Aaah... what memories I have of school...

As I sit down to share my memories on the one and only school I ever studied in I am also a bit guilt ridden. Because the chief topic of discussion is regarding some teachers from my 14 years of education, well, not all 14 years were technically educational per se, but you know what I mean. So here goes, and teachers, if by some horrid luck you read this, no offense what so ever is meant by my words. Afterall, among the thousands that you have tutored what is the opinion of one very disturbed individual going to matter. That off my chest I feel like I just came out of confession, ready to sin again.

Mathematics is by far the most entertaining of subjects for me, I never fared well in them but can you blame me for having the two most colourful individuals for teachers that all focus was removed from the subject itself. First there was Mr. X ( ahem, journalism ethics to protect the source you see), a brilliant teacher who indulged in extensive facial archeology, if you get my drift. Never having paid attention in class, I was the last to catch on to my teacher's tunneling expeditions. The boys in my class used to go through more than their share of jumping out of the way, when Mr. X threw bits of chalk at them for talking in class. At first, naive as I was,I thought they just did not want to be smacked in the face by whizzing bits of chalk, it was only years later did I discover that those chalks held more than just white marking compounds and that my classmates were desperately avoiding all chances of coming in contact with my teacher's nasal residue.

I remember now watching Mr.X slide his hands and do a gentle wiping dance with his fingers on various surfaces he encountered. Unfortunately, my unsuspecting back was one of these surfaces too. I was a bookworm and used to sit in my school corridors oblivious to the world around me. On seeing Mr. X walking down the corridor all the students present used to nonchalantly move into the playground, whistling or just plain running. But as transfixed as I was with the blasted book, I never saw him coming. An affable man, he used to stop and enquire about my sister, his favourite student, do a gentle swipe on my back and be off to his next set of unsoiled victims. Sheesh, I wonder if my sister had similar experiences with the gold digger? But she was a good athelete, maybe she used to make a run for it.

Enough of Mr. X lets move on to Mr. Y. Another mathematician of swarthy complexion, he would come to class with the top two buttons undone. While for most men it is not an issue of hair raising proportion, Mr. Y was gifted with profuse growth of hair everywhere except his shiny head. I have to admit, I am something of a hairophobic, so everytime Mr. Y entered class, beads of sweat used to pop up on my brow on noticing his gold chain glistening from the depths of a hairy chest. But one incident stands out clearly and traumtically. While teaching calculus he blithely walked down the aisle between our benches and perched himself on my desk. With one leg bent upon my desk and the other supporting him on the floor. I looked up from my notebook and noticed a rip in his pants down the side of his thigh. Ughh, I felt emotionally violated. Why should I have to see that bit of hirsute skin so hig up on his leg? Wasn't I emotionally disturbed already? Needless to say I switched seats with my friend and never made eye contact with him again.

Now as a fifth standard kid I never really caught on to Ms. A's funny use of the english language, but as I grew older and my english proficiency increased so did my amusement with her statements. Once a physics teacher she was suddenly assigned to the computer lab when I was in the tenth grade. One day after a mighty struggle with the mouse, she turns to the students using the other computers and says in her breathy voice 'hey who took my mouse's balls eh?' This was the same teacher who one day summoned up so much courage and outrage that she stormed her whithered 5 feet 5 inches frame into our noisy, unsupervised classroom and screamed ' SHUT UP ALL OF YOU. DONT ANY OF YOU HAVE ANY SENSE ORGANS?' She obviously mistook our stunned silence for something of a permanent reaction and left us in a huff while we laughed it off quietly.

Our games instructor was somewhat of a mystery, he had a candy blue bullet for a bike. That by itself is an oxymoron, I mean the bullet is the epitome of masculinity, why would you paint it baby blue? And for a sports teacher he resembled a dumpling more than he did an athelete. But it was his comments that really made his classes fun. These are not the usual PT teacher jokes about 'Open the window,let the climate come in' no siree. After all on the playground where are the windows?After making us run two rounds around the school, he would segregate the boys and girls and send the boys off to play basketball. He will then turn to us girls and say ' ok girls today we will finger with our partners, here Shobana make sure everyone has balls.'

One of my friend's school teacher was just as amusing. She taught them Hindi and had that sleeping disorder where they nod off suddenly and wake up moments later like nothing is the matter. While writing on the black board she would gently rest her forehead on the surface with her chalk making a lazy downward path from where ever her last waking alphabet was written, a gentle snore would emanate sometimes, he told me. She would wake up a minute later and continue as if nothing happened, resuming from where she left off with no evidence of her mid-class siesta, other than the downward lines on the board one by her chalk and the other by her sleep induced drool of course. He told me that while flipping through his hindi notebook, he could tell exactly when she fell asleep while correcting the pages, they too would bear longer than usual tick marks on certain pages when her pen went unattended for a few moments.