The Extraordinary Life of Mr Smarty Pants
Everybody hates
Suvit --------------------------
Suvit was as smart as any of the students who showed up for orientation one pleasant autumn evening at the sprawling Stanford campus across from
Palo Alto. He had gotten a whopping 1600 in his SAT, the maximum possible score at that time. Had there been no upper limit on the test,
Suvit would probably have been in the running for the world record. In which case there might even have been a thread on Sajha titled "Nepali breaks SAT world record" with perhaps a third of the people claiming such a feat was no big deal or that he was a looser, another third screaming and abusing the first third, and a third third actually gathering up the courage to say good job in the midst of the hullabaloo.
Suvit did not want to be or choose to be so intelligent. At nineteen he wanted to be popular. He wanted guy friends to go swimming or play tennis with. Or just to hang out in his room and play Mario Bros and Donkey Kong on the ATARI he had brought all the way from Nepal. Well, Bangkok to be precise. He wanted girl friends he could take out to the bars on the weekends and drink with them till they got hammered. He wanted to do those things he heard people in America did after they got hammered.
It was very important to
Suvit that he be liked at Stanford. Every time he had changed schools or move places in the past, it took a long time for him to develop a circle of friends he was close and comfortable with. He didn't want that to happen here especially since he was so far away from home and did not have family to fall back on when he felt down. People usually took their time, in some cases a very long time, to warm up to him perhaps because they were intimidated, annoyed or resentful, or all of the above, by his overbearing intelligence, his impressionable family lineage and his star-studded academic pedigree not to mention his admirable physique and looks.
He once attended a frat party and managed to piss off everyone whom he opened his mouth at. He didn't say anything rude. He just talked about the things he thought all normal talked about like which city they came from, what their hobbies were, what games they played, what their parents did, where they worked or went to school, what books they read, what movies they watched, which countries they had visited and so on. The maximum attention he got was for 4 minutes and 27 seconds, from a girl who had come from
UC Davis and was waiting for her friends to arrive.
Suvit secretly hoped she would introduce them to him; that way he would get to meet more people in this new place. When they got there, she said bye to him in a hurry, almost as if she was relieved to be rid of him and avoided him the rest of the evening.
That forced
Suvit to come down from the perch he didn't realize he was sitting on. Your intelligence, schooling, looks and achievements are less important when it comes to making new friends than your ability to level with and show empathy towards others he concluded. He decided he would try and see the world from the perspective of others. Three days later he gave up. It was hard to see things as others would when they showed no interest in seeing anything from your perspective.
One evening, after a series of lukewarm welcomes that bordered on indifference from the people of this new place, he escaped to the park behind the college, sat on a bench, stared at the blue Californian sky and softly asked himself "Why?"
The formative years
-------------------------
The acorn does not fall far from the oak.
Suvit’s dad was an astrophysicist at the Royal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (
RONAST) and spend his days and nights collaborating with scientists around the world on subjects related to the creation of the universe. They hadn't fully figured out every detail how the universe originated but there was one thing they were sure of and that is God, or any such divine being, did not create it. His mom was an oncologist who worked with cancer patients every day and knew if there was such a thing as a god, then he or she would not have made people suffer the slow death and pain that cancer brings. Both his parent's evangelical agnosticism played a great part in shaping
Suvit's religious choices later in life, as you will find out during the course of this story.
He had an extremely curious mind, one that could put a kitten to shame. Such was his curiosity that by the time he was seven,
Suvit had either read or been read to almost every question in the "Tell my Why" series of books by that existed before the days of inexpensive personal computers and laptops, the
internet, Google and
Wikipedia.
“He is your son after all” one exhausted and thoroughly drained parent would point the finger of blame (and pride) at the other for their sons voracious appetite for information. His parents would come home from work at around five,
Suvit would go running and yelling to the gate to greet them and the three of them would spend an hour on the veranda with
Suvit quizzing his parents about what exactly they had done at work that day and why the sky was so high.
“How is barium therapy different from chemotherapy?”
"Is the
emigdulla a part of the medulla?"
“What the difference between a two stage and a three-stage rocket”
“Does Nepal have a rocket?”
His grandfather called him a sponge for being able to soak in as much knowledge as was fed to him and his granny called him a knife for being sharp enough to spit out what he had soaked in. From the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or Zaire as it was know back then, to the R-7 rocket that launched the Sputnik into geocentric orbit,
Suvit was a fact spitting machine powered by a Duracell battery, who, like the bunny in the ad, would never stop if left to his own devices.
While his razor sharp intellect greatly endeared him to the elders at home, it made him somewhat unpopular with one of his primary school teachers who felt threatened by the seven-year-
old's encyclopedic grasp of everything factual; something she had struggled with for years. She knew how to cut him down to size in class by making snide remarks, quoting the scriptures, about how a student could never be better than his teacher, no matter how smart he was.
No sooner had she said that than
Suvit blurted out the solution to a Math problem that she had been trying to resolve on the black board but had got stuck on because she used the wrong technique. The ever so grateful teacher sent him to detention that evening for speaking in class without raising his hands, an effective weapon she deployed in other classes against over-smart, over-achieving kids born to parents who taught them nothing about respecting teachers. Right after condemning him to detention, she re-worded and used his logic to solve the problem. She then made it a point to say that this was not the way
Suvit said the problem should be solved, thus baiting him to protest because that would be in violation of her raise-your-hand-rule.
Seven year old
Suvit, not yet smart enough to decipher the conniving schemes of insecure adults, fell for the bait, feebly protested and had his detention upped to a week.
"This boy here thinks he is Einstein. He thinks he knows everything but he doesn't know not to talk to a teacher without raising his hands. A good week in detention will bring him back to his senses" his teacher told the nervously giggling class.
Yet, for reasons he could not understand or explain, something told him the whole class was on his side. Children can be mean creatures but they sometimes posses an uncanny sense of right and wrong. Moments later, the Principal walked into the class announced
Suvit's essay about the humble dwarf who brought down the mighty giant had been awarded the first prize in the inter-school essay contest. The class burst into thundering applause. Amidst the thumping desks and stomping feet,
Suvit stood up and acknowledged the plaudits. His teacher immediately changed colors and said
Suvit was the best student she had even encountered in her one-year and three-month teaching career.
At the end of the class, she pulled him aside and told him his detention had been canceled because he had made her proud by winning the essay contest.
"Oh, I was hoping to write another essay during detention time"
Suvit had a trouble-prone and big mouth that he just could not control.
"Now get out of here before I change my mind, you ungrateful boy" she turned red and screamed at him. He bolted out of the class.
The accidental champion
-----------------------------
Suvit first learnt in the fifth grade that if you have brains and are willing to use them, you can conquer most hurdles in your way.
Wanghuck Gyurmee was the class bully and the boxing champion in the junior division.
Wanghuck had been brought up in a family of army officers who had ideas about strength, masculinity and success were quite different from
Suvit's more academically inclined parents.
Suvit's parents had taught him to fight back if bullied, but always cautioned him on using physical strength judiciously.
One fateful sunny afternoon in a small gymnasium tucked away on a big hill on a hill station in India,
Suvit's stood in his blue PE shorts, white
Sandoz vest, red boxing gloves and blinked his eyes nervously at
Wangchuk while waiting for their instructor to blow the starting whistle. Boxing was mandatory for all boys classes five and six, with the option of continuing in class seven if you so desired. Each student was matched with the person closest to him in height and weight.
The monsoons had hit early that year and rain dripped through a small hole in the roof and hit
Suvit on the
cheek. The referee then explained that you were only allowed to shadow box and could not touch the other person above shoulder level. Physical contact was only for senior boys.
The referee blew his whistle to start the round but immediately turned his attention to two boys in the corner ring who had gotten carried away, violated the no-physical-contact rule, and given each other one bloodied nose, one black eye, two bruised cheeks and possibly several weeks of detention.
Suvit, intently focused on
Wangchucks face, did not notice the distraction.
Wangchuk on the other hand blinked and turned his eyes towards the fight in the corner for what must have been a
nano second. A
nano second too long.
Suvit lashed out at
Wangchuk, still within the rules of shadow boxing, with what he thought was a shadow uppercut. It turned out to be a knockout blow because
Wangchuk turned his head right the nanosecond before.
Wangchuk Gyurmee, all 140
cms and 40 kilos of him, was flat on the floor like a dead-body. The runner -up in last year's all India Inter-School Junior League was knocked out cold by an ant-weight who was waiting to reach the next grade so that he could avoid boxing classes altogether.
When you achieve something you don't want, especially by accident, you are not prepared to handle such success. He did not want to be a boxing champ. For god's sake, he had tried to bunk boxing classes on numerous occasions, rather unsuccessfully, and gotten caught, and been sent to the detention room at least twice that year. How could such a person beat the school junior champ?
He dreaded the consequences of a dead
Wangchuk. He would probably be sent to jail and have to spend the rest of his life grinding flour like they showed in the movies. Or worse, they would even arrest his parents and put them in jail. It would be all over the papers, the boys in class would hate him, and he would have brought shame and dishonor to his family.
Suvit felt like the worst person in the world at that moment.
Much to his relief
Wangchuk moved his legs. He then opened his eyes and wiped his nose with his right hand.
Suvit held out his hand,
Wanghuck took it and got back on his feet.
Wangchuk then said the most astonishing thing.
"
Don't tell any body this happened" he said in a low voice, walked out of the rink and headed for the gym door.
Suvit thought he saw a tear in the corner of
Wangchuks eye as he walked with a limp towards the back door.
From that day onwards,
Suvit and
Wangchuk became best friends and avoided each other in boxing class.
Suvit kept his end of the bargain and never told a soul.
Wangchuk in return believed
Suvit had some secret powers from reading all those books his scientist parents gave him, powers that he could not fully comprehend and decided it would be best not to fight him.
Suvit always took victory in grace after that point.
Wangchuk soon learnt to do the same.
Walking with Allah
---------------------
Suvit got drawn to Islam while at Stanford. It all started as a joke in the Anthropology class he had taken. The topic was
Palestenian suicide bombers and the 72 virgins that awaited them in paradise as per a controversial interpretation of
Quranic text. It was 8:00 AM on a Monday morning and the otherwise yawning and half-asleep
Suvit's antennae suddenly went up at the mention of the s-word and he sat up and started thinking about it. While two students battled it out as to whether the
Quran or
Hadith really say such a thing, the mathematician in
Suvit started doing the arithmetic. At one virgin a day, it would take a martyr almost two-and-a-half months to get done with the whole list.
That would be a tall order for anyone. If it was weekly, it would be a year and five months. Or once a month and it would take a full six years to claim the entire reward. The idea was tempting but the price of martyrdom was too high to pay. He decided best to settle for an earthly life and just a tenth of the women. Since 7.2 was not a whole number he conveniently rounded it to eight. If he got married at 30, that meant he had ten years to find seven women. The eight would obviously be his wife.
He became friends with a devout Muslim from Palestine who prayed five times a day. Through him,
Suvit got introduced to Islamic teachings and philosophy. He even attended
namaz a couple of times at the mosque in Fremont. This was
Suvit's first real encounter with religion. Having grown up a devout agnostic, it fascinated him to see and hear people who actually believed in a super natural being. He had read about and flirted with Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity but Islam was in an altogether different league. Allah was Allah, not god, not almighty, not the saviour, not anything else, just Allah. He was as intrigued by the the practices and customs of Islam as by the philosophy and beliefs not to mention the intense passion of the believers he met.
Brotherhood amongst the believers was one way to rid the world of its problems one of his newly acquired friends argued. No matter where you are or who you are, as long as as you are a Muslim, you are considered a brother. So if the whole world was Muslim, then we would all be brothers and live in peace and harmony. He thought of all the prejudice and violence that existed in the world because everyone was not Muslim and decided to research Islam further.
His friend even offered to conduct a conversion ceremony for him. It would involve
Suvit swearing there was no deity but Allah and that Mohammad was his messenger. That would be followed by a symbolic shower to cleanse him of the sinful ways of the past. He could then contact the local imam and ask for a Muslim name if he wanted.
He chuckled as he thought of the looks on the faces of his parents and uncles and aunts when they read a letter from an Iqbal Hussein who claimed to be their son or nephew.
"I thought he was just over-smart"
Sushmita auntie, whose dad had abandoned his wife and two daughters to become a
Ringpoche would tell
Birendra uncle "but now he seems to have completely lost his mind."
"That's what happens when the parents let their kids do whatever they want"
Birendra Uncle, who kept his son
Pankaj on a short leash, would reply "I hope
Pankaj doesn't hear about this. He seems to copy everything
Suvit does."
Summer of ambitions
-------------------------
Suvit romance with religion was interrupted by an irresistible offer from Wayne and Company, the strategy consulting giant, to intern in their Boston office. That summer he packed his bags and flew cross country to Boston, the cradle of modern day America. He was in love with the city although he found it to be very different from San Francisco. There was something plain and idealistic about California. There was something rugged and realistic about the East coast. That summer he traveled up to Maine and down to New York and DC. He soaked up the sun in the sandy shores of Cape Cod, and serenaded himself and Julie
Malloy, his
Indo-
Tibetophile date from
Craigslist, to Bach and Mozart at
Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
He also partied hard that summer. You could not browse through
Ramjham without running across a dozen pictures of him. Whether it was Buddha
Jayanti in
Somerville, Nepali New Year in Queens, or the ANA in Virginia,
Suvit was all over. His favorite picture the one where we had his arms around two girls - one his friend's older sister and the other his cousin's cousin. Not many people knew that and
Suvit took full advantage of the awaiting opportunities and dropped his phone number and email address at different places on Sajha. He got one call and one email as a result. The call came in the middle of the night from
Mero-Card-
Kinki-Kin Tel and the email from a
Sri Lankan gay guy claiming he was interested in having friendly conversations with other South Asian men regardless of their sexual orientation.
Suvit did not show up at any more parties in Boston. Next summer he interned in London. With Virgin Galactic.
Suvit, lately an astrophysics major, was going places and he definitely wasn't going to pass on space if given the opportunity. The CIA and MI6 had cleared his background and he was ready to work on a project to figure out the escape velocity that
SpaceShipThree, launched from the Mohave or the steppes of
Kazakistan, would need to get past the stratosphere, hopefully with him inside it
"Nepali blasts into space" a thread with 50 views at the bottom of
Kurakani would someday say
BaDboYNePALI23 and
EviL_
GeniouS_6 would claim the other was full of shit. Lonely_
Gurl_15 would post "It's a beautiful world" from
YouTube. The thread would soon vanish into the black hole of Sajha archives as fast as that story about an over smart kid written by a flopped essayist.
Last edited: 15-Oct-07 06:31 PM
.
right from "i met her on sajha" to this one, you have evolved as a better writer every time while i have come more and more close with the characters in your stories. the characterization, in whole, of the protagonist in this one may sound a bit unrealistic (at least to some of the readers), but some of its shades are very commonly evident in our society and since they are, in its entirety, 'extraordinary' to the eyes of the writer, it should make sense to us readers (well at least it does to me). 
innit? innit? 
.......ok that was enuff of digressing on my part)
