Vinasha Kaale Vipareetha Buddhi – Part 3 – 5th Standard

Well, Shruthi maam and Shashi maam weren’t the only ones who had something against me. The next in the list is none other than HM. Well it wasn’ t actually my fault, but nevertheless I got properly beaten for it.

It all began with my craze for inventions. Always used to be mad about inventing something(still am, keep thinking up new things that can be made everyday), and the fad then were pens. We had just joined the 5th Class and this was the first year in our lives that we were allowed to use pens(had to make do with pencils until then, don’t know about other schools, but for us, upto 4th Class end, we had to use pencils, that were sharpened by those machines that were gifted by someone, the ones where you put the pencil in, and and twisted the handle until the pencil got sharpened, really used to be fascinated by it then).

Although I wasn’t the pioneer in pens, I did get into some really wacky stuff with them. The credit for being the pioneer innovators in custom-made pens goes to Sadde and Yagna Valkya. They were the ones who first got into this field. Although others before them made minor modifications to their existing pens, these two were really the first to craft an entirely new pen. They had taken the nib and base from a fountain pen(Hero pen), and put it into a sketch pen, and filled it with ink. Was really a marvel of that time, and in no time, the class was filled with people attempting lookalikes of this version(me included, although I was also trying to develop my own model also).

So I decided to one better than them. I took a ball-point pen(ball pen), emptied it throughout except for the body. I attached the filler portion of the Hero pen to its rear end, and attached a conventional nib and base to the front and filled the entire body as well as filler with ink. Thus in many ways it was an easy to fill pen, all you had to do was press the filler, and the whole pen would fill up. And it would last for atleast 2 weeks with the amount of ink it had. Was very excited about it and showed it around and immediately got 3 enquiries/orders for such pens. But my joy wasn’t about to last long.

It was after bhajan time, and I just set about making the first of the orders that I had received. Suddenly the whole class grew quiet, and HM walked in. I didn’t know, the deeply-engrossed inventor that I was, I was just putting away the pen after completing it, when HM told everybody to line up for dinner. I also joined the lines, and stuffed the pen into my pocket. The ink began to leak(well it was just a prototype and wasn’t yet ready for commercial production), and soon enough my pocket began to spread into a blue enlarging dot(which brought to mind a bad reminder of the ‘tar’ incident).

Obviously HM noticed it and asked me what I was doing, I raised my hand to explain, and she saw it dripping in ink. She immediately demanded to know what was going on, and I pulled out the pen to explain that it was the reason for the whole mess. Unfortunately for me, Shruthi maam went ballistic seeing the pen, adn tried to wrench it from my hand. But being my first successful invention, I wasn’t about to let go of it so easily, and starting waving my hand wildly to prevent her form reaching it. In the process, the ink got sprayed all over HM’s silver saree, until the pen drained out. By the time Shruthi maam let go of my hand, HM’s saree was redesigned into a trendy one(well not everyone would have my kind of taste in fashion, so people who object can ignore that word) with dithering droplets of blue all over the silver.

She just walked out in a huff to change the saree. But my story didn’t end there. I got yet another whacking form Shruthi maam for redesigning HM’s saree, although truth be told, if she had left my pen alone all this wouldn’t have happened. But then, am I to judge events, she too had pressure to react when a student of hers was surely fiddling around(was just saying I could have been spared the thrashing).

to be continued… … …

– GUPTA GHOST