FALL

F(*)LL --Ooooops there is no A in FALL

pride goeth before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall"

Book of Proverbs, 16:18

Armed with his fathers piece of silver, his late uncles shared trivia and with all his grit Bhola was on a warpath.

Click — one, two, three, four ——-thirty, thirty one —— seventy five, seventy six — one hundred — Click Click— 1 minute 45 seconds !!

Not good.

Start from the beginning.

Focus and faster recital.

This would be the key of winning.

He had landed at this juncture because of his name

Bhola - simpleton - the local buffoon.

He used to have sleepless nights when he reached teen age and realisation hit that he was really not stupid but his name had automatically put him in that bracket.

Ravi a rich neighbours son a few years older to him who was a England return, highlighted the difference in the spectrum of comparison.

Ravi was a pain in the neck and many people had much lower opinion of him.

24/7 snooty and always going out his way to ridicule people he never missed an opportunity to be nasty.

His knowledge of the dictionary gave him a upper hand in blabbering out long words which zapped listeners.

He made it clear to all that he was only entertained by Hollywood and in his opinion Hindi cinemas was only for the riff raff, uneducated and rabble of society.

Everyone agreed that he was very articulate but loathed him because of his nature of running down people.

Everyone felt pity for Bhola when Ravi kept insulting him but nobody wanted to cross words with him.

Click — one, two, three, four ——-thirty, thirty one —— sixty five, sixty six — one hundred— Click Click— 1 minute 33 seconds !!

Still not good enough.

He had to be more clear saying the numbers and be more faster.

Bhola’s father was a middle class white collared employee in a watch factory.

With a meagre salary he just scraped through life and managed to educate his three children in the state run schools.

He was a movie buff and over the years had engrossed himself watching loads of Hindi movies sucked into the glamour and blitz of this untrue world.

Probably the three hours he spent in the larger than life land engulfed in eardrum straining sound and music took him away from life’s realities and hardships.

His favourite movie was Sholay and as a great fan took every opportunity to watch it over and over again.

Over the years he must have seen it at least 30 times mopping up bits of information unseen and unheard by other movie goers like — MYB 3047 was the number of the motorcycle with side car (that Jai and Veru hijack from the Parsi gentleman) in the song ‘Yeh Dosti’ or that Gabbar Singh’s fathers name was ‘Hari Singh’ (picked up from a court scene background Hindi dialogue — Gabbar Singh vald Hari Singh —- )

He must have paid for them from his pocket not more than six times for cheap tickets in blood sucking ‘khatmal’ infested theatres but the rest of the viewing were at no cost in open air theatres of Bombay streets (Thanks to Ganapati and Dusherra mandal organiser’s night street screenings)

Sometimes he did not even mind seeing it in reverse screen lip syncing dialogues like ‘Kitne Aadmi thay’ as he sat on opposite side of the white curtain from where the projection from spools happened.

In later years whenever Doordarshan screened them in their Sunday Hindi Movie slots he just kept watching it with craning necks at neighbours house doorsteps or shop windows of TV showrooms to add on to the tally.

So when he retired, his office friends collected money and gave him a Sholay memorabilia.

It was a duplicate so not of great value apart from the silver in it but for obvious reasons was priceless in his eyes .

At his death bed he handed it to Bhola with the strict instructions to guard it and use it only in a dire situation.

Bhola decided time had come to use his dads silver.

The situation was dire !!

As he practiced again with the commitment of a marathon runner he continued recitals of his counting keeping tab on an old hand held stopwatch.

(Phones with clock apps had not yet arrived)

Click — one — four ——-thirty eight, thirty nine —— sixty six, sixty seven — one hundred — Click Click— 1 minute 11 seconds !!

Much better but you need to target 1 minute

That is the challenge.

His dads younger brother was street wise. With no classroom education he had educated himself with a trove of trivia which he loved sharing with Bhola his favourite nephew.

He was accidentally killed a few years back as a bystander on the roads of Bombay.

It was a mistimed bomb in a taxi, set off by a lone suicide bomber targeting the then chief minister.

His uncle had always preached to Bhola - Where there is a will there is a way and you do not need to educate yourself only in school and colleges.

His mantra was that life itself is a teacher and observation with presence of mind is your tool.

He always insisted that knowledge of bits of information however trivial was much better than lack of that information.

Trivia was not that easily available.

(WhatsApp had not yet arrived)

Bhola had decided that he would be using the ‘number trivia’ that his uncle had shared with him to win this ‘war’

Click — one — four ——-thirty eight, thirty nine —— sixty six, sixty seven — ninety seven, ninety eight, ninety nine — one hundred — Click Click— 1 minute.

Pheeeew !!!

He did it.

Just few more repeat practices and Bhola felt he would be ready for battle with Ravi.

Now he just needed the following to engineer Ravi’s FALL into his trap.

1. Opportunity around a huge crowd — he was confident Ravi’s arrogance would provide it.

2. Trick to make sure Ravi took the test first— his dads silver would provide it.

3. A challenge — he hoped his uncles trivia would come handy in this test and took a gamble that Ravi had not come across this information. And finally

4. Victory — his grit and the practice over the few weeks would take him there.

D day came on New Year’s Eve when the ‘mohalla’ boys had organised a midnight dance party in the locality.

Quite a few people had gathered for this well organised function with funding from the local goons and shopkeepers.

Food was a plenty and music wafted in the air.

On some petty pretext Ravi started an argument with Bhola and the conversation moved to his superiority in the English language.

Sensing that this was the right opportunity Bhola grabbed it and challenged him loudly to a word game.

A big crowd of curious neighbours, local big wigs, and a few esteem educated guests of the evening gathered around them in anticipation of what would follow.

Bhola challenged him for a duel of words Oxford dictionary would be the point of reference within a time scale.

He agreed.

An Oxford dictionary and a stop watch was quickly produced from somewhere in the locality.

(Wikipedia and smart phones had not yet arrived)

Bhola put out a few requests —

Target would be maximum number of words in ONE minute.

The words should not have the alphabet ‘A’

A toss of coin would be the decider for who would go first.

The difference in number of words between winner and looser to be paid @Rs 10 each word by the looser to the winner.

Highly over confident Ravi agreed to the conditions.

Happy that it was moving in the right direction Bhola extracted a SILVER COIN from his pocket and passed it to Ravi.

He asked him to flick it and stated that he (Bhola) would call heads or tails. Ravi expertly flicked the coin and in that instance Bhola called HEAD.

It swirled, twirled and landed with a clink on the footpath paving as all eyes fell on the coin.

It was a HEAD - King George’s head to be precise.

Bhola thrilled with his win of the toss, bent, picked up his coin and confidently slipped it into his pocket a warm smile spreading in his inner mind.

As winner of the toss Bhooa decided to give the chance to open the word duel to Ravi saying he would follow second.

The duel began with ready steady go, a click of the stop watch and all eyes and ears on Ravi.

He started confidently trying to unnecessarily show off his vocabulary by using unique words — Monimolimnion, Snozzcumber — —Phyllophyllin — — Sogmire — —

Boondoggles, — — Flummox — — Humplecrimp — he was struggling as the barrier of not using alphabet ‘A’ shackled his thought process.

It was a mammoth task for the local scribe who was frantically scribbling the words that spewed out from Ravi’s mouth.

As seconds ticked Ravi froze and words came out much slower than he would have liked or was used to.

As he heard the click click and the announcement that one minute was up he had rallied a score of 42.

Ravi was still confident that he would win even against Bhola with this performance.

After all — How could a desi dehat know more English dictionary words than a well read phoren return ???

A search began in the dictionary and pages were flicked to check the authenticity of his words that had been recorded on paper.

Five were not found even after checking and rechecking them as they did not exist in the dictionary

An argument erupted as Ravi insisted that they were valid Dahl words.

Snozzcumber, Scrumdiddlyumptious

Humplecrimp, Sogmire, Zoonk

He repeated them with spellings again confident that they existed.

They were words appearing in ‘The BFG’ but alas they did not exist in the ‘Oxford’ Dictionary

Ravi argued that it must be a very old publication.

Argument did not stand as it was the latest published Oxford dictionary (second edition — 1989)

Another eight words were disqualified as they had alphabet ‘A’

Exasperated he had to settle for a final tally 29

It was now Bhola’s turn and as soon as he heard ready steady go, and a click of the stop watch he started confidently — One, two, three, four —- everybody’s ears pricked up and eyes opened up in astonishment.

He continued reciting the number as practised and as the 59 second moved to the final second in the minute and the sound of a double click sounded he slipped in the ninety nine and the hundred.

Ravi stood aghast. He realised that his hubris had taken a FALL.

Bhola had scored over him ticking all boxes of the conditions just by articulately reciting out the numbers 1-100.

No one needed to check these words in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The result was obvious and Bhola was declared the winner amidst great fanfare and hurrah’s from the large crowd.

A difference of 71 words had made Ravi Rs 710 poorer (a decent amount in those days) with incalculable loss of face.

For Bhola New Year was not far away but the last few hours of the old year had already brought him immense respect in his Mohalla along with Goddess Laxmi !!

For all those who are still zapped — Fathers piece of silver — a replica of Amitabh’s,both side King George headed, Silver SHOLAY coin.

Uncle’s Number Trivia —there’s no “A” in the numbers one through to 999

The first number with an A in it, is 101 — one hundred and one.

Language purists might argue and bring to attention that this is not correct as the word ‘and’ is not a number, and therefore the first number to fit this bill is actually 1000: one thousand.

Bhola would not argue this.

He was not greedy and was happy to go only till 100.

After all he was Bhola — not a purist and still had King George with him.