Pineapples Galore
I'm Bernard the Buffalo, and this is my home.
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 [...]
Take it from me, to experience a crushing, painful disappointment is no bed of roses. To get to that point, one needs a considerable build up such as your own lofty expectations that come crashing down; or, perhaps, a great desire that goes unfulfilled for much too long. I experienced such a shattering and defeating disappointment[...]
(As it is with most things that have a prologue, this too has an epilogue, where many loose strings are tightened considerably.) Mr. Utta Faylur was the newest teacher of the school, having had his job only five months. He was very proud of his job, and looked forward to what he could make of it.[...]
(After that prologue, we finally get to the meat of the matter with this tale, starring none other than your friendly neighbourhood Speck. And that’s not it at all! Stay tuned for the epilogue in a few days.) Speck’s first test in his fifth grade was a particularly memorable one. So memorable it was that decades[...]
When something’s wrong with your face, people always ask you if you know about it. And if you’re a young person, it even turns into such an important topic that it surpasses the old favourite, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” to become the most irritating thing people ask you. As if it was possible not to notice a giant cancerous growth on the tip of your nose. Or even a slight scar on your cheek, which is what I once sported due to a mild injury which took ages to heal, and on which I was questioned by everyone and their mothers. Literally, as the mothers who came to pick up their kids from school were always interested in what was wrong with you. I don’t know why, maybe its so that they can feel better that there’s at least something right with their own son. Never mind that he exhibits violent psychotic tendencies, smokes pot and has fathered two children, at least he doesn’t have a scar on his face like that nitwit standing there.
Fortunately, it was around this time that I came upon the movie Scarface on cable TV. Being a violent, profanity laced film, it had to be heavily censored so as to allow it to air at times when school children everywhere are returning from school and switching on their TVs. I was quite fascinated by this man with a scar on his face, not unlike mine, and seeing how he responded to questions about his scar changed my approach altogether. “Where’d you get the beauty scar, tough guy? Eatin’ pineapple?” he was asked. Pat came Al Pacino’s slightly whiny voice, “How’m I gonna get a scar like that eating pineapple?” And I laughed in glee and wondered to myself, Yes, how?
So from then on, everything about me became about pineapple. I got the scar eating pineapple, auntie. I fractured my arm while eating pineapple, teacher. I can’t go to school because I fell sick eating pineapple, Mummy. Telling someone that something happened to you because you were eating pineapple throws them off completely and shuts them up. And especially at that time, in the midst of pineapple season, where one of my favourite fruits was staring at you wherever you went, there couldn’t have been a more fitting explanation to give nosy people. Thus, everything was taken care of by the glorious pineapple.
But then, something happened to pineapple. It was a few days later that a friend and I came upon a ten rupee note lying on the school ground. Of course, had either of us been alone at the time of the discovery, we would have rushed to the school gate where there’d be a hawker selling plates of cut pineapple and bought ten rupee’s worth of the germ-infested fruit. But since we were together and being kids, both of us wanted to show just how much better than the other we were, we somehow agreed that we would do the right thing and give the note to the principal.
The time when all this was happening was a short while after school had ended, when almost everyone had gone home. But still we went ahead to the principal’s office, on perhaps the most well-intentioned mission of our lives. We found the principal sitting in his chair, stroking a little cat next to him. Most people would find that strange - but after you were in his office for a while and noticed that among his pets were a couple of scorpions and something slimy that you’d feel crawling up your leg and God knows what other exotic life forms, you’d see that the cat was the most normal thing about him. “Yes?” he asked us as we stood there watching him. We explained to him about the dirty ten rupee note, and made a subtle mention about how we were doing such a wonderfully right thing.
He sat there still stroking the cat, bearing a striking resemblance to Marlon Brando in The Godfather - another movie featuring a still whiny-voiced Al Pacino. He looked at the note for a while and with a slight smile on his face, he took it. “Ah yes,” he said as he put the note into his pocket, “that’s very thoughtful of you boys.” Feeling the need to explain just where the money was going under the stares of two innocent lads, he said, “Yes. I’ll put it in the Poor Boy’s Fund. Your thoughtful action will make a poor boy very happy. You can leave now.”
And so, we were taught what could have been another important lesson if things came to an end at that point- the kind of lesson that stays in your heart well into adulthood, the lesson that you always fell back on later in life when faced with tricky situations where doing the right thing comes at a great cost. But life isn’t like that, see - life never knows when to end things and so always ends up ruining a perfectly decent conclusion. So it was that a few minutes later as we waited outside the school for someone to pick us up we saw the Principal and his cat walk to the pineapple stand, where he took a dirty ten rupee note out of his pocket and bought himself a nice big plate of juicy pineapple. As he ate, with juice falling down on his cassock, we heard him say to his cat, “I’m such a happy Poor Boy, aren’t I? Too bad we don’t have a ‘Poor Pussycat’s Fund’, eh, little pussycat?” and chuckled happily at his wit and went back to his office.
This too would have not been a bad place to end, with me and my friend left to mull things over, and think about how we’d just had our innocence ripped out of us by our own principal. But even that wasn’t to be, as now the process that had begun had to be completed and every last bit of our innocence needed to be actually stamped our of our very souls. The scar on my face had not yet healed completely, and my friend had been one of the few left to ask me about it. “How’d you get that scar?” he asked me.
Doing my best impression of a whiny-voiced Al Pacino, I replied immediately, “I got this scar eating pussycat.” Almost instantaneously I realised that I had made an error, understandably influenced by the encounter with the principal and his pussycat, but that wasn’t all I realised - as at that moment, all the various whispered dirty things that overexcited pubescent runts discuss among their closest friends which had been fused into a disconnected mess suddenly uncoalesced into one strikingly linear narrative that brought forth the true meaning of those words from Scarface, a meaning that was yet untouched by the said pubescent runts’ whisperings: “I mean, I got this scar eating…oh my god!”
~
Which brings me to my subsequent decision of responding to all questions pertaining to what I wanted to be when I group up with “Head of the Censor Board.” And why wouldn’t I want to be that? I could watch whatever I want without the slightest guilt; and more importantly, revel in the all powerful feeling that I and I alone controlled what was appropriate for others to watch. And if my job forced me to to sit down with a stack of film reels containing borderline pornography, then by God I would do it willingly, perhaps even with a large grin on my face and drool flowing down like a river. That’s how committed I would be; people everywhere would say, “He truly is a workaholic, that man. But what is that in his pants?”
And when I am bored (as if that’s possible!), I could think of ridiculous substitutes for dirty words — but mostly I’d just stick to inserting names of various fruit whenever something that could harm a schoolboy would pop up. You know, just to mess with his excitable unformed mind.
THE END. I hope you enjoyed that. If you'd like to read more, there's plenty available in the archives