George and the Bishop

When your Uppappa George was 11 years old, he didn't get into the posh school your Daddy went to so he was put into Perumpally Boarding school. The Bishop of Perumpally was the patron of the school which was on the grounds of the church and the Bishop usually lived in the house there. 

The school was surrounded by orchards with mangoes and cashew trees. But the fruit of these trees was forbidden to the boarders. What greater torture could they have devised for these sons of Adam than to put them in the middle of an orchard full of forbidden fruit!

In those days, it was common for the children to get caned for being naughty. And no one got caned more than George. It got to be so that if no other perpetrator could be found for the crime, they caned George anyway because, by the laws of statistics, he was the one most likely to have done wrong. 

But being the scapegoat didn't dampen George's spirits. He roamed the grounds and knew them inside out. He knew the best places to hide and the best trees to steal fruit from. 

In the whole of that school, George had only one, unexpected, ally and that was the Bishop himself. This is the story of how George and the Bishop became friends.

The Bishop of Perumpally was revered and respected far and wide. It was said that he was a prophet and that many things he predicted came to pass. When the Bishop met George's sister, he said that she would marry a man with a beard, and, sure enough, a year later, that was exactly what happened. 

The Bishop loved the orchards as much as George did and probably knew all the same hiding places. He would probably have climbed the same trees as George if only his robes had allowed it. But most of all, the orchards provided the privacy for the Bishop to escape from his responsibilities and smoke a sneaky cigarette.

One day, as the Bishop stood puffing away beneath a mango tree, he saw the leaves rustle and a brown leg dangling from a branch.

" What are you doing up there, George?" asked the Bishop.

George sat very still.

" Are you picking mangoes?" asked the Bishop.

Slowly the leaves parted and the boy looked down at the Bishop with mango juice staining his mouth and chin. The Bishop looked up at the boy with smoke curling up from his nostrils. 

A sly grin lit the boy's face and found it's reflection on the Bishop's face. 
They acknowledged each other as partners in crime and a friendship was born.

George learned more in the grounds of that school than his teachers ever succeeded in teaching him in the classrooms. 

The Bishop owned a turkey that laid eggs. Unfortunately for the Bishop, the turkey never laid it's eggs in the same place. It's not difficult to imagine that George was usually the one who found the eggs first. 

In the dormitory toilets he would empty out his geometry instrument tin and with 3 candles lit under it, it would form a fine frying pan to make a turkey egg omlette! The best way to succeed in crime is to get rid of the stolen loot fast and what can be more fool proof than eating it! 

George's favourite hiding place was on top of the school bus. One day, as George was lying flat on the roof of the bus, he heard the engine turn on and, before he knew it, the bus was moving! The driver drove the bus all the way to the petrol station before he realised that he had a stowaway on top.

George spent four years in Perumpally School. Once he left, he never went back. I wonder what his classmates and teachers would say if they knew where he was now...