Thursday, July 14, 2005

Trring

14:46
I will the display forward
It stays where it is, defiant
Is this what they mean by 'time stood still'?
another three hours
flashback to school and college
the agonising wait for the bell to ring
but there's no bell now
except for the one in my head

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

With reference to your presentation re Trring, may I say the following lines which is also of a nostalgic propensity? Time was when time used to stand still for aeons because on the backwaters of Cochin nothing much used to happen except when some people used to take into their heads to go on a strike. A strike called by boys in one school may not find much of a support among boys in another school . You ask why you strike? It could be for anything. You dont have to have a good enough reason. It could be something as trivial as a rise in boat fare from 1 anna to 1.5 annas (1 anna being equal to roughly 6.25 paise these days. Those days the paise were just introduced in a fit of fascination with anything decimal and since they were newly introduce they were called -- what else-naye paise)
Going back to strikes, so the boys in the strike calling school used to get mad with the strike denying school and would rush their to urge them to join the casue; shouting slogans and waving flags and punching the air with arms.
The arrival of the striking boys -- few in no, rowdiyish in inclination-used to send a rush of anticipation in the boys of the other school (Girls school one located conveniently near at hand) used to be left out of the order of strike. When persuations and cajoling and pleading and all failed one of them would rush upto the sacred spot where the school bell used to be hung and take out the mallet and strike it a few times . The last bell used to have its own special signal as opposed to one between classes, marking the end of one period and the beginning of another)So when the bell went, most of us would think that the Head master has decided to close the school and would rush out and head home or to the nearby college grounds to spend the rest of the day generally fooling around.
Wonder what happened to that bell-- round, almost the size of a full moon, smooth after millions of strikes with the malletand with a sound of its own.
"YOU KNOW WHO"