Love thy neighbour but don’t get caught...

In school I was not one of those whom you could define as a ‘naughty boy.’ However, somehow it was me who always got caught. I think it had something to do with my height. I was the tallest boy in class. I was the youngest too, but that’s another story.

Like it happens in most primary schools, at the end of the day we had to fall in line and walk out of the school gates. Since I was the tallest I was usually seated at one of the last benches in the class. I would try hard but somehow the anxiety within me to meet my folks outside the gate would make me invariably break the queue. Now whenever someone breaks the rules of this so very unjust system, s/he was subjected to detention. My breaking the law was so regular that my class teacher almost made it a ritual to hold me back.

It was my 9th birthday and like most school students I too had gone to school all dressed up. At the end of the day, I thought to myself and decided not to break the rule today as it was my birthday. I treated, my getting caught on my birthday as something that would occur all year round. So very cautiously I decided to ‘fall in line.’

Out of sheer habit my class teacher picked on me and subjected me to a detention. I cried, pleaded and reasoned but she would not give in. I made a last ditch attempt by telling her it was my birthday n I did not deserve the punishments. She replied by telling me that this would teach me a lesson for life.

A lesson I did lean for life. After that day I never got caught for breaking the queue ever in school. I must confess though I never stopped breaking the queue till my last day at school but somehow no one ever managed to catch me.

The rationale behind my casual approach to life.

People often ask me how I could have been so causal with big decisions of my life, like my marriage with Anita, my taking up an MBA in a classless college like BVIMK or my not applying my mind to clear the NET exams of the UGC that would have ensured me a permanent job in a college in Bombay.

I too wonder but may be the story of ‘The Verger’ my mum often told me when I was a kid must have had something to do with it.

THE VERGER is a story by W. Somerset Maugham.

It was about an illiterate guy who worked in a Church in London on odd jobs like cleaning, dusting and its upkeep. Suddenly one day a new Catholic priest who was commissioned to reform the parish asked this illiterate and near uneducated verger to pass an exam to retain his job. The poor guy to retain his job tried desperately to clear the test but after several attempts realised that it was not his cup of tea. Desperately dejected he hoped for a miracle but nothing happened and he lost his job.

At such times we all know the walk back home is long and painful. To fumigate his sorrow the guy thought of having a smoke and to his surprise could not find a single cigarette shop on the really long street he was walking on.

A business idea was thus born in his mind and soon he executed it. Thank god he was not an MBA and thus did not waste time writing a ‘business plan.’
His cigarette selling business flourished and within a matter of years he became a rich man; Rich enough for the bankers to notice.

On one of his many regular visits to the bank a high ranking bank official called him to the investments office and explained to him the benefits of investing instead of using the savings option. Convincing as they are, the banker managed to make a kill and convinced our verger to invest. All that the verger was expected to do was read the papers and sign.

This is when the cat was let out of the bag and the verger confess that he could not neither read nor write. The banker almost feeling pity for him said something that provides the ironical climax of the story.

He said “do you mean to say you became such a rich man without knowing how to read or write...? Imagine what you could have become if you only knew to read and write...”

Pat came the verger’s reply... “well I would have been a VERGER at that church around the corner there.”