Rejath and I were the Laurel and Hardy of our group. He had his curly hair and his skin and bones and I - well, I had my generous share of - body fat, I guess. We were both into trivia and once in 4th Std, we qualified for a district level quiz on the 'science of sound'. I remember endless coaching sessions with the teachers describing the workings of SONAR, echo etc (which was exciting in itself, as it meant that we were exempted from some of the more mundane lessons) till a couple of days before the quiz when we got wind of the fact that the whole thing was a light-hearted affair where kids are expected to guess various sounds (for instance, that of a musical instrument or an animal). What a let down, I thought - all that effort for nothing. Anyway we went to the recording studio - the AIR office near Calicut beach - with one of the 'sisters' (the nuns who were teachers in our catholic school). When we got there, there were kids from other schools in the studio already. The adults had left us in the studio and gone elsewhere. Rejath and I were trying our best to be the good boys - the others were running around the room and queuing up excitedly in front of the air-conditioner (a rarity in those days) as it blew cold air into their impish faces and ruffled their hair. The quiz itself, I do not remember much about, but I do remember that my face was burning, which it does whenever I feel shy. We stood around this gleaming big chrome fruit of a microphone dangling at eye level and the quizmaster asked us to shout out our names into the microphone on his cue. When my turn came, hardly any sound escaped me and he had to coax me repeatedly to speak up. The only thing I recollect is that one of the questions was clearly the sound of a string instrument - so I shouted out 'tabla' feeling very smug till the others burst out laughing. In the end, inspite of my bungling, I think we won first place, thanks mainly to Rejath's level-headedness at the age of 9. Afterwards, the 'sister' bought us chaya and pazhampori from the AIR canteen. I could not resist, even though my mother had trained me to say no to 'outside' food (fearing lack of hygeine) - so I chomped into the cold semisolid pazhampori, enjoying every bit of my guilty pleasure. When we got back to the school, there was no one about, it being a saturday. We were herded into the convent where we had lunch in the peculiar deep bowl-like plates which I found strangely amusing. Afterwards both of us had a slice of tea cake.
The other clear memory of Rejath is from 7th Std. I think Ms Vijaya's class. He used to bring his big leatherbound world atlas to learn geography - most of us had thin limp 20-rupee atlases while he had this 'Reader's Digest Special Edition' which used to annoy me a lot, because whenever the teacher described a place on the map, he would pipe up: 'Miss, Miss, it is all very clear in MY atlas'
Grrrrrrr... we were all soon tired of his very clear atlas - I started daydreaming about taking his atlas (which he would not allow anyone else to touch) and beating his brains out with it - Aaaah - the resonating crack in the sleepy mid-afternoon followed by loud cheers from all my classmates as they lifted me onto their shoulders for saving us all from Rejath's inimitable squeak. Sadly, it was not to be, which is why he has now managed to find his way to Minneapolis - I am sure it was all very clear in his atlas!
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