My Illustrious School Days

17 Dec 2004

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A recent article in the The Spectator (I couldn’t give the link because it requires you to login and I don’t like giving such links. Anyway, this is the link) tickled the sleeping memories of an ancient era when I used to study in a special school (for those who haven’t read my previous writings, I’m cerebral palsied). Unlike the nun the author above has mentioned in her article, most of my teachers back then were pseudo nuns in the sense that they wanted us to be exactly the way they thought we should be. Anything here and there invited their wrath. Like the author above, I was expelled from the school too.

I was always the questioning type. This used to rattle them and in every parent-teachers meeting the subject of my insolence was brought up and my mother used to be barged with complains and reformative suggestions.

We had a human skull once on our class shelf and my class-mate was fiddling with it while the class teacher was not in the class. Suddenly she came in and saw my friend holding the skull.

“Never ever touch this skull again,” she grinded her teeth in her patent manner and took the skull from him with a force. “If you break it you’ll have to pay Rs. 3000 because it costs this much.”

Some queer bug got into me. When I went home, I put all my energies into finding out the cost of a human skull (this might sound gross to the uninitiated, but class-rooms and school labs have such stuff and it can be obtained from authorized suppliers). No matter how good the skull was, the price would not go beyond Rs. 400.

So the next day:

I: “Didi?” (we called our teachers didi may be because most of them were Bengalis and Bengali females prefer to be addressed as “didi”)

Teacher: “Yes Amrit?”

I: “The skull costs Rs. 400.”

Teacher: “What skull?”

I pointed to the skull and then to my friend.

I: “Yesterday you scolded him and said if he broke the skull he would have to pay Rs. 3000.”

Teacher: “So?”

I: “It doesn’t cost that much. A good skull costs Rs. 400 at the most.”

Teacher (grunting her teeth): “How do YOU know that?”

I: “I found it from a supplier.”

I spent the next hour standing outside the class and a note was made in the diary that I had intentionally tried to prove that my teacher was lying.

Did I really do that? I mean, tried to prove that she was lying? May be. May be not. There was no bad feeling, of course. Something inside me told me she needed to be corrected.

There was a time when people were crazy about those silly art movies that had pathetic characters. Our teachers wanted us to watch those movies and write down the thoughts. As 13 and 14-year-olds, those art movies were the last things we wanted to watch on television. So we rarely watched them. Our teachers said we didn’t like the movies because our comprehension skills were not good and we had very bad tastes when it came to watching quality programs.

One day.

Teacher: “Amrit, did you watch that movie yesterday?”

I: “Yes didi.”

Teacher: “What made you watch the whole movie?”

I: “Because you had said so.”

Teacher: “And did you like it?”

I: “Not a bit.”

Teacher (ready to launch her tirade): “Can you enlighten me why you didn’t like the movie?”

I: “Sure. I didn’t like the movie because my comprehension is not good and I have a bad taste when it comes to viewing television programs.”

I was sent to my principal’s office who said she’d pray for me so that I stopped being so nasty.

Later on, all these things added up and lead to me expulsion. I’ll write about this episode some other day.