One for my Teachers

I was a strange kid.

No. Not kidding. I was really weird. 

*

4th Grade.

Hindi class. 

We all just finished a Hindi class test. Our teacher Mrs. Vandana Joshi had a surprise for us. 

"I won't be checking your copies today, you all are big kids. You can swap notebooks and check your partner's copies. And, you can use pens to check. The correct answers are on the board."

The whole class erupted with joy. We could use pens! In class 4, that was a BIG deal. I swapped my notebook with Nisha, my partner. I remember neither of us being great in hindi,  (at that time at least).  

So, seeing that Nisha was far from scoring top marks (Sorry Nish!), after every mistake I circled, I'd write a note of encouragement or drew a smiley face. Nisha was doing the same thing in mine; as I too was nowhere nearing average scores. We both peeked in our respective copies and saw what we were doing. In order to out-do the other ... our remarks and cartoons started from cute, to encouraging, to downright pathetic...

"Don't worry..be happy".

"This is not the last test, you'll score next time!"

"Live and let live"

"Every dog has its day..."

We scribbled and scribbled. In the end there were more remarks than test-material. We, really proud of what we had done, went to Vandana ma'am to get the 'test' signed. Waiting for praises to shower on us, we saw her jaw drop.

Result: We were sent to the Sr. Kg class next door. Vandana ma'am sent us to observe and learn how to behave and stay there till we'd learnt something. 

What I learnt: Never enroll yourself in the same school your sibling goes to. That was Rati's Sr. Kg class. The minute she saw me walking in, the little dweeb had to go, "Minnnnnnieeeeeee!!! That's my sister!! What are you doing here? Are you punished? Look my sister and her friend got punished!!" 

I never heard enough of it.

*

Now that I think about the things I did and they way I used to act, I feel stupid. I was strangely inquisitive and I had to touch everything! It was like an obsessive compulsion for me to know stuff. My repertoire boasts of breaking cameras, stopping escalators, messing with show pieces, casually wandering off somewhere and 'forgetting' to come back home... But the reason behind all these antics was just one- I was inquisitive and I loved to observe stuff. Very "Ooh, what does this button do?!". Everything I did was always with some good intention but they never always turned out that way.I feel sorry for the people who put up with me- My parents and my teachers. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank them for putting up with my weirdness. Well, there was little that my parents could do... after all I was their child, so they had to live with my eccentricity. But I'm amazed how my teachers put up with me.

I was the kid who chatted with people in the middle of class, who skipped and did not walk to class, who put her hand up to answer  and then forget what the question was, who would completely zone out and would stare into space. Yup, that was me... till 9th grade. There was so much going around me I found it hard to concentrate on one thing happening inside class. Ugh. 

I was always in trouble especially with Aruna ma'am (my Science teacher till class 5. I think she taught us biology in class 6 too), Vandana Ma'am (Hindi), Noopur Ma'am (English, History/Civics/Eco), Ashu Ma'am (Hindi- higher classes), Uma ma'am (Maths), Anup Sir (Chem), Alka Ma'am (Physics),... Parthiv Sir (Games)... Okay  lets just say I was trouble for everyone. 

*

Dipali ma'am, our librarian took us for our first field trip to Mt.Abu. It was a 10 day trip. 10 days with 3rd graders. We drove her crazy and she would scream her lungs out at us! But she'd also tend to our injuries (Yeah, that would be me again... i fell off  trees, scraped myself a dozen times and had volcanic nosebleeds) and would sing "Itnee shakti hame de na dataa..." for us at night. Even now when I hear that song, I think of Dipali ma'am. Yeah, Mt. Abu was a memorable trip.  

(Now I also understand why she would sing that song... she needed all the "shakti" she could get!)

*

But all the mistakes that were pointed out to me and corrected; and all the encouragement I got from  my teachers made a huge difference in my life. I may have been a messed up kid, but i was really sorted as a teenager- which is actually when most people go crazy. No one was harsh on me... but they weren't too easy on me either and frankly, I prefer that because I'm happy the way I've turned out. My teachers have really helped me (knowingly/ unknowingly) to become what I am. 

Even during college. I have a great relationship with my teachers (even now). I was never disrespectful to any of my teachers. It would be all fun and games. From swapping food with Anil Sir to pointless arguments with Hegde sir, from gossiping with Meghna Ma'am to cracking jokes with Goldin ''saar''. 

After a spell of non-attendance, I turned up to college one day and my post-grad teacher Jai Ma'am  said, "Thank God  you turned up today, this place was getting really dull without you around!" And that made my day... !!

So this is for all my teachers... 

Sorry for being an absolute annoying-pain-in-the-neck and thank you for everything :)

Happy teachers day!! 

                                                                  

 *

Third year BSc. 

Mithibai College

Papiya Ma'am was collecting her notes from the table in the lab.

Sowmya, Palak and I were standing outside the lab. Peeking from the door.

Sowmya: Should we ask her? This feels weird. 

Palak: I don't think people do this, usually.

Me: Oh, Come on! It'll be rude, if we don't. And it won't be right.

Ma'am came outside the lab and gave us a searching look.

Sowmya: Ma'am its your lecture.

Ma'am: Yes, yes. I'm coming to class. Go on. I'll be there.

None of us move.

Palak: (Looks at me..) Ma'am we..um...

Me: (Blurting out) We want to watch a movie. We were wondering if we could bunk your class.

*Silence*

Ma'am: (Coming out of her initial shock, since when have students started taking permission to bunk class?) Absolutely not. You're sitting for my lecture.

And she practically steered us back to class,while Sowmya muttered "Devyani and her great ideas..."

With 15 minutes for the lecture to end and 20 minutes for the movie to start, Ma'am asks us, "Which movie?"

"The Dark Knight" we say in unision.

"Ok. Mark your attendance and go." 

Marking our attendance and giving the others smug looks we fly off to the movie hall. 

*

Old and New

So we shifted houses last week. Nothing great, we just came down to the 5th floor from the 7th in the same building. We've changed places 3-4 times, we've changed cities and even Countries. But shifting from the 7th to 5th floor has been the most challenging thing ever.

You tend to take it lightly. 'Cuz in the end, its just 2 floors down. So you leave everything till the last moment. Then suddenly the new occupants arrive out of the blue, with all their stuff and you need to move out asap; a week before you actually intended to move. Its CHAOS.

Between all this chaos while packing and moving, you come across these tit-bits that are of no use but you have this clingy feeling towards it. I hate this clingy-ness and this feeling of 'oh-what-if-I-need-this someday-and-don't-find-it"? And for some reason, i was not clingy to anything. After all if you don't get rid of the old stuff, there will be no place for the new. There was just one problem.

MY father. The king of Cling.

He was like Kreacher from Harry Potter. Everything that i would throw out he would somehow smuggle it back into the house stating some or the other use. From old wires ("What if I need it for the music system?"), to shirts ("This is pure Australian cotton, i can use it for yoga !!"), from books and magazines... 8kgs of them ("What do you think i'm going to do after I retire? Read these of course!"), to pen caps ("You always keep losing pen caps, keep them together and then you can replace these with the lost ones"), from crusty battered bags ("Ah! I'll keep the phone and electricity bills in these" ) to broken radios ("It's not broken. Wait I'll fix it.").

All this stuff did go, but not when he was around. (Don't tell him though).

The more he kept stuff, the more stuff I threw out. We opened our box bed, which we didn't touch, ever since we came to Mumbai 7 years ago. Boy oh boy kid we pack some junk! A Broken kid's accordion, a remote controlled car, my old video game, more and more and more books! Mountains of sarees, huge carpets and thick, knobbly, wooly blankets. After throwing out most of the stuff, I looked around and spotted the huge mound of blankets.

"These, have to go!", i said pointing at the blankets. "They take up space and you don't need them in Mumbai anyway."

Mom grabbed a bundle of soft pink blankets. "I'm not throwing these ones, they're very expensive and they're in a good condition."

Sensing the finality in her tone, I went for a set of revolting brown and orange blankets.

"And these? Throw these"

"These were given to us as a wedding gift, but I guess we can throw them away now" Mom said a little hesitantly.

The last two blankets will very thick, white, had some painted designs on them and were very heavy. So i dragged them out and said, "These are going. I've said it. Bas, Enough."

"You can't throw these", Mom said.

"In God's name, WHY?"

Pointing to dad she said,"Ask him".

"Because," Dad said in a wistful voice, "My mother made them for me with her own hands. She stuffed it with cotton and stitched it herself. And painting was so expensive back then but she still got it painted for us."

Mom was smirking at me. She knew all along. Cheeky.

Trying to act unabashed and to fill in the awkward silence, I start rummaging through whats left in the bed. I find a heavily chewed book (No, we did not own a dog when I was a kid, but we did have Rati, you'd never know the difference.)

It was called, "A book about Me!", a Dr. Suess book. After some time i find myself smiling away while reading that book. It was a fill-in-yourself kind of a book. I must have been 5 years old when i filled it. Some of the things I wrote we're quite funny. For instance,

* I wanted a pet dinosaur

*I was "11 centimeters" tall. (I wasn't 11 cms tall, I just wrote I was!)

*I wanted to be a nurse when I grew up (Now, that's news!)

*In the "draw a picture of yourself" part, i drew myself with blonde hair.

* In the ''how many teeth do you have? part" i wrote 12.

*Rati had colored all over the book, distinctly outside the margins... clearly indicating she had no future in the fine arts.

It's the memories that makes you all clingy and weird. We can associate everything and anything with some kind of a memory. And we find reasons for keeping stuff with us so that we are constantly reminded of what it was like. I have a knack of doing that. Who doesn't like to re-live old times? For instance, I have kept all the letters that people have ever written to me. I love reading them again and again. Looking at it on the flipside, if you just keep hanging on to these old memories you're not making room for the new and possibly better ones. The question is where do we stop? Where do we draw the line? The answer- you'll know. In time, i guess, we learn to move on. Life is all about moving forward isn't it?

So the book stayed so did my signed Old DPS uniform, my first DPS Blazer, my Wilson Primary School t-shirt and yes, so did the blanket. We brought everything down with a LOT of effort, re-assembled the bed and started putting things back. And then ... *CRACK* the bottom part of the box bed gave way and broke.
"Oh no! Of all the times it could break, it chooses to break now!" Mom exclaimed, fretting about the all the stuff that has no place to go.

"You remember we bought this bed when you joined DPS?" Dad said.

All I could say was, "Yay!! New bed!!".

Something had to go ;)