When I was 15, I moved to Chennai to get into IIT. Within a week, I realised I did not belong and resolved to jump the wall to call my dad and ask him to get me out of there.
The hostel wall, like all other contraptions of imagined confinement, had pieces of glass stuck on it. I had been watching too much of Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood’s escapades in Where Eagles Dare prior to my departure from Bangalore, and made a plan involving cloth bandages and a cultural programme at the school to distract the missing guards from my great escape.
The programme had started. Everyone was attending. As I made my way towards the wall, I saw actor-director S.Ve. Shekher on the stage delivering jokes like gunfire. He had every teenager and adult in the crowd open-mouthed with his wit. With only a mic to amplify whatever his mind was telling him.
