I slowly, carefully slipped my hands through- the left one
went first, to the chagrin of the pot-bellied Master Rasul, and then the right, and a few smoothing of creases
later, he directed me to a mirror to take a look. The suit felt mighty fine,
and unlike what I’d thought, almost weightless. I tried to stretch my arms out
wide and had to stop at an unwieldy angle that made me look like an overdressed
scarecrow. Ma had the now-ubiquitous “I wish was quick enough to take a
photograph now” moment, as Big B started laughing out, too. The tailor was
shaking his head when I enquired if I couldn’t stretch my hands beyond the
point where I was. He replied through poorly controlled sniggers- “People in
suits aren’t really expected to go beyond a shakehand”.
That was probably the only dampener in an otherwise supremely satisfying two
hundred seconds. As Big B and I concurred, Tashaniya.
While that tailor’s receipt says my abbreviated name will
receive that suit two days from now, my name troubles will probably haunt me a
day earlier. It’s that big feline day tomorrow, and stories are flowing in from
all directions on how the organisers are very particular about identification
details, with at least three different levels of frisking and checking. In that
regard, it's piquing that my passport, college ID card and ATM card, the only three officially acceptable
forms of identity verification I have here, all happen to be slightly different variations
of the same 25-character name (without spaces). An identity crisis, indeed.
Talking of that catty event, the venue happens to be another
of those million permutations for college names here in Hadduland that go like (random-alphabet)ITAM. Just to make sure,
Big B and I did a recon of the venue yesterday. The morons have the only centre
in Visakhapatnam a full thirty kilometres off the city. Thankfully, at least
twenty-five of those are either on the highway or on a newly-constructed BRTS
road. But once you take that dreaded diversion the college board demands, you’re
into a sand-and-rocks quagmire in the middle of dense snake-infested forests,
flanked ever-so-briefly by an almost out-of-place picturesque lake. I have a
feeling Slartibartfast left some of his work over here, too.
***
Five months after the last visit, and more than twelve years
after that first landing, I think I’m going to miss Visakhapatnam/Vizag/The city
of destiny.
