Playing the truant...

There is a park just outside our house, about which I am sure I have told you for the hundredth time. Well every morning when I drag myself to office, late as usual, I look at the green park for inspiration or divine intervention. I look heavenwards hoping that would be some hindrance on my path, so that I would not be able to reach office for a very genuine reason like for example heavy rainfall resulting in water logging or bandh or something along that line. Very Kolkata I know, that too in dry Delhi, but hoping and dreaming are two activities I am not ready to give up. Anyways to come back to the topic at hand, everyday I see some schoolboys lolling on the grass and just chatting amongst themselves. Their bags would be somewhere, their ties loosened and shirts already dirty. They are playing truant from school. How cool. [Cool for me cos I am not their parent, neither am I responsible for their upbringing or education.]
I can almost imagine the conversation they are having—cinema, sports (specially cricket), girls, homework (mostly how they could not finish it), how parents are becoming more and more unreasonable and of course ‘when I grow up…’ stuff.
How I wish I could also do that. Wake up in the morning, get dressed and then just go and sit in a park with a good book or if I am luckier some vella friends and just have ball of a time. The idea is as tempting as chocolate desserts.
I remember learning the word ‘truant’ one sleepy, summer afternoon in school. The word caught my fancy because of its immense possibility and potential. In fact that is why I vividly remember learning the word, it was in one of our English grammar exercises. Whenever I pondered over the word [in the process of maiking a sentence with it, our school was hung ho on making us create sentences with every new word we learnt] I would go off on a day dream where I would be playing a truant, having a lovely and adventurous day and then cooly going back home without anyone being any wiser. Just like that kid in Taare Zamin Paar. When I saw that scene I was thinking the boy did just what I always wanted to do.

Sadly I never dared to do anything like that in school. There were friends boldly bunking school, but I was one of the chicken hearted in this respect. The dread of my parents’ reaction when they found out was rather intimidating. Also I had too much fun inside school; so never felt the need to be outside it. But on retrospection, I wish I had done it at least once just to know how it feels.

We ( my friend and me) did a lot of bunking in college, so much so that we became decollegiate or something, had to bribe the college clerk fifty bucks to let us appear for our final examization.

Must try once in office, but I don’t think it would be that much fun. Again my office is a fun place, so enjoy being in it, than out of it.