A piece of  memory  from school days…

The last class of Thursday brought sir Mathai back to the environmental studies class. He seemed weird, not only because of his partially bald head but also because of his plum features and extremely short height. However, that wouldn’t have evoked much laughter from the naughty depths of our hearts had he not spoken wrong English with such great confidence!

So, ever since he had delivered his lecture on the extinction of dodos, the students learnt the term ‘shotten’, for that is what sir had said, “Dodos became extinct because they were shotten dead.” Sir Mathai’s chief concern seemed to rest on the unfortunate ‘ jatropa’ plant. He had, someday, probably dreamt of making a lucrative fuel-business out of the plant and turning into a millionare. However, his dreams remained confined within the four walls of the classroom as his words echoed in the ears of the students either completing homework or playing a game of cross-and-circles or omitting numbers to a ‘BINGO’ or busy penning down in a rough sheet of paper all the grammatical errors that he made in his speech, only to be turned into a butt of jokes later. Sir, I suppose, on his part loved our class for he lived under the illusion that we were busy taking down notes on “earth-dying-of-smoke”, “we-throwing-out-carbon-dioxide”, “a world minus pollution” and so on.

However, that day the boys at the last bench had started playing a new game. For this they had collected all small pieces of chalk and preserved on the lower shelves of the desks. The game was simple- they were setting up a new aim each time and throwing a piece at the prey. Each time a chalk hit a girl or boy, he or she would turn back only to find a bunch of innocent faces engrossed in the jatropa plant! This would have continued without any disturbance had not Prachi placed her complaint, “sir, somebody threw a piece of chalk at me.”

Sir stopped his lecture.

“Who throwing chalks at Prachi? Stand up or I going to check you.”

The attention, which he otherwise failed to posses, was now completely his! Shreya and I lowered our heads to conceal the amusement. So, with another twenty minutes remaining for the bell to go, we knew our environmental studies class for the week had already come to an end, replaced as it seemed by sir’s frantic enquiries to find out who dared to play throw-a-chalk in his class!

“Who telling me honestly? I never liking such things in my class.”

Everyone kept quiet. Finally, realizing that he wasn’t born with the mystery-solving capabilities of Mr.Holmes, he thought it was better to return to dodos, plants and water, “This happening last time, I warning sincerely.”

After a small murmur, which mostly consisted of regrets that the boring lecture would resume, the most shocking incident happened- a piece of chalk bounced back from sir’s forehead and fell on the table. The confusion had not allowed anyone to see who the dare-devil was! Though amused, we indeed regarded it as something which shouldn’t have happened. I looked back at the so-called hooligans of the class- Rajeev, Sumit, Rohit and Dweep with quite a what’s-wrong-with-you-guys look, but they seemed equally puzzled, and frightened, I would add.

“who was that?”- sir spoke short sentences properly! With this, before we could quite discern what was happening, sir walked towards the back-benchers and started checking their desks. At last, the investigation-officer in him! People never get down to action unless it affects them, you see!

He found the pieces under Rohit’s desk. The class thundered as he placed a hard slap on his left cheek.

“sir, I threw the chalk at Prachi but not this one at you.”

It is in human nature that when they are accused of bigger crimes, they confess their real crimes, which seem smaller in magnitude compared to the accusation.

“shut up! You coming with me right now. When I small, we worshipping teachers, and this what you do?”

Sir dragged Rohit out of his place to take him to the principal’s office, all of us fearing the possible consequences when Pilby (the great Pilby whom I have already introduced to you in my first post ;-)) stood up, “Sir, it was me who threw the chalk.”

The whole class felt silent as all eyes turned towards him. It all seemed so unbelievable to me, because Pilby was the quiet kind of guy, you know. Even sir, quite taken aback by his bold confession, let go of Rohit and kept staring at Pilby at a complete loss of words.

“Sir, I wanted to throw it at Prachi for making that silly complaint of hers. I missed the aim and it hit you.”

Prachi always sat in the first bench, which is why his explanation seemed pretty plausible plus his bold confession and honesty drew our complete sympathy towards him.”I am sorry, sir.”

“Go stand the blackboard. I talking later to you.” (read as:go and stand near the blackboard. I’l talk to you later).

Sir resumed the lecture and for the first time, we seemed to listen to what he was trying to explain. I occasionally looked at Pilby who kept hanging his head all-time low. Finally the bell rang the death-knell of the class and all of us fixed our attention on sir and Pilby.

“I definitely punishing you harder, but honesty deserving reward as well.  Doing such things anymore?”

I bet I could have cried down from relief.

“I am sorry sir. I won’t do it again.”

Like small kids all of us started clapping at sir’s clemency!

Sir must have felt very good at this as he added as an epilogue, “when somebody confessing, you must forgiving. But if doing same thing again, then never forgiving.”- and all of us broke into a huge roar of laughter with a renewed sense of respect for sir that students generally develop for a buddy-like-teacher!

P.S.- that day Pilby and I were the last ones to leave the classroom. I told him with an angry-mother-like   voice (;-)), “don’t do this again, Pilby!”… with a small grin playing on his lips, he said, “hmmm, yes ma’am.” And then well, Pilby got my first kiss on his right cheek, for his honesty, you know… ;-)