One of the short stories...

Main Hoon Naa!

The train rumbled to a halt at Ghoom railway station, Darjeeling. Whistling one last time it engulfed the railway platform in a cloud of dark heavy smoke. Major Ram emerged out of the darkness all set for a top secret mission - He was going to St. Paul's College to look for his long lost brother, protect the general's daughter and save the nation from an impending disaster. Typical filmi ishtyle!!

No prizes for guessing. I am talking about one of the top grosser of 2004 - the movie, Main Hoon Na and well... my relation with the same. With all my humility, of course! :)

Well, guess what!!... I too went to the same school long before Shahrukh came along :). Thankfully, I did not have the nation’s millstone on my small shoulders, but yes, had my own share of responsibilities. I never raced on rooftops like in the flick, but the red paint on it somewhere had my hard work. Painting them as part of social service towards the school was what flashed before me as I watched Shahrukh and Zayed racing on the roof.

1989 Admitted to St. Paul's School Darjeeling - standard III, I belonged to the Primary Wing (Only students from standard 1 to 5 belonged to this Wing).The primary wing was a safe haven, sheltered from the senior wings by quite a distance and a lot of rules. No senior could come and boss over us on normal days. That was cool! We had our GI Joe's, He-mans and a whole array of field sports to spend our Sundays. But the best part was definitely the tea time alias Tuck time.

Tea time, would food be left behind? Coke crates, Cartons of Wai Wai noodles, Ferro Roche chocolates, Danish cookies, whole lot of bhujia and tins of swalis. Each one of us used to get loads of food from home, especially the Marwadis and the guys from Nepal.

We could open our tuck lockers and eat as much as we could. Frankly, tuck was the most important, just as important as the toilet paper!

Whatever be the misgiving, early school days was a ball. Fun, food, games, torturous study timings and of course experiences. Where do you find them better than boarding schools? Let me relate an interesting incident...

It was Sunday and tea time! Double whammy! Half an hour of tuck time followed by a cartoon movie!! But today it was different. There were strong rumours floating that would have sparked a rebellion. But we, class 5 guys being seniors of the wing decided to hold on till we were sure. The rumours were confirmed. We were being served with laddos, bhujias, fanta and a whole load of delicacies.

Wait a minute......something was wrong out here...

The teacher in charge had ILLEGALLY opened our tuck lockers and distributed "OUR" food UNEQUALLY among all of us. How could he ever know the emotional value of our tucks!!!
Out of nowhere laddos whizzed across from one end to the other of the dining hall, accompanied by an emotional cry for justice. The 200 strong ‘primary wing’ rebelled. Samosas, fanta cans, Wai Wai's started to crash around everywhere. It was war!

A food fight!!!!!...a massive rebellion and tons of fun....!! However the teachers didn’t think so......and before we knew it.... a brigade of teachers marshalled by our most feared hostel warden paraded into the dining room...... The hostel warden’s thunderous voice roared like a hungry tiger - 'SILENCE'. Her roar did us all in.

I guess she too was hungry for our tasty tucks. We had enough of it from the teachers, we decided to unleash the might of 'George Bush' - a three and half feet giant of class II, who was always into fights. Time for action against the teachers!

The rebellion was growing till the teachers reached the quadrangle...however a bunch of tiny tots were no match for our beastly teachers... heavily armed with canes and loud voices ...crushing our rebellion at its prime :(.

One by one we were called to the quadrangle for justification... a more subtle name for caning... Caning was indeed painful, but we tried to hide our moist eyes, for weren’t we rebels? And how could rebels cry!..the rebellion cost us our regular - Sunday cartooooooonnnn :( !!!!

George was ‘furious...’and so were we...

Though the rebels were disbanded, our purpose was met. From that day onwards, no teacher tried to play truant with OUR tucks. Though we did not have a moment to bask in the success of our rebellion, I guess we put up a better show than Shahrukh in ‘Main Hoon Na’.