Metamorphosis

4th standard was a very special year. It was the year when I transformed from a boy to a man. Or atleast that was what I thought then. It was a year of changes. A year when I had to face many unpleasant challenges for the first time and also a year when many pleasant firsts occurred.

The new school in the new state did not provide with the luxury of skipping my second language classes. Instead, I was to face the most terrifying Tamil teacher I have ever had. She screamed at students, hit them with whatever she could get hold of and flung homework notebooks on to their faces.It did not help that I missed the previous two years of Tamil lessons. How I loved those Thursdays when I did not have Tamil lessons!

It was a year when I got my 'own' membership card at the local library. It saved me from the tyrannical Tamil teacher as I quickly learnt to read and write reading Siruvarmalar at the library. But more than anything, I loved the freedom of going to the library by myself and picking the book of my choice.

I wore my first analogue watch that year and the teachers asked us to bring fountain pens to school - the first thing that marked the men from the boys. A yellow belt at the Karate class also meant that I was the second strongest man in the world next to my black belt Karate master.

My freedom grew boundless when one afternoon my dad got me a top-of-the-line Hero Ranger bicycle after only 3 hours of pestering. At that time, owning a Hero Ranger was like owning a Ferrari now and owning a Street Cat was like owning a Lamborghini. Owning any other bicycle was just useless.

It was also the year when I swore at my science teacher on his face. A girl had sucked at him to give her mistake ridden test paper a 100 and my mistake less test paper a 99 so she could get the first rank. She got the first rank. Well, she was not a she actually. She was a he. But he deserves to be called a she, doesn't she?

Analyse this!

Since the time I started to work for money, my job title has been an analyst. My job title changed several times in the last 4 years, but it always ended as some analyst. At first it felt nice to say I was an analyst than to recite the usual 'I am a software engineer'. However, I learnt only later that calling oneself an analyst has its own disadvantages.

First of all, when people ask what an analyst does, I always struggle to quantify my work in less than a 1000 words; by then the person who asks me the question is in deep sleep. You see, being an analyst, you do several things. And sometimes you do nothing. So after sometime, when I told people only the nothing part, they were surprised that I was getting paid for nothing.

And then one day, when a pretty girl asked me the usual 'So what do you do for a living?' question, I geared up to impress her with yet another 1000 word I am the king of the world speech and started with the 'I am an analyst' line. To my surprise the girl did not ask me the 'What does that mean?' question but instead dived into her handbag and gave me a bottle.

I took the bottle from her and asked 'What is this?'
'That's my urine sample. You said you were an analyst right? So could you analyse my urine and tell me if I have swine flu?'