SO KHOOL!

When I was a teenage schoolgirl, I worshipped this 20-something female who lived in the neighbourhood. To me, she was 'The Goddess of All Things'. She looked fabulous, was really smart, dressed well, carried herself with amazing grace, and did all the right things. She was the perfect grown-up, and I would hang around her all the time, telling her every now and then HOW KHOOL I thought she was, and how much I wanted to be like her.

Today, I had the opportunity to see the other side. Here's the full story.

I woke up really early this morning as I had to go and volunteer at a fund-raising event organised by the Student Volunteer Corp. I was running late, my Filipino maid was cleaning the house, and my housemate was still asleep. I knocked on my housemate's door and bellowed, "Hey, I'm off, can you pay the maid once she's done?" My housemate mumbled something back. "She'll pay you." I told the maid, as I rushed for the door. The maid looked at me with astonished eyes and after struggling to express herself (her English is not very good) said, "So apter I pinis, I knock her?" I had no time to laugh. But I wanted to say, "Yes, you knock her, girl. You knock her out and do whatever you can to get your money, but I gotta run now!" (This actually has nothing to do with the rest of the post, but it was just very funny.)

So I reached the Youth Park and set up my henna stall. A large group of teenage schoolgirls was also volunteering at the event. A giggly bunch of them came to my stall and plonked themselves on the chairs around me.

"Are you the henna girl?" One of them said with a smile.

"Henna girl? Errr.. yeah, I suppose I'm the henna girl!"

"Can I get something done on my wrist?" One of them asked shyly.

"Sure! What design do you want?"

"Could you just write 'Linkin Park' on my wrist?"

"Err... Just write 'Linkin Park'? Ummm.... all right!"

As I wrote the words on her wrist, she said, "Ok, that is just SO KHOOL! You're just SO KHOOL! You're the first grown-up I've seen who can spell 'Linkin Park'! All the others spell it as 'Linking'! Can you imagine that???"

Ah well. I really had nothing to say.

"So where is your shop located?" Another one asked.

"What shop?"

"Your henna shop?"

"Oh, I don't have a henna shop. I just do it for fun, and once in a while for fund-raising."

"Really?? What do you do then?"

"I'm the editor of a children's magazine."

"Really??? That's just SO KHOOL!"

Another girl came along and asked hesitatingly, "Can I get henna done? But I don't have enough coupons, am down to my last 1-dollar one!"

"No worries. Come, take a seat." I offered.

"Ok, you just ROCK! Doesn't she?" She asked as she dropped the coupon into the sealed box. All heads nodded in unison.

"Are you a local Indian?" Another one asked. She was a local Indian.

"Nope, I'm an Indian from India."

"Oh! So you must know Hindi! And you must know Bollywood movies!"

"Yes, I do."

"So what do you think of Zayed Khan?"

"Zayed Khan? Well... I think he looks better in real life than in his movies."

The girl suddenly made a dash, almost upsetting my table. In a minute, she was back with two other breathless Indian girls.

"OK, ASK HER! SHE HAS ACTUALLY SEEN ZAYED KHAN!!!" She gushed.

"Oh my God NOOOOO! Really?????" The others gushed too.

"Yes, I have."

"Who else? Who else?" They chanted excitedly.

And I had no choice but to recount what the Grand Hyatt knows.

In a while, I had a raptured audience at the stall, who then proceeded to ask me everything else about my life. Every now and then, a new girl would join the group, and the whole cycle would be repeated. "Ok, you have to listen to this! She is an engineer, who works as an editor, and she's really smart 'cos she came here on this really KHOOL scholarship. And she does henna for fun and fund-raising, and she's seen like a million Bollywood actors in real life, and she knows how to spell 'Linkin Park'! And look at her earrings, they are just SO KHOOL, and so are her bangles. And don't you just love her nails? She's just SO KHOOL!"

The other stall holders were giving me very amused looks. I could not even tell the girls that it really wasn't "SO KHOOL" and that their "KHOOL idol" was actually embarrassed to bits about all that gushing.

But then I remembered my early teens.

And I finally knew what it felt like to be considered by teenage schoolgirls as 'The Goddess of All Things'.