Of films and sounding filmy

Ok, so this might sound a bit filmy. But, here it goes.
I will have to take you back to the late 1980's for this. Mostly because I haven't seen the early 1980's myself (or the years prior to them).
So, we are talking about that time of the last century, when streets were empty on sunday mornings because B.R. Chopra’s "Mahabharata" was being aired on Doordarshan. When, Mr. Sharma had to climb the stairs to terrace every fortnight to re-orient the "aerial". When, Rajiv Gandhi was in the middle of his Prime Ministerial tenure. Tendulkar hadn't arrived yet. Mithun Chakarborthy was a rage, Tezaab was a bigger rage, and "ek do teen" was a craze (it was the anthem of the decade).
I must have been in Ist standard then. Bubbly, animated, bouncing off people and things with a constant smile painted across my face. I can go on staging the setting for hours, but I guess you already got the picture.
It was during this period that we were introduced to music at school. It must have been the first class. I guess it have been the first class for the music teacher as well. She could have started with the desi “sa re ga ma”, but she probably thought of doing something different. She lined us all up, and poor thing just asked if anyone of us would like to sing.

Now, when you are 5 you have the feeling that you are the best. You are the king of everything. If you ask a bunch of 5 year olds how many of them can paint, all of them would raise a hand. Ask the same question to a 100 graduate students and you would be lucky to get 5 volunteers*. But I wasn’t a graduate student then. I was 5. The king of everything. My right hand was stretched out in a moment of that question being asked. I stepped forward, turned around to face the class and in the meantime finalized the song in my head. You guessed it right. In 1989, any song by a 5 year old had to be “ek do teen”.

Ek do teen chaar paanch …… HAHAHAHAHA

Sadly I had just reached “paanch” when the whole class burst out laughing. Embarrassed and red-faced, tears rolled down my eyes. The teacher sshd everyone and consoled me and then consoled herself. Her experiment had totally failed. Within minutes we had begun our musical journey with “Sa Re Ga Ma”, “Sa Sa Re Re” and “Sa Re Ga, Re Ga Ma “
But that’s not what this story is about. It’s about the afternoon after school. I went back home, ate and recited my day dutifully to my mom with special emphasis to the musical misadventure part. I told her that I would never be singing “ek do teen” again. She looked at me and told me something that I would never forget.

She told me that all my life I would be facing the same predicament. I could either step forward and make an effort to do something, or I could stay rooted and poke fun at anyone who would. It was for me to decide. The tone of her voice told the child-me that she considered the first one to be better than the second, although it looked a raw deal to me back then. Poking fun was so much easier. Being poked at wasn’t.

I had forgotten about that incident, when something in the Pub yesterday reminded me of it. CAT is what the people everywhere talk about these days. With CAT few months away, people who have never prepared for CAT, who never had the courage to take that step forward, question those who did.
“Do you think you would make it to IIMs? I mean they are the toughest institute in the world to get into.”.

Sad. Some of us just don’t ever step forward.