The Supermoon

Clouds are vying to conceal

The beautiful bright sheen

Adorning the night sky, pristine!

Full and round, bright and brilliant;

A lesson for all-

To be so powerful and yet silent.

The glass windows by my bed,

Allow the snowy rays to filter through;

I’ll leave the curtains ajar,

Shut my eyes and drown -

Like a cube of ice in wine in a bar-

While secretly appreciating

That my eyes can’t spot its scar!

The halt

A bottle, almost half-filled with mineral water rolled off the edge of the tray with a noise that was just enough to wake him up. Water spilled over onto the floor.

“Ah, Rashi, didn’t you cap it properly after drinking?”, the fifty-something man admonished his daughter, as he stooped to pick up the bottle with his left hand while using his right foot to shove the shoes away from the mess.

The man was not more than five-and-a-half feet tall. He wore an old-fashioned pair of glasses that concealed his mischievous eyes with an air of intelligentsia. Half-bald by the combined forces of age and heredity, this stout man had the appearance of a typical small-town businessman. His daughter, in her early twenties, was certainly not very beautiful but was pretty enough to exact lengthy glances from young passers-by.

The train journey hadn’t so far been very memorable. Nested in one corner of the compartment was the daughter. Just next to her was her father.  A nap between two stations ensured that time flew faster than usual, as they attempted to fight the ennui ensuing with every passing minute. But a sudden jolt had woken them up. The train had come to a halt. But there wasn’t a platform in sight.

“No signal yet again? The railways must be shut down! It’s already running so late”, complained a middle-aged gentleman to the left of this man, wiping sweat off his forehead by the stroke of his forefinger.

The daughter hadn’t paid much attention to the world outside her iPod. She was mindlessly tapping her feet to the beats of a song she played so loud that it almost got the boy opposite her tapping his feet as well! With the train now standstill, the breeze had stopped blowing. The girl removed the earplugs with a sigh of discontent.

A tall man with a mustache came running down the aisle. Startled by his panicky movements, the passengers exchanged confused glances. One of them couldn’t resist asking, “What’s the matter? Is everything alright?”

Paying no heed to the question, he walked past briskly, only to stop again at the same question by an old bespectacled man. This time again, he paid no attention but cared to reply more out of annoyance than courtesy-

“Someone pulled the chain.”

In a moment, all eyes turned towards the window. Men hanging from the door were shouting fiercely at a short young man running with a grey suitcase towards a village. Green pastures disappeared into the horizon. And apparently so did he plan to! Chasing the man would be a futile exercise, considering the fate of the thousand stranded travelers. The railway officials had given up.

Rashi was quick to recognize the suitcase the man was fleeing with. She quickly caught hold of her father’s arm, “Look, it’s that suitcase!”

In no time, the father realized that the suitcase that was carefully perched on the upper berth was no longer at its place.

The suitcase wasn’t theirs. Nor did it belong to any of the passengers in that bogie. They had lived in constant discomfort ever since they had discovered it after boarding the train.

“Let’s open and see if there’s an address of the owner”, a tall man who acted like a detective, had advised.

But before he could execute his plan, one lady had disclosed her concern. She'd complained to her husband, “Haven’t you seen those advertisements they show on TV? This might be a bomb. No place in this world is safe. There are terrorists everywhere!”

The husband had dutifully complied by engaging the fellow passengers in a discussion.

“Let’s throw it away”, proposed one. But he dared not bell the cat. In fact, no one would touch it. Some tried to get hold of a policeman in the train but to no avail.

“Okay, we should wait for the next station and inform the police”, suggested an aged gentleman. Everyone had agreed to the only seemingly feasible solution. The next station was an hour away.

“So, we’ll have to wait”, sighed a worried passenger, who embraced his kid, promising safety.

While they waited, the long journey coupled with the May heat had taken its toll on their body, inducing sleep from time to time, despite the cause of worry. The wait had come to a premature halt with the thief running away with the suitcase. The passengers did not know whether to thank him or not.

The father looked at his daughter, smiled at her and caressed her hair. Rashi reciprocated and soon went back to listening to her little device.

The Competition

It was barely early summer. Mr. Saha always thought that the education system in the country had become a farce. The summer vacation came as planned by the ‘academic’ calendar at the beginning of the year, irrespective of the cruelty meted out by the bright star light years away. And when it was time for schools to reopen, the sun was too strong that the government had to order them to shut down again. The erratic behavior of nature should hardly dictate the academic calendar, argued the officials in the education ministry. Irony was- it somehow did.

Almost every year, the two months of vacation had to be extended by another two weeks. Kids were happy. So were the teachers. Discontent showed only on the faces of the parents. Saha, for example, wanted his son Bimal to go to school simply because school would discipline him. Bimal was shy and introvert, disciplined and courteous. Saha, however, was never at ease, having seen multiple times on his way back from office, his son’s friends furtively puff cigarette at the paan shop near the school. Thirteen isn’t the best age for this, pondered Saha, himself a heavy smoker.

To put to productive use the long vacation that never seemed to end, Saha decided that he would arrange a competition for Bimal and his friends. Outdoor games weren’t an option. Snakes and ladders weren’t exactly for thirteen-year olds. Ah, how about chess? Saha went to speak to other parents.

History teacher Mukherjee vehemently agreed, “Nice idea, Mr. Saha. Chess originated in India…” He went on with a boring lecture on the history of chess.

Sarkar seemed uninterested. To Mukherjee’s embarrassment, he quipped in, “Is that why my son finds history so boring?” Others broke into a fit of laughter. He also added, “Not everyone might find chess interesting. My son Bikas likes football. I’m sure he will not like it. He will lose matches and quit. Our purpose is thus defeated.”

Dutta was listening intently. While everyone was debating, he hadn’t said a word. But now, while everyone else was trying to think of an alternative, he took a loud sip from his cup and then spoke up.

“Wonderful tea, Mukherjee babu. Do you know about the origin of tea?"

Mukherjee was sweating. Everyone else looked confused.

Dutta continued, "How about a quiz contest?”

Dutta explained, “Everyone will find it exciting. You can have questions on sports, Sarkar babu. And history too, Mukherjee babu. Films, geography, physics, current affairs and what not!”

The idea hadn’t struck anyone before. The word “competition” somehow always managed to conjure an image of some kind of ‘sport’. Quiz was never considered a sport. Now that Dutta’s proposal had gotten everyone into thinking about the merits of the ‘game’, Mukherjee nodded in soft approval, “Yeah, everyone would learn in the process.”

Dutta carried the discussion forward. “You like sports, you read about it out of interest. I am a movie-buff. I go straight to the movie section, first thing in the morning. But I don’t know about sports or science. How do I learn it? Barter system! Old school, yet very effective.”

He continued after another sip, “In quiz, you just cannot sit with your ears shut. Even if you’re into history, and the question is on politics, you’ll listen to the answers of other teams, discuss with others in your team to get the right answer. Guess it, at least. Even if you remember half the answers, it serves more than our purpose!”

The next week went into grouping the kids into teams of four- each with as far as possible, interests in a different area! The date of the event was fixed one month away from the formation of the group. Saha and Dutta took keen interest in bringing the kids and getting them to participate in the event. Most of the students readily agreed to be part of it. Those who weren’t sure initially were convinced soon since they only had to study about their favorite subject. Moreover, the sun was too brutal on them for them to play outside for long.

The next few weeks saw boys and girls spending their afternoons with newspapers, quiz books, magazines and often the internet. One of Mukherjee’s students, who was now pursuing his post-graduate degree, agreed to be the quiz-master.

Twentieth of June saw desks and tables being set up in the spacious garden in Mukherjee’s backyard. The evening happened to be a time that the entire neighborhood happened to remember for quite some time.

“Who wrote, The Picture of Dorian Gray?”

“Oscar Wilde”, shouted one of them.

“Which year was the first FIFA World…”

“1930!”, the answer came before the question could be completed. “Easy”, complained others.

“Name the capital of Norway”

“Oslo”, was the confident Ananya’s reply.

Prizes were given away at the end. A cricket bat! A music CD! A CD of a popular video-game! All sponsored by the parents.

The next year saw Sarkar’s football-freak son answer questions on science,  Dutta’s studious son jovially answer questions on sports and Bimal getting the questions on movies correct!

Two generations lived happily ever after.