Durrty Baayz - I

This one’s dedicated to ‘The Durrty Baayz’ - my best buds from school, so christened by our physical education teacher a.k.a ‘Peetla’.

This one goes back a long way…to the times when Bangalore had 6-digit telephone numbers, Shankarnag’s Chitramandira was Symphony theatre, J.C. road had 2-way traffic, RX 100s ruled the roads, and Banashankari III stage was sooo far away!!...with sites owned by people other than Deve Gowda.

“Oye durrty baayz, do not open yuvar durrrrty mouths I say!” bellowed Peetla from his pedestal just before the daily school assembly/prayer. A bull of a man, he towered over us – a sea of puny little men/big boys in our white & maroon school uniforms. When you heard that bellow, you stood at attention, tucked in your shirt, checked your badge, belt, shoes, nails etc and put on your ‘It wasn’t me, sir’ face. Unfortunately, ‘Kariya’ (blacky) and ‘Kulla’ (shorty) – my buds with unpolitically correct nicknames, were in an engrossing conversation about ‘Benne’(butter), the fair-skinned babe they ogled everyday after school. Meanwhile, Peetla was making his way towards them... and the maroon sea parted to let him and his swirling cane proceed on the seek & destroy mission. When the boys felt Peetla’s hot breath and his ominous presence, they froze. Too late to put on the face, now it was time to employ the second line of defense as the cane came swishing at their butts– the escape dance!! Bend, twist, arch, lift, step to the left, right, jump and repeat! If that didn’t work, you took one courtesy hit and then faked the subsequent ‘hits’ by rubbing hard and howling with pain – “sir, sir, sir…ayyyoo, ayayo, amma, appa!!”

“Durrty bayzzzzz!!!” resonated...only until we polluted the air with our two standard and one special prayer (which btw was about non-violence, truth and other alien concepts) - all rendered with the competitive vigor of adolescent boys dropping their voice an octave, breaking up midway, and waiting for testosterone to kick the bass up a notch. Great times!

After the vocal festivities, we filed back to the classrooms with Kulla leading the way with great energetic strides, followed by A ( the scapegoat, who’d challenge anything that moved to a race…but  let us down in an inter-school 4x100 relay where he did a slo-mo run to showcase his moves for the benefit of the camera-less audience.) The rest of us tried to catch up – classy KK trying to balance his badge on his shirt pocket (didn’t want to pin it and spoil his shirt you see); Leader Shetty taking care not to ruin the polish on his shoes, thereby his candidacy for school captain; DP surging ahead flashing his mischievous smile that left you guessing when he’d strike; Shyama in his ‘balloon baggies’ in a serious conversation with R about a new strategy to copy in exams; SJ worrying about the Hindi homework…until we heard the familiar “yewww!!!” from juniors following us on the stairs. Kulla had struck again!!! An unsuspecting victim on the stairs was hit by the saliva missile!! For years our man had tirelessly practised the 'Generate, Release and Run' technique. Never missed, never caught!

Now that you have a taste of things to come, I'll give you more on the classroom action in my next blog. Now it’s time for a few gems of the durrty baayz:

Shetty to a salesman in a garment store pointing at the trousers rack: “Are these readymade or stitched already?”
Salesman, in all honesty: “Readymade sir”

R to a different salesman in a denim store checking out some white denims (?!!): “Will this fade?”
Unsuspecting salesman: “No sir, guaranteed not to fade”

Y, explaining a complex difference: “Eradu bere bere, andre onde thara, same thara!”
(translated: Both are different, they're like one, essentially the same)

R in one of his deep philosophical moods: “What’s gone…I haven't got!”

Coming soon: Durrty Baayz II