eFiction India eFiction India Vol.02 Issue.09 | Page 13

STORIES

12

MY GLOBAL
CONFESSIONS
    DEBLEENA ROY                                   

ebleena Roy is a Strategy and Analytics
professional and writes short stories,
non-fiction articles and poetry. Her
work has been published in the Deccan
Herald, selected as part of Lituminati
anthology on Hope, Spark magazine,
Chillibreeze, eZine Articles. She blogs at
www.debleena.roy-blogspot.in.

W

Society cannot change with one individual.
Not in India.”

Not that it mattered to her or to me or to
our parents.

My sister and I would sit rapt, our love
for knowledge and keenness for questions
never satiated with the large and full Sunday
dinners.

HAT’S WORSE THAN
having your elder sister at
school? Having a brilliant
elder sister at school, of course. I was in that
unfortunate position. I was infamous for
asking endless questions. She was famous
for answering questions, correctly, in her
exam sheets.

In a family where quirky professions were
more the norm than exception, exam marks
could never stand up to the twin pillars of
individuality and creativity. Principles that
our parents swore by and worshipped and
which we uttered at alarmingly early ages,
even in our dreams – A for apple, C for creativity, I for individuality. Our usual Sunday
evening dinner table conversations would
feature a generous sprinkling of them following over substantial portions of mutton
curry, fish masala and rice.
Sample this:
Artist cousin waving her hands expressively in the air: “Who said Bangalore does
not have old art history? See the cartoons
by Paul Fernandes. That’s pure genius and
history.”
Professor Uncle stroking his beard: “Show
me one big private social initiative that
worked. You need government intervention.

Musician auntie, drumming her fingers on
the table: “Ok, I’ll play my new recital after
dinner. Raga Multani. Have you children
heard Kumar Gandharv?”

Our art historian mother and cartoonist
father played the usual balancing role, balancing humour and creativity, history and
dreams.
But then, it did matter to one person. To
Mrs. Globe. Our none-too fondly named
Geography teacher in school. That she was
a tad rotund with a fondness for sweets and
all things deep fried and buttery and that
she hurried through her lectures before
you could even spin a globe around, was
of course, quite secondary in importance.
Mrs. Globe hated me, every inch of the
three feet, two inches; thin as a latest-sleeknew-phone me that I used to be in those
days. Why did Mrs. Globe hate me, you
ask? She can tell you better, of course. That
discussion might take hours or even days for
she does have a photographic memory of
each insult that I seemingly heaped on her.
The instances were countless.

eFiction India | June 2014