"Settling Down!"

 My initial anxiety of joining a new school subsided after the first few days when I could successfully find my way around the campus. I immersed myself in the fascinating  series of Harry Potter books  which I was introduced to here itself. At home, my mom and my sister  had to literally pull me away from these books to make me eat, drink, sleep and do my homework! My dad had passed away a decade ago when I was just nine years old. Since then mom had single-handedly been taking care of us. My sister Radhika is three years older than me and was then in her first year of the college. Both she and my mother were very glad that I was liking my new school and kept asking me how my day was, how much I liked  my teachers and who my new friends were !

 Speaking of whom, that was a matter of opinion actually! My classmates seemed to be a set of smart and confident people! They were at the same time, also supremely unconcerned about the new student who had joined their class! It would have been good if I wouldn’t have been the only new addition to the class that session because I noticed that all the girls were already pre-divided into either groups or pairs amongst themselves and their whole attitude clearly screamed to me that they were not willing to add any new member to their personal territories! Most of them had not even made an effort to talk to me and judging by the way they simply looked past me, I might have been as good as invisible! The boys were more united than the girls but then, they were most oblivious about anything going around them apart from sports. 

It did not take me more than a couple of days to figure out that the female strength of this class was unanimously divided into two major sections- “The popular and the cooler group of girls” and “ The not-so-popular -group of girls”. The former kept to themselves and did not interact with the latter at all! The second group was friendlier to me and I made a few friends with whom I could hang around in the break times but secretly and selfishly, I longed to switch over to the other group. I knew that it would take some time to make my place there. This was my first experience with the classroom politics and I planned to handle it well! If the girls ignored me, I ignored them back! If asked a question  , I answered coolly, as if my time was being wasted! It was childish and silly but slowly and steadily, it was beginning to work. I knew that the girls had begun to notice me and I was certainly not complaining! I mostly kept to myself at the school but in the class, I volunteered confidently to the questions which teachers asked. Being an avid reader, I was good at the languages and soon became one of the better students of these classes. Math was still a problem and I was really struggling with it! I knew that I must be Mrs. Pandey’s worst nightmare ever! I dreaded the Math classes everyday and on the days when we had a double class, I literally had to drag my feet to the school, wishing that Mrs. Pandey would be absent, (which rarely ever happened)!

Science was not one of my best areas either, but it was better than Math as it comprised not of the complicated formulae and tables, but of the theory which I could at least mug-up. The fact that It had not yet been diversified into Physics, Chemistry and Biology but was one combined subject, also helped matters. Our science teacher was a very sweet, playful man called Mr. Manish Sinha. He was a fair, bald and child-like person, with twinkling eyes and laughter just like Santa-claus –Ho Ho Ho! It was very sweet (and a bit strange) how he treated us like young kids. For instance to capture the attention of the noisy class he would say- “Now ,will everybody please look at Mr. Sinha’s beauuuuutiful face!??”  or “Now I am going to tell you a thing which only two people in this whole wide world know...”, he used to say, while making a huge imaginary circle, swinging his hand  to signify the world, “ Do you know who these two people are??...APJ Abdul Kalaaaaaaam.........aaaaaaaand.....Mr. Sinhaaaaaaaaaa”. He once made us draw a colourful picture of dinosaurs each on drawing sheets holding which, as a group we were all made to recite a poem in the assembly, called “Dinosaur, dinosaur, where do you live?” on the tune of “pussycat, pussycat”, the popular nursery rhyme.

The boys, in particular  found it a bit unnerving to be treated like a bunch of six year olds but personally, I found Mr. Sinha very sweet and lovable, just like a teddy-bear!

History was taken by Mrs. Bhan herself who really brought it alive by   often connecting historic events with personal tales related to her family and acquaintances. She told us about the time when she was a child and was asked to present a ‘Thali’ of fruit to a very aged, bald person sitting with her father wearing only a flimsy dhoti and nothing else. She asked her mother- “Mummy, why is this man wearing no clothes?” and her mother had shushed her and said “Lila, Do not talk about him that way! He is Gandhiji, the most respected and loved  freedom  fighter of our country. He is here to discuss some important issues with your father!”. Stories like this made our history classes all the more alive and interesting! Mrs. Bhan was a lively and a patient teacher! She made sure that each child participated in her class and was always eager and excited to listen to the views of everybody present there even if they were a bit off-the-track and irrelevant!! Sometimes, all the students would enthusiastically shout out their answers all at once, making Mrs. Bhan turn still and absolutely stationary, with her index finger on her lips and her eyes closed, until the class quietened down itself!

On the other hand , Dr. Bhan’s reasoning lessons were one hour of uncommanded, pin-drop silence and the students’ undivided attention! He asked us to solve one mathematical or a general puzzle in each of his classes, which was usually very confusing but, the answers seemed pretty obvious and easy, once he had showed us how to work it out! Dr. Bhan, I noticed, had a dry, sarcastic sense of humour! He had a strict way of handling the class but he also cracked unexpected jokes from time to time, which made everybody but himself, laugh loudly! The fact that his face remained serious , not showing as much a flicker of even a tiny smile, while the people around him laughed and laughed, made the situation even more hilarious! I remember once when one of our classmates, Hardik was caught staring absent-mindedly out of the window by Dr. Bhan, he said to him in his Kashmiri accented Hindi –“MOSAM (mausam!)  SUHANAA  HAI , AAP  BAHAAR  HI CHALE JAAIYE!” (i.e Since the weather is so lovely, you should go outside only!). It is one of our most special memories associated with Dr. Bhan! Thus, my academic graph was balanced because of my good language skills on one hand and my very poor performance in Math! Sports ,on the other hand, were a different matter altogether!