Written by Shamit Bagchi

“It is like this”, Professor Ongko Bannujjay, was showing it, waving his hand to show the n-dimensions.
Then he started moving both his hands like an orchestra player. Prof O we will call him - the
mathematical wizard or just O.

Bool raised his hand, his skinny arm didn’t even register in O’s n-dimensional far sight of a vision. He
continued on drawing 3 matrices simultaneously on the board, bored the students started jotting down
the tableaux.

“Taabloo”, yelled O suddenly animated and then went on to blabber more. “Do you get it? The fact that
multiple such planes intersect and each of them are convex, yes what?”, he asked Bool in between
repeating his previous point. He had spotted Bool – his arm intersecting one of his imaginary planes – and
interrupting his train of thoughts - disgusting.

Bool felt trepidation and the area around his bladder tightened, constricting any chance of liquid flow. It
was a strange sensation, he felt he had to run to the toilet yet the body took an autonomous decision as if
as a counter measure!

O’s jowls were as fiery and red as a raging bull’s. “Yes what is it?” he yelled out again.

Bool started to speak, when his mobile rang. A ringtone that was of some Bengali Rabindra Sangeet,
written by the famous poet Rabindranath Tagore and unknowingly set as a ringtone by one of his stupid
cousins yesterday when he had gone to their place. These next gen kids were ‘pod pakaas’ – sharp ass, as
in overzealous! Bool felt as if the ghost of the poet with the white flowing beard had kicked Bool in his
backside. He fumbled to shut off the mobile, but the sound subsided – it was only an SMS – Shit Messaging
Service.

Ongko was now livid. He made a caustic remark, “How callous are you fools”, he said addressing all in
general but Bool in particular. “First of all it takes you hours to understand the simplest of concepts that I
understood back in secondary school - calculus”. “And then you don’t even turn off your mobiles in class –
how did you morons get into this prestigious institute?” So callous and calculus registered as words in
Bool’s mind as nodes of an associative map tightly entwined that he would never forget!

“Sorry Sir”, Bool managed heads down ashamed and that’s when he happened to glance at his mobile
screen. It read “Take me in”. He was shocked, Ashok it was who had messaged him. What did he mean?

Bool now stood up and with great courage managed to ask “Sir you mentioned multiple planes
intersecting and all of them being convex, but what if they are concave?”
Prof O thought for a minute and started scratching his head! He suddenly ducked and then paced back
and forth on the elevated platform for almost thirty full seconds. By now Bool had forgotten his question
and was busy reading the SMS from Ashok trying to fathom its meaning!

Also by then Toothy Shashank had peeped into his neighbour’s mobile and seen the SMS and giggled!

Coming out of his deep thoughts, Prof O shot back a look of anger at the class, who dared giggle at him, he
would answer the question all right! He started pointing his right hand’s index finger at his head an
almost reflex action, as if commanding his mind to throw out an answer. But the answer eluded him. And
this got him even more animated and his speed of pacing around quickened.

The message had spread in the class like wild ants; the students were flabbergasted by two equally comic
happenings. Ashok sending Bool a message saying “Take me in”, for extra kicks someone had spiced up
the SMS as “Take me in tonight” – and the way Prof O had reacted to Bool’s question. The lanky and
muscled Peter even whispered into the ears of Sriram ‘Tilak’ Iyer that he thought Bool was a gay, he had
always thought so!

All of a sudden something quite extraordinary happened. Prof O raised both his hands and sighed loudly,
“You’ll have to give me five minutes”.

He jumped down to the door, unlatched it and stormed out. As soon as he had stormed out Ashok
stormed into the class.

He was five minutes late to the class and Prof O was so strict (finicky most students thought) that he
would lock the door, latch it from inside two minutes after the time the class was supposed to begin. Then
he’d dust his hand as if he had just punished some criminal who was left outside and smile at himself for a
moment and then get back to being a tough professor!

“Dude please take me in, ask the professor to open the door, I got delayed by a minute” read the next
message from Ashok that reached Bool a little late… And by then he had actually managed to do exactly
that. Bool later boastfully claimed it was: Telepathy.

Plus several toppers including Sriram ‘Tilak’ Iyer congratulated Bool on his near-impossible feat that
semester more so than the genuine question Bool had raised and Prof O had answered in the subsequent
class!

Incessant taunts for Bool on the message from Ashok and its distortions died out after a while. And so did
the incessant praises for having sent Prof O out of the class with his mind blowing question.