Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Another brick in the Wall.

Not so long ago, when ass meant donkey, rubber meant eraser and desibaba.com used to have more hits than the Facebook login page, there was this little me. A young teenager, he would look forward to spend a few eventful hours every week in the dingiest, shabbiest of 5 ft by 10 ft rooms in pursuit of learning, shall we say, good English. Accompanying him were a few other mortals, like him. But then, there was another one, not quite in the same league as theirs. Someone, who tried to educate them.  “Syar”, they used to call him.

The room was an architectural marvel in itself. Amidst a fine backdrop of greenery adorned by Partheniums, the interiors exuded no less beauty. The soot, cobwebs and dust had their say in almost everything that the cracking walls offered. Finally, the shattered window pane and the creaking 4ft by 10 ft door put the icing on the cake. Sir took great efforts/pains to revive their true colours once in a while, only for them to reclaim their glory a few days later. 

Finally, there were the usual suspects. Innumerable “bet er mora”s adorned the floor and  most of them, during my days there, were at the twilight of their lives. A big red chair was the envy of all except the one who sat on it (Sir). A table, with feeble knees, carried the weight of the world on its shoulders, finely balanced on its two sides thanks to Sir’s notes, files, Radient Readers, Question Papers, Webster’s, Shakespeare(s) and all that Sir English literature had to offer to students. Also in the supporting role were matchboxes, candles, festive greetings and all those things who found their love/destiny on it, courtesy one’s carelessness/forgetfulness. The table had an Uncle Podger feel to it.

Every day, the classes would begin amidst much hullaballoo. No sooner than Sir’s dirty yellow scooter/green Maruti 800 was visible at some distance, we would flock near the door so as to get that hotseat which we desired. (The context of this hotseat would vary from person to person).The moment Sir unlocked the door, each one of us would try to barge in, and in the process, get/receive a few knocks depending on the stars. A dying concrete soul would be brimming with humanity. The class would commence.

The room would be buzzing with activity- On some days, Wren&Martin, O.Henry, R.L Stevenson, Wordsworth would come to life with their majestic works. Whether it was “Home they brought the warrior dead” or Treasure Island or Alice’s/Lucy’s/Daffodils’ exploits, the treatment of the subject was of the highest class. Sir’s narration and the enactment would keep us spellbound as we visualized those scenes for the umpteenth time. On others we would be busy scratching our heads to convey the eternal water clogging problem to the Head of the Municipality. Or scribble down the notes which mostly contained the chartbusters of the question papers.

A word about the collection of notes Sir had. Came in myriad colours (brown, violet, green mostly). Most of them seemed to have survived a world war. Especially, a few of them which were hardest to decipher and at times reminded us of the carvings at Mohenjo-Daro. Nonetheless, they were priceless in their content and though they lacked the oomph factor, decoding and later encoding them successfully during the examinations paid rich dividends! Won’t be surprised if I see one of those featuring as an ancient relic in the next Lara Croft adventure.

And amidst all this, there would be pranks, laughter and fun. A few innocuous glances would be exchanged and some whispering /murmuring would prevail to notify those glances. A few wry smiles would be shared at the cost of one’s sense of fashion/lack of knowledge. The current state of the Indian cricket team (which wasn’t Team India back then) provided the juiciest of gossips. And then, at times, Sir would gorge on some rather delicious (by the looks of it) homemade food on the pretext of having been starving the whole day. At others, we would be treated with tit bits owing to Sir’s birthday celebrations.

Events of power failures were accompanied by loud cheers. Sir would promptly light the candles and would place them on four corners of the table and the class would continue. We would be joined by the evergreen mosquitoes that were having the time of their lives, literally. In most cases, upon our requests, Sir would narrate a joke/real life incident that would soon turn into an impromptu adda session, the climax of which would be intervened by the arrival of power. How I miss those days!

In the present day, that dingy room doesn’t exist anymore. Its rejuvenated version provides shelter to mankind. However, it will always be in my cherished memoirs for all the good times I had. The jokes. The leg pulling incidents.The addas.The essays. For the innumerable times I was excited to tell others that Sir actually scored 100 runs off 1 ball.Those who have heard the story from the great man himself,will probably know about this achievement of Sir's.

As for the rest,never mind. :)