Memories of another day

The recent media reports about teachers dealing injurious blows to kindergarten kids on one hand and students roughing up their teachers on the other, brought back memories of my schooldays. The regard with which we held our teachers and the strict parameters they kept up to ensure that we grew, but stayed in our boots.

The day I was caned!

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The recent media reports about teachers dealing injurious blows to kindergarten kids on one hand and students roughing up their teachers on the other, brought back memories of my schooldays. The regard with which we held our teachers and the strict parameters they kept up to ensure that we grew, but stayed in our boots.

It is only on hindsight that I can recall how threadbare was the sherwani our Moulvi Sahab, who taught us Urdu, wore or how Spartan was the dhoti-kurta worn by Panditji who taught Urdu and Sanskrit. All we could see at that time was the cold glare that sized us up as we approached or greeted them.

My docile behaviour combined with my family’s repute to make me an outstanding student in that I was never punished, admonished or thrashed. Classmates held me with esteem and I was often used as an example by the teachers while telling them off.

One day, passes arrived from the Sports Directorate for a cricket match. I had been handed the bunch to distribute them, but all hell broke loose when I announced in the classroom what I had in hand. There was the maddest scramble I had ever seen, the boys elbowing each other and screaming their lungs out while snatching the passes from my hand.

Of course in the boisterous din, nobody noticed the arrival, even the call, of Prof Raina, the graceful, stoic Kashmiri, who wielded the cane as he walked.

Sharper than the hullabulloo around me was the lash of that cane as it struck my arm. It was not aimed at me, but it hit me. I was stung to say the least and suddenly everything else was quiet too. The teacher had taken strong note of the chaos and the boys, who till only a moment ago had been an unruly mob, were all back on their respective seats in silence.

Prof Raina had never been the way he had been in the past few days— edgy, intolerant and more violent than ever. .Personal tragedy had changed him. His son had topped the university exam and on his way home was struck dead in a road accident.

But the singing pain on my arm turned me blind to reason. It was more of embarrassment, actually. It was my first taste of humiliation. Being caned in front of my classmates!

Without a word, I walked out of the class, out of the school and out of the sight of all the witnesses of the indignity I had suffered. My vision was frosted by tears that never dropped. At home, I sulked a bit than went out to play with mates, none of whom were in school or class with me. When I came back home, my Punjabi-speaking mother asked me: “Sakool vich kedi sharaarat kitti si?” (have you been naughty in school?)

As I looked at her in silence she told me that my school teacher had come to meet my father. Soon, a servant came to tell me that I had been summoned.

With shaking legs I went to the drawing room to find father and Prof Raina in conversation.

“Why did you leave?” said Prof Raina, the moment he saw me. “Come here,” he beckoned and threw his arm around me as I stood near him. “You know how I have been doing my work in spite of myself! I know what a good boy you are…you shouldn’t have left…”

My spontaneous reaction was to touch his feet and say sorry. The very thought that my teacher was tendering a sort of apology made me giddy.

And today, I wonder, where we have failed to witness reports of violence exchanged by the teacher and the taught!