Skip to main content

Online class

Fiction


The online class began at 9. James woke up just in time to switch on the phone and log in to the class. Attendance is important. Having marked his attendance and making sure that both his audio and the video are switched off, James got up from bed. The teacher’s audio and video are on.

‘Inertia is a property of matter…” Malini Ma’am has already begun class. James searches for his toothbrush among all the pens, pencils and other such litter on the study table. ‘… existing state of rest or uniform motion…’ Malini Ma’am goes on. Phrases like straight line and external force are heard while the toothbrush is fished out and James moves to the washroom.

Ensconced on the commode and chewing the toothbrush, James wonders why people like Newton had to bother about motions in straight lines and all when what matters most in real life is this motion in the toilet.

Appa and Amma were busy in the cowshed and pigsty. Their motion starts at 4 o’clock in the morning. Can’t the cows sleep a little more and wait for a decent time of the day to be milked? Who cares anyway? There must be some laws of motion for cows too. Newton be damned.

‘The final velocity of a moving object is dependent on three things,’ Malini Ma’am’s class is continuing as James emerges from the washroom feeling fresh enough for a glass of Bournvita. James picks up the phone and walks to the dining room where his glass of warm energy drink must be waiting. Amma must have taken the usual tangential motion from the cowshed in order to get the Bournvita ready at the right time for the darling son. ‘… initial velocity, acceleration, and time…’ Malini Ma’am, can’t you make this a little less complicated?

We = you + ATM will demand more attention, James decides. He can make that equation an excuse for chatting up with Megha in the afternoon. ‘Hi Megha, what’s acceleration got to do with ATM?’ And then Megha will flip the kiss-curl from her plumb cheek with her sleek fingers and say, ‘Jerk, acceleration is a tough concept. Very creepy, you know.’ And then she’ll go peppy on the phone screen with her kiss-curl accelerating onto her chubby cheek as if there was a Newtonian force acting on it irresistibly.

Sipping the warm Bournvita, James flips to WhatsApp. Malini Ma’am goes on to lecture about ‘per second per second’. Let her. There are many unread messages in WhatsApp. Per second per second can wait until the motion of Megha’s kiss-curl starts flipping.

One of the messages is from Anita. Must be quite sentimental. Anita’s sentiments accelerate like the KTM 390 Duke. James opens Anita’s message. It is a video. A girl opens her notebook and reads a poem she has written herself while her father is chilling out on the couch behind her with his mobile phone in hand. The poem is about a lonely girl’s wish to be a mobile phone.

I wish I were a mobile phone..

Nobody bothers about me.

But when the mobile rings

They all rush to pick it up…

Wow! James thinks it’s wonderful. Loneliness is so painful, Anita, I know. And he forwards the video to all his friends’ groups.

The Bournvita is over.

‘When we come to the distance travelled by a body, the final velocity is not in picture,’ Malini Ma’am is teaching.

A cow lows from the shed. Another one echoes that. The echo accelerates in the hollowness somewhere.

‘Great video, dude,’ James types a response to Anita.

 

  

Comments

  1. The Moon's BOYFRIEND September 15, 2020 at 1:05 PM

    Feels like James is lazy as I am.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 15, 2020 at 1:25 PM

      So my story does strike a chord? Well, it's inspired by some real people.

      Delete
  2. UnknownSeptember 16, 2020 at 12:27 PM

    WOW,THIS IS A GOOD STORY....THE CHARACTER IN THIS STORY FEELS LIKE ONE OF MY FRIENDS IN MY OLD SCHOOL..

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The
62 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so
39 comments
Read more

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r
34 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
36 comments
Read more