Misbehaviour , Mexican Waves And Memories Of School

For a long time now , I've been trying to remember when it is exactly that I took to writing. For it seems as though I always have . But then again , until perhaps I was about 15 , all my writing was strictly for my own perusal , more of a vent to my private grievances against the world than anything else... and then I guess , I began to find in it , something more than that , perhaps a sort of enjoyment in the words itself , and how aesthetic and musical one could make them sound if one tried hard enough. I don't mean to sound pretentious and I'm quite sure the results of my efforts are perhaps a little more than mediocre...but I enjoy it and that's all that counts I suppose.

Anyway , In trying to establish when I began writing , I was looking through my old notebooks and diaries and the trip down memory lane was quite pleasing. One invariably ends up remembering loads of little things. Things you surprise yourself by remembering. And among the many memories I found one particular 'thing' that I had written that reminded me so much of school and it's 'nice-ness' ...I loved school..those were the best of my years. And I think all my classmates..or most would share my opinion. So I wanted to post the following for posterity. Something that I think I seem to have written when i began 11th std. This is for all my classmates..I wonder if u guys remember this...???

Like a mexican wave , we rose. The person sitting nearest to the door had stood up. And observing his sudden anxiety to deprive himself of his previously comfortable posture , his friend stood up and so like ripples in a pond ,consequently , did we all rise . It was like stimulus and reaction . When someone stood up , the rest of the class invariably did.

Offlate ,however , the delayed reactions seemed to mar the beauty of the thing , making our beautiful mexican wave into something that resembled a plot by an ECG machine. And the blame was all to be dumped on the ingenious soul that occupied the important and life-saving position of the class sentry.The guy who was responsible for listening for footsteps of an approaching teacher , checking to see if it was really one and shushing the class into silence ,to save it from a fate equal to death...Lectures on discipline.

Well, one day he realised, perhaps by accident that we stood up only when he did and only if he did. (a lot of false alarms by other idiotic students trying to alarm us, by standing up all of a sudden, and amusing themselves ,watching us scurry to get up , had left us an extremely untrustworthy lot. And now we trusted only our sentry. Self-appointed and therefore bound to be sincere is what we thought)

Possessing a scientific temperament , and in a position to observe this seemingly strange phenomenon , it tickled him no doubt to indulge in a series of 'trial-runs' , for practice perhaps to make sure , he got the same result with each repetition of the experiment.

For crying out loud , he had taken to suddenly standing up for the sheer thrill of watching us all jump up...he was getting as bad as those other idiots who had tried it before him. But this was a different. Entirely so. He was untouchable. Even when he grinned and burst out laughing , the guys would curb their urge to let him have a piece of their fist and the girls would swallow the shrieking telling off they would have dished out to any other soul that dared try this sort of stunt.

But not he… he was the man.what would happened if he relinquished his post and ceased looking out for us .(quite literally) . Well it would’nt do to even imagine. Disrespect , according to our teachers , was manifest in our every turn of head. We were supposed conspirators in a giant conspiracy to shame the teaching profession. Not getting up and greeting them as they entered was a grievious crime.

Well, It was’nt as though we had to leave much to our imagination . Considering that we had bear the consequences of such “misbehaviour” on more than 20 previous occasions. The first forty minutes of a forty minute period devoted entirely to picking on each and every one of our shortcomings as a person (we’d each have our turn as the target) and collectively as a “bratty” class.

But we were like soldiers , sensing the end of a war. Much bloodied by the incessant battle and about ready to declare ourselves spent. We had two years to go and our youthful rebellion seemed to be failing us,battered by old voices screaming treason..None of us felt able to the task of dealing with it .It was too much to ask the most lion-hearted of us to endure. And so the boys usually resorted to pretending like they were hard of hearing and the girls looked remorseful and bitched about the teachers in their head.(and later quite loudly) and I, well I alternated between both , occasionally stupid enough to argue but I quickly learned that was futile.

“We respected our elders when we were twerps like you…” and other such assorted pleasantries formed a daily diet that we were force fed. They knew it was no use yelling at us or lecturing or anything and yet perhaps deep down they knew that we listened to their lectures on our miserable behaviour more than we listened to their class...(Out of fear...'cos the extent of our misbehaviour was directly proportional to our punishment..and that was something we had to listen out for.) So, well yeah…I guess you could conclude that people love to be heard.

The younger , slightly more zealous teachers , actually thought they could “reform” us . Boy. Were they in for disappointment. They conjectured that a little physical discomfort might make us “adangafy” (toe the line …so to speak). But that only made us more hardened than ever. So being asked to stand for an hour (sometimes even up on the bench …can u believe that…15 yr olds… The humiliation…The injustice) or threats to leave the classroom produce little or no alteration in our efforts to be model students. (for god’s sake they just did’nt get the fact that to most of us it did’nt get any better than going to school and persuading a teacher that we are too terrible to be taught…)

But on the other hand , standing in one’s place or on one’s bench , with little leg room and no place to squirm either , holding one’s 3kg math or physics book in one hand trying desperately to write with the other, was’nt easy. You’d know what I mean , if you’ve been subjected to it.

The dilemma of it. To rebel against the forces of oppression or meekly succumb to inhuman treatment. Not much of a choice. And therefore , did we hate our Mr.Smarty Pants sentry who amused himself at our expense at such high costs or what???

Usually , the memory of punishment would linger atleast a couple of days.A painful reminder in the form of a strained calf muscle or a catch in the stomach. Why the stomach…one might wonder…well that is due to human nature. See the thing about 15 yr olds is that when they are punished as a group the most natural thing to do …is to keep quiet for the first couple of minutes… then catch a comrade in suffering’s eye…and smile. The smile triggers a chuckle and this occurs as a sort of chain reaction. You catch A’s eye and exchange smile and chuckle A in turn catches B’s eyes and exchanges the smile and chuckle and so on. And in a while…you find the whole class is chuckling…Then is the transition period. About a minute for everyone in the class to realize that everyone else is chuckling… Now that is when everyone abandons all previous restraint. All hell breaks loose and the class is now in what is known as “splits”

Thus the culmination of a lecture on bad behaviour is laughter which in our teachers eyes was always suspect since it was always supposedly at her(his) expense (which it was ofcourse) and was considered even worse behaviour. And thus the eternal vicious cycle would begin again.

P.S: I have lived to tell the tale… I always had this knack of getting away with blue murder…attribute it to my charming and mischievous smile.:-)

Moral of the story

1)Always have friends who are notorious and horribly anti-authority (Vishnu et al buddy…that means you ) that means you always come off as a nice person , who might be a good influence on notorious friend
2)It helps if you are charming…Not sure if that is cultivatable though.
3)What seems torturous at one stage in your life , we look back on with so much fondness.

For all my classmates at school…(I think I’m a little high..) I love you guys.Those were great years. Surprisingly , I think of all of you quite fondly…even though some of you made it a trifle difficult for me…Jyotsi , kothari , smiths , abhin , pish , mags …we were a great gang…,akila and gang..i’ve known u forever… , lena , abhiram ,tommy,soumya and sandeep (our resident Romeo and Juliet) ...well it was fun… and to my supposed “ex-flame” ….you know who you are…lol…you were the class act in a class of class acts.., adarsh , nabs , boondi kunal and all the guys basically…thanks for teaching me patience and how to like assholes…it's something that will come very much in handy in a world filled with assholes...lol..Vishnu , visram …for being great buddies… And Mags for everything...you are the best....

God…definitely totally drunk…