1996

Standard Seven, in my opinion (Also proven by a kick-ass scientific study. Sacchi, meine padha hain), is the most challenging year in a student’s life. The reasons, as I will soon put forth, are a handful. Let’s start by looking at what happens on the ‘educational’ front.

Normally, anyone who has ever bothered to check the syllabus when s/he entered standard seven must have at least for once played with the thought of exterminating the author and his next five generations. If you ask me, I think such a thought process comes pretty naturally to anyone who 1) happens to share my levels of interest in anything remotely scholastic, 2) hero worships the Chainsaw Massacre guy and owns a pet python or 3) both.

Thus, unless you were immune to all forms of pain or happened to drool over things like empirical formulae and the Pythagoras Theorem, you too will probably recollect going "Photo what frigging synthesis?!!" when you first turned the pages of your syllabi, seventh standard and every standard.

The second and perhaps the most important point is the fact that by the time you reach standard seven and happen to be a guy, the world seems to be a lot lesser nice place to live in.

Apart from the thing with the hormones that is constantly playing havoc with your age old beliefs about girls being a source of unbridled nuisance, you suddenly find yourself uncomfortably placed in a 'semi-kid' kind of a state, a lawless territory where its residents are labeled by the degree of confusedness on their sparsely moustached faces.

Contrarily, this does a world of wonders to the female population, especially for someone on M34I26S34’s growth path. Thanks to the hormonal thing (which works totally in their favor) that I briefly touched upon in the paragraph above, they are suddenly inundated with buying-your-bus- ticket and helping- you-with-your-homework offers.

Hence considering the fact that I carried fairly normal tendencies and was as hormonized as anyone else, it shouldn’t go against me if I told you that I happened to be one of the guys in the class who steered their attention towards the door, when they stepped into our classroom… the exchange students... from a formerly alien part of the world called Canada.

Pink looks hot on girls. This is probably the other thing to learn by the time you hit standard seven. I learnt this when I saw her wearing the color, partially eclipsed by our class teacher and the other girl she was accompanied with.

Standing amidst her escorts, she looked visibly shy and mildly perturbed by the hustle she had generated. Perhaps, she had planned to coolly walk into the class and hope no one would give two hoots about it. So much for wishful thinking, ha!

This is India, young ladies. You come from anyplace minutely foreign and you WILL be stared at!

“Hello children! Please join me in welcoming S14X17C and E12X17C! They have come from Canada and will be studying with us. I hope you will make them feel at home!” the teacher announced to our largely awestricken class.

Her wish seemed to have been heard rather instantly, as some of us dived into the task of wiping the dust and our partners off their seats, making place for the Canadian goddesses. While others, including me, restricted by the lack of courage than anything else, only managed to construct inviting expressions which bordered on the risk of appearing lecherous if overdone and pray earnestly that they might sit in the adjacent row or perhaps the row adjacent to the next two rows.

Feel at home? Hell yeah!

PS: Thanks to my teacher's rather vague form of introduction, it didn't strike me at first which one of X17C sisters was the girl in pink. I, of course, did manage to figure that out eventually.

Present Ma'am!

Back in school, the second strongest reason - the first being the natural lack of focus and motivation - to help me find solace as an underperforming flag-bearer of the underperformers, was a distinct team of faculty members.

Akin to a baton-wielding jail superintendent, working zealously towards making life as difficult and regretful for its resident inmates, these ‘givers of education’ strived to achieve a similar result.

To mention a few… there was that slap-happy Hindi professor, who had the tendency to whack the living daylights of anyone caught half-yawning during his awe-inspiring, post-lunch lectures. One neatly landed blow from this guy and you had the germs residing in your dental cavities dive into coma. Man, this guy could make a full-fledged Sunny paaji’s water-pump uprooting ‘Dhai kilo ka Haath’ assault feel like a peacock feather caressing your butt cheeks in comparison. Believe me, I speak from experience.

Then, we had Miss P58T67S - our PT instructor. This lady could make Hitler laugh his moustache off with her grammar-no-bare usage of the English language. I distinctly remember her telling us once, rather fondly, that she had ‘two daughters and both were girls’. I tell you, nothing was more daunting than conversing with her and yet maintaining a straight face. (Now you know whom to blame if you find something funny with my writing… Undesirably funny that is.)

Last, but not even remotely the least, was the Biology professor, who perhaps out of sheer affection for her subject, always found striking similarities between the animal kingdom and her class. Thus, on a given day, you could hear her calling someone a ‘dim-witted buffoon’, an ‘undernourished flea parasite’, a ‘super-sized amoeba’ or when highly agitated, a ‘bottom-of-the-food-chain dwelling, filter-feeding zooplankton’.

However, amidst and in spite of these wonderful reasons to get up every morning and head to school, there were few people who helped me sustain my belief in the Indian educational system.

The first being our librarian Miss L33I66B, who also doubled up as an invigilator during our exams – a favor which I will never forget. Apart from being a very kind and a gentle lady by nature, she was a deeply religious person as well. This, probably, prompted her to do nothing but softly announce “God is watching!” when she managed to find someone cheating in class. Undoubtedly, I owe her a lot to help me wade through most of my math papers.

And then of course was Miss S22H25L … my English and class teacher for standard six. She was easily the only person who deserved the title of ‘Miss’ as the rest were either married or even appeared to have married off their grand-children.

Ah, Miss S22H25L… She was way not married and was way not like the rest of them! She was, as I fondly recollect, my inspiration to take a bath before I left for school. She was, amidst the jaw-rattling, language-murdering and animal-comparing teachers, my inspiration to learn. She was the reason why I waited impatiently, one roll number at a time and all forty of them, to watch her look into the attendance registry and call out my number with that pleasing smile on her face.

“Present Ma’am!” I would scream, raising my hand with sheer delight.

Much to the horror of my fellow classmates, I began participating in debates, elocution competitions, roll playing activities, debates, quizzes and absolutely anything that had to with English and Miss S22H25L. I began answering ad-hoc questions; some which had even left the chronic toppers staring at the blackboard with gaping stupor.

(Now is perhaps a good time to reiterate to the post where I had spoken a bit about my roll number and my English marks. You probably must have realized by now why these two could have been the possible exemptions. Okay, back to this post.)

Yes, things were changing and they were changing fast. My perplexed twelve year old heart was finding it increasingly difficult to come in terms with this new and totally uncharted feeling. A feeling which by any sixth grader standards was as good as unlimited access to video games and toffee bars minus the need go to school or eat veggies for like a month.

But, as it happens with all earnest, one-sided love stories, the girl is fled away by a moustache-sporting, car-driving, MBA-holding, bank-managing guy… While the secret admirer (read me), the one who has tones of silent adoration for her in his bespectacled eyes (Okay, I had a number. Who doesn’t?) is left with well, just all by his self.

I learnt about Miss S22H25L’s engagement when she gleefully broke the news to the class and even resorted to distributing éclairs like it was an occasion worth celebrating. Citing an incessant pain in my tooth, I plainly declined from picking the sweet when she turned at my desk. For a moment or two, I felt she might have smelled the rat. Perhaps she must have noticed me munching a toffee bar right out of my tiffin box during the recess break. Nonetheless, she never made any fuss about it and walked on. And, so did I…

Slowly but steadily, I began to trudge back into my original self. The painful process of self-recuperation had begun. Questions were answered, but only when asked to. Hand was raised, but only to seek permission to attend a nature’s call. Bath was taken, but only when mum threatened.

By the time I entered standard seven, Miss S22H25L was honeymooning in Shimla. We had a new English teacher at our disposal. But, post Miss S22H25L, things never remained the same with English teachers. Thanks to my first and what could have been my last female-liking experience, I was months away turning into a hard-wired, tin-hearted, lifeless robot. Things would have pretty much headed in that direction, if life hadn’t met an abrupt diversion.

The year was 1996 and mathematics had just become stratospherically tougher. But it wasn’t something that had exactly caught my attention. It was something or rather someone else.