views and muses

Call it verbal diarrhoea or sensible reflections..........

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

The Teacher who was once a Student.........

The year was 1981. I was in the second year of Hr. Sec. in Delhi. Nothing much has changed when I look back to the feelings I experienced and compare them to those of the Hr. Sec students of the present. Anxiety, irritation and above all, a constant need to doze off! We were so desperate that we would invent jokes out of mundane happenings and would laugh at the slightest drop of the hat as if we’d witnessed the joke of the era!! We were on a constant quest for entertainment.

Given these conditions, it was not surprising that one day, when we had a ‘rare-free-period’, our excitement hit the ceiling. To top it, the next period was PT. …and the PT master was supposedly absent since nobody had sighted him in his den, the PT room. Like a kid holding a double sundae and eagerly wanting to do full justice to the treasure in hand, we started planning meticulously….science students that we were :P Being the ‘Pundit’ of the class, (that was the price I had to pay for being a sincere student), I suggested moving to the library to polish off the remaining adventure novels that were gathering dust in the shelves. But to my utter horror, the girls sitting next to me were longingly listening to the boys of the class. Eavesdropping was not my style…but how could I miss out on something that was seemingly tantalizing?

Without wasting precious time, we marched off in the direction of the playground with a determination akin to the crusaders of the middle ages! No…it was not for a match of basket-ball or hand-cricket…our usual PT routines….rather we had nothing to do with the play ground at all! The idea was to cross the ground and climb the steep ridge on its extreme end. …for on top of it was the mysterious, sinister Ridge Road …a road on which Sanjay and Geetha Chopra….the kidnapped siblings were found murdered in the recent past!!

I guess it was the adrenalin rush that made my classmates climb so nimble-footedly and quickly, while I lagged behind wondering whether to collect specimens of Adathoda vasica for my herbarium on the way back or immediately, for I could not suppress my passion for biology! But eventually, the bright flame colored blossoms of Beautea monosperma gained precedence over the muted flowers of Adathoda vasica…and they happened to be sprouting on trees on top of the ridge. So, gathering my might and looking more behind than in front (for the fear of being caught by a wary staff), I too joined the bandwagon.

While my fellow classmates were climbing like mountain goats, I was struggling to keep pace. The boy who was leading had made it to the top and the shout he let out to mark his victory was more like a blood curdling war-cry to my anxious ears!! And even before my shivers could subside, there came from behind us a shrill, earth-shattering whistle that almost converted my shivers to a seizure! Spine-chilling silence followed. All eyes reverted to the play ground. Standing at its entrance was the supposedly absent PT sir, somehow appearing life threateningly menacing even though the actual size we could perceive at this distance, was that of a peanut!

With neither Adathoda vasica nor Beautea monosperma in my hands, I looked back at my friends. To my utter horror, the tables had turned on me…I was to lead them back to the ground as I was the last to climb!! With knees knocking and palms sweating but my facial expression not depicting any of these, I lumbered towards …Apocalypse???!!!

Silence can be more threatening than din…I realized this when without a word, our PT instructor led us to the office of our Vice Principal, VD – the inventive nick name by which we(biology students , remember?) addressed Mr. Vikram Deva, our VP. I’m sure all belonging to the student community will agree to the universal fact that VP s are the terrors of the school. Anticipating a big tirade in Hindi (for VD being a Hindi PGT, spoke only in Hindi), we stood in a huddled group. I had this hysterical urge to giggle…such were the facial expressions of my beloved classmates…the already sobbing girls and sheepish looking boys! He threw a “Maine aap sabko suspend kiya hai, ab aaplog jaa sakthe hain!” at us. For the benefit of non-Hindi readers: this translates to :”I’ve suspended all of you. Now you people may go!”

Not having the guts or the gumption to ask for how long the suspension would last, we climbed up to our classroom in the second floor…..how different this climb was from the one we had ventured into a few minutes back!!...OMG I was getting philosophical too…a ‘Pundit’ to the core! Only philosophy could prepare us for what ensued…the classroom door was locked …and we were left outside for half-a –day..more importantly, without lunch for our lunch bags were inside the room. It was not common for us then to carry much pocket money on our selves. While the boys borrowed money for lunch from their friends in other sections, we girls decided to starve it out….self-punishment seemed to sort of soothe our pricking conscience.

Evening came, the final bell rang…the final bell stopped ringing and the evening almost went too…we were still stuck outside our classroom. Going home without our school bags was a possibility that we did not even want to imagine. Even the guys who were gloating that this incident had not affected them one bit, started looking edgy. A good one hour later, the watchman came with the keys in his hand and a condescending look on his face. He gave us all a royal sneer and opened the doors with a, “Chalo le jao, jaane kahan se aate hain, padai to karte nahin…harkat ki hadh ho gai!” (“go, take your bags, heaven knows where they come from, never study…there’s a limit to mischief!”

Rushing to the bus stop, I panicked even more because the street lights had already come on (it was winter time) and I and to take two buses to cover a distance of 16 Km to my house. That I devised another master plan to fool my mother by concocting a story for the late coming, and that it failed miserably and that I spilt the entire truth and nothing but the truth to her is something I would love to forget…but have never managed to!!

WARNING: Readers are requested not to try the above stunt even under experimental environment.


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