Intelligence

Aquilus and I were talking about intelligence today.
And the conversation brought back the memory of a not very pleasurable incident that had blotted his escutcheon, and mine, a couple of months ago.
One encounters all sorts among the vestiges of humanity in that madhouse of a hospital. Ranging from the flamboyant gutka-graffitizers of the inter-storey elevator-shaft-walls to the hoaryheaded puffyeyed foulmouthed squat professors.
My story dwells on this latter type.
For there is one of them that prowls our classrooms, canteen and library. One that I, a reasonable while back, had diagnosed of having a grossly malformed pair of frontal lobes. One that Aquilus and Shaky have lovingly (just joking) christened Bandicoota bengalensis. One that I shall refer to henceforth as B.
He shoots obscenities at people left, right and centre. He grabs hold of hapless students and fries their cerebri till desiccation. He has a self-professed problem with authority, and paradoxically despises others with the same quality. He claims to be influential enough to ‘chuck anyone out of college’ for no good reason. I confess that I don’t know how (because he hasn’t done anything of the sort yet, according to a teacher of my father’s who knew B well, and who adds with a wink that he thinks that B is actually a ‘sport’, and, therefore, incapable of such atrocities even if he had the happy power).
So B, one fine morning, had decided to pollute the atmosphere of our classroom. As is his wont, he started with his ritual of self worship.
If there is a kind of teacher I cannot stand, it is one with a superiority complex. This one thought he knew English, despite his appalling rendering of the same. And he accused us, Aquilus and myself, of not being up to scratch in the noble tongue.
And if that were not sacrilege, he went on to accuse us of having poor mathematical ability. His firm belief is that he would have made Ramanujan look puerile had he cultivated his talents in that direction, and that we had ended up shut in that hellhole with him because we were no good with numbers.
This was said in presence of one viator magnus, who had scored the nation’s highest in Mathematics in IITJEE Mains 2004, and one A.C. who had topped the entrances to the Indian Statistical Institutes.
And then this self-proclaimed genius had decided to deepfry Aquilus. I must say that he stood the torment like a man, and scored one over B in his own right. But I will not tarry on that part of the story. Old wounds are best left at rest.
After Aquilus had fought his battle, and I had been referred to in a most embarrassing fashion, came the climax of this tale. It would not be out of place to mention here that both Aquilus and I have fared rather favourably in our IQ tests. Our rating has always hovered around `prodigy’ in the Briggs-Meyers topology, and our mental ages stand a dignified decade ahead of their physical counterparts. I also happen to be a member of the International High IQ Society.
To cut the story short- neither of us is stupid.
QED.
B had other ideas.
Looking for a new brain to fry, he said `Akta s*** intelligent phes nei b*** gota classtay. Mukhgulo....’
And he fixed his watery, porcine eyes on me.
I gave him my adorable teddy-bear look, hoping he’d find me dumb beyond description, and succeeded.
Aquilus looked back tensely at the eyes that pootled over his countenance to Shaky’s, which, bless him, was rather red, but he passed, too.
And they locked onto T. After passing nearly four hundred and fifty worth in IQ points staring him in the face, he picked someone so obviously rated nincompoop that we nearly burst out laughing despite the situation.
Inference.
Intelligent people always rate themselves as incompetent, to leave room for improvement.
Fools live in their mangy little paradises of self-exaltation.
And imbeciles like myself blabber grandiose generalisations like the ones above when they should be devouring Virology like there were no tomorrow.