Going to School with Shah Rukh!

 

Going to School with Shah Rukh!

(in a dream, a long ago)

I found myself on the way to my alma mater along with Shah Rukh Khan in a half-open jeep. I was puzzled why I was with Shah Rukh Khan, the King of Bollywood. Maybe I was going to the school to attend a function there. On our way to the school, our jeep was passing by a farm well which was on the left side of the road. It was used for watering crops by farmers in the old-fashioned way, using bulls and a very big metal-sheet bucket. To lift the bucket filled with water up from the well, the bulls are driven down a sloped pit to pull the bucket, which is tied to a rope. And to send the bucket down into the well for refilling, the poor bulls and the farmers both had to walk backwards up the slope. No electric power is needed, and it is a good but probably unpleasant exercise for both the bulls and the farmers. I wanted to go past the well and check what was there, as I had never seen anything beyond the well and the pit before. Nothing was visible beyond them because their edges were completely covered with trees and bushes. For some reason, I never ventured beyond the well and the pit.

The condition of the road was as it was during my school days – it was still a dirt road. I didn't see any improvement in the road since I left the school a few decades ago.

"Where is your house?" Shah Rukh asked me. But I did not answer. I pretended as if I did not hear him. Later, I saw that there was one lady in the same vehicle, but I wasn't sure who she was. Probably, he asked the lady instead of me. I was thoroughly confused. I thought I did a good thing by not replying to him. It looked as if he did not see me at all, even though I was there in the same vehicle. I wondered how this was possible. Probably, I was invisible to them, or were Shah Rukh and I in two different worlds?

(My alma mater is in Mandepally village, Sircilla district, Telangana state of India.)

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