Remember.....

Those were the best days of our lives.....there now..

Sooopppaaaerb da -While boasting about ones possessions or ones close ones abilities is fine, especially when you are kid in high school, it is often exasperating when you have a classmate punctuating each of those recounts with a soooppaaaerb da, even my cousin has it. Ramesh, who left us in 10th standard can lay claim to this phrase. Which ended up irritating a lot of his peers and also people who swore that they were not his peers!!! The people most affected by this were Ramkumar (bondey), Radha, Sandesh, Mohan and Vijay.

Ashok's monkey antics -Thatched roofs were a dream to someone given to climbing as a second nature. Ashok fitted the bill perfectly and felt absolutely at home in the environment! During one of his monkey-like escapades, the principal Govindachari chose the moment to check on the happenings-on in the classroom whose decibel levels was threatening to compete with military aircrafts, or so claimed Govindachari. Ashok was caught smack on top of the roof on the inside), and hung on, literally, that way until that long-minute passed by. The moment Govindachari left the class, there was an almighty thud!!

Nana and the mysterious scratch sounds - For the annual excursion, the class was taken to Bangalore in the 9th standard. The response was good, and this left us with limited facilities being shared by a lot more people than was planned for. It was a trip remembered best for, among other things Vijay going around in a ridiculous pair of sunglasses which he insisted on wearing even to the loo! But what took the cake was the mysterious scrunching noise emanating from Narayan Rao's (Nana) torso while deep in his sleep!!! On closer investigation, viewed by a wide audience, with lights fully turned on, it was indeed from Nana, and from a part of the body where the sun usually don't shine!!!

The geographical relevance in a nickname -While this may not be an incident in the truest sense, one can only laugh at how parochial the southies are. So an incident regarding a newcomer from the north instantly gave him a name with which he would live for the rest of his time in Chinmaya. The name quite explicitly illustrates what the newcomer had done to deserve it Delhi kusu, the name accorded to Venugopal, formerly a resident of Delhi!

Brick your head - While vernacular professors are best when they stick to their chosen language, they become spectacular when they try their hand at another, more alien languages. Natarajan, the tamil teacher has more scores to his credit than anybody else during our stay at Chinmaya. His common threats of "I'll brick your head" used to draw more laughter than terror that it was intended to bring! The phrase was normally accompanied by a pained statement combined with a mild guffaw that made the scene even more memorable.

The volleyball net that refused to go away It was common practice to play as many games as the courtyard (how else could one describe the place that was called playground!) would allow. So there could be cricket (on a crumbling concrete pitch) , volleyball and football apart from the random mudoo puncher (a game where the objective is to maim the other person with as much sting as a rubber ball would allow a little medieval, agreed!) on at the same time!

During one of the heavy sports sessions, our chief protagonist Sanjay Kothari was playing a very involved game of football. So involved was he in the game that he paid little attention to the fact that a volleyball game was on at the same time. And so involved was he that he was looking at only the ball and not where he was going and bamm the unyielding volleyball net (it's not supposed to yield, is it?!) caught him out by the chest! His legs maintained the momentum while his torso came to a dead stop. It had a vertical trampoline effect and saddled him to the ground so hard that the next (memorable) sight was that of Sanjay holding his chest and shouting Ammaaaaa!

Moral of the story? Never fight a rope tied at both ends with your body. The rope always wins!!

The vulnerable spot -The aforementioned mudoo puncher was almost always the game of choice during the shortish lunch breaks cause it needed minimal equipment and the starting procedures were minimal! Get the ball and whack the shit out of the next guy!! If he moans during the rest of the day (and the next day) you could lay claim to the mudoo puncher hall of fame! Well, Chandrakanth was one hall of famer if ever there was one. With a side-throw technique that was new during that day and age, his shots rocketed like bullets. If he was in possession of the ball, a quick sense of dread seemed to spread among the game's participants.

His victims were many, and one very high profile one. The highest profile person in a school .i.e. the principal. Govindachari cames out of his dinghy office to take a post-lunch look at how his wards were doing. He didn't realize he had suddenly moved into the line of the (worst) fire coz one of Chandrakanthi's well-directed missiles missed its (fortunate) target, and thudded into the unsuspecting scrotum of the Chief! Days play over!

A desperate looking Chief was out at the assembly the next day and in plaintive tones asked us not to involve in dangerous sports during the lunch-break (or at any time in our lives?!). He also mentioned how he'd be hit in a vulnerable spot. Of course, there were a bunch of chuckling faces in the crowd who knew exactly what he was talking about!

Where is the Poori - The gruff-voiced principal when we were in 11th provided more than his fair share of humor to batch. Half of what he said was lost out to the gruffiness, and his concerns were lost as one couldn't make out what he was talking about. Notwithstanding, he was offered the goodies that came from the students once in a while. He was offered Bhel Poori on a religious occasion, god-knows-why! It was immediately greeted by a question that the students thought verged on the rhetorical, "but where is the poori?" It took them some time to understand that the man was serious about the question!! The man's South Indian predilection made it tough for him to understand that Bhel Poori was a popular northie fare, and you couldn't see the individual constituents of the end-product.

The dangers of sport, Paul Raj style - This one phrase, uttered so memorably by Paul Raj has been repeated more often than any by any other teacher. Our jolly Physical Training teacher, who it should be said, took far more interest in his duties than any other PT teacher we had before. He was involved to the extent that the student took a real keen liking to him, and the way he systematically he did what he was paid for. During the first few sessions, he was briefing about the joys and dangers of sport.

Here's what he said, in words modified for phonetic accuracy: "Aay shaat put, discuss, jawvelin are all dawngerous, aaw. It may prove to be fawtaal." Many of us instantly recorded this for replay that none of us even dreamed would stay with us for more than a decade - fifteen years as this is being write!!

Sherlock who? - The number of students in the class who had problems pronouncing words correctly could not be counted on the fingers of ones hands. However there were some whose problems were more chronic than others. Among the biggest was Rajkumar or Eli.

(How anybody that big could be called Eli (rat) is beyond any reason, whatever it might be.) Picturize someone trying to pronounce Holmes (as in Sherlock Holmes) and you couldn't mouth the word without the h! That was Rajkumars predicament, and much as he would try there was no way to get that right. So the English teacher NJ tried setting that right by asking him to watch her mouth the word. So she set about it starting out very slowly, splitting the word into as many syllables as were present. O- mmes she said, and our man would say Vommes repeatedly. And adding to the confusion was Hariharan telling him to say it in a manner that was absurdly wrong. So Eli, caught between contradicting opinions, between the devil and the deep blue sea as it were, finally fell prey, when after much prompting he blurted Wolammes much to the amusement of the rest of us keenly listening in!

The shower lectures -Generally most of the nerds among us would prefer sitting in the front benches during lectures, but there was a time when sitting there would bestow upon you something that you just didn't want! Deluge from the teachers mouth was something you wouldn't give your back hand for, and that was precisely what one got if you were attending Kesuvulu's lectures and sat in the front row. Rumours that some of the hardcore nerds brought umbrellas to the class are, however, unfounded.

The gozen - Annapoorni, one of the better liked teachers, taught us History (and English at some stages). She had a weirdo accent that made her pronounce the word question as gozen. This amused Srinivas (kurvaad) no end. So his spare time was spent imitating her, and asking the rest of us, "where is the gozen". Ashwini, found this a good opportunity to extract some publicity mileage (redemption value unknown!), and snitched on Srini when he went for a washroom break. So on this return he was greeted by Annapoorni, who confronted him, and asked him HIS question��or should that be gozen!! So he didn't have a face when she repeatedly asked him where is the gozen, maaan.That apparently was the last day he called her that, and the first day that the rest of us started using it!

There now, there now -This one has to be the toughest to beat, anywhere on earth. How anybody could justify using two words at the end of every sentence that have no significance or meaning, is beyond reason. Satyamoorthy, our maths teacher, uttered these words at the end of every sentence, sometimes twice!

For instance, "Sir, where have you kept the register?" "Dai, it's there now, there now". And that is NOT an exaggeration. More.."Two plus two is four, there now." "How do you expect me to give you more marks there now, if you haven't written the right answers, there now." "Is it now there, there now? I had expected it to be there, there now."

Several of us, sometimes in unison decided to maintain score of how many he uttered every class! Those with a passion for statistics, and very little for academics, have recorded scores of more than 150 per class. If he gets animated, the numbers would snub even Wall Street's volatility n the late 90s!!

The costly mimic - Ramasubramaniam, who many of us remember as the loud-mouthed tiny thing that came in and out of our lives pre-tenth standard, took a particular liking to Anaapoorni's style of talking. It was generally laced with superfluous and typical phrases and cliches. He was asked to explain to the class the War of Blaah-Blaah-Blaah, and he proceeded to answer it in a very typically Anapoorni fashion. The imitation was so astounding that Annapoorni was like "hey, wait a minute, where have I heard that before." She just waited for him to finish off, and proceeded to verbally lash him verbally so bad, that it was no longer funny to any of us witnessing the scene. It was not known what was the correlation between his bad marks that term, and this unsavory incident!

The Blue Whale, Eli-Sanjay style -To improve our diction, and to some extent our knowledge, Kanthi, our English teacher requested that all of us take turns to prepare a short, interesting feature and present it to the class. Obviously, this wasn't relished much by all. Eli, realized pretty late that morning that it was his turn to take to the face the class and make his contribution!! So he enlisted the services of Sanjay, barely apt for that kind of a task! Nevertheless, the two of them got cracking, and here's the gems we received from Rajkumar:"The Blue Whale is a mammal. It lives in the sea. And it is kgs hundred tonnes." The class split up on hearing that, and the rest of the preparation was insignificant, and just as preposterous!

The newcomers and their specialties -Not the best of specialties really, but the newcomers Gopinath and Murlidhar had some very uniqueness associated with them. Gopinath had a typically characteristic way of expanding all words with an a in it. The most memorable of which was, "I want a baaaaaal!" Murlidhar was less unique with his words and his memory had more to do with the senses. A strong one at that! Anyone sitting next to him can vouch for his manliness. Enough said!

The Discipline statement -Twice every year, before the Independence and Sports days, the whole school had to go through the rigmarole of marching, and supposedly perfecting the way you present your march in front of the elite gathered for those two days. Every house had their teacher who would assist their wards to be the best. For some reason, Alakananda was saddled with Natarajan, the Tamil master, who had his own way of enforcing discipline among us. At one point, he was exasperated trying to keep some of us from talking (the only way to make the drab affair anything close to interesting). So he came up with something that he thought would get his message across. He looked and sounded stern when he uttered this gem:"Boys and girls, behavior yourself first, then discipline." Those were his strongest English words for a long time, and one wouldn't be surprised if he had been practicing days before unleashing the Tomahawk on us!!

Mairu -There were among us, teachers who pretended that Tamil was an alien language, though it was probably what they speak at home. In one instance, there was, like as was so common, an expletive shouted out very loudly. The teacher in question, happened to hear it, and instantly recognized it as an expletive (she pretended that it was something she recognized as out of the ordinary!), and shouted back "who said maairu?" The word was steeped in an accent so acute that it appeared almost Caucasian!

The Pen Potrait of Lore -There we some among us who elected to take Advances English as a course if only to escape the drudgery of Maths or Biology, nevermind the fact that you paid for it by way of marks at the end. Abdul, who chose this more for its name than any tangible benefits it would bestow upon him, proceeded to struggle in it, as his penchant with languages! For one exam, a very unique questipn (for him) was asked, which he promptly proceeded to interpret as only he could. The question? "Draw a pen-potrait of Gopal." He proceeded to give them just that. It's a pity that this paper has since been destroyed. A true gem.

The MFTG clan -There was a time when the nerdiest among us were also the scariest among us. And it was for good reason that they were ostracized from the rest of us. True, they rebelled against 'cruel' pranks, but hell, you are in high school. They had MFTG written on their books; on every page on which there was matter. Annapoorni had her sari squelched with with ink from a pen, and proceeded to belly-ache her feelings about it. Overcome by by guilt about keeping quiet, Radhakrishnan (our MFTG guru) came to the fore, and pointed his fingers in the direction of the culprit. The wary among us treated him with an uneasy respect and kept a distance, while the braver ones ridiculed him for years! In case you are wondering what MFTG stands for, its the famous quad of Mother-Father-Teacher-God!!

The Karthik-Kalpana Spitting Saga -I don't know whether Kalpana drooled all over Karthik or not as he claims, but I was eyewitness to another incident. It happened like this... we were on an excursion, i believe it was the 8th std, where they bored us to death by taking us to carpet factories and other such stupid places. Anyway, on the return journey, the teachers (i remember Cuckoo was there, Usha was our class teacher) opened a box of apple pies. (does that RING SOME BELLS???). I actually thot they tasted decent, and ate mine, but Karthik, Mohan, Vijay etc., with their usual enterprise, thought they made terrific missiles. We had a GREAT time pelting all passers-by with the pies. One poor old man almost fell off his cycle, more out of shock than anything else. so anyway, apple pies being a non-renewable resource, we soon ran out. that didn't deter katri(karthik). In a sudden burst of inspiration, he stuck his head out of the window, and spat "thoo" at a passing bike. At that exact instant, kalpana who was sitting behind us also stuck her face out! the wind carried the spit straight on her face!!!! I was sitting next to him and we laughed like maniacs for the next 5 minutes!!

The Ashok On Roof Incident - a different view - Another bit of history, where Ashok was on the roof when Princi visited our class on his rounds - just wanted to give credit to Veena who was taking Phy/Chem class. I mean there was princi as usual making a pain of himself at the doorstep (may his S R.I.P), Ashok hanging on for dear life directly on top of his head, all of us not breathing, and staring everywhere BUT over his head, and Veena talking to princi as if nothing was wrong. I mean, she was a real sport wasn't she? If princi had caught ashok, she would have been in deep trouble... It might interest some to know that i met her at Arizona state, where she was teaching and studying while I attended. She's doing great.

The Paper-ball war and the aftermath - - During the Hindi class in VIIth std, as usual torture was happening. Sailesh and I were in the last seat and Karthik and Raviprasad) were in the seat in front of us. In walked Kalpana (isn't it uncanny, how all my memories have Karthik and Kalpana as chief protagonists?!) with some non-sensical announcement about some stupid school meeting or something...so, she distributed it to everyone and left. We promptly began putting those flyers to good use. Sailesh and I made ours into airplanes and aimed at the various heads in the front row( if people sit in the 1st row in Sapra's class, they deserve it, right?). Raviprasad and Karthik meanwhile had more ambitious plans. They crumpled their flyers into balls and heaved them over the wall-partition � right into the Tamil class next door. Two minutes later Hariharan walked in saying that the Tamil master had sent him to report that someone had thrown those balls from our class. Then, on summons from Sapra, in walked Natrajan himself with the famous words: "miss, somebody, this throw... 'it my 'ead..." Sapra swung into action. with Sherlockian speed, she figured out that all she had to do was find out who didn't have the flyer, and she would have caught the culprits. Now comes the twist in the tale. Seeing our enthu, many of our neighbours had also thrown airplanes, balls etc to the front of the class. So Karthik and Ravi(being the experienced rascals that they were) had coolly picked up two spares while this tamasha between Natrajan and Sapra was going on. Me and Sailesh had nothing in hand. "Ok, stay cool," I told Sailu, as Sapra walked around checking everyone. "We'll just say that we never got the flyers." So when the dragon lady came to us, we stuck to that (rather weak, I admit) story. She promptly called Kalpana and asked her if she had given us flyers. Looking back now, I seriously wonder why I thought Kalpax would defend us...anyway, she spoke in the most confident tone I had ever heard from her: "YES MISS, I clearly remember giving these two the flyers!" Well, that was that. All our weak protests were shoved aside and we were marched to the men's staff room - that 4 by 3 feet hole at the rear. For the next 2 hrs, we were threatened and interrogated by Natrajan's gang. Satyamoorthy's "there now's" were no longer funny and he was the scariest, with Paul Raj alternating between saying something really stupid and spitting on us (inadvertently!). In the background was Kesavulu providing comic relief. Anyway, to cut a long story short, eventually we tired of hedging and told the truth, that we certainly got the papers but only made airplanes and threw them only inside our class, and not on Nattu's 'ead or any other part of his anatomy. we were let off and later Raviprasad and Karthik owned up. so that, children is the story behind those famous gems from the Tamil master!

The female anatomy, waxed eloquently - - During our advanced tamil class, when our dear nattu (tamil master Natrajan) was explaining one of those poetry lyrics...describing female anatomy... he was giving us explanatory notes...there was this word 'kongai'..I didn't know the meaning for it and the guys didn't either. In the notes too... he said the same word...and promptly I asked what it meant..ooo boy he really went in to show and explain..damn.. I've never been that embarassed in life !!! Kannan still remembers the exact lines of the poem.. for the others..kongai is an archiac word in tamil for breast !

The ventriloquist fart - - Once again during our advanced tamil class, a more funny incident. I remember Mohan made those funny farting sounds and we told to him that Prasanna was having a stomach problem !! He really believed it and after hearing the sounds a few more times, he politely asked her if she would like to go to the toilet!! Sport that she was, Prasanna grinned her way through the whole class. We kept giggling at him and he was smiling thinking we were giggling at the sounds from Prasanna. Wow, a hilarious 40 minutes !!!

p.s. If you happen to be among those who studied in our batch, and want to be a part of our thriving e-group, e-mail the moderator using the link below.

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More...there now

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