Saturday, October 25, 2008

Memories of a free period

Remember those days in school? When it is the third hour (or period) after the morning prayers and your strict math teacher with her bossy spectacles and her equally bossy stature walks in and starts explaining algebra in a (well, again!) bossy voice? Ok, for me math was the terror - you replace it with a subject you used to dislike and the picture is pretty much the same!

But wait! The rest of my discussion isn’t going to be about the math teacher! Rather, I intend writing about another scene. Picture this: It's the third period, and you are digging through your bag for the math classwork notebook and textbook. But..but...Lo! A different teacher walks in, quite unexpectedly, and very well to your delight, instead of the numbers woman who rattles your brain! “Substitute teacher” yeah! And so, the moment the other teacher comes in, an irresistible smile escapes your lips! And then, you frantically try to cover it up – smart if you are that is. Or else, if you are one of those “cannot-hold-back emotions” types, you let out an uncontrollable giggle much to the annoyance of the substitute teacher, who would already be fuming at the thought of having to spend her “free hour” in a class filled with devils.

So, that being that, some of the human species that I just mentioned (ah umm, there were quite a few of them at every class that I was in and no, no, I wasn’t one among them!) - even if you had five of them in a class of forty doing that, it would have qualified as a cacophony capable of tilting luck out of favor for the entire class. Here’s how.



Things would have depended on which class you were in. Say you studied in class five. You would have immediately got a “stand up on the bench all of you” punishment and one of the first-benchers would have been sent off to the next section to fetch a wooden scale (After the entire class kept quiet, when asked for a scale!) – of course for receiving a punishing hit on the palm for everyone, including the seemingly innocent ones whose brains would have already started working on a scheduling program as to what to make of the free hour!

Or perhaps the annoyed teacher would have gone to the point of deciding on showering a rain of chalk pieces on the class, the talkative ones being the most targeted!

Here’s another case. Suppose you studied in class ten, and the substitute teacher happened to be a subject teacher, she would have, for all you know, chosen to do some “revision” when she would have earlier decided otherwise - perhaps to let you study for a test that afternoon. Fizzzz…and all your study plans would have gone down the drain!

And that gets me to the next point. Let's assume that the teacher somehow let the class do whatever it felt like. Can you even think of how many different courses of action that each of us would have decided, the moment we realized we had free time in hand? The playful *slash* care-a-damn *slash* branded-irresponsible *slash* cool-headed *slash* freaky and so on types amongst us, would have chosen to play those little games. Like what? Like these – turn to a fresh page of hopefully your rough-book and divide the page into four columns to play the famed “Name Place Animal Thing”. Ok, if you hadn’t been that organized to carry a rough book, it would have been the last page of some “ill-fated” subject notebook, in all probability a subject you hated or the subject of a teacher who was lenient enough to let things pass without examining the last few pages of your notebook during correction.

An associated game – book cricket! I wonder which genius of a child discovered (or invented?) this marvelous discovery (or invention?) of a game! Fetch a book, open a random page, and write down the last digit of the even-number page, which is your score!! I bet there are other versions of this game that have evolved in the thousand different schools across our country!

Probably, the height of delight for the playful young minds such as these would have been when the substitute teacher happened to be the Physical Training or the P.T. teacher. Such kids would have been only itching to run out of the class, after uttering the monotonous “good morning”!

Yeah, playful kids. But, what’s a class without those serious ones? After all, they are the balancing factor in any class! The true darlings of their god-fatherly, god-motherly teachers – the many apples of the school’s eye! And here’s what maybe the branded-geeky *slash* studious *slash* responsible *slash* intellectual and so on types amongst us would have chosen to do.

If we had been in one of those younger classes, we would have chosen to finish off some homework and free up some time. Mind you, no amount of coaxing from friends to play would have deterred these studious minds – even when it was the P.T teacher for a substitute! The literature or knowledge-thirsty ones would even have chosen to get permission to run up to the library and grab a book – literature or science or math or whatever appealed to our brains and devoured it during the period! I remember when I was in class seven, when I luckily got a free hour I spent the period reading through a few chapters of Alexandre Dumas’ “The Three Musketeers” which used to be the “non-detail” syllabus for our English Paper II. (Well, don’t even decide what types I am, there! I have played my share of those intelligent games too!)

But, yes, as we progressed to the higher classes, we probably were left with little or no choice but to sit and prepare for the endless list of tests that popped in front of us everyday, till we gave our board exams!



Yet, whatever type that we might have been, the very memory of a free period unlocks the gates to a treasure house of memories – of the innocent things that we once did, of the many tiny decisions that we took at the snap of a finger, and mind you, with so much ease, of the little nothings in life, and most importantly, of being what one truly was, of enjoying life, of delightfully indulging in whatever we did, with the least sense of guilt. Memories that perhaps become lessons as we work our way through the big adult world today.

11 comments:

aditya said...

The school life, for most has held a place of high esteem, for the sole reason that it was during this time that we were not affected by the so called bigger things in life. We did not worry about prices, that was taken care of by the parents. We were more worried about if one should take the red pen or the blue pen to class, about if the girl sitting on the fourth bench likes me (she did keep changing her place often), if I can go home and play cricket, if my team can beat the other team to whom we lost the other day, of infinite thoughts of summer holidays, of grandmother's tales, the list extends to infinity.
It was like that series, The wonder years, in many aspects.
In the end, it was probably an age of innocence, when the sun rose to make us happy. Life was simple, and was... Life

Praveen Krishnan said...

Good to see you after a long time :-) You have just rekindled the bright essence of the good ole days.

Ramya Shankar said...

Wow ! Your post just drove me down memory lane and memories just whizzed past my mind - a la Mani Ratnam screenplay!

Anonymous said...

Someone wanted to know if I had been typing something for my blog or studying for my semester examination. Nothing more to add :P

VJ said...

Hi,
Good to hear from you after a long time!
Have been a silent reader all this time... this blog has made me comment.
You really have rekindled old memories !!
Wish I could go back to those days again !

Anonymous said...

To "give" or to "take" an exam was quite a confusion even for me sometime back.

Unknown said...

hey anu, good old memories have come rushing to the fore of my mind. the spontaneous one being : the first benches used to be occupied by the so called bright students (read me :-)) & v used to wait for the teacher to ask for a text book from one of us. how silly, yet cute, to imagine a smile brought by a sense of accomplishment, when the book was urs !! , when there was pretty much nothing achieved.

& then... the few minutes break i got, when i was asked to borrow a duster from the neighbouring class.

Anu said...

Adithya, thank you for sharing your thoughts! :)..couldn't agree with you more!

Praveen, thank you for revisiting this rusting blog! :) keep coming!

Ramya, Mani Ratnam screenplay - that's quite a compliment! :)

Bhargavi, *cough cough*, that was just a casual question! :D

VJ, glad you decided to break your silence and leave a comment! Thank you for having visited this blog all these days! :)

Sethuraman, well, I wrote that without a second thought. But, did you finally crack the confusion? :)

Akila, Hey! true, that book thing is something we really used to be so proud of! :)..good to hear from you!

Amrita said...

Anu,

That post really refreshes school day memories..is it in relation to the recent childrens day celebration or something..how are you and how is your 'little bundle of joy?' hope your life is good and wish it to be so.

Anonymous said...

TOTAL WASTE....

Rathish said...

Hey Anu,

long time. What is your latest mail ID? Do send me a quick email. I have something important to share with you :)