Rama Maam

Some of my finest memories come from my SGRR days. The school may have lost some reputation now, but in those days it used to be just fine. There were many a fine teachers, each one unique in their character. Their voices and faces are still stuck in my mind as if I saw them yesterday.

Even though Rama maam never took a class for me, or at least I don't remember she did, there was something about her that made me admire her. I think it was her strong personality. Middle aged, she had a habit of supari chewing. She always carried a reshmi supari pouch with her, the one thats round and has a string at the rim so you can pull and close it. I don't think I ever saw her empty mouthed. As soon as she finished, she would open her pouch and ate a small helping. Because of this her teeth had become tinted, and there was big gap between teeth as well. For some reason, she also always limped while walking. One of my distinct memories also is that she used to wear dark green sari always. Sticking out from the short blouse, her extremely fair flesh always shone on the sunny days making her even more attractive.

When a new principal was once hired at the school, he tried to bring about a few changes, one of them being each one of us would bring the news highlights from last night's news or from the morning newspaper and read them to the whole school during the morning prayer gathering. Also, for the prayers, it was decided to make it more musical. It turned out that Rama maam actually knew how to play harmonium. So, then every morning from then on we sung different prayers like itni shakti hame dena maata or ae maalik tere bande hum with her harmonium and her strong voice took prominence over all other voices. Of course once the prayer was over, she took supari from her pouch for a fresh helping and sooth her dried mouth from all the singing. Such was Rama maam.

Link to Jaya Bhaduri's video for a morning prayer session at school, singing hum ko man ki shakti dena: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbchuCfqBls&feature=related

Confessions of born Merchandisers

An article in yet to be published editorial in newsletter, it talks of confessions of one my colleague and is apt for sales personnals:

Fine day god gifted us to this earth we immediately put up a simple structured solutions for our parents….mom lovingly fed us while dad became our most willing cleaner and never have we seen again customers so happy ever. Growing up trial and error further honed up our marketing skills, initially fleecing grandparents for the pocket money on way to the school leaving behind again a set of well satisfied and adoring customers, still in college increased complexity of ‘Growing up’ business threw up challenges which certainly tingled our boiling hormones and growing grey cells, this time as complex as it can get..latest flames’ father finances the happiness of his child in turn feeling good whilst the child finances the surreptitious meetings again fueling the happiness all over….certainly we did get a engaged customers family.
Finally getting hired by Cargill to be paid for a job which came as naturally to us as honking comes to a donkey but never making an ass of ourselves always leaving a trail of devotionally singing customers behind the pied piper

Twinkle! , twinkle! Cargill star,
sometimes we wonder what you are !
making us feel good and high,
Like a fly caught in sweet pie!

OSAMA

Had Seen this pic somewhere in a magazine earlier saw again.

No virus in this.... :-)