I love the way the child connects the dots so simply and honestly- how he’s determined to establish the fact that he is NOT a boy!And money is money..brilliant!

AWK: What fun, indeed! And I agree, that kid deserves 15/10, or even more. Maybe his teacher was not in the mood of reading some rambled creativity.

Bhaijan: What can I possibly say in response to such an amazing and equally hilarious comment? You also reminded me of one of my FSc days when I knew the answer to not a single question in our Chemistry exam, and the invigilator was another Chemistry teacher who had a good impression of me. So every time he would pass by my seat, I would reverse the answer sheet and start working on some chemical equations — that are still to be acknowledged by the scientific community — giving the impression that I am busy in “rough work”.

And yes, I flunked as well. Our teacher had not bothered to look at the backside of my answer sheet, or I might have gotten negative marks. (Or, perhaps, I might have won the Nobel prize. Who knows.)

Ehtisham: Glad you liked them.

Beautiful Stranger: *scratches his head* No idea about Booker prizes. But prizes are always biased like that, look at the Academy Awards — comic roles rarely win. But have you got any of those essays saved somewhere? I’d love to read them.

Thanks for sharing!

I was instantly depressed when I arrived here today. I have been away, and I am still away, and I know I have been away; but when one comes to ulta seedha land, and finds not one, not two, but three posts since one’s last visit, one knows one has been away for, perhaps, too long. Having been away for too long is depressing. I was depressed. (Watch how quickly I try to imitate this kid, and watch too how miserably I fail – need I explain my absence anymore?)

That depression has quickly ebbed into oblivion though. Whoever wrote those essays is probably a published writer today – in the conventional sense that is – since this kid was writing excellent thought provoking prose way back in 2001.

Thank you once again for an excellent post – made my day.

Reminded me too of this one time when I had got the date sheet wrong in my 11th standard, and gone in expecting a Chemistry exam, when in fact, we were sitting for Bio.

The question paper was in two parts -twenty True/False questions, and four subjective questions. I got through the True False with alacrity – it took little effort on my part, sine I knew answers to only seven out of the twenty questions. Now there I sat, at a quarter past nine o’clock, waiting for the clock to strike 10:30 am, which was the earliest time at which one could submit his papers. I tried sitting there doing nothing, since the rest of the paper was latin for me, but it was hard to do, since the invigilator happened to my Urdu teacher, who expected me to be a good student, and whose good impression of me I had no intention of tempering with. Then along came a brainwave – one of the subjective questions was about CNS – Central Nervous System. The Brain. And I knew that a brain had three parts. So I wrote that down, and then I explained how even in psychology the brain was to have three parts – this was followed by a detailed description of the conscious, sub-conscious and the unconscious.

I looked at the clock then, and it was still only 9:45 am; so I proceeded to enlighten the prospective reader about the intricate workings of the sub-conscious mind, and how our conscious actions are a reflection of what has been in the subconscious while we remain blissfully unconscious.

There was time enough, and I was able to illustrate the point with a couple of my very recent dreams, the concept of deja vu, and the symbolicism of a blank white sheet.

I flunked – needless to say; scoring all of nine marks out of 100. The professor gave me two marks for the effort, five for courage. Two of the remaining were testimony to my deep understanding of the subject of biology.

Yeah! I got nothing to do.