The colony nostalgia – Part 2

After I wrote the part – 1 about colony, I feel like writing more about my school. -:)
We had a MATH teacher who was supposed to be very very strict. All students in the school very often spoke of her. Her husband worked in the same school too. He was also strict. But she was like a sadist. After all she is a female you see!  She had a girl kid who was a year junior to me and she also studied in the same school. The whole family came to the school in a BAJAJ scooter from what I remember. The kid was quite hefty. She used to bend forward while her dad drove the scooter. Finally, when I was promoted to seventh standard, Mrs. Prabhavathi was my MATH teacher, the terror of school. Few days went by without much of hassle. I still can’t forget the way she shouted in the class. “Vijay!! Can’t you understand what I am telling? I told you to stand outside the class until you finish your home work.”
It once happened that there was a unit test in the class (MATH) and I did not do the homework. When she came to my place asking for home work I told her that I did not do the homework because I was studying for the unit test. She held my arm and started twisting. “Homework is homework and test is a test. You have to do both of them”. And then she pinched my arm. I was never hurt physically by any teacher so badly. Hitting with a scale on the hands and knuckles was common but I don’t know how she managed to pinch me so hard that by next day there was a dark black scar on my arm. My mom saw my arm sometime the next day and she exclaimed in fear. “What is this? Has anything bitten you?” I told her what had happened the previous day. I told my mom it was not a big thing and there was nothing to tell to my principal. After everything it was solely my mistake that I had not completed the homework on the day it was due.
The next day when I went to the school, she was giving away the test scores to everyone and when she was calling each person’s name she wanted us to stand aside. I don’t remember now for what reason she told us to do that. She called out my name and she stared at me as if she is going to swallow me:-P After all the books were distributed, “Ok … now I am going to tell you a story!”. I was already sweating. I kept my fingers crossed and prayed to god. Hope my dad has not spoke to the principal I said to myself. She continued “I heard that was a severe injury on a child’s arm in this classroom. Thankfully, there was no need to take her to hospital by ambulance”. I took a deep breath and I started sweating even more. By nature, I am scared of people who go on demanding. I am a coward I should say, always run over by such people. I am always ruled by them I should say. She used to wear a thick pair of glasses and looked at an angle from those glasses. Sometimes I felt she was trying to look by not using the glasses. When she does not want to look through them, why wear them? Her look was so scary. I didn’t even dare to look at her face. I kept looking at the floor. “I will not speak to that child now on. I won’t ask her any questions. She is on herself.”
Her declaration looked so scary to me. I could do what I wanted and what I felt like. Strange!! All I understood was that my dad had spoken to my principal and the principal has warned or whatever and I am gone for a toss :P She had stopped talking to me as she announced. There was never a conversation between me and her after that. She corrected my test papers but while giving away she never called out my name I would understand it’s my turn.
If I recollect the incident now, I feel it was so funny. First of all I don’t understand till today why I was so scared. Probably as a kid most of them are scared of their teachers. Some kids are scared of teachers more than their parents. But I don’t understand why the teacher behaved so strangely. I would call it immaturity.
Thankfully she never came to teach me in 8th standard. In my 9th standard also she was not assigned to my class. But unfortunately, she was to teach my brother’s class. I told my brother not to tell her that he had a sister if at all she ever asked him. It is a small community where one knows each other pretty well, so ultimately there came a time when she asked everyone in my brother’s class if they had any siblings studying in the same school. My brother told the truth. He told me that she never reacted. I know that my brother was a pretty intelligent boy and there were lots of teachers who kept my brother in mind to design the question paper so that he does not answer them 100%. She couldn’t keep herself away from appreciating him all the time for his intelligence. After a month or so she got transferred to some other KV. I had a sigh of relief.
The education system is changing radically these days. The teacher can never handle student rashly. They submit home works only once a week. This is the age of iPads ;-)