Senryū# 4

At client's, with
bytes of code in pocket,
sitting idle.

Miss

She rattled off answers to every single question, most of which beyond the jurisdiction of my comprehension, fired at by the professors. Her short ponytail swayed in simple harmonic motion while she spoke and her hands moved feverishly to assert her argument. I observed her with sanguine deference, precariously perched on the corner seat of amphi theatre's last row and admired her as she courageously hunted down every possible permutation of the problem at hand. Being a glorified backbencher, I was so used to seeing the back of her head, that I often wondered what she actually looked like. For me her ponytail had become synonymous to her face.

Even after two months of coexistence in the same course, I hadn't exchange pleasantries with her. I was not very inventive in my approach either. I favored an easygoing life, sans intrusion from external sources - pedagogues or members of opposite sex. Notwithstanding my lackadaisical approach in the classroom, professors often shattered my reverie with some arbitrary question which I always failed to answer. They impressed upon me the need to 'pay attention' and 'study hard' and often sympathized with me that my lack of interest in studies will lead me 'nowhere'. Once through with this quotidian regimen of pesky henpecking, I wasted no time in returning to my earlier state of semi comatose ponytail-watching.

She was a particular favorite of Mr Mani, Professor of Mechanical Thermodynamics. He was a possessor of heartless demeanor and ruthless ferocity. He was known to have been born with a four-stroke engine instead of a heart. Prof Mani was the proprietor of weird corporal features, description of which is necessary in order to gauge at the terror he exuded. He had an oblong face with high cheek bones and penetrating eyes set on a jet-black background. His eyebrows were immoderately bushy and covered a large part of his enormous forehead, left bare by the receding hairline. His nose was remarkably rotund at the tip and nostrils were roughly porcine. Right beneath his nose opened up the oral cavity which displayed a set of ugly denture bleached brown by the overuse of tobacco. To top it all, Mr Mani smeared a paste of sandalwood on his forehead - a mark of Vishnu which was supposed to keep him sangfroid throughout the day. His immaculate white shirt and razor edged trousers did not go a long way in ameliorating his 'handsomeness'. Needless to say, I did not hit it off very well with him from the very first day for I was not his type, someone who he'd easily develop an affinity with. Oh yes, he was nicknamed 'Hitman' for the atrociousness he displayed towards every single life form.(more...)