The Infamous Incident of Topless VR and the Peeping Professor

God isn't watching you, Bhikku. But I am, because I have to. So please dress well.

-- The Diary, date unknown, the Fall of 498 BC

In September 1995, L~ was being ragged by his seniors. Now, L~ was a man with an eye on Big Things. He was always coming up with proofs of Fermat's Last Theorem using only addition and the number forty-three. In short, he wasn't the sort of man to bother about underlying details. So when asked to strip, he promptly shed the lungi, forgetting that he was unchaddied that day. A riot ensued. One of the seniors passed out. Another developed jaundice and missed his finals. The third squealed like a schoolgirl and ran out of the room.

Or so I'm told. I wouldn't know, because I wasn't there. Most of my life, interesting things have happened roughly 100 yards from where I was. Yet, in spite of missing all this action, I have not killed myself. And that is because I've had my moment too. Bow, gentle reader, to B., the only first-hand witness of The Infamous Incident of Topless VR and Prof. N~, alluded to earlier on this space. (Prof. N~'s real name is not N~, of course. I'm still not brave enough to face her wrath, should she find out about this.)

It was a hot Saturday afternoon in the spring of 1999. VR and I sat in the VLSI laboratory. VR was topless, while I was topped. Not that I have anything against toplessness, but my dimensions at the time were such that it was more prudent to bear the heat than bare the body. VR and I were both goofing off: I was checking the cricket score while he was chatting with what he thought was a girl, though it was only M~ posing as one.

And then Prof. N~ entered, or rather she peeped in from the door, as she always does. Now, Prof. N~ was VR's project advisor, and that of course, meant that she loathed VR with all her blessed heart and some more. And now, suddenly, she was faced with more of VR than had ever wanted to see. She saw him, even as he was trying to disappear into his computer monitor. Her face twisted a little, methinks. And then she saw me. Now, Prof. N~ generally did not like to see undergrads. She had her reasons. We undergrads were extremely lustful lads, and she was decidedly cute. But she saw me, and this time, her face twisted a little more. It must have been a Smile, though Prof. N~, as a rule, did not Smile. The strain showed.

"Have you seen C~ lately?"
"Yes, ma'am. I mean, no ma'am. I mean, I saw him yesterday, ma'am. He was looking for his cycle, ma'am. That's because he had his cycle key, ma'am. C~, his cycle and his cycle key are never in the same place, ma'am. Ha, ha, ha!"

Prof. N~ looked downcast. She turned away from me, but then she saw VR, now trying to bury himself under the table. With a steely look, turned back to me.

"If you see C~, can you please ask him to come and see me at my office."
"Yes, m'am"
"Yes what?"
"If I see C~, I'll ask him to come to your office, ma'am."

She seemed surprised at this unexpected show of intelligence. Anyway, she walked out. I went back to the cricket score. A few moments passed.

"Do you think she saw me?", screamed VR, making me jump.
"What? Oh that. Probably."
"Really?"
"Yup, you are hard to miss."
"Aargh! Well, what do I care? I don't care a damn. It's not a crime. Isn't it hot? Yes, it is very hot. Nobody would wear a shirt. Say, why are you wearing a shirt?"
This was dangerous ground. "Well, just because. I don't have to explain to you, you know?"
"Well, no need to get angry. I just asked."

I went back to the c. s. A few minutes passed.

"I can SEE you", bellowed VR. He was now standing at the door, roughly where Prof. N~ had been. I considered this information.
"Not fair! You didn't tell me you had started counting. That's against the rules, you know. Well, anyway, now you hide. I'll count to twenty."
VR seemed perplexed. Then, he said, "No, you moron. I can see you from here. That means she could see me."
"Brilliant, Holmes! Now can I get back to some real work?"
"No wait, wait, wait! You aren't sitting where I was. Go sit over there".

I groaned, but obliged. After all, friends shift for friends.
"Damn, I can still see you."
I shrugged, and returned to my nook. Further c.s.-checking had lasted barely five minutes, when the sound of thunder shook my ears.

"You are taller than me". Now it was VR standing right next to me, staring wide-eyed.
I blushed. "Oh, no! Not really!"
"No! You are MUCH taller than me. At least one foot!"

Low self-esteem, I had noticed, was rather common among those who knew yours truly. Encouragement was clearly called for. "Come now, my boy! What if I'm taller. I'm sure you have your strengths. Maybe you're handsomer, smarter, more charming, nicer." And then I looked at him, and pondered the issue. "Hmm, well, yeah! I know what you mean. We do have a problem. Let's see. Oh yes. Can you whistle?"
"Why, yes! I can"
"There! I can't whistle. See, I told you you have your strengths. What if I'm taller", and I reached out to pat him on the back.
"No, you moron", said VR. It was obviously a pet phrase. "I mean, you are taller. Maybe that's why I could see you. Maybe she didn't see me."
"Ah! Possible, I suppose. Good luck, my man. I hope that's the case."
"Oh, shut up. Now go to the door, and bend so that you are about the same height as her."

I groaned. But I moved to the door and stooped. Friends bend for friends.

"Can you see me?"
"Yes."
"Well, look right at me and tell me exactly you see."
The lad was obviously in love. Kindness was called for, once again. "VR, my boy, I'm sorry to say this. I don't think of you that way. It's not you. It's me. I drive on the other side of the road, if you get my drift. Let's just be friends. If I have ever done anything to give you hope, I beg pardon."
"No, you moron! I mean, if you just peeped in, would have noticed that I'm not wearing a shirt?"
"Ah! Why, yes! Of course, scienfically, I can only say that if you're wearing a shirt, it is no more than chest high."
"Damn! So she would have noticed. Well, what the hell. I don't care what she thinks. It's a free country. There's no uniform in this place. Anyway, this is Saturday. I can dress as I please. In fact, she has no business being here on Saturdays. She could lose her job if I complained to the Dean. Right?"
"Exactly. Couldn't agree more," I piped in, desparate to get back to the cricket score.

Roughly half an hour passed. The first innings was over. I realized I needed a leak pronto. I stepped out on to the corridor, and saw it was crowded. Prof. N~ was walking, talking to C~. VR was following them. I joined too, of course. Leaks could wait.

Prof. N~ asked C~ something. He immediately laughed, as always. And then he realized it wasn't a joke, and he answered. She asked some more. He laughed and answered some more. VR was following them, clearly waiting for C~ to finish. But Prof. N~ kept talking to C~ anyway. They climbed down the stairs, walked to the parking lot. C~ was perplexed. Nobody ever talked to him this much. Slowly, his answers were becoming completely idiotic. He was drawing from the well of his wisdom, and it was running dry. Now, he was describing his recurrent nightmare, something about bending under the sofa to find A~'s head there. He was about to get to the "What do you think it means?" phase, when N~ reached her car. She first let out a sigh of relief. Then she looked at C~ with a mixture of gratitude and pity. Then she turned to VR, with a killer look full of contempt and loathing. Her face twitched. She was Smiling, again. Triumphantly, she drove out into the sunset.

I slipped out unnoticed, and took a leak, and came back to the lab to wait for the second innings.

VR breezed in after 10 minutes. He looked happy, even jubilant. "I don't care, man. I'm not afraid of anything. What can she do? Nothing, that's what. I won't even consult her on my project. I'll just do it myself. What does she think? Ha!"

I nodded appreciatively. Five minutes passed.

"Say, do you think she's near-sighted? She does wear glasses, you know."

I walked out. I needed a quiet place just then. Friends don't laugh when friends are in trouble.

God: Heavenly Father or Big Brother?

Relax, Bhikku. God isn't watching you. He has too little time and too much taste.

-- The Diary, date unknown, the summer of 498 BC

The trouble with the white man, I've always said, is that he never does anything with his own hands. He uses forks for input, toilet paper for output and outsources everything else to Brownistan. Since he has no hands-on experience, he knows nothing; and since he knows nothing, he's afraid of everything. He lives in constant terror of bird flu, anthrax, hurricanes, gas prices, differential calculus, and of course, death. He's scared of brown people with beards, and brown people without beards. He's afraid of black people's children, and he's afraid of his own.

The most peculiar of the white man's phobias, however, is his positive horror of the Lord. And nowhere is this more apparent than in his approach to the burning social issues of each era.

Take, for instance, the abortion debate in the US. From 1950 to around 1975, white people were liberal, meaning they had sex all the time. During this period (strangely called the Baby Boom instead of the Big Bang), the Supreme Court of the US legalized abortion. More precisely, Roe v. Wade ruled that it was illegal for states to pass laws which made abortion difficult. The fact that such an obscurely worded ruling is so well-known itself shows that the white man takes the law way too seriously. But at any rate, around 1980, lots of white people started suspecting that all this sex was way too much fun and God most certainly wouldn't approve. These people, strangely called conservatives instead of Inquisitors, soon took over the country. And now they're slowly, but surely rewriting the law. By the time they're done, they'd have made abortion, among other things, illegal. (And then they'll all probably have another wave of pseudo-liberalism again. Every time I reflect that my forefathers were ruled by these omadhouns, I hang my head in shame, may family pride be damned!)

Here's where God enters the picture. The reason conservatives are so pissed with abortion is not mere envy of cooler people, who get to have more sex. Their baadha, as the Gults put it, is that they think abortion is sin. And they think so because they believe that the foetus has a soul, and killing anything with a soul is a strict no-no. (Factoid: A soul is something like a Platinum membership, for which only Man among all of God's creations, is pre-selected.) The liberals, sheep that they are, meekly bleated that noone really knows exactly when a human baby gets its soul. And then all heaven broke loose. The Conservatives started pulling out lots of old books, which stated that a soul enters the picture

4. When the embryo quickens, i.e., when momma can feel it move. --St. Augustine
3. Forty days after conception for boys, and ninety days after conception for girls. --Aristotle
2. When the fertilized egg is implanted in the womb, about 1 week after fertilization.
1. Immediately after fertilization. -- St. Gregory something
0. Even before sex, so you shouldn't use the Pill -- St. Dubya Bush

The conservatives saw that there was too much inconsistency in the textbooks. So, just like engineers, they picked the worst case, namely case 0, and have been sticking to it these last fifteen years. Having chosen the most unreasonable interpretation available, they are convinced that God is on their side because He is after all beyond Reason. And with this smug superiority, they have been morally castigating the liberals ever since.

As a brown man, I find all this tamaasha laughable, for we brown people take an altogether different view of matters. We treat our babies like our bread. For our bread, we follow the five-second rule. If it has been on the floor for less than five seconds, it is not really dirty and you can pick it up and eat it. For our babies, we follow the two-day rule. If it has been alive for less than two days and if it is a girl, then it is not really human and you can kill it. We know that this is extremely unright, even disgusting. But we do it because we are either too poor or too barbaric, depending on how you look at it. In either case, we leave God out of it.

It is not that we Brownistanis are specifically bright. We are as stupid as anybody else, but we have the distinct advantage that our sacred texts were written in a language we don't remember anymore. At any rate, our religion is either vague or tolerant enough to permit almost anything. God is just not in our genes, at least in such matters.

Ultimately, it's a question of instinct.

In the spring of 1999, my friend VR and I worked in a lab whose keys were always with a rather religious TA. After the infamous incident of Topless VR and the Peeping Professor, the TA had been specifically instructed to not give the keys to depraved undergrads like us. However, like all brown people, we thumbed our nose at the law and went and asked for the keys one Sunday. The TA said she couldn't give them, because the professor wouldn't allow it. VR, sharp cove that he was, immediately pointed out that the Professor wouldn't really know she had given us the keys, if we all agreed to not tell her. He even generously volunteered to keep it is a secret till his dying day. To which the TA said, with horror, distaste and outrage in her voice, "What if Madam doesn't know? God does, doesn't He?" Even VR couldn't reply to that, so we left. We had cycled halfway back to the hostel, when VR turned to me and breathlessly croaked in anguish, "What has f***ing God got to do with it, man?" We cycled on in silence.

VR, being brown, instinctively saw the point. The white man, alas, does not.