Jokesapart

Recently, I was nostalgically remembering about my student days in College in Trivandrum. That is almost 50 years ago, when life was a dream, a song, a poetry. Those were also the days when students agitations were very frequent and in 1956-57 (I think) the students agitated almost for a full year for causes I am unable to remember clearly now. There was this agitation for not shifting the High Court from Trivandrum to Cochin – Or was it an agitation to retain one High Court Bench in Trivandrum? I cannot remember. Any way it was agitation time and for students to stay away from classes which suited most of us who were in the grip of juvenile romanticism. Communism was so romantic one day and it was so heroic to oppose Communism after some days of supporting the Communist causes. The student community was so full of energy that any small cause could whip up enormous passions and unleash havoc. Political parties of course made full use of the opportunities regardless of what happened to the future of the youngsters. Those days there was only one Engineering Degree College and one Medical College in whole of Kerala and it was a Herculean task to obtain admission for Engineering or Medical courses in Kerala. The effect of student agitations in our most crucial year for admissions to the Engineering or Medical Colleges in Trivandrum was that, not one student from our college got admission to the Engineering college and only one student got admission to the Medical Co;;ege, despite our college being one of the elite colleges in the State!!.

This is just the background! On one day of violence (which was frequent) the police entered our college and ordered caning the rioting students and then caught a few boys at random and took them to the police station for questioning. The boys were made to stand in a line against the station wall and one constable started writing down the names and addresses of the boys. When asked for his name one of the boys said “Sardar Vallabhai Patel”. The constable got very angry but controlled his anger because if he as much as touched the boy, or even shouted at him, the others would have raised hell shouting slogans against the high handedness of the police force! So the policeman quietly asked him again to tell his real name and not to act funny. In fact he said, “Brother, these are trying times and not the time for jokes. So tell me your real name and not waste my time” The boy asserted that his name was indeed Sardar Vallabhai Patel. Though the policeman was furious he had to control himself and grind his teeth. Then he approached another boy standing a little distance away and asked the name of the boy in question. He readily said that his name was Sardar Vallabhai Patel. The policeman consulted few more boys who confirmed that his name was indeed Sardar Vallabahi Patel. With a smile on his face the policeman went to the inspector’s table and told them about the boy’s name and suddenly loud laughter broke out from the policemen in the station. This followed even louder slogan shouting from the students. At last calm was restored only after some one explained the lighter side of the whole incident and it became a joke to be told again and again.

Recently, not really, about ten years ago, I was talking to an employee of a bank in Mumbai, regarding some matters and I had to meet him again the next day. So I asked his name and he replied “Jawaharlal Nehru”. I was taken aback and his colleague sitting at the table next to him, must have noticed my bewilderment and said, “ Yes, it’s true. His name is Jawaharlal Nehru. His sister’s name is Indira Gandhi and his brother’s name is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.” Jawaharlal also nodded and said that what his colleague said was true.

So there it is. God help those with names such as Bin Laden or Sadam!!!