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  • A Textbook Experience

    I am studying for my upcoming exams (that’s short for “examinations,” if you don’t know), something I’d been doing since receiving that ever so unpleasant shock of finding out that my exams actually were, in fact, upcoming. Every now and then, I fall into a state of groggy lethargy when nothing can enter my magnificently [...]

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  • Letter to Textbook Writer

    (I have grown. And I have changed. Whereas previously I might have engaged in an angry tirade about textbooks, now I instead try to do something about it. So when I came across a slight glitch in a textbook I was studying from, I sat down, thought about it, and wrote a letter about it [...]

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You know, as much as I hate studying (and ‘hate’ is an understatement of gargantuan proportions), I do try to get down to it and get it done the best way that I can at the last possible minute. Honestly, I do try to make the sincerest efforts imaginable to mug up just enough that will, at the very lest, make me get to the next step of this idiotic and mindless ladder. “Seriousness!” is what a particularly loud teacher from school said about studying, and she always looked around to find all the students looking back at her intently, thus leading her to believe that she aroused seriousness among the students. This, unfortunately, proved to be a misconception on her part, because what really happened during her classes could be very well summed up by a statement made by my friend the Goat during her first class, who whispered to me when she entered the class for the first time, “Her cans are big.” Vulgar, but true.

But seriousness was what I always sought to achieve in my study sessions. And after much hard work and much time spent in looking intently into my text book, I would reach a point where I could sense seriousness coming upon me, and it was at that point, more often than not, that seriousness would then take a sharp detour and leave me laughing. You see, they don’t want you to succeed. They really don’t. That’s why they pepper their textbooks with things so absurd that makes one laugh so hard that the much-needed seriousness is nowhere to be found.

The first time that I can remember this happening was during my reading of my History text book, y’know, his story? Well, the ‘his’ in this particular story was a chap named Shah Jahan. There were two Shahs actually, the other one being the Shah of Persia. Also in the picture was a place called Qandhar, which everyone wanted a piece of. If this place were a person, it’d be Angelina Jolie who I assume everyone wants a piece of. (In case you were wondering, this is how I keep my studies interesting, by injecting my fantasies in the most inopportune moments. Desperate times call for Angelina Jolie, as they say.) Now Qanjelina happened to be under the control of an unfortunate yet brave man named Ali Mardan, a Persian governor, whose misfortune and braveness you will soon see for yourself. So back to Mr. Shah Jahan, who desperately wanted Qanjolie, not for the booty, but for its strategic position. Booty, by the way, is a much favoured word among our ancient history textbook writers who evidently haven’t heard of a person named Beyonce. “He conquered India and helped himself to its immense booty”, “Every soldier was able to get a part of the booty” and “”Shake dat booty, woman! I said shake it! <slap>” are a few examples and I can think of off the top of my head. The last example might have been yet another attempt to keep it interesting, but whatever.

Getting back to our fascinating story, Shah Jahan, realizing that he had the necessary means to obtain the bootilicious land, said to Ali, quite simple, “Surrender.” Ali, in his first show of bravery, flatly refused by yelling back at Jahan, “Get your own booty!” OK, that was just taking it too far with the booty allusions, so I’ll stop now. It was only then that Ali saw Shah Jahan’s military might, and he promptly soiled his pants. In desperation, he sent a request to the Shah of Persia to send him some military assistance. Now, at this highly critical juncture, when the future course of my history syllabus depended solely on how the Shah of Persia responded, I found in my textbook the following line (and it’s an exact quote): The Shah took it as mischief and therefore he sent a general to arrest Ali Mardan.

Now just to understand the immensity of hilarity contained in this one single sentence, let’s just review a few points. First we have Qandhar, a place whose importance cannot be underestimated. Then, there’s brave, foolish Ali Mardan, who’s practically crapping bricks, and who sends a desperate, earnest plea for help to his Shah. So what does the Shah do? Well he just slaps his fat overpaid thigh, shares the ‘joke’ with his many bootilicious harems, and then, to make his own joke, he sends a general to arrest Ali Mardan.

It was therefore most unfortunate that the Shah of Persia’s joke went unappreciated, because unable to comprehend the humour in a warrant for his arrest, Ali Mardan surrendered Quandhar without any resistance and in return he is rewarded by Shah Jahan with more booty than he could have hoped to have in his entire life. Not only that, he also got immense riches, high honours and was made the governor of Punjab! And as for the Shah of Persia, the Shah with the most misplaced sense of humour in history, he just got royally screwed.

But as whacky as the history book might seem, it pales in comparison to the psychology book. Apart from confusing experiments that have maddeningly vague aims and objectives, the psychology book is also littered with the most horrendous illustrations that you’ll ever see. Sometimes the illustrations are so bad that the only thing that’ll make them clearer are further illustrations to illustrate what the illustrations are about. I doubt even that would work, though, as even the illustrative illustrations would require further illustrations, and thus snowballing into a giant frenzy of illustrations.

Take for example this illustration:

What apparently happened was that the writers of the book thought that the reader would obviously have no idea of what a human baby would look like, so just to be on the safe side, they come up with the strangest, hairiest baby they could think of. But why would they use this abomination to represent all the human babies of the world? Really, what baby looks like this?

It was after that and many more ill-conceived illustrations that I thought it couldn’t get any worse. It seemed that no matter how ludicrous the remaining contents of the book might be, it simply wouldn’t surprise me. Why is it, then, that when my eyes feel upon this next illustration that I not only burst out in crazy belly-laughs but also monkey-danced on the ledge of the parapet in glee for what seemed like entire era?

Notice that the caption states, quite poker-facedly, “Changes in body associated with age.” Yeah, right. It would have been better served by something like, “Attack of the Fugly Man-Sized Babies from Hell.” Then all that they’d have to do is reverse the order of the figures and, with that second caption, the illustration would do a much better job explaining what happens to one suffering from fugly man-sized babyness that it could ever hope to do explaining the changes associated with age. Think about it. In the first stage of fugly-man-sized babyness, the man first disposes of all those pesky clothes and simply stands stark naked, unashamedly. The second stage doesn’t really witness much of a change, other than the fact that the person is then aware of the ridiculousness of his body and starts to get a bit shy and fidgety, and brings his legs closer together. In the third stage, he is freer with himself and even spreads his legs slightly apart, and lastly, his we-wee becomes a small V encased in a big V (in fact, this is why he refers to it as wee-wee which is really just V-V). Also, the head stars to get rounder and bigger. At the commencement of the fourth stage, things start to go haywire. The body gets broader, legs get fatter, face looks stupider, head gets rounder and even bigger, and for some reason, he now has the most amount of hair on his head than he has had in all the prior stages. Then, at last, he morphs into full-fledged fugliness: the head looks like a large watermelon and has slits for eyes and nose, he’s completely bald, he gets a case of thunder-thighs, becomes really fat, and just stands there, saying, “Look at me, I’m the ugliest bloody thing you’ll ever see!”

THE END. I hope you enjoyed that. If you'd like to read more, there's plenty available in the archives