Ek gaav mein ek kisan Raghu Thatha
On the first day of my ninth standard Hindi class, my teacher asked students, who felt that they were bad at the subject, to raise their hands. This is basically a danger sign — nobody raised their hands, because nobody was dumb enough to fall into her trap. In case you were wondering, I was never a clever one, and if you ask my classmates, I wasn’t the good-looking one either. I wasn’t even a one — I was large enough to be a three or a four. I raised my hand, the only fool in the class to do so, and I immediately regretted it. She made me write an essay about my relationship with the language, and I drew some fun-shaped jangiris until class ended because that seemed apt. Thus began my two-year feud with my Hindi teacher, Kotiyalji, which ended with the grand finale — Board Exams. And guess what happened? Ghar ladki 80% mila, hate karne log hate karenge (Homegirl got 80%, haters gonna hate!).
Beyond school gates
When you’re a student, teachers are known only specifically in the context of school and not outside. There is nothing more horrifying than knowing a teacher outside of school, because do you still call her ‘Miss’? Do you still stand up when she passes by and say ‘Good Morning’? I would rather be dead than call her aunty, and our relationship isn’t at the point where we can call each other on first-name basis, you know? I probably had the strangest out-of-school relationship with my seventh standard Math teacher. Not only did she teach me Math, but she also taught me squash at an academy. Therefore, she saw me sweat while trying to find out what four into six was, and sweat while running across the court. I feel bad for her now — my answer papers were hard to look at, but to see me running? Now that’s a memory you can’ t multiply by zero.
PT stands for Pretty Terrible
If you didn’t already guess, my shape is out of shape. Therefore my relationship with my PT teachers — we had three — was very strained, like my ankle during class, which would magically heal after the bell rang. My PT teacher saw me as a project, and attempted to magically reduce all the weight I put on in fifteen years in one 20-minute class. This he decided to do by ordering all of us to run five times around the field, and would spend the first two laps yelling from one end of the field. Once he realised that I wasn’t going to be breaking into a sprint anytime soon, he attempted to push me by jogging along and cheering me on while profusely panting. But the joke is on him — if I'm going down on the field, I'm bringing down Chidambaram sir with me. I still remember his favourite line — “Only one more lap, c’mon!” “Sir, we finished only one lap, and we have four more to go — that much Math I can do, sir.”
Lessons on love
I n high school, a young, pretty Economics teacher joined us. She was to teach the eleventh standard, which was conveniently our class. That's when I completely lost all faith in men. My male classmates (and let’s be honest, we girls thought she was pretty good-looking, too) would hang on to her every word and every step in a scene very similar to Shah Rukh Khan and Sushmita Sen’s relationship in Main Hoon Na. My friend, who would normally draw tattoos on his arm with a pen during Economics, was suddenly taking notes and asking questions in class. Another classmate was suddenly volunteering to be class monitor and to collect all our homework, a task that is as difficult to complete as said homework.
And my favourite was when a friend of mine would always ask for extra paper every time she was invigilating. So you won’t ask for paper when the large and grumpy Commerce teacher Rajendran sir walked past, but when Swetha ma’am walked by, suddenly you’re out of paper? More like out of luck, because he still failed the Economics test.
Don’t play favourites
Everyone has that one teacher who not only is an amazing educator and facilitator, but also had a soft spot for you. Even though she would always try her best to remain neutral and unbiased, you knew she was fond of you, and the feeling was mutual. My English teacher in eleventh standard was the person who made me fall in love with words and the power they hold, and she was the one who would check up on me when I had a bad day. With thick black kaajal drawn around her eyes, she’d glare at me whenever I was moping and sternly remind me that I was good enough to chase my wildest dreams, and that crying in the library would solve nothing. And look at me now! I’m disappointing her just like I told her I would.
Breaking the fourth wall
This kind of teacher is only found in colleges, where the line between student and teacher is blurred slightly. This is the teacher who is so tired of putting up with students that he doesn’t care what he says, and so it gives you an interesting insight into the world of teaching. My college professor was once correcting a pile of clearly badly written papers when he suddenly pushed away the papers, and loudly said, “They don’t pay me enough for this”, and put his head down and went to sleep. Other gems include, “Oh my God, don’t tell me Gandhi looked like that,” during a play put up during Gandhi Jayanthi, “I’m telling you kids, teaching seems fun and you get a lot of holidays, but,” accentuated with a shudder and my absolute favourite, “I don’t want to deal with the kids, I’m not emotionally ready for that”, to a co-worker.
Culture shock
This teacher is the one who always takes the seniors for any and all culturals. He’s always way more invested in the events than us students, failing to realise that we’re only here because we don’t want to sit in class. Have you ever heard of someone preparing for Modern United Nations (MUNs)? Aside from a trip to Forever 21 to pick up a formal jacket, finding out which of the other schools' delegates were cute, and Wikipedia-ing the capital of your chosen country, I don’t think anyone actually reads up on foreign policy, international relations, or debating. Our music teacher in school would choreograph dance steps for songs we sang at culturals, so that we would score extra for ‘stage presence’, even if that meant we had to make a rose with our palms and pretend to search around the hall while singing ‘Kaadal rojave, engae nee engae’(Oh love! where are you?).
Miss, one more mark, Miss!
This lady must be charitable in her personal life. Maybe she works with underprivileged children, donates to the homeless, etc. However, getting marks from this teacher is harder than convincing a homophobe that gay people also have healthy relationships, and have the right to get married. My history teacher in eighth standard once failed me by giving only 19 out of 50. I’ve always wondered what she had against me — was it because I didn’t appreciate the unquestioning way we had to learn about the past, which had just as many valid and discerning viewpoints as we do now? Or was it because I gave Akbar a whole new life, two Hindu wives instead of one, a horse named Cherapunji, and made him battle with the English colonisers somewhere in Salem? No, it can’t be that, she was just cheap with marks.
Put your hands up like you don't care
It’s very simple, you see. If my hand is up, I know the answer. If my hand is down, I don’t know the answer. However, I had a Chemistry teacher who decided that those signals don’t apply in the classroom. I didn’t know how to explain to her that I raise my hand on only one occasion — when I had a full beaker of brine in my bladder, if you catch my drift. I knew that nitrogen was ‘N’ and oxygen was ‘O’ and my general mood was NO, but she did that for a year until she saw me willingly put up my hand when I knew the answer, upon which she ignored me and asked my friend, who had his hand down.
All the class is a stage
We all had that one English teacher who said ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘when’ with an exaggerated ‘h’ sound that sounds like someone blowing through a straw, and got way too excited while reading Shakespeare in class. She’d assign roles to students and close her eyes and smile while we read the line in a bored monotone. There would be a moment where someone would pronounce a word incorrectly, upon which all literary hell would break lose, and the teacher would dramatically announce that she would do the reading in the way it was ‘supposed to be read’. What followed was the most extra enactment of the English dramatist’s plays that have mild homosexual undertones, while the class rolls their eyes and hope that Romeo and Juliet just do the whole double suicide thing already, because it got old after Titanic.