Help Save The Dodo!!!

It struck me today that perhaps I should take up this worthy cause - fighting to save the dodos from extinction. This is the most worthy and suitable cause for me.

What makes it so perfect is the timeline for this task. I seem to have been born with this innate knack of recognizing just when it is too late to complete a particular project, and begin working on it only from that point.

Over the years, it has happened again and again and again. Leaving aside the small day to day blunders, the first remarkable incident of this nature was when we had to submit our computer science project for the 10th standard.

We were given 2 years to work on it. Not that anyone ever really worked for 2 years, but then groups would get formed that early, and the sincere ones would work atleast for a year.

Me and my friend, well, we had nothing to show even 6 months before the deadline ... but then there is always hope. We had nothing to show two months further down the line... which is when we heard that those who participated in the school concert (generally a musical drama of some merit) would get an extra week.

My friend and I immediately decided that this was the thing to do - join the school concert!

We worked dilligently towards it. The concert that year was a musical adaptation of Ali Baba and the Forty thieves. Everyone on the cast was required to be able to sing and so, we were required to give an audition before the school piano teacher.

My concept of the scales (up to 2nd year of engineering) was that the Do Re Me .. was like the vowels ... the ending sound was all that mattered. I was clueless about pitch. Add to that the fact that the piano teacher was drop-dead gorgeous.

My first audition was a nightmare. After having been tutored for about a week (by when my voice was too hoarse anyway) I went during the lunch time for my audition.

The lady went to the piano .. turned her eyes on me (oh my gawd!!!) ... hit some keys and said.. sing along "la la la"!!!!! Imagine my surprise! How can you simulate "Do Re Me" with "la la la" ... shouldn't it be something like "Lo Le Le" at least????

I just choked. The piano teacher saw how flustered I was and probably assumed that I was just nervous as a tribute to her beauty.... to cut a long story short, I made it three auditions later, with sheer tenacity. Needless to say, I spent most of the time in the choir doing lip-sync (appropriate because I was a bass and well isnt a bass supposed to go gulp-gulp-gulp). Everytime I did try to sing a line or two, I would generally throw the folks around me off tune .. and I survived several rounds of culling when the choir master would try to isolate the point cause of the problem...

All this mind you ... to get that additional one week to complete our computer project.

Well, the school concert came and went ... I will only mention in passing that on the fateful day, I managed to rip my silk pyjama costume and for once, no one had to whisper from the sidelines not to turn my back towards the audience.

Now that the concert was over, it was time for project submissions. We ofcourse were secure in the knowledge that we had an additional week in which to complete the project that we had not started.

It came as a surprise therefore when the principal decided on Wednesday evening that it would be unfair to give the boys from the concert an additional week to embellish there projects since everyone had been working on them for 2 years anyway. We opposed the motion ... and after some discussion, it was decided by Thursday evening that the projects were expected by the next morning.

Luckily, my friend had a home computer. That was my first night-out for writing code (involuntarily) ... and we cooked up something by the next morning. I wont bore you with the specifics, needless to say that it passed muster, and well wasn't bad at all. Our teacher slightly differed in that opinion ... all the more apparently because it was produced in a night "... imagine if you had spent 2 years" he thundered!

To come back to the first point ... this has been the story with everything all my life... packing while going to the hostel, packing while coming back home from the hostel, preparing for exams, packing for my onsite assignments, my project deadlines... and at the end of it, despite everything, whenever the odds have been really stacked up, I have made it.

Someday I will perhaps blog on the somber aspects of this ... how we should sometimes have a need to create challenges for ourselves in life, how one of the greatest challenges is to create the right challenge ... and all that balderdash ...

but for now I think I will just help save the Dodo!!!!