The sleeper wakes up at last!

Being jobless and fighting ennui aren't new to me. On parallel lines, I was chatting with a good friend of mine at school, Dharini. This blog on some of my experiences in school was her idea and this is dedicated to her. She asked me to credit her for the idea in the blog and hopefully she can't sue me now.

I am thinking hard to recollect one experience that would top the list of all the strange ones that I have had there.... Let me start with this... St.John's Senior Secondary School, Chennai was where I went. I owe a lot to it. In fact, everything to it. Alright... I am not getting sentimental.

St. John's had this routine of conducting parent-teacher contact sessions (it still has) on the second saturday of every month. This was something I regarded as a desperate attempt by a school to screw a child's weekend. It wasn't the case with me as I was the most impudent, disobedient brat that parents would dread bringing up. Anyway, they have brought me up. Kudos!

I was in class nine and had a particular grudge against my social science teacher (name withheld for fear of her reading this blog and coming into my dreams to curse me) - the only social science teacher to have caught me sleeping in class everyday. Many students managed to stay awake in her class. My heart goes out to them for I still consider them to be chronic cases of INSOMNIA. I actually was proud of my deft capacity to doze off in social science classes with my face buried into my textbook, without being noticed by the teacher until this lady came into my life. History was a tranquilizer, Civics was a sedative, Geography was poison and Economics seemed a soporific. Naturally I slept without partiality to any division of social science. This lady shall be called 'R' henceforth.

One fine morning, I was woken up with a violent rapping on my back, only to find R staring at my blissfully wretched face through the gap between her eyebrows and spectacles. I stood there, scared of what she would do to me and disgusted for she had woken me up from heavenly peace. She asked me what I had eaten that morning and I told her "Dosas". She lectured for more than five minutes in her Malayalee accent. I shall try and recollect some of her phrases. "Ya Anantha Kumar... Useless fellow... Alwaiiiyyys (the malayalee pronunciation of always) sleeping in the class.... What do you eat at home?" To me, a better question could have been - how much do you eat at home??? But my cherubic features probably made the quantity obvious. Anyway, there I was, being lauded for my exploit and I shamelessly managed to smile when she said I was eating her life. I wanted to retort telling it was the other way round, but was too sleepy to do so.

The following saturday was the Parents-Teachers meeting and my mom dragged me to school despite my resistance. The English teacher complained that I did not score well in exams though I spoke from ear to ear. Mathematics was no exception and the only person who made my mom happy was my Hindi teacher who said I took good interest in class and fared well in exams. I was thrilled. The science teacher said I was like any other student (very ordinary) and nothing else. Then came the tete-a-tete with R. Every step I took towards her table made me anxious. As soon as I parked my posterior on the seat in front of her, she started her list of complaints. But the complaints were all cooked up cock and bull stories, to my surprise. She said that I was a disturbance in class (the first lie), that I did not allow anyone else to concentrate (the second lie) and I had scored very low marks in the surprise test (there was nothing of that sort to my knowledge. So thats the third). To top it all, came the fourth. She said that I had beaten up a boy in her class and he had started bleeding. Most interestingly the boy she mentioned was the bully in class, easily twice my size and umpteen times stronger. This was too much for me and I started weeping. I thought all freedom at home would now be gone and my life in St. John's as a free budding child was over. All teachers would look at me as an urchin most potent of being made the scapegoat for a variety of mischiefs.

But something else happened! My mom, while walking back, gently caressed my head and said, "I know she is lying. My son isn't strong enough to beat anyone up!". This angered me and pinched my ego, but it brought a mountain of relief to a wounded soul (highly exaggerated - I was born shameless). Now what the teacher achieved by fibbing so gloriously is unknown, but it made me sleepless in her class thereafter. Was it a deliberate move by R to prevent me from sleeping? What would have happened had she just told I slept in class? I really don't know. But I thank her for this. After that, I have always made an attempt to avoid sleeping in any class that I attend (sometimes in vain, thanks to the teacher and the subject)....

Disclaimer: This blog is not meant to discourage talented class-dozers. It is only an attempt to warn you of potent danger from teachers like R.