WHO HUNG KING ?

Halfway through the roll call session at the inaugural lecture, the anatomy professor found himself on the brink of a sneeze. And sneeze he did with a resounding 'Hak...ack...shee...'. During the ensuing silence, a chinese student in the class stood bolt upright and blurted out, "Present, Sir."

The bemused professor quizzically peered at the student as if to charge him with insubordination. But when the apologetic student muttered, "My name is Hak Aak Shee, Sir," a ripple of laughter spread across the lecture hall.

This was one of many guileless gags involving the names of the Chinese at our cosmopolitan college campus in the late sixties which spiced our student days with spontaneous humour sans rancour.

Take the case of a Chinese name 'Ng', the phonetics of which was beyond description in written words except that the sound (as explained by Mr Ng himself) bore an uncanny resemblance to the tight-lipped groan of an intractably constipated chap straining to attain deliverance from his 'motion sickness'!

And being bitten by the Chinese (name) bug, the innovative inhabitants of the college hostelry took it upon themselves to nick name anyone (irrespective of ethnicity) having some idiosyncracy with a Chinese-sounding name. So, a foul-mouthed guy became 'Mr Tongue Too Wrong' and one who ate like a horse was called 'Mr Junk Chunk Chew.' Similarly 'Mr Stunk Lek Skunk' was a 'hydrophobic' who took a bath once every leap year.

The Chinese too sportingly joined the frolic with their own versions of Indian names. Mithun Choksey, for instance, became 'Mein Chop Suey' and it was 'Gung Ho Rum' for Gangaram. An innocent bystander like me too had to put up with a 'Cage-hey Shen Hoy' (for K J Shenoy).

Even though the the Chinese baptism entailed a highly evolved methodology, Mr Shambu (alias Sham An' Boo), our hostel's wit and racounteur, had his own theory. He postulated that christening of a Chinese newborn was a very simple ritual: the baby's father would merely fling a coin on to the cement floor and from whatever sound it produced - Ting dong tunk or Ding tonk deng - a name would be 'coined'.

"Then huccome my name has no coin ringing in it?" retorted Duk Tok Chee, a Chinese boy, taking exception to Shambu's hypothesis. "In your case," chuckled Shambu, "the coin might have fallen on the wooden floor producing the sound 'Duk Tok' which prompted your dad to exclaim 'Chee' with annoyance."

At that, Duk Tok Chee's embarassed face looked a spitting image of 'Ing Tind Mang', which in Kannada means a monkey that had swallowed a lump of asafoetida (a bitter spice).

TAIL PIECE: During the visit of the Chinese President Mr Hu Jintao to New Delhi, seeing the security drill on the streets, a man asked a policeman "Who is coming?" To which the cop replied, "Yes."

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'Chitting' at Exams

“I am all set for tomorrow's surgery paper. So, shoot your questions,” he challenged. I sniffed at his breath to check if he had been on a pub-crawl. For, he was a veteran of a thousand exams who, having flunked successively, had taken root in the college campus like a mighty oak.

I queried him about appendicectomy. In a jiffy, he conjured up a chit from his shirt collar. The chit, neatly folded like an accordion pleat, contained the answer written in telegraphese. Further barrage of questions saw a rush of chits sprouting out like skin rashes from all over his body - his socks, belt, cap and even his briefs. He, indeed, had 'answered' all my surgery questions with surgical precision! But his scheme had a flaw which proved to be his undoing.

For, his answer sheets provided the examiners with a smoking gun in the form of a series of parentheses containing things like vide infra, vide supra, refer to page No 1920 etc. An advice that an interested reader could update his knowledge by referring to the article 'Pathogenesis of sporadic cases of tuberculosis, Lancet, 277:1008, 1967' nailed him good and proper.
There were other plots of his that were relatively successful. They were of such ingenuity that, had they run aground, they would have kicked up a storm in the local print media triggering headlines such as ‘daredevils climb drainage pipes to deposit answer sheets in exam-hall toilets’. Or ‘Exam candidate faints, recovers both consciousness and answer sheets in rest room'. But despite his exploits at the theory, the viva-voce proved to be his nemesis.

The howlers he inadvertently churned out at the orals were legion. To a question about the salient features of pneumonia he replied "Its 'p' is silent, sir." When asked about the first measure to be taken on encountering a patient with severe chest pain, he glibly said "Call a doctor." His cure for intense itching was simple 'scratch vigorously.'

And a day came when one of his erstwhile classmates became an examiner who offered him a bail-out package. The terms of the offer required him to swear on the 'Bhagavad-Gita' that he would spare the humanity the benefits of his healing touch. And with the embargo in place, he was pushed through the exams after posing knotty (or naughty) questions like ‘which part of the body aches during headache?’ etc.

Today he is knee-deep (with 'k' silent) in his father's flourishing poultry business somewhere in the north. And, true to his graduation vow, he never dabbled in medicine. Except, maybe, when one of his chickens went down with Chickenpox!

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