Blunderlust

Some have wanderlust, with wheels under their feet or wings on the backs. Varyingly, some have blunder lust, those who specialise in making blunders, though without conscious volition. I need not go far and wide to search for illustrative examples, who taste the blunders. Here I am, near at hand, yours blunderingly.

As a college fresher in the early '60s, I was told by a senior to check up with Mr Johnson of the English department. Someone in the staffroom convulsed with laughter and pointed out to a grumpy giant buried in a lexicon. "Excuse me, Mr Johnson, sir!" I began brightly. "What?" he growled like a lion. He pounced on me, using the choicest vituperative words at his command. Little did I know his nickname among students was ‘Johnson’ ( in lieu of Jagannathan ) because of his bombastic lingual blasts, and a reference to it touched a sensitive nerve.

When two gentlemen came home to take forward the matrimonial proposal of my brother, I interrupted their eulogy of the girl to be married, to ask, tactlessly, who between the two was the father of the girl. Little could I realize, the younger and smart-looking was the father and the elderly looking one was the brother of the girl. The alliance did not click.

But the crème la crème of the blunders. I was alighting from the Howrah Mail early one morning. On that trip, the passenger who shared my first class coupe was a portly member of the clergy. Out of consideration for the holy fellow traveller, I had hidden the book I was planning to read under my air pillow. We had a hearty chat, he enquiring about my family and I, and I about the difference between an orphrey and chasuble. Soon, we retired for the night, the priest befitting his position of eminence, occupying the upper berth. He climbed on to it with commendable agility.

Came the dawn. The Howrah-Madras mail reached Central in the wee hours. I woke up, realized the train had reached the platform, and so woke up the holy father who was still enjoying ‘nature’s sweet restorer’ interlocking his fingers in a prayer-mode, placed on his chest. Hurriedly we threw our belongings into our bags and detrained.

Later, when I opened my airbag at home, I had the shock of my life. I found the paperback titled, The Playboy Adviser, lent by a friend, missing. Instead, there was a well-thumbed volume, containing the holy biblical text.