“Goodmorning class!”, Mrs Ghosh greeted us as she opened the attendance register and started calling out our names one by one. Being one of the seniormost teachers of the school, she had been assigned as the class-teacher of the seniormost class i.e us! Being such an old teacher she knew each of us well ! She spoke only in English or Bengali and just for fun, we enjoyed speaking to her deliberately in the Hindi language as she was not very fluent at either understanding it or speaking it. We absolutely adored her ! Today the boys had decided to answer to their roll-call in Sanskrit. So whenever their names were being called out, they were answering it by saying –“Asti! Or Upasthit ” (both of which mean present!) .
Mrs. Ghosh adjusted her spectacles on her tiny nose and glared through her square shaped glasses, saying- “Now come on! Stop being silly all of you. We are getting late for the assembly! What is this ‘aasti-aasti’ business! Answer properly.” she had just closed the register and was about to say something when Khushboo came hurrieng to the door. She was a chubby girl with a booming laughter and a sensitive temper like amitayu’s. She was the only one who had opted for the arts stream after our board year but we all shared a common class of English language with her, which was compulsary for students of every stream. I, however also had an additional subject of English Literature with her for which only both of us had opted. It was taken by Mrs. Bhan and we studied the classic literary works in this class, analysing the character-sketches and doing thesis on the writing style of the different authors. Sonal, Sakshi and Pratishtha had opted for fashion designing instead! “Sorry Mrs Ghosh!” Khushboo said, catching up her breath, “I missed my bus and thats why I had to come with Mrs bhan in her car after she had taken the assembly of the junior school!” After Mrs Ghosh had allowed her in and had marked her present, she took a new pile of dark green thick books from the classroom cupboard and distributed them to each one of us. “Children, We have a double English class today after lunch. So, we would be starting with ‘Great Expectations’ from Charles Dickens now and we would also be continuing with ‘The Tempest’ simontaniously.” “Thats a relief!” a voice whispered “ we need a break from thee, thy and thou now or we will soon start speaking that way amongst ourselves too!” I think...” Mrs Ghosh remanded, looking straight at Avtar, having heard his comment, “that on the contrary, Mr. Shakespeare is the one who needs a break from all of you! You murder his dialogues sometimes. Anyway, I also have to inform you four girls of the commerce stream”, she said gesturing towards us, “ that your new Accounts teacher would be taking your classes from today. Mrs. Bhan has found a very nice and talented person finally for the subject.” The four of us groaned, as we got up to form a line for the assembly, as till now we were getting all the accounts classes as free periods because of the absence of the teacher for it and in that time we enjoyed long sessions of frolicking and chatting. I was most depressed as I knew that I, in particular, would come out to be the lousiest at the subject. It was afterall, a close cousin of Mathematics!
After the assembly, where after the hymn, Mrs Bhan had warned the chidren to behave properly in the bus while coming to the school as she was getting a lot of complaints from the teachers, we four girls took our books and made our way to the first floor for our first lesson of the day- the Economics class. Boys’ classes were held in our main classroom and we only spent a little time there before the assembly and during the English lessons. We had been assigned a small cubicle near the staffroom for all our classes which had initially seemed to be very small and stuffy but with the passage of time, we had come to love it and now treated it as our privately owned domain. We crossed the library and entered the door of the staffroom, immediately on the left of which was our cubicle. There was room for exactly four small-sized blue chairs for each of us and a plain, roomier chair for the faculty in our room. Our places had long since mutually been fixed amongst ourselves and lifting aside the joint panel attached to the hands of our chairs for keeping the books, we took our seats. Economics class was taken by our very dear Christian teacher in her fifties- Mrs. Barbara David. She kept her hair short in the boy-cut style and was fitter than many younger people in the school. Previously, she had been incharge of the whole junior school but she had been transferred here, to the senior school for taking our commerce and economics classes as she had majored in these subjects in college and also took excellent coaching classes for them at her home in the evenings. Even though Mrs. David was much older than all of us, we shared a great rapport with her and she was always there to favour us and to eagerly discuss all types of our academic as well as personal matters openly. Today, she strode in ten minutes late and immediately commanded us to open up our text-books to page 38. “I was talking to Mrs. Bhan about a student and did not hear the bell at all!” she said in a wheezy and huffy voice by having rushed to the class in such a hurry, “I bet you girls must have been elated thinking that Mrs. David is not going to turn up for the lesson!” “No ma’am!”, Pratishtha said, “We would never do that! We loooooooooove eco classes.” “ Young ladies!” Mrs. David said, raising her right eyebrow and smiling, “I am not that old yet that you could butter me up and I would not understand it. Whenever I take reading lessons, you all are asleep halfway through the class. I think you don’t take me seriously enough. I should be more strict with you girls, you know! Other teachers say that I have spoiled all of you rotten. And I think they are right. Now come-on! Toooooo the next chapter.” She loudly exclaimed over our defensive replies and mock outbursts. We never took Mrs. David seriously but loved her a loot! Turn by turn, we read the chapter about the monopolistic market conditions and its effects. During the second-half of the class, Mrs. David dictated us some important points regarding the topic and the answers of the commonly asked questions. Sometimes, when only a last few minutes of the class would be left and we Mrs. David would see that we all are tired, she would let us off early. But today, even after our pleas and requests, she made sure that we keep on writing the matter. Sonal, who was eventhough sitting nearest to Mrs. David kept asking her to repeat the ‘last sentence’ and finally, latter retorted in an irritated manner “Arreee, this one! Sonal, are you short of hearing or what!” rest three of us burst out laughing and kept repeating to Sonal in unison- “short of hearing or what!” for the rest of the lesson. “That’s enough girls!” Mrs. David said, closing her register and putting the cap back on her pen. “and by the way, I keep telling you that the jeans you wear are far tighter than the ones which would be appropriate according to the school and you all don’t listen. The girls of junior classes even more so than you. Now I have heard that if this continues then your uniform might get changed to something more suitable and comfortable.” “Noooooooooo!”, we all exclaimed together. We absolutely loved our uniform. It was so much cooler and trendier and smarter. The idea of wearing something else to the school was frightening and appalling! “ I said its a possibility! So mend your ways girls and tell your friends and juniors to do the same too.” Just on cue, the bell rang, announcing the end of the lesson and Mrs. David left for her next class. While coming out of the cubicle to search for our new Accounts teacher for our double period, the possibily of changing our beloved dress-code was the only topic of discussion between us and we looked over each other if they really were as “inappropriate” as they said, for wearing them at school!
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