while stealing someone's lunch in the classroom, you get Newton's third law applicable on you, the full effect of it! Stolen lunches were sweetest, supposed to be gobbled down whenever available wherever available! Period.
Piddi and I always used to take exceptional care to tear off a chunky bit of the Paratha. Scooping up the curry with it and putting it into our eager shameless mouths to chomp in delight was a rare pleasure! Afterward, conscientiousness stirred within us. We realized pretty quickly that our classmates whose tiffin boxes we kept stealing food from are going to be emotionally hurt unnecessarily. If they come to know that their lunch has been mysteriously depleting day after day because of Piddi and me, then the world as we know it will not remain the same again, Newton's third law notwithstanding! Therefore, it slowly dawned on us that our little thieving enterprise must shut shop and call it a day.
Naturally, Piddi and I never found the nerve to give away who the culprits were, the culprits being us, of course! Not until a couple of days before the school breaks for summer vacation! Stolen lunches taste awesome, if and only if you do not get caught in the act. Satisfied that there was a substantial portion still left in the box for Hangorag’s bulky self to lunch, we closed it shut and placed it where it belonged, back in his cavernous school sack. A while later, it was teeth hitting teeth and saliva squirting around in our mouths: Umm umm umm. Pure Misophonia.
Fortune favours the brave. The lunch containers of our class were full of promise for good taste and smell: sometimes it was Kissan Strawberry Jam, Sevaiyan Pulao, Rajma Chawal, Noodles, and at other times it was Lemon Rice, Upma, and Bread Sandwich. Even scrambled eggs make their presence felt. Hawkish Sribathtub was its consistent devourer, eaten with Chappatis. Baljee and Heymunth used to call it “Egg Bhurji,” evidently it was their No. 1 nibble for lunch.
Free lunch like stolen lunch has to be eaten (and greedily) then and there, without further ado! What do you do when you have good food in front of you, you eat it right? We understood that Newton's third law of motion was applicably true to motion, force, and inertia stuff, but to abstract things like love, affection, and free lunch, the same darn Newtonian law when formally stated - for every action (force) there is an equal and opposite reaction - was found wanting. Weird analogy? Yes, it could be. In our case, however, stealing lunch helped us learn Newton's third law, all right. Besides, one does not have to wait for someone of the calibre of Newton to deduce the law for abstract things: one of which is stolen lunch, which should be devoured, without thinking much about whether it is right or wrong to do so. Not getting caught is the key to taking up such an adventure! Beware! If you get caught while stealing someone's lunch in the classroom, you get Newton's third law applicable on you, the full effect of it! Stolen lunches were sweetest, supposed to be gobbled down whenever available wherever available! Period.
Piddi and I always used to take exceptional care to tear off a chunky bit of the Paratha. Scooping up the curry with it and putting it into our eager shameless mouths to chomp in delight was a rare pleasure! Afterward, conscientiousness stirred within us. We realized pretty quickly that our classmates whose tiffin boxes we kept stealing food from are going to be emotionally hurt unnecessarily. If they come to know that their lunch has been mysteriously depleting day after day because of Piddi and me, then the world as we know it will not remain the same again, Newton's third law notwithstanding! Therefore, it slowly dawned on us that our little thieving enterprise must shut shop and call it a day.
Naturally, Piddi and I never found the nerve to give away who the culprits were, the culprits being us, of course! Not until a couple of days before the school breaks for summer vacation! Stolen lunches taste awesome, if and only if you do not get caught in the act. Satisfied that there was a substantial portion still left in the box for Hangorag’s bulky self to lunch, we closed it shut and placed it where it belonged, back in his cavernous school sack. A while later, it was teeth hitting teeth and saliva squirting around in our mouths: Umm umm umm. Pure Misophonia.
Fortune favours the brave. The lunch containers of our class were full of promise for good taste and smell: sometimes it was Kissan Strawberry Jam, Sevaiyan Pulao, Rajma Chawal, Noodles, and at other times it was Lemon Rice, Upma, and Bread Sandwich. Even scrambled eggs make their presence felt. Hawkish Sribathtub was its consistent devourer, eaten with Chappatis. Baljee and Heymunth used to call it “Egg Bhurji,” evidently it was their No. 1 nibble for lunch.
P.S.V.V.S.T.U.V.W.X.Y.Z. Ramraj’s tiffin box was not exactly a party-goers delight, but, most of the time, it used to be seen filled up to the brim with his staple pearly Plain White Rice and richly spicy Vegetable Curry/Sambar with stalks of Drumsticks, tamata (tomatoes!), and beans tossed in. Sometimes a boiled egg used to be lodged deep inside cushioned among the rice, exactly, at the white-out centre of his round stainless-steel lunch box. The egg would not easily be viewable unless you made an effort to peer at it with as much concentration as it required for you to get unnecessarily accused of “nazar lagaoing” (evil eye) problem! Not that anybody blamed for it. Ramaraj’s and his brother Laxmanraj’s lunch, coming from the same home, were always found to be the same, obviously so.
I remember, once when I opened a stainless-steel lunch box, to my amusement, I found a small amount of veggie on one side and a nice little whitest white hardboiled egg on the other: the squarish tiffin box owner was neither Ramraj nor his sibling. I wondered with fascination that the boiled egg’s top half was flattened a little bit, presumably because of the top casing being firmly closed on it. This beautiful egg was well-ensconced in one of the compartments stuck among a bunch of Rotis and a few fried finger-rings to boot. I soon realized it was our classmate Nitasu’s tiffin box. Mama Mia! I thought she sure needed ample protein to endure our Physics teacher Mr. ReferBooks’ class coming up just after the lunch break, so it will be better to leave it untouched. However, Piddi looked at me expectantly if I would go at it, but I shook my head to say “No” and closed the box and slid it into the bag, reluctantly moving on to raid someone else’s tiffin box. During those two weeks of our lunch-box thievery, Piddi and I concurred that no lunch was ever gross to eat; everything was quite as delectable as were intended to be. As long as you have an appetite and a sense of fun and adventure, you’ll eat and eat with gratitude! Thank God, nobody thought of inventing anti-theft lunch bags then!
Good sense prevailed at long last. Afraid that we might get reprimanded for indulging in as silly a pursuit as robbing other people's lunches, we brought our juggernaut of fun to a grinding halt. It was good while it lasted. Our day-to-day novel ‘experiment of eating’ from the variety of plastic and steel tiffin boxes of our classmates was quite amazing to experience, for both of us carried on bunking morning prayers and stealing lunches for straight two weeks unhindered.
Admittedly, it was becoming an escapade so queer that our daily raids on tiffin boxes had ended rather abruptly. We found to our surprise that we were not the only ones doing it; others too from other classes did indulge in such acts of thievery pretty often. However, we slowly were beginning to feel the boredom of it, and sooner than later, we quit pursuing such games for the sake of having some "fun" at others' expense. Piddi and I suddenly lost interest in it: Jams and curries were not tempting us anymore. However, it was fun while it lasted because, after all, we had the chance to wolf down some of the best home-cooked packaged lunches safely snuggled inside everybody’s school bags! Like all good things must come to an end, ours too did.
Playing games on the playground was one thing, but raiding others’ lunches was quite another. If free periods were supposed to be for “constructive” or “useful” work as our Mathematics teacher Mr. Paudwal sir (name changed) used to affirm, then so be it. So Piddi and I, along with his twin brother Biddi, Hawkish Sribathtub, Baljee Risla, Heymunth, Dhanoj, Sheik, and Hangorag Tarik took to football, cricket, and my personal favourite Baseball to help ourselves stay away from the constant din of didactic voices. In this way, our days of stealing lunches had come to an end. Piddi and I never indulged in it again. Aaj bhi yaad hain wo sab din. Koi louta de mujhe beete huye din…
What will be will be
School memories always make you happy. Regardless of how cool your college life was, you will miss your good old school days; I still do, so much.
The thing is the school memories shape us into what we are today. College years also play their part. Memories, whether good or bad, are never forgotten completely. They stay with you right till your old age; maybe a lot of it recedes, while others tend to be there as long as you hold them dear to you. One understands that all your school friends will go their separate ways, and chances are you will lose contact with either all or some of them.
As I endeavour to recall my school memories peopled with quite a few characters, it was during Class 12th that I realized that some of these were just... how do I put it, a formalistic bunch of personalities who had a thing or two about ‘acting friendly.’ They come to school daily and take a seat beside you, learn and play during free periods but remained uninterested and generally unwilling to become friendly with you as a co-student in the class. Unmistakable feelings like that don’t lie to the heart, do they?
(I confess that I am overly critical of some of my dear classmates here. That is because I am emotionally burnt-out to be too goody-goody and nice with my character sketches about them. Pity, they are not here to tell their side of the story, ‘if’ at all, they have anything to say that is. Being perspective-driven, not perspective-limited, is my idea of being fair and just with the lot.)
Let the truth be told: they were in the act of ‘acting friendly.’ This little nagging feeling was of so grave a consequence that I began doubting my sense of place, time, and friendship with them. Learning lessons with these what appeared to me as ‘high-handed’ chaps in class after class did become an encumbrance of the sort you don’t complain about. I felt I am the only one who could be made responsible for finding an amicable teenage-style resolution for the problem at hand for ‘new joiners’ like me, Hawkish Sribathtub, and Hangorag Tarik. There was no ragging (not even a hint of it), but it was something of a, more or less, self-inflicted botheration that I think other students in the class wouldn’t try and understand or would show any inclination to do so. The onus was set on me entirely as to how to make myself comfortable despite the imagined odds (again, maybe self-inflicted) I had to endure for some time. (About which I have written about in my previous essays). Sure enough, as a tentative first step, I began to learn how to be unmindful of seemingly, after all, a patronizing feeling of encumbrances and get into the groove of things all our class fellows liked to be in, going forward. Being unmindful worked beautifully well, I admit.
Either they are too smart for their pants or too much boring for their shorts, or I am trying to be a Jonnie-come-lately in their one-upmanship games they liked to play frequently, and worse if I had not been half as attentive as I had been in the class then all this would have cooked my goose! Somehow I knew if this ‘new reality’ is consigning me between a rock and a hard place, then I’ll be the only one left to worry about my trifles while others will pass me by without giving me as much as a fair glance. Ouch! Hard realities such as the ones I just mentioned above took a slightly heavy toll on me than was necessary! But in the end, all things fell into the right place. If you think high school education is easy, think again!
It took a lot of time and burning up of mental energy to realize that some of my class fellows are perfectly (emotionally, mentally, even physically if you like!) capable to completely blank over about you after leaving school. History is witness to that. They wouldn’t think twice to put you out of their mind. Once they step into that demanding future that they were so looking forward to, you are a nobody. Hard to believe that days spent in a classroom, going to the library, playing on the grassy ground, doing science practicals in laboratories didn’t mean anything for any of these folks. It seems that all those days have been gotten over with, forever. Whatever little friendship we might have had was just a means to an end, or if the end justifying the means, then what they did was quite commendable. Whichever you look at it, it was not something I couldn’t possibly relate to in any way. Not in my book, never.
Tell me, how do you react when you are face-to-face with such mean-spirited circumstances your life turns you in? Your first reaction is: you don’t react to everything you find as stressful; instead, you try and learn to make a conscious effort to let it pass; excuse them their inexcusable travesty and, if possible, forgive and forget them, slowly and persuasively. Soon you’ll get the closure you need.
It’s fine with me if they don’t happen to remember me anymore, but I keep remembering them all the time, keep the olden days feeling alive, and refuse to let go of them. I have got a nostalgic museum in my heart that provides sanctuary to everything my life holds dear. Life is weird sometimes; it’s more to do with reality than romance, no doubt about that. Strangers become friends, and friends become strangers all the time, and, at a certain point, when Fate begins to dictate, destiny catches up with us sooner than we prefer to realize. And then all of us go away in different directions for different things in life. Life indeed goes on like a proceeding. Catch ya on the flip side!
Ultimately, that’s the way life is, that’s the way it goes; the cookie crumbles, the ball bounces, the world wags, the mop flops, tough, powerful, stubborn-looking sh*t, and all that jazz. Such is life; who would argue with it? Delicious or not, the cookie just crumbles away with the first bite. Point well taken.
Thanks for all the good memories, laughs, and giggles, and of course, free lunches!
(To be continued…)
By Arindam Moulick
I remember, once when I opened a stainless-steel lunch box, to my amusement, I found a small amount of veggie on one side and a nice little whitest white hardboiled egg on the other: the squarish tiffin box owner was neither Ramraj nor his sibling. I wondered with fascination that the boiled egg’s top half was flattened a little bit, presumably because of the top casing being firmly closed on it. This beautiful egg was well-ensconced in one of the compartments stuck among a bunch of Rotis and a few fried finger-rings to boot. I soon realized it was our classmate Nitasu’s tiffin box. Mama Mia! I thought she sure needed ample protein to endure our Physics teacher Mr. ReferBooks’ class coming up just after the lunch break, so it will be better to leave it untouched. However, Piddi looked at me expectantly if I would go at it, but I shook my head to say “No” and closed the box and slid it into the bag, reluctantly moving on to raid someone else’s tiffin box. During those two weeks of our lunch-box thievery, Piddi and I concurred that no lunch was ever gross to eat; everything was quite as delectable as were intended to be. As long as you have an appetite and a sense of fun and adventure, you’ll eat and eat with gratitude! Thank God, nobody thought of inventing anti-theft lunch bags then!
Good sense prevailed at long last. Afraid that we might get reprimanded for indulging in as silly a pursuit as robbing other people's lunches, we brought our juggernaut of fun to a grinding halt. It was good while it lasted. Our day-to-day novel ‘experiment of eating’ from the variety of plastic and steel tiffin boxes of our classmates was quite amazing to experience, for both of us carried on bunking morning prayers and stealing lunches for straight two weeks unhindered.
Admittedly, it was becoming an escapade so queer that our daily raids on tiffin boxes had ended rather abruptly. We found to our surprise that we were not the only ones doing it; others too from other classes did indulge in such acts of thievery pretty often. However, we slowly were beginning to feel the boredom of it, and sooner than later, we quit pursuing such games for the sake of having some "fun" at others' expense. Piddi and I suddenly lost interest in it: Jams and curries were not tempting us anymore. However, it was fun while it lasted because, after all, we had the chance to wolf down some of the best home-cooked packaged lunches safely snuggled inside everybody’s school bags! Like all good things must come to an end, ours too did.
Playing games on the playground was one thing, but raiding others’ lunches was quite another. If free periods were supposed to be for “constructive” or “useful” work as our Mathematics teacher Mr. Paudwal sir (name changed) used to affirm, then so be it. So Piddi and I, along with his twin brother Biddi, Hawkish Sribathtub, Baljee Risla, Heymunth, Dhanoj, Sheik, and Hangorag Tarik took to football, cricket, and my personal favourite Baseball to help ourselves stay away from the constant din of didactic voices. In this way, our days of stealing lunches had come to an end. Piddi and I never indulged in it again. Aaj bhi yaad hain wo sab din. Koi louta de mujhe beete huye din…
What will be will be
School memories always make you happy. Regardless of how cool your college life was, you will miss your good old school days; I still do, so much.
The thing is the school memories shape us into what we are today. College years also play their part. Memories, whether good or bad, are never forgotten completely. They stay with you right till your old age; maybe a lot of it recedes, while others tend to be there as long as you hold them dear to you. One understands that all your school friends will go their separate ways, and chances are you will lose contact with either all or some of them.
As I endeavour to recall my school memories peopled with quite a few characters, it was during Class 12th that I realized that some of these were just... how do I put it, a formalistic bunch of personalities who had a thing or two about ‘acting friendly.’ They come to school daily and take a seat beside you, learn and play during free periods but remained uninterested and generally unwilling to become friendly with you as a co-student in the class. Unmistakable feelings like that don’t lie to the heart, do they?
(I confess that I am overly critical of some of my dear classmates here. That is because I am emotionally burnt-out to be too goody-goody and nice with my character sketches about them. Pity, they are not here to tell their side of the story, ‘if’ at all, they have anything to say that is. Being perspective-driven, not perspective-limited, is my idea of being fair and just with the lot.)
Let the truth be told: they were in the act of ‘acting friendly.’ This little nagging feeling was of so grave a consequence that I began doubting my sense of place, time, and friendship with them. Learning lessons with these what appeared to me as ‘high-handed’ chaps in class after class did become an encumbrance of the sort you don’t complain about. I felt I am the only one who could be made responsible for finding an amicable teenage-style resolution for the problem at hand for ‘new joiners’ like me, Hawkish Sribathtub, and Hangorag Tarik. There was no ragging (not even a hint of it), but it was something of a, more or less, self-inflicted botheration that I think other students in the class wouldn’t try and understand or would show any inclination to do so. The onus was set on me entirely as to how to make myself comfortable despite the imagined odds (again, maybe self-inflicted) I had to endure for some time. (About which I have written about in my previous essays). Sure enough, as a tentative first step, I began to learn how to be unmindful of seemingly, after all, a patronizing feeling of encumbrances and get into the groove of things all our class fellows liked to be in, going forward. Being unmindful worked beautifully well, I admit.
Either they are too smart for their pants or too much boring for their shorts, or I am trying to be a Jonnie-come-lately in their one-upmanship games they liked to play frequently, and worse if I had not been half as attentive as I had been in the class then all this would have cooked my goose! Somehow I knew if this ‘new reality’ is consigning me between a rock and a hard place, then I’ll be the only one left to worry about my trifles while others will pass me by without giving me as much as a fair glance. Ouch! Hard realities such as the ones I just mentioned above took a slightly heavy toll on me than was necessary! But in the end, all things fell into the right place. If you think high school education is easy, think again!
It took a lot of time and burning up of mental energy to realize that some of my class fellows are perfectly (emotionally, mentally, even physically if you like!) capable to completely blank over about you after leaving school. History is witness to that. They wouldn’t think twice to put you out of their mind. Once they step into that demanding future that they were so looking forward to, you are a nobody. Hard to believe that days spent in a classroom, going to the library, playing on the grassy ground, doing science practicals in laboratories didn’t mean anything for any of these folks. It seems that all those days have been gotten over with, forever. Whatever little friendship we might have had was just a means to an end, or if the end justifying the means, then what they did was quite commendable. Whichever you look at it, it was not something I couldn’t possibly relate to in any way. Not in my book, never.
Tell me, how do you react when you are face-to-face with such mean-spirited circumstances your life turns you in? Your first reaction is: you don’t react to everything you find as stressful; instead, you try and learn to make a conscious effort to let it pass; excuse them their inexcusable travesty and, if possible, forgive and forget them, slowly and persuasively. Soon you’ll get the closure you need.
It’s fine with me if they don’t happen to remember me anymore, but I keep remembering them all the time, keep the olden days feeling alive, and refuse to let go of them. I have got a nostalgic museum in my heart that provides sanctuary to everything my life holds dear. Life is weird sometimes; it’s more to do with reality than romance, no doubt about that. Strangers become friends, and friends become strangers all the time, and, at a certain point, when Fate begins to dictate, destiny catches up with us sooner than we prefer to realize. And then all of us go away in different directions for different things in life. Life indeed goes on like a proceeding. Catch ya on the flip side!
Ultimately, that’s the way life is, that’s the way it goes; the cookie crumbles, the ball bounces, the world wags, the mop flops, tough, powerful, stubborn-looking sh*t, and all that jazz. Such is life; who would argue with it? Delicious or not, the cookie just crumbles away with the first bite. Point well taken.
Thanks for all the good memories, laughs, and giggles, and of course, free lunches!
(To be continued…)
By Arindam Moulick
Disclaimer: This blog is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of my imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.