Neither Hustle, nor Flow
I'm Bernard the Buffalo, and this is my home.
I was travelling in a crowded local train one day on my way to a wedding, and then realized that I wasn’t feeling very good at all. As a matter of fact, I felt lousy. The reasons for this may be many, but if one thing can be said for sure it’s that my being [...]
Christmas this year was unlike any of my previous Christmases. Sure, I say the same thing about every Christmas, because, when you think about it, no two Christmases can be exactly the same. There’s always that one factor, or a group of factors working together, that provide us with an endless variety of Christmases. But [...]
An examination is a strange and pointless thing, where one is expected to retch out answers to questions asked in a haphazard manner with a minimum of understanding. Which is why I haven’t had one in 1 1/2 years. 1 1/2 glorious years, spent fruitfully by concocting grand plans, almost all aimed at getting even[...]
I was sitting in a restaurant, having lunch with a friend. This friend was the much talked about Goat, who often turned up for no reason other than to keep a story going. This time, however, it was clear that he was out to change this, by actually trying to get a story started. It[...]
You know, I really hated school. Of course, you already knew that, because I keep saying it over and over, to every person that I meet, even people I’ll never meet again. After being introduced to someone new, I’d go, “Damn, this school sucks, doesn’t it?” So me saying that I really hated school is[...]
I often ask myself the question, why do people sing rap songs? Maybe ’sing’ is the wrong word to use in the context of rap, I don’t know. But whatever it is, why on earth would it be done? Little did I know that I’d be answering that very perplexing question myself, as fairly recently, for no apparent reason, I found my very own self in the same confounding situation of singing the chorus of a rap song to myself. Wondering what had brought about this…’rapping’, as it were, I received some very incredulous answers.
It all started a year ago. What started a year ago? The events leading up to that rarest of modern rarities, which is, as I’ve said at least twice before, me singing a rap song to myself. That’s what started a year ago. It was a the time when I had found out I had passed my examinations in my first year of college. I had passed; while the girl who had been in front of me during the exams had failed. I soon understood why, as the memory of her looking back at me, showing me different combinations of her fingers held up and then staring at me like a cat who’s just been deserted my all that she held dear came rushed back to me. I didn’t at first know what to make of the fingers that she kept showing me. It was later, after the examination that I was informed that what she was showing me was the number of the question in the question paper whose answer she didn’t know. Perhaps forgotten it, perhaps she and never studied it in the first place.
And that’s how she had failed. It didn’t bother me too much. I went on with my daily regimen of nothing, and soon met one of those unearthly scum-kind. The kind that loved the school that they and gone to, the very school that I loathed from the depths of my soul. It was this scum who told me with what I assumed was unbridled enthusiasm but what looked like a really full bladder, that the next year in the school was to be a huge reunion of the folks who had ‘passed out’ of the school. I was one of those folks, and I, as logic might dictate to you, didn’t give a rat’s behind.
But then I go to thinking. What if I did go for it? Well, I’d just feel rotten if I did that. Because rotten is what you felt when you are reminded of the terrible ten-year long experience that you really wished you’d forget. But still, I kept persisting. What if I didn’t feel rotten? Why, the only way I’d not feel rotten was if I had a tremendous success story behind me, a story that I’d tell those at the reunion. Yeah, that would actually feel pretty good. That, or going for the reunion with the most unimaginably hot chick that one could imagine. That too would make me feel pretty darn good by itself.
But considering the saddening scarcity of chicks who come under the above category, and the even more saddening paucity of chances that I might somehow be with one of those chicks when the time came, I opted to consider instead the former plan, that of having a damn good success story. Thinking it through, I came to some rather thorough and daring conclusions. My reason went something like this: see, I hated school, that was understood by all. But I also didn’t really like college either, simply because it was too much like school for my tastes. Therefore, by quitting college altogether and doing that college-from-home thing that you keep hearing about these days, I would make what I hoped was a very strong point. The point that I’d make, however, would be strengthened tenfold if I actually did well in the college-at-home thing and then, at the reunion, told them, the saps and the sheep, all about what I’d done.
What I had hoped to achieve by doing so was quite clear to me. Perhaps too clear. On telling those saps and sheep about what I’d done. they’d realise that contrary to all that they’d been told, one could actually study by oneself, without the so-called ‘aid’ of a so-called ‘lecturer’ peering over their one’s shoulder, insulting one at every turn. On realising that, they, the saps and sheep, would reach the same conclusion about their school. Seeing that they needn’t have put up with bad teachers and received beatings and what-not, they, filled with rage of the most unspeakable kind, would then burn that school to the ground, chanting ‘Burn, Horrible School, Burn!’ over and over again. And perhaps then they would turn to me and say, ‘You have shown us the way, master, and so we now proclaim you king, the King of the Saps and Sheep, and you shall be provided with whichever wife you please, and you shall rule over us forever!’ After that, I’d change my name to Chi. Pidambaram just to make people laugh and then bring peace and goodwill to about half the people of the world.
Sure, it may all seem a bit strange now, even a bit unlikely to happen. But I was just a young lad then, uneducated in the ways of the wicked world. All I knew was that I had a dream, a vision, and that dreams and visions were worth fighting for. That’s the kind of person I was. But that was soon to change.
I went on with my life, setting my plan in motion by signing up for College-at-Home, and I never went back to my old college. No even to tell them that I wasn’t coming back again. Was I even supposed to do that? But I didn’t care. It was only the next year - which is, and you should know, this present year we are in - that the events of the previous year came back to me. Out of sheer curiosity, I decided to check up on the dates of the examinations on the internet, and was rather shocked to see that they were to be in exactly a month. But I wasn’t too perturbed. After all, how hard could it be?
That following month I was prepared with what was sufficient to do reasonably at the exams, but I was quickly reminded as soon as I entered my classroom and that examination were the most mind-numbingly boring things in the entire world. They actually expected me to sit there for three hours, doing nothing but writing rubbish into a paper that I found soon forget the next day.To ease my burden of boredom, I made it a point to write my answers to the point and as quickly as possible. This worked out well, as for one of the examinations, I was out of there in just an hour and a half. I was, as they say, pleased as punch.
So it came as a shock of the most unpleasant proportions when I, two days before the reunion I was so looking forward to, found out that I had failed in one of the subjects. It came as a terrible blow to me, as you can probably imagine. Me, fail? Fail, me? I asked over and over again, but both combinations of the words ‘me’ and ‘fail’ brought me no answers. I thought back to the exam of the subject of the one I had failed in, and with slight surprise, noted that it was the very one I had finished in half the allotted time. Might that have had something to do with my failure? I didn’t know the answer.
But now, there were more difficult questions to answer, what with the reunion being in two days. The situation that I was placed in was so unforeseen, that I didn’t really know what could be done at that time. I hadn’t expected something like that to happen. So what about the reunion, then? I had after all spent a year preparing for it, and now, it was all gone. All that time that I had put into planning for it, thinking about, was all that to go to waste? That was something that I just wasn’t prepared to accept. In short, I was in a mess. Going through my plan again, I realised that there were two possibilities that would not make me feel rotten at the reunion I had just lost one, but the other still stood. All I had to do then was find an unimaginably hot chick. But where the hell did one find such a chick?! Hell, I didn’t know any chicks, let alone a hot one. Well, there was one that I knew: the girl who sat in front of me during my examinations last year, but for some reason I had the strange feeling that she wouldn’t exactly jump to do a favour for me.
That’s when I began to fall to pieces. I couldn’t just not go for the reunion now, I had told everyone I knew I was going and it’d look mighty strange if I suddenly pulled out. Questions would be asked, and answering those questions was not what I was looking forward to. Plus, I had invested so much in it. It was all a whole rotten mess, like the mess one finds out that the murder he had committed wasn’t so perfect after all. Things were so bad, that I remember saying to myself at that point, “This situation is as uncomfortable as wearing a coconut-bra”.
Now before you start getting any strange ideas about why I would say something that was, on the surface, so frightfully odd and offbeat, let me explain how I know what wearing a bra made of two halves of a coconut-shell might feel like. Several years ago, there was a grand birthday party, the likes of which hadn’t been seen before or since. Part of the reason for it’s uniqueness was that this party had a very special feature - the males of the party had agreed to put up a small fashion show in which they’d be dressed as female models and walk around, all female-model-like. It was an uproarious success, of course. One of the models, who I knew and was a bit on the plump side, was actually wearing a coconut-bra and had then complained for a day after that about some God-awful itching that wouldn’t leave him. He even made a little joke out of it: he’d point to his chest and say, ‘This one is Itchy, and this one is Scratchy.’ And he was one of the better models that day. That’s how I know what a coconut bra feels like.
That was also when it hit me. That was it! All I had to do was get in touch with this guy, this model at the party, explain the whole thing quickly to him, throw a couple of coconut shells on him, and there! Although it wouldn’t be anything like a smoking hot chick, it was still something, and I wasn’t going to let anything as insignificant as hairy legs or a gruff voice stop me then. I made a quick call to this guy that I speak off, and told him to meet me at the coconut-water place. I figured that I might as well kill two birds with one stone and gets the coconut shells while I was explaining the whole damn thing to him. If he didn’t agree, I could either get him drunk with some fermented coconut water, or knock his lights off by hitting him over the head with a massive coconut. A drunk ditsy thing with facial hair who was a bit on the plump side was still better than no thing at all.
Everthing was planned in my head. Seeing as the person I wanted hadn’t come yet, I asked the man or two halves of a coconut shell. Sure he gave me a strange look, but he wasn’t the kind to turn down money and ask questions. ‘Preferably a 34, double D’, I said, and seeing the blank look on his face, I quickly followed up with: ‘Those big ‘uns will do just fine.’ I took the shells and sat.
I went over the details of my last resort again as I waited for him at the coconut place, when someone who looked like a young David Hasselhoff sat next to me. “Hi!” he said. “What’s all this about?”
“Who the hell are you?” I asked him, annoyed that he had disturbed me so.
“It’s me! You told me to meet you here, didn’t you?”
I really need to improve my powers of foresight, I berated myself, as I saw that I had clearly underestimated the changes that just a few years can bring about in a pubescent kid. There he was, the Guy I was counting on, changed completely from someone who did have at least the slightest of chances of passing for a strange-looking girl who was a bit on the plump side to someone who was David Hasselhoff incarnate. I obviously couldn’t go there with a young David Haselhoff in a backless dress with me. It would never fly. In fact, people would raise eyebrows, and I really preferred eyebrows to be where they belonged.
“Damn you and your coconuts!” I screamed in David’s face, threw the shells at him and hurried home, unable to control anymore the mad rush of thoughts from a panic-stirken mind.
There wasn’t anything left to do. Even the remotest possibilities of making it work somehow had been vanquished so violently. I then plopped into a chair. That was when my lips, as if on their own accord, opened and out sprang the words of a song.
It’s hard out here for a pimp, I sang. It’s hard out here for a pimp.
THE END. I hope you enjoyed that. If you'd like to read more, there's plenty available in the archives