My school Memoirs Part II - Teachers & Beatings

School is a wonderful place to be at. And what's school without teachers. Teachers, they are like second parents. They besides imparting useless knowledge in you; help in moulding the delicate conscious of a child to make a better grown up & teach you to differentiate between right and wrong. 

Yeah in the course of setting you on the right course, teachers do have to beat you up sometimes. Lucky are those who got good teachers. Luckier are those who got good beatings from teachers. Believe me school memories are like a 'Dal Tadka' without Garlic if you didn't get a beating in school days. By my narration & bragging, you might have guessed by now that I do count myself among the 'lucky' ones. Of course there was lot of hard work; read mischiefs, from my side which favored the odds towards me.

According to my advanced theory of 'Teachers-Beatings' every of my fav teacher would beat me up at least once. Yes and the theory has proved to be correct except for on one rare occasion. Confused, let me explain.

4th Standard

I was overheard by a teacher abusing one of my classmates. Her name was Mrs. Manju Tiwari. She was my science teacher & hence my fav. I got a beating. The end result; I never cussed, till I reached 12th standard.

5th Standard

Mrs. Anjali Sharma. Again my science teacher. I had picked up a musical key chain which belonged to a classmate without asking (Some of you moral people might prefer the word 'stealing'). Gosh, I got my hide tanned that day. I can swear that till date I have never forgotten the beating of that day. Lesson learnt - Never steal anything.

6th Standard

Mrs. Ramesh Kakariya. My maths teacher. Besides being my fav maths teacher, I must acknowledge that she is one of the very few teachers I have come across who knew how to teach & she loved doing it. She had the honor to lay her hands on me more than once. Always, because I was too lazy to do my homework. I remember once after getting punished, I started crying & told her 'I will tell my mom that you beat me up today'. Well, you can smile & imagine my intellectual growth by this time. She didn't smile. She just gave me a hug & said 'I am sorry, I promise I will never beat you up again'.  She kept her promise. I never missed my maths homework after that. I can vividly remember that till the time I passed off from school, even after many years she stopped teaching me, she would always tease me "I would like to see your Mom now".

7th Standard

Of all the times I have been beaten up, this one was the most puzzling. Mrs Kaur, She was a mild mannered soul & I was in her good books. I don't exactly remember the chain of incidents, but she did give me a beating to remember her by one day. The thing that always puzzles me is why did she do it? I am not saying that I wouldn't have done anything wrong to deserve it. Being what I was, anybody could find 10 reasons to give me a punishment in a single day. She had been teaching me for the past 2 years & I had never seen her beat up somebody, except for an occasional slap. Then why did she choose me up?

BTW, the bad influence of my life, Jai, & me were pretty close by now & the graph of punishments vs time had shot up exponentially.

8th Standard

I had always been into comics. But this was the golden era for me. I would buy, borrow, exchange & even visit libraries to read comics. Well, my passion for reading comics was overflowing, I was reading one tucked nicely between my textbook during a class, when all of a sudden my hindi teacher 'Miss C.K Soni' asked me to stand up & recite a para of the poem. I was in the world of 'Super Commando Dhruv' fighting with all the baddies of the world. The return from 'Raj Nagar' was a little painful. The beating was just a part of the prize. Miss Soni told the story to every teacher in the Staff room & for months to come, every teacher would ask me if I had a comic between the pages of my text book. Of course, this made me famous. 

9th Standard

My most fav teacher, Mrs Shehnaz Siddiqui. I have never come across somebody like her. She found me saying something(nothing good) about my sanskrit teacher. No she didn't gave me a beating, just a single slap! It didn't hurt much either. But after her class, she called me aside & took me for a walk. She sat with me for 45 minutes, giving words of advice. I had sat with her on those pavements before also, but then generally she would be gossiping with me asking about the girls I liked & things like that. That day it was different. 

I got punishments on countless occasions even after that. But I was never beaten up by teachers. Partly because I was a good student, partly because I started bunking classes from 10th standard & partly because of the things she said to me that day.

Yeah I did mention about my 'Teachers-Beatings' theory. The rare occasion where my theory fails is during the times of 11th & 12th standard. My Physics lecturer, P.K Sharma was the coolest chap in the whole school & had all the good traits of a teacher. He never boasted. He was humble enough to acknowledge that he didn't knew the answer of this particular query & he would work on it. He once told me "You are very intelligent, perhaps one of the most brilliant young minds I have ever taught but you are not a good student. A good student should have 3D qualities:- Discipline, Dedication & Determination. Which of the three do you think you do have?" I preferred silence as the only reply.

My another fav was Mrs Kumar, my english teacher. While I never gave my Physics teacher a chance to complain, Mrs Kumar had umpteen chances of that served her on a platter. She never took it! Her fav complain was "I have taught both you & Naren; & you are nothing like him". I tried explaining her a couple of times that she shouldn't compare the genius & the greatest buffoon of the family. Couldn't!

If you are thinking that the number of times I have been beaten up are really less, let me clear that these laurels of affection are the ones which were handed over by my fav teachers. And these are the ones which I still do remember, 8 years after school time! Let me put it this way "How many do you remember?"