Skip to main content

Bra Baba


Fiction

“A centipede is crawling across a road with a velocity of one foot per minute.  There are vehicles plying on the road at the rate of one per five minutes.  The vehicles are of various widths like bikes, cars and buses. What is the probability of the centipede crossing the road alive?”

“Nil,” said Rohan without even thinking for a moment.

Radhakrishna, the mathematics teacher, was stupefied.  He had expected the brilliant student to sit and apply some formulas.  What is mathematics without formulas? 

Radhakrishna had given the problem to Rohan in order to keep him quiet in the class.  Rohan was an ADHD student according to the counsellor of the school.  He needed a lot of attention.  ADHD means that, hai na?  Attention Deficit?  So the loving and caring mathematics teacher gave him all the attention he could.  He gave him all the problems that his knowledge of mathematics could create.  He was particularly fond of algebra and Rohan turned out to be an expert with all the formulas in the algebra that Radhakrishna knew.  It was then that the teacher sought the advice of Professor Miranandan who handed over the centipede on a platter.

“Show me the calculations.  The steps of your calculations are vital in CBSE’s value points,” said Radhakrishna to Rohan.

“Arey Sir, your question is infinitely more absurd than the universe which has at least some laws like gravity.  But I will solve it nevertheless if you tell me the velocity of each vehicle, its acceleration, wheelbase...”

Radhakrishna stared at Rohan.  Rohan stared back. 

It was then Sohan dangled a bra in front of the class.

“Alge-Bra. Alge-Bra. This is the bra that Radha Sir was trying to pull out from our balcony last night.”

Radhakrishna was saved soon from the classroom by the Principal who rushed there in spite of the obesity he had amassed in direct proportion to the donations paid by hapless parents.

“Algebra has become bra,” Leela shouted.  Leela had a particular reason to shout.  Her inner thigh had been pinched by Radhakrishnan Sir the other day for failing to get one step right in a problem which applied the formula (a+b-c)3.

Radhakrishna left the village the very next day bearing the shame of bra-lifting.  But his mathematical mind was more preoccupied with his ADHD student’s universal laws of gravity.  Gravity.  Grave.  Gravitation.  Pull.  Yes, everything pulls everything else.  Sitting under a coconut tree which had thankfully no coconuts to fall on his head like Newton’s apple, Radhakrishna was attaining enlightenment.  He refused to go to school though his magnanimous wife forgave his sin of pilfering the bra of Sohan’s mother.  The thunderstruck coconut tree was in the next village and it was superstitiously avoided by people.

A stranger passing by thought Radhakrishna was a beggar and threw a ten rupee note as carelessly as a priest who gave gratuitous counsels to devotees.  Radhakrishna was in too deep a contemplation to notice ten rupees.  But more and more people passed by and the ten rupee note extracted the devotion and more currency notes soon which Radhakrishna could not ignore.

Radhakrishna soon became Radha Swami.

Algebra gave way to the Vedas. 

“Those who are misers will never part with their money,” Radha Swami started his Satsang homily with a quote from Rig Veda. 

The misers opened their wallets. 

Radha Swami’s wife opened a bank account which overflew with currency from abroad soon as devotees sought online delivery of Radha Swami’s instant wisdom from beneath a thunderstruck coconut tree.

“Bra Baba is going to buy the Manorama estate,” announced Leela one day in the class.

The Manorama estate was soon razed to the ground in order to construct what Radha Swami called an ashram.  

Eventually acres and acres of land was bought up by Radha Swami Ashram Trust whose motto was “Trust, isn’t that everything?”

Only Leela and Sohan and their friends referred to the Swami as Bra Baba.  They were still children.  When they grow up they will also become trustees of the Trust.  Let us forgive them.

Rohan still remained an ADHD problem even for the Bra Baba in his mind.  So the Baba appointed a corporate honcho to evict Rohan’s family from the village that was no more a village now...



Indian Bloggers



Labels:

Comments

  1. RakeshOctober 16, 2016 at 10:35 AM

    You forgot to post a disclaimer that this story doesn't have any relationship to all person living or dead and all the similarities, especially with our so called godmen, are unintentional and coincidental. 😂😂😂

    Loved the muted sarcasm.

    ReplyDelete
  2. SaketOctober 16, 2016 at 12:18 PM

    One of the best satires I have read recently

    ReplyDelete
  3. Prasanna RaghavanOctober 16, 2016 at 2:04 PM

    Ha ha a dark comedy. Bras are ruling the world.

    ReplyDelete
  4. जितेन्द्र माथुरOctober 17, 2016 at 11:01 AM

    Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! Simply marvellous Sir !

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 17, 2016 at 1:03 PM

      I was pleasantly surprised to receive 600 views the day this story went online.

      Delete
  5. Amit AgarwalOctober 17, 2016 at 1:03 PM

    Ha ha:) a wonderful breather, Tom sir:) Thank you:)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
12 comments
Read more

Queen of Religion

She looked like Queen Victoria in the latter’s youth but with a snow-white head. She was slim, fair and graceful. She always smiled but the smile had no life. Someone on the campus described it as a “plastic smile.” She was charming by physical appearance. Soon all of us on the Sawan school campus would realise how deceptive appearances were. Queen took over the administration of Sawan school on behalf of her religious cult RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]. A lot was said about RSSB in the previous post. Its godman Gurinder Singh Dhillon is now 70 years old. I don’t know whether age has mellowed his lust for land and wealth. Even at the age of 64, he was embroiled in a financial scam that led to the fall of two colossal business enterprises, Fortis Healthcare and Religare finance. That was just a couple of years after he had succeeded in making Sawan school vanish without a trace from Delhi which he did for the sake of adding the school’s twenty-odd acres of land to his existing hun
19 comments
Read more

Randeep the melody

Many people in this pic have made their presence in this A2Z series A phone call came from an unknown number the other day. “Is it okay to talk to you now, Sir?” The caller asked. The typical start of a conversation by an influencer. “What’s it about?” My usual response looking forward to something like: “I am so-and-so from such-and-such business firm…” And I would cut the call. But there was a surprise this time. “I am Randeep…” I recognised him instantly. His voice rang like a gentle music in my heart. Randeep was a student from the last class 12 batch of Sawan. One of my favourites. He is unforgettable. Both Maggie and I taught him at Sawan where he was a student from class 4 to 12. Nine years in a residential school create deep bonds between people, even between staff and students. Randeep was an ideal student. Good at everything yet very humble and spontaneous. He was a top sportsman and a prefect with eminent leadership. He had certain peculiar problems with academics. Ans
13 comments
Read more

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
15 comments
Read more