Dit-to

To start with…

This is my home. OUR HOME; on the homeland of God! It has been two years since I met my grandparents. My grandmother is just too cute. I just grab her cheek and pinch it till it hurts her and asks me to stop it. She gives me a warm kiss as a greeting to our home. My grandpa is taller me. It’s his genes that I inherit.  When anyone asks me what my goal is, I just reply that I have no idea or just say that I want to become as tall as my grandpa. I was boasting about my height when I was in seventh or eighth (I don’t remember properly…) as I exceeded my grandma’s height. My grandpa was a doctor. My grandma was a Malayalam teacher in a corporation school. She retired a few years back. The boat, the river, the coconut trees that bade good bye with their leaves as I leave this place and go to Chennai, the air of divinity and the liveliness of the place that lightens up a human’s mind and soul…. It was all in THEKKADY!!!

It took me a few seconds to realize that I was at my apartment in Chennai. My dad was paying the auto driver and I got down with the luggage. 

The house was perfectly alright. No mess and everything were very clean… except for the floor of course! My mom had already cleaned everything before we went to Thekkady. And strange thing was that we had heard that there wasn’t any theft this time at any of our neighboring houses. 

Less time for school means more tension. And more joy by the way... I have to get a new bottle, new uniforms that we gave for tailoring purposes, and many more. 

June 18

It is the first day of school. Well, I just knew tenth classes were on the third floor, so just guessing our classroom would also be there too, I just went up and saw almost all my friends over there.  I was happy. 

That class seemed to be where my classmates are seated. And that is X D!

So I just squatted there and commented on the changes that I observed in their physical appearance (oh my god! Look at you! You’ve grown so tall! … Oh! Your voice has been broken! … Um.. You are just the way you were…).

And so suddenly a teacher asks us to just come out to the corridor… and she says.. we are going to be shuffled…..

'Oh!’

‘My God!’

‘Shit!’

‘Oh my god Shit!’ , came out the voices.

I was in a dilemma on how to respond : to cry or to just shut my mouth up and be patient. I chose the second one… and if I had left the choice to you.. you would have chosen that for me too.

The teacher called out the names in each class. I saw my friends moving to different classes. My name was listed in X C.

I just knew four people: S.Srinivas, Nithesh, Vishal Deva and Shankaran.

I waited... we all four were looking at others as if the other students in our class were cannibals and we were their sumptuous target…

Our class teacher was Bhavana ma’am and she was our mathematics teacher. She was by-ENLARGE a good teacher: I heard so…

And then she was dictating the time table.. all this time… I was silent.

Then she left and came in Giridhar sir, who is our chemistry teacher. I always love his teaching and his way of keeping up humour and sarcasm throughout the class. No one can be his pet. He just loves us as being students in a way that everybody is equally treated.  Well, he didn’t start anything on the first day, but we all had a good time answering his questions about our interest in chemistry.

When he left, we saw Prabhu sir getting in. I never had his class before but I just knew that he was our history teacher. He just didn’t like any of introductions and started of reading the text book. It was hard to put everything in my mind whatever he said in class.

The next period in the time table pointed out to be Biology class. Satyabama ma’am is definitely an excellent teacher, and I inferred that from her first class. Just that she was always on a serious mood, I felt. I difn’t know much about her either. 

I became hungry. But there were no chances of escaping English period.  Geetha Sugumar ma'am was our English teacher. She resembled a reptile from which they say birds developed wings. Another hint: those species are extinct. For the first time, I realized it was very true. She was sweet, though than any other teacher.

Now, that it is lunch break, there was one question that was popping up in our minds:  can we go to other class to eat lunch? We thought of nothing later, and just bravely decided to go to X A where most our ex-IX D students belonged too.  It was certainly happy to hear that everybody had the same feeling that I had when we heard the news about shuffling.

After the burp and the bell, we had to go back to our class and dig out our time tables to find out the period. It was math. Bhavana ma’am is the best math teacher I’ve ever seen! Trigonometry! That’s the chapter we started with, and I loved her way of teaching! And one thing that still keeps me happy is the praise I got from her for choosing an easier way of solving a problem. She said ‘Good’ with my name twice, but that rang inside my mind for two days. You know, the feeling that you might have felt if somebody sees you for the first time, praises you! My mom always used to say ‘First impression is the best impression’. I realized it.

The sixth period was geography. Mridula Mahesh ma’am was just a normal teacher. A normal teacher means a normal teacher. And why she is like that is because she is normal. And so she is normal. And since she is a teacher, she is a normal teacher: HER INFLUENCE MADE ME WRITE LIKE THIS. So you must be knowing about her now…

The seventh was physics with Hemamalini ma’am. I don’t want to talk about it. I had a clear Idea of physics, but she ruined it. Duh!

The eight one was Physical Training. Logabhushan sir was absent that day, so  ‘Poduma Susi’ ma’am gave us permission just to play basketball. Finally we pleaded her to give us volley ball too. 

The last four classes are boring. That’s all I could say…

The last class: Generally, many ask me, ‘Why did you take tamil?’. I’m a tamzhan. I speak tamil at home. My relatives live in Thekkady, that’s it! But we speak tamil only. 

And so this period was tamil. Rani ma’am was our teacher for many years, so she knows about me and my studies and she left us free. Without bothering about her so much, I started to talk with my friends.

Wait a minute...ALL HAPPENED IN ONE DAY??? Was it too slow?

Well, the rest of the days are totally opposite to it. My class, I realized was too cool and lovely! I also became a bigger chatterbox this time… I came to know about rumours of many people and I also became a master ( :P )of ICING many teachers. I learnt to mimic like teachers and also to be happy a lot. 

DID TENTH GO SO SOON????????

There is this one thing: Everytime, I used to get a good name in the first PTAM, then in the final meeting, all the teachers would go off disappointed and give me a good titile of being TALKATIVE

But this time… it was:

BHAVANA MA’AM:  What Pranav you mean? Well, he is….