*** looks long but will take a max of 5 mins to read in entirety ***
Yesterday, as I sat down to fold 3 loads of laundry, I turned on the TV. DD, DH and parents left for a day at an amusement park and I had just put my son down for a nap. Browsing through the channels I found the Jim Carrey starrer 'Bruce Almighty' dubbed in tamil on sun TV. I normally never watch such stuff, but yesterday I was very tickled to catch Jim Carrey shout 'Kadavule', 'Poda loose paiyya' , Jennifer aniston go ' Enna aachu ungalukku?', Morgan Freeman playing God say 'Pinne kaanaam' ( see you later in malayalam) - I figured the original version must have had him say 'Hasta la vista or Ciao'.
In this film the character of Jim Carrey, Bruce is disgruntled, unhappy and blames God for his lacklustre career, for painstakingly having to eke his way out without immediate success and for the quick growth of his clever coworkers. Finally God decides he's had it with this man's complaints and decides to contact him through his pager. Bruce's pager beeps with the number 555 0123. What struck me was the co-incidence with something that happened many years ago - for a second I relived the same 'chill down the spine' feeling.
It was during my II P.U. public exams; The warning bell had just sounded at 12:15 pm to remind us that we had only 15 minutes left of our 3 hr exam, to turn in our mathematics exam answer sheets. I always stay writing till the very end of my every exam - I am very wordy in my answers, never had success with precis writing and I also cannot write very fast . Also my nervousness always made me check and recheck my answers and I could never walk away cool and confident, turning the answer sheet in before time. This time was no different. Just after the warning bell, as is customary, our invigilator told us to tie in all our answer sheets, check our registration numbers were entered right and be ready to hand them over. I did the needful and kept reviewing my answers as one by one most folks turned in their answer sheets and exited. The final bell went off at 12:30 and the examiner said in a clear but strict voice - " Keep your answer sheets on your desk and leave the room" as she collated the ones on her table in the front of the room. I stood up but still kept my head buried in my answer papers. The examiner said a bit agitated to me, " Did you not hear me, your time's up, leave the room". It struck me as a bit too rude (even though I realize now that the mistake was mine), I packed up my geometry box with my compass, protractor, scale, pens etc., clamped my question paper to my clip board ( which we referred to as exam pad) and walked out. At that point only my very good friend and I were present there and we started to discuss the paper animatedly right outside the open doors of the exam hall, as the examiner went from desk to desk collecting answer sheets. After about 5 minutes, the examiner turned toward us and asked me " who was sitting in front of you?", I replied " No one ma'am". She asked " Then whose number is 555 123?", I replied " Mine, ma'am" with growing anxiety in both our voices. She shot "Where is your answer sheet?". Panicked I quickly checked my exam pad- I lifted the question paper to find my entire answer sheet sitting clamped beneath it. The examiner went " How can you be so careless?" as she took the pile from me. She told me that since I was in front of her very eyes the whole time and she believed it was a dangerously foolish inadvertent mistake, she accepted my answer papers a full ten minutes after the time limit. A little hurried and a little miffed I had forgotten to leave my answer sheets on the desk before leaving.
Had I walked with it down the corridor, down those flights of stairs, down the long drive way to the bus stop discussing with my friend, there would have been no way she would have accepted my papers. I would've made a nice newspaper column of someone who studied for an exam, solved trigonometry and calculus problems, drew geometry figures and crunched logarithmic tables for 3 hours and brought her neatly stacked answer papers home with her to a wonderful 'failed' result. I'd have lost a year, turned into a psychological wreck - God knows what! I faltered at the top of a steep cliff and managed to fall on the safer side. All three of us present there - myself, my friend and that examiner were shaken at the enormity of what might have happened. Never before had my buddy and I ever stayed back right in front of the hall talking about our paper.
Almost 20 years later, I experienced the same stoppage of breath, lump in my throat, knot in my stomach for a few seconds as I travelled with no speed limits down memory lane. After I regained my breath I couldn't help but think how diametrically opposite this was to the examination scene in the movie 3 Idiots - in which an unco-
operative examiner refuses to take the answer sheets from 3 students who request for a few minutes extra time since they started the exam late due to an emergency. The students then trick the examiner and mix up their papers with the rest of the lot on the examiner's desk and run away.
The number 555 123 is something I can never forget. Whether the Almighty did anything for Bruce or not, he surely saved me from becoming a Bruise Alrighty! :-)
Yesterday, as I sat down to fold 3 loads of laundry, I turned on the TV. DD, DH and parents left for a day at an amusement park and I had just put my son down for a nap. Browsing through the channels I found the Jim Carrey starrer 'Bruce Almighty' dubbed in tamil on sun TV. I normally never watch such stuff, but yesterday I was very tickled to catch Jim Carrey shout 'Kadavule', 'Poda loose paiyya' , Jennifer aniston go ' Enna aachu ungalukku?', Morgan Freeman playing God say 'Pinne kaanaam' ( see you later in malayalam) - I figured the original version must have had him say 'Hasta la vista or Ciao'.
In this film the character of Jim Carrey, Bruce is disgruntled, unhappy and blames God for his lacklustre career, for painstakingly having to eke his way out without immediate success and for the quick growth of his clever coworkers. Finally God decides he's had it with this man's complaints and decides to contact him through his pager. Bruce's pager beeps with the number 555 0123. What struck me was the co-incidence with something that happened many years ago - for a second I relived the same 'chill down the spine' feeling.
It was during my II P.U. public exams; The warning bell had just sounded at 12:15 pm to remind us that we had only 15 minutes left of our 3 hr exam, to turn in our mathematics exam answer sheets. I always stay writing till the very end of my every exam - I am very wordy in my answers, never had success with precis writing and I also cannot write very fast . Also my nervousness always made me check and recheck my answers and I could never walk away cool and confident, turning the answer sheet in before time. This time was no different. Just after the warning bell, as is customary, our invigilator told us to tie in all our answer sheets, check our registration numbers were entered right and be ready to hand them over. I did the needful and kept reviewing my answers as one by one most folks turned in their answer sheets and exited. The final bell went off at 12:30 and the examiner said in a clear but strict voice - " Keep your answer sheets on your desk and leave the room" as she collated the ones on her table in the front of the room. I stood up but still kept my head buried in my answer papers. The examiner said a bit agitated to me, " Did you not hear me, your time's up, leave the room". It struck me as a bit too rude (even though I realize now that the mistake was mine), I packed up my geometry box with my compass, protractor, scale, pens etc., clamped my question paper to my clip board ( which we referred to as exam pad) and walked out. At that point only my very good friend and I were present there and we started to discuss the paper animatedly right outside the open doors of the exam hall, as the examiner went from desk to desk collecting answer sheets. After about 5 minutes, the examiner turned toward us and asked me " who was sitting in front of you?", I replied " No one ma'am". She asked " Then whose number is 555 123?", I replied " Mine, ma'am" with growing anxiety in both our voices. She shot "Where is your answer sheet?". Panicked I quickly checked my exam pad- I lifted the question paper to find my entire answer sheet sitting clamped beneath it. The examiner went " How can you be so careless?" as she took the pile from me. She told me that since I was in front of her very eyes the whole time and she believed it was a dangerously foolish inadvertent mistake, she accepted my answer papers a full ten minutes after the time limit. A little hurried and a little miffed I had forgotten to leave my answer sheets on the desk before leaving.
Had I walked with it down the corridor, down those flights of stairs, down the long drive way to the bus stop discussing with my friend, there would have been no way she would have accepted my papers. I would've made a nice newspaper column of someone who studied for an exam, solved trigonometry and calculus problems, drew geometry figures and crunched logarithmic tables for 3 hours and brought her neatly stacked answer papers home with her to a wonderful 'failed' result. I'd have lost a year, turned into a psychological wreck - God knows what! I faltered at the top of a steep cliff and managed to fall on the safer side. All three of us present there - myself, my friend and that examiner were shaken at the enormity of what might have happened. Never before had my buddy and I ever stayed back right in front of the hall talking about our paper.
Almost 20 years later, I experienced the same stoppage of breath, lump in my throat, knot in my stomach for a few seconds as I travelled with no speed limits down memory lane. After I regained my breath I couldn't help but think how diametrically opposite this was to the examination scene in the movie 3 Idiots - in which an unco-
operative examiner refuses to take the answer sheets from 3 students who request for a few minutes extra time since they started the exam late due to an emergency. The students then trick the examiner and mix up their papers with the rest of the lot on the examiner's desk and run away.
The number 555 123 is something I can never forget. Whether the Almighty did anything for Bruce or not, he surely saved me from becoming a Bruise Alrighty! :-)
