1. Once upon a time, in 1990, Antara of Class 6A had won the Maggi Inter-School Quiz Contest. Around 40-50 top schools in the industrial region of western West Bengal had participated, Antara's team were the champions. Lunch was provided to the participants by the poolside, but not to the parents accompanying the students.
Ajit remained aghast all his life, "Your mother starved through the day."
"Yes, but we were champions, it was me, all my teammates said it was only because of me that we became champions," Antara had protested.
"Your mother starved," Ajit kept saying, "No poolside lunch for her." Till the last day of his life, that's all he said, "your mother starved".
2. Then Numbers became a pool, "not a single individual could be out of it, we'd show what Maggi Quizzes were all about."
3. When it came to poolside rankings, 'obedient wives' were among the top four.
Above, Antara at JLF 2015, as an 'obedient wife'.
4. Those workplaces that didn't work through Communist excesses were going at the third spot in the poolside rankings, known in the Posta-Burrabazar area as the 'fools'.
Above, Antara in 2013, the 'phools' all lit up.
5. "What on earth was 1980-Mykolaiv" was at the second spot in poolside rankings.
Eh, 1980-Mykolaiv was probably about those who fought the Boer War and WWI and didn't invest in the space-based IPOs.
Above, Antara at a WWI memorial in New Delhi, 2012.
