Monkey Man

From Nahid Khan to Yusuf Rassiwala and Srichand Arora to Razia Khan, the ‘teachers’ who conduct our exercises come in all shapes and guises. If one is regular and systematic, another would be casual but correct, a third may be moody and authoritarian while yet another, pleasant and playful. Over time we have learnt to deal with their angularities and idiosyncrasies, almost to the point of taking them for granted. But nothing had quite prepared us for the monkey man who was to land in our midst this morning.
Short of descending from a tree, he occupied centre space for more than half an hour and on the pretext of conducting the free-hand exercises, demonstrated what Arora politely described as ‘monkey tricks’. With zero sense of rhythm or coordination, the man tore through the session like a bandit from hell, leaving everyone exasperated and laughing their heads off (see pic) in disbelief. Poor Mumtaz had to complain, “He’s going too fast!”
But this man couldn’t care. He committed one goof-up after another, laughing to himself continuously. Let alone look around or bring about a semblance of orderly action, he could not even count to save his life. (At one point people wondered aloud if he had been to school at all.) He had become a law unto himself. And to make matters worse, there was Yusuf-bhai giving a running commentary: “Look, he is under tension; see, how he is scratching his head; now he has taken off his cap…”
But in the end, Yusuf was generous enough to award the man 35/100 -- just about “pass marks” for conducting the exercises today.
Renu Babani's PICSPEAK:
"I seriously have no idea what I'm doing!"
Harish Wadhwa:
Lovely pic of a school boy doing the exercises. Close observation shows his bellybutton (Oops!) but the two seniors giggle seeing it.