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.

Standing and Praying:)

This is strange. A mere glance at a book of short stories by Rabindranath Tagore, at home, sent me on a flashback session. Let me explain. I thought of Tagore, then I thought of the National Anthem, and then I "flashbacked" to the prayer sessions at schools. It brought to my mind, so many memories of those morning assemblies.

I have been through seven different schools from LKG to class twelve and at every place, I had this huge task of learning the assembly prayer songs, as a new comer. The only one thing that was common was the National Anthem. And believe me, every school that I went to, the last part of "Jaya hai" would go totally off track, "abaswaram" to say it in music parlance. The pitch of some people wouldn't rise beyond a certain level (and it isn't their mistake, of course!) and while some will be on tune with the "Shruti", the rest would almost sink it to a level of their comfort. The result, well..! It was also the time, when we used to pledge, "All Indians are my brothers and sisters" and some smart alec from behind would murmur, "except one..!"

While we sang the prayer, there used to be the late comers outside, standing and peering through the grills of the huge main gate of the school, wondering how their day would begin, probably 5 rounds around the school ground, or a nice whacking from the PT teacher.

The other interesting part used to be the check whether you were in "full uniform" or "non uniform" (What words to coin?!). I remember in DAV, where we used to have prayers only on two days, I would polish my white canvas shoes frantically those mornings, cut my nails. There were some girls, who would come to class with shoe polish and nailcutters, worse still, some of them used to polish up using white chalk pieces!!

And once the prayer was over, we had the appointments (the captains/prefects/house captians) dutifully sharing responsibilities. Once the first person checked the condition of your shoes, you needed to deposit your palms into those of the next checking "appointment" and hands just used to glide into theirs for checks.

Talking about appointments, I can recollect some of my own experiences with it. Not at many occassions, but I have felt great pride in exhibiting some leadership. During first standard at MCTM, I cried and made a big fuss at home about going to school and my dad had to come and speak to my class teacher. Mahalakshmi "miss" the next day, made me the I-B leader who would lead the students in a line to the prayer session! Crazy?! That's how I was. Then again in class five at Chinmaya Vidyalaya, I used to stand in the front in the assembly and we had this really strange practice. We had to come forward, salute and shout, "Class five - C, 32 present, 2 absent!". I can't explain how proud I used to feel!

There were also the "thought for the day"s and news and prize announcements. It was indeed great fun to have been a part of all this. It would fill me with so much of excitement and pride!:)

And of course, how could I forget those silly people who would faint in the assembly because they haven't had food? (not that I am a great eater, but I never used to skip breakfast;)). Everyday, there used to be at least 3 cases of people fainting and teachers would rush in and drag those kids to the labs (usually, chem and phy labs where we used to have long benches to sleep on!)

Eventful, if something has to be said about prayers in schools. It gave me a sense of belonging to the school, whichever one I studied in, the sense that I was part of this huge group and an arena where you would see laurels and feel proud. It was also a place to giggle and see some funny experiences. To quote one, it was my first day at Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) in Tiruchengode (a rural area near Salem). I had joined class three and was standing in the prayer, the first one in that school. Old students were curious and excited. One of them looked at me and said, "Hey this is not the way you stitch your pinaform (for pinafore!)" and she asked me, "What is your name?". "Anupama", I replied hesitantly. "Anu enadhu?"(Anu what?) she asked and not waiting for an answer, continued, "Uh! what a strange name!" (in Tamil). Ah, Prayers...!

People who make a difference

Twenty days back I was walking down towards a mobile dealer shop to purchase a recharge card and I saw a familiar face trying to cross the road. She too caught a glimpse of me and she kept turning around hesitatingly, trying to place my face inside her head. By then, I had recognized her and the smile came across her face. All this in a few seconds and I beamed, “Hello, Ma’am!”. In a moment, Ranganayaki Ma’am held my hand and asked me how I was doing.

It was a pleasant surprise. Ranganayaki ma’am was my class teacher who also taught me maths in my +1 and +2 classes. I was meeting her after seven whole years and she hadn’t changed one bit. Quite unlike me, I actually saw myself absolutely free as I went on and on about what I was doing now, what had happened in the last two years, ever since I finished my grads and I found an earnest listener. I gave a whole round up of the post D.A.V life and finally ended with “No ma’am, am not yet married!” when that was the first question, she asked me after, “How are you?” “You look the same, you haven’t changed one bit,” she smiled.

Today, my mom, who also happens to be a teacher, a science teacher to be more specific, showed with all interest, one of the answer sheets that she was correcting. She was pretty amused about the way one of the guys in her class had written an answer, partly proud too! There have been many, many occasions where she would come and tell me all the fun that she had with her “kids” at school.

I would often think, what a noble profession, teaching is. It is a vocation marked by selflessness and one that would give a very high level of job satisfaction. After all, isn’t it a matter of pride to actually guide so many lives up the ladder of success? Personally, if there is one set of people whom I spontaneously give respect to, it is my teachers. I don’t know why, but till now, every time that I ran into a teacher, there is a reverence that appears almost immediately. I would agree to do anything, if they had any work to be done out of me and that would come without the slightest hesitation. And this has been true, especially with ACJ.

My granddad has been teaching for the last sixty years and at 84, today, he still continues to hold math tuitions. While kids who are much younger to me, come to study under him, I have seen batches and batches of guys and girls, attending his classes before who were much much senior to me. Infact, generations of students studied under him. I remember at least 3 cases where the parents and later their children got his training. One ought to be really gifted to light the lives of so many people.

And for all the teaching that he did, to this day, he commands respect from the oldest of his students, one of them being about 60 years or so of age. My mom too, comes home, loaded with gifts and hand made cards from her students, especially on Teacher’s day. She would come back and describe with heartfelt happiness as to how her class students burst the balloon on top of her head and a whole lot of glitters landed on her. I remember how my sis used to dig into her bag for “bday toffees”.

Teachers would send out batches and batches of students, hoping their kids would all settle down well and would come back to them some day. A post wouldn’t do to tell how much I respect the profession, especially with quite a few of them in my family itself. I have sometimes thought to myself as to how good it would be to handle KG students as a teacher. It should be so much of fun listening to all their sweet little complaints, “miss, he is hitting me..”, “miss he took my pencil” etc. etc. All cutie pies that could get really attached to you, if you could show them the right kind of affection! Probably, I would do that some day, who knows? :)