Grandma on underachiever

With my demonstrated capabilities of aggression and leadership during childhood and as a teen my mother expected me to lead the Indian Army one day, when I joined NDA in 1969. She was (and all of us were) unaware that my DOB would not have allowed that.  When I hung up my boots as a Colonel and returned home with the kit bag slung over my shoulder, my mother called me an underachiever. My father who knew better, was unfortunately not with us by then. For instance my mother thought that my capabilities with the sling shot with which I nonchalantly felled mangoes for the neighbour’s daughter was talent enough to mow down enemies at will…and wasn’t defeating enemies the prime duty of a soldier? She reasoned. We can’t fault her for that. Can we? Last week when the time mag cover with the caption “underachiever’ emblazoned across a photo of MMS was being splashed on all TV channels, she gave me a knowing look. I can understand my mother believing in her son, all mothers do. But that ‘daughter’s’ (for who I felled mangoes) father has always felt that I was good for nothing. I knew all along he was wrong and may be so is my mother.

I am a firm believer that to achieve something, under, par or over, one has to swing the club. You have to get on to the course compete, negotiate hazards and handle rough conditions and make the tricky putts to get a score. You can’t do it sipping beer on the 19^th hole. The TIME magazine, once considered the last word (even before Karan Thapar was born) in politics, put out a sexy and alluring cover with the photo of an inconsequential PM of a ineffectual council of ministers calling him an underachiever. The National media bit the bullet and gave it wide publicity in the process catching the fancy of various political outfits in India. By this the publishers of TIME magazine hope to increase their market share in India, albeit briefly, as nobody is buying the magazine elsewhere in the world. Oh! The gullible Indians!!! Little do they know that the cover is only for copies to be circulated in India and possibly the Asia-pacific region.

But my grandma was unfazed. She has always been a fan of the Time magazine since the time Sachin Tendulkar was featured on its cover. The other day she recalled the cover with the caption “GOD of cricket” or something like that and wanted to know God of what this Higgs Boson is made out to be. She backed the Time magazine to the hilt. She condemned our knowledge of the English language to worse than that of Sub Maj (Hony capt) Kanshi ram (She knows all about him from me) and declared that underachiever meant achieving something under cover or under the table…That, she emphasized, can’t be denied about this Government.

Her head held high in triumph, having proved the Time magazine right, she proceeded for her afternoon nap.