My Friend - Motee Sheem

Hi All,

I have scripted a small story which needs your criticism.

pls reply back with your comments when you have time.

I did this on one lazy rainy saturday, when i had nothing to do but put my nostalgia into e-paper.

hope you all are doing fine.

till then,

Love and regards,
Gyani


"I haven't lost my mind ~ it's backed up on disk somewhere!"

My Friend Motee-Sheem

Preface – This had been my favorite story I had narrated so far. I have tried to key it down as it brings back nostalgia and a sense of happiness to me. It is not meant to hurt anyone and I believe all my alumni would agree with the facts associate with our school.

I had studied in a convent school, a co-ed convent located in an area which had a fair mix of Believers of Christ & the holy mother.

This mix of people composed of East Indians (Marathi speaking Christians), Goan’s, Mangees (people from Mangalore, Karnataka State), Mallus (Malayalam speaking folks from Kerala), Buddhists & a set of Hindus.

The place was called Sahar village, it had houses which had the distinct East Indian look.

A front lawn which had domestic animals like hen, mud soaked pigs, ducks, geese & occasionally few turkeys and horses.

Every such house had a distinct small balcony where you can find Old Uncle Joe in his trademark deshmukh chaddi (striped cotton shorts) and a ganji (vest) sipping some brew.

And yes the brew, All Christians in Sahar gaon (village) do make wine and other liquors. So Uncle Joe may seem to the new comer as the official wine connoisseur.

All homes would definitely have a good music system all blaring songs from Prince, George Michael, Pet shop Boys & bands which you never heard of.

The lingua franca is Konkani and the Hindi is accented, it has given rise to the mumbaiya term called Pau-Walla.

Pau is the local salt bread which forms the daily bread for all folks from Sahar. The bakery is a profitable institute. Opens at 4:30 am and by 6 am there is a huge queue. All the bread is sold out by 7 am.

Ok so much for the surrounding around my school, the school was run by a mission, so had a church, a graveyard and surrounded by trees. The principal would be the strictest & oldest holy person around usually.

Once inside, the huge mammoth gates where shut down and we were literally disconnected from the rest of the world and the now bustling and awake Sahar village.

I was in class 6 when we had 3 kids sharing a bench. A class of 70+ shouting, scratching, fighting, crying students all over from the suburbs of Mumbai.

I shared my bench with Paul & Intikhab…our trio were referred to as the Amar Akbar Anthony of the class.

But we had a bigger group of confederates. This gang wasn’t christened but you can always find one of them setting examples by being punished for breaking rules. Oh yes the rules, our princy had a fetish for rules and they kept growing each day.

The gang all had one thing in common, we wanted to rebel each rule set against us.

One such day when the weather was just fine, a thought came to my mind. During the recess (lunch break) while everyone was gulping from their (or someone else’s) lunch boxes. I said, “Isn’t it the perfect time to be in the outside world?”

Everyone agreed, but was quiet as we couldn’t scale the huge perimeter wall or the huge iron gates.

The situation cried of rebel, I remembered ‘the Abbot’ & ‘Edmund Dante’ plotting to escape from the prison in Count of Monte Christo, which my dad used to tell me every night before bedtime. The story took from November to the next August but I was never tired of it.

I had to bring the gang to spirit. I said, “Intikhab, what do you think, what can we do once we are out in the fields which is behind your home”, Intikhab said, “It’s a lush green ground perfect for Cricket! Alas, it’s been occupied by unworthy buffaloes that graze all the green grass down to the brown mud.”

I said,” Gentlemen, we have to have a cricket match on that ground and legally establish it as a playground, I need volunteers, all who agree raise your hands”

I saw 9 out of the 10 member gang raising their hands with a broad smile reaching their ears, except for Motee-Sheem, and I knew him too well to know why he was looking at his shoes.

O yeah, you haven’t met this friend of mine, the great Motee-Sheem!


Motee-Sheem is from Nepal, he told in his famous brags his family was washed into Mumbai when Mount Everest felt that it has to loose its cold ice cover and take some sun for a change. Nah…no one believed it. But yes one thing is sure, the cold Himalayan ice has blessed Motee-Sheem with a perennial cold. He can be always found with a streak of pale yellow phlegm running down his nose. We used to bet on which nostril would run down when Motee-Sheem came to school everyday.

Think you already have formed a bad image about my friend. No he is very clean otherwise, bespectacled with lenses the thickness of soda glasses which made his small eyes almost tiny to a speck.
He came everyday to school neatly ironed, his creases last till recess, while mine goes off during the mock wrestling matches I had once aboard the school bus.

His shoes are perfectly clean, the official navy blue canvas shoes with no pencil drawings on the front white patch. Though he had not mastered the art of tying shoe laces and always needed a helping hand. He wears the tie the whole day, whereas we end up either strangled or with a tie tucked into our shirt, pretending to be good kids and violating rule with the ties (there were so many cant remember the number).

But yes the only thing which Motee-Sheem can do is make a very serious classroom go berserk. Let me tell you about his divine power.

This happened during our Hindi class; we had a new teacher, Mrs. Agarwal. She had come from Africa (probably after killing all the lions there). She had a bob cut and was fat. She always wore sleeveless which would scare us as she had biceps fatter than that of ‘The Undertaker!’

She would read a poem, give us the poem to be learnt-by-heart as homework (which was mean). The next day she would call everyone turn by turn and make them recite the poem.

If anyone misses a line or fumbles, he/she had a day, the cane would flash...Swish...Swack…whack. then you have to get your calendar ( a record book where teachers wrote their lies about us and which had to be accepted by our parents by signing them…in a way agreeing to correct our mistakes.)

Mrs. Agarwal would then give you not one but two remarks saying homework not done.

Now what’s with the two remarks, rule 567 stated that a student if he gets 5 remarks, he is issued a warning card. His parents have to come and meet Fr Angelo (the principal) and beg before him, slap their kids before him….in all make him smile which is very tough. He smiles only when the student cries. So now that you know about the warning card, two remarks are closer to a warning card. The nerds in our class, the sissies and the girlies would cry. The class soon turned into a crying class.
And it was Motee-Sheem’s turn to recite the poem.

He walked towards the teacher, measuring his steps. Mrs. Agarwal was grinning at him, probably thinking...”Fresh meat”.

He turned towards the class and was still staring at his shoes. Mrs. Agarwal bellowed, “Why don’t you look at your class and read the poem loudly”

Motee-Sheem looked up, everyone was praying that he won’t break down and have a attack of memory loss.

He was about to start reciting, then the miracle happened.

A huge yellow balloon formed under his right nostril and exploded with a phut!

That’s it, the class went wild, Mrs. Agarwal couldn’t stop anyone even as she went on a blind cane trashing rampage.

No one can do that…what a performance…blow a balloon with your nose and explode it!!!

Ok, back to our voting session. Now I had to convince Motee-Sheem and put back his self-confidence. I placed an arm around him; He was the shortest in our group.
And said, “Motee-Sheem how bad it would be for us playing without a great wicket keeper like you.”

That bought a halo over his head, he was floating in air, as someone…someone had finally accepted before the gang that he was a great wicket keeper. Though the gang always felt one who can’t bat nor should bowl be the wicket keeper.


While I was sure that Motee-Sheem can’t escape my bid. I let him alone soaking in the moments of glory.

I turned to the Gang,” When & how, these would be our primary questions for the challenge”

Paul said, “We can play only during school time, the objective of our rebel would be to escape during this time and comeback undetected. So I think recess is the best time, we have 30 minutes of chaos where the teachers don’t have eagle eyes on us”

“Perfect, agreed”, I said.

Intikhab who is known for his analysis said, “There is no way we can scale the perimeter wall. They have reinforced it with broken glass as topping to the ice. So we have to scale the gates and that too the back church gate as the front gate has Kalluram the watchman dozing on it.”

“Hmm, so we have only one option of scaling the church back gate, but I am not sure how many can do that from our gang.” I said.

Roland, one more active member of the gang, who is famous for breaking rules, came out with the solution at the great moment of dilemma. He said,” I agree with Ganesh, no one can scale the gates, be it the main gate or the church back gate. They are too huge. But we can easily wiggle under it. The gates are ½ feet off above the ground, and I think that’s the only way out”

Everyone was beaming at the idea, a true military style escape. Everyone remembered the great escape planned by Sylvester Stallone in the recently aired movie at school called ‘The Great Escape’.

Yes this is going to be our great escape!


Everyone silently voted for the idea. Now we had to get the kit. “No problem” said Paul, “we have a bat, which is the under part of our desk. Ball is easy to sneak through in our school bag. We need pads which I think we can borrow the cardboard from the paper scrap shop. We don’t need a helmet as no one in our Gang can bowl over shoulder length.”

All was set, perfect, the D-day was set. We all went back to our class as the bell for the assembly rang.

Tomorrow was the big day, when I came back to School; I saw a gleam of happiness in everyone’s eyes.

The first 5 periods which were 45 minutes each seemed to look like they were for 45 hours. Everyone was dying in anxiety.

The recess bell rang and we all looked like a charged team reaching glory.

Paul expertly took the wooden bat from under the desk. He also produced the ball from him bag.

We all teamed up behind the church where a group of nerds where discussing bad things like math’s and science over their lunch boxes.

They didn’t notice us nor did we expect them too. We all reached the back gate. The ground was visible from there. I ushered in Paul to be the first volunteer; he lay flat on his belly and crawled like a worm under the huge gate.

Everyone was happy when he reached the other side of the gate and jumped at his new found freedom.

That was it, everyone was scrambling under the gate and the entire gang was outside school into the open free world during school hours for the first time.

The taboo was broken and how easily. What mattered more was not the game but the sheer idea of being out in the open.

The ground was green but not flat. it had mud puddles, buffalo dung and the ball would always be lost each time a fielder missed it. The whole team would spend time searching it. Motee-Sheem was happy. Adjusting his specs each time he took his wicket keeper stance.

Intikhab was bowling, He was a promising pace bowler, and Rolland was on the crease, ready to take the delivery with the crude bat in his hands half raised.

As Intikhab started his run up the situation was tense. Motee-Sheem with his yellow streak of Phlegm was wide eyed and opened his hands wide to collect the ball incase Rolland missed it.

The ball was way wide and Motee-Sheem dived to collect it, no use; the ball zipped past him and went into the shrubs behind him.

Jus then chaos began. The recess bell rang, our freedom tenure was over. We had to go back and join the assembly.

Motee-Sheem was speeding towards the shrubs to get back the ball. The gang had already started helter-skelter towards the church gate.

I was in a dilemma, should I race back to the gate leaving poor Motee-Sheem lost in the shrubs or whisk him back.

I decided to opt for the latter. I ran towards Motee-Sheem who now seemed to be invisible in the shrubs.

I paced across the shrubs to find Motee-Sheem stuck in a mud puddle.

He had tripped and his specs were in the mud and so was he ankle deep.

He was crying and the yellow balloon was blowing each time he took some oxygen to cry aloud.

I pacified him, took his hand and pulled him out of the mud puddle. His left shoe was stuck in the mud; he wanted to get it back. I had to pull him back. So he felt over-powered and crying left his left shoe back in the mud.

Being dragging Motee-Sheem crying was a sorry thing to do, but I had a greater motive and that was to be back in class. Mrs. Agarwal made late comers take 4 canings and one remark.

I couldn’t afford that as I already had 4 remarks in my calendar.

We reached the gates; I had to push Motee-Sheem underneath. He wriggled like a stuck pig to get past. I followed suit.

We reached the class. Everyone was already in except us; we could not take the main door and risk Mrs. Agarwal noticing us. So we decided to sneak past the back door

As we did that Motee-Sheem who had some mud in his leg touched Pinky Das. Now Ms Pinky Das was a real sissy. She would shout and scream at anything and everything.

Motee-Sheem’s mud laden leg touched Pinky and all hell was loose.

She screamed fearing Anaconda had entered the class.

The next moment Mrs. Agarwal pounced upon us.

I knew we were done.

She pulled the struggling Motee-Sheem by his ears, and asked him, “What are you trying to do, hide from me?”

“No, madam, we were searching for Motee-Sheem’s lost eraser” I said, gathering my wits.

“Ok, you could have told me, now get back to your seat fast” She said convinced.

And left us. I could see it in Motee-Sheem’ eyes full of gratitude and thanking me.

Since that day, Motee-Sheem believed me blindly. He sought his savior in me.

This went on till a year and his father was transferred to Delhi. He cried all day and his yellow streaks were obvious from both his nostrils.

I haven’t heard from him after that. But I remember him and the good days we had together. I have told this awesome story to my kid whose favorite character is Motee-Sheem uncle. Hope Motee-Sheem’s yellow streak kids too would have heard the same story as told by him.