How today’s girls use the tricks of Malkiat Singh’s First Edition

By Ainea Bolingo

NAIROBI, KENYA: Exam time is here, the time we would save little money to buy success cards – with a picture of a couple holding each other – to send to girls we thought looked cool.

I remember the two telephone booths on each end of Kenya cinema that served as our meeting place.

Those of us who had dates waited religiously. Whenever our dates were late, we would call their home phone whose number we had ‘crammed’.

We would use a ‘tapping technique’ to make free calls by simply connecting naked wires.  Whenever we asked a girl for a movie date, we would go ahead to wait at the cinema hall for hours.

We would watch the movie with half interest till the end of the next movie.

Then we would walk back home eating the biscuits or chocolate we had bought for our date.

Still, things were different as our girls were more genuine unlike the “mahewa generation” who are   materialistic to the bone.

They believe in the famous phrase that ‘you can’t eat love; you eat food that is bought by cash’. These days, with the advent of the mobile phone, I doubt most of us will make it to heaven with those lies.

The other day I read that Longhorn Publishers has acquired 41 titles in Malkiat Singh’s Improve Series.

Just who was Malkiat Singh? Many of my generation know and   respect him for making education as easy as ABC as he placed answers at the end of his books.

Most titles like Better English and Preparatory Mathematics didn’t have answers though.

However, I blame Malkiat as he turned most of us away from speaking the Queens English.

 He localised the content, giving local examples while some of us were used to poems like Humpty Dumpy.

However, when my friends and I occasionally meet at Java Coffee House on Mama Ngina Street, we often refer to Malkiat Singh in another way.

This view is usually expressed as we laugh at the new generation and the  tricks they try on the young boys.

The new generation refers to  Malkiat Singh’s First Edition while some of us revised the tenth edition. Most of the lazy girls today prefer the ‘fish’, not the ‘net’ to help them ‘fish’.

Just explain to me how one meets a girl on Monday and on Wednesday she sends an SMS with the normal words, “I need a favour”? Of course having read Malkiat, you usually know where that leads.

The “favour” is not reading a poem for her, but rather some financial situation that needs your help.

Then the man wonders whether to place her last on his list of friends.

When you start solving financial problems on day two, what of the future?  Many times, the same SMS has been sent to many men. Needless to say, some “generous guys” will respond by sending money via M-Pesa, not knowing the girls have a ‘hit’ list of men to rinse dry.

It’s funny when a lass says the mother is sick; but when you offer to take her to hospital a resounding ‘NO!’ is the response.

We have seen many young women trying to drain a man by drowning in  expensive drinks, which their throats are not used to only to end up vomiting helplessly.