Excerpts from the Unpublished Memoirs of an Errant School Boy

At a recent class-reunion, conversation, as is wont on such occasions, turned to the Worthies who had taught us, and finally came to rest on two teachers. One was our Hindi teacher who stood out not only because she was one of the very few lady teachers in a boys school dominated by the austere Irish Brothers but also because she was so petite and charming that it was almost mandatory for every chap in senior school to fall in love with her. Unbeknown to her, this calf love spawned endless verses sighing about the unbearable anguish of unrequited ardour. However, in the case of one chap, distinguished for his boxing skill, matters went beyond respiratory turbulences and literary effluvium, and acquired a proprietorial hue. Through the sheer vigour of his poetic effusions, reinforced no doubt by his record of knock-outs in and out of the ring, he forced the other courtiers to retire to regions of doleful shades. However, our Hero soon encountered competition from an unexpected quarter. The only male teacher who was not in Holy Orders was our art and craft master from Tamil Nadu. In an ill-disguised pretence at patriot fervour, he decided to learn the national language. The resultant proximity with our Lady-on-the-Pedestal was viewed with profound suspicion by all us Courtiers.

Unable to bear it any longer, Our Hero resolved to wage war. During those days the art master was also standing in for the boxing coach who had resigned and left. So Our Hero went up to his unsuspecting opponent, who was oblivious of his Adversary Status, and got him to agree to a regular three round bout on the pretext of preparing for the inter-school tournament. The Courtiers, having sunk all personal rivalries, rallied around Our Hero. War councils were held. Chaps who had to be carried into the ring (because their knees, after sufficient knocking in the dressing room, just gave way when it came to taking the long walk to the ring) came up with ingenious strategies of feints and cuts, while others with their new-found expertise in anatomy, hastened to point out the Adversary’s weak spots which, if judiciously pounded, were certain to reduce him to putty. Great was the excitement: David had taken on Goliath (though in this case there was but little difference in size); True Love had challenged the Pretender. It was expected that in some mysterious way, our Lady-on-the-Pedestal (oblivious of all the fracas she had caused), would recognise the tremendous sacrifice being made for her and hasten to make some appropriate, though undefined, recompense.

On came the Longest Day and the Grand Fight was scheduled for the games period in the afternoon. Like the Charge of the Light Brigade Our Hero rushed into battle. What he lacked in prowess he made up in fury. But the Adversary was far too experienced and most of the young warrior’s salvoes fell on empty air. In the middle of the second round the Adversary decided to stop the fight as True Love was rapidly discovering his feet of clay. For the next two days Our Hero was not seen in school. He returned the third day, having graduated from a pining lover to a confirmed misogynist, a sadder but wiser man. Our misogynist is now a senior level Civil Servant, happily married to a class-mate at the academy. And as for the Adversary, he decided that his lessons in Hindi required a more permanent liaison with the Lady-on-the-Pedestal and so he proposed and she accepted.

The second teacher who was the focus of our attention at the re-union was a gruff Irishman whose ill-humoured demeanour, as it then appeared to us, was reinforced by the long years of rigorous abstinence of a man in holy orders. His piercing steely eyes below rust coloured bushy eyebrows complemented his nasal Irish twang, punctuated with soul-quaking growls tinged with an occasional asthmatic wheeze. Among his many accomplishments was a rock-like wrist supported by strong fore-arm muscles, having been built, no doubt, through the long years of swishing the cane at errant schoolboys. His modus operandi was to give two geometry theorems to be learnt at home. The next day in class two chaps would be asked to go up to the black-board and do them there. While the Quarry worked on the black-board, the Mortal Dread stood at the other end of the class-room, swinging his cane, waiting for the slightest mistake to take him lumbering down the class-room to belabour some geometric sense into the hapless victim.

The two theorems given to the class one fateful day were: “In a triangle if the sides are equal then the angles are also equal” which was a rather simple one and easily memorised. The other one made some queer and fearful sounds like Pythagoras and hypotenuse, and was something about the square on the hypotenuse being equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Only the most intrepid knight-at-arms could take on such monsters through the maze of their geometric habitation. That evening, while pondering over this problem, the law of probability was discovered (not bad for a chap in class seven!).The reasoning was that having prepared one theorem very well, and given the fact that there were nineteen other chaps in the class, the probability of being called upon to do the other theorem were quite negligible.
However, as matters turned out, one’s faith in the new-found law was so complete that one quite failed to recognise one’s name when called out in total contravention to the law. A sharp nudge from the neighbour’s elbow found one plodding unwillingly from the desk to the black-board. No mortal ever walked through the valley of the shadow of death more fearfully than did this Victim that morning. All sense of reality fast slipped away and one’s entire being was concentrated on hearing the sound of lumbering feet that would anon descend upon this Errant Schoolboy. The process at the black-board had barely gone beyond drawing the triangle when, with the roar of an enraged bull, Nemesis rushed upon the hapless Victim. Quaking with fear, having lost both wits and volition and responding only to the primordial instinct of survival, the Victim ducked behind the black-board (it was the tripod variety). But Nemesis was not to be thwarted and soon there was a new version of the traditional ‘round-and-round-the-mulberry-bush’ with the difference that this was no picnic and the mulberry bush was the black-board. The shocked disbelief of the class-mates gave way to a snigger and then turned into a loud roar of encouragement for the Nimble Foot. This roar restored sense into The-Victim-now-turned-Nimble-Foot, who, appalled at having, quite inadvertently, started this not-so-merry-go-round, came to a dead halt. Nemesis had, by now, acquired that ire of the Furies which was spoken of with holy dread by the Greeks; and a wild rain of the cane began whose marks were borne long after the swish was heard no more. Enough was enough and the Victim decided to call it a day. From the next day an hollow tree trunk became an ideal place for hiding the school-bag and the entire day tripped by with so much to explore and discover. Butterflies and bees, travelling salesmen and cowherds, lovers meeting in the quiet of a graveyard, an encounter with a soft-fingered pick-pocket, were part of an exciting adventure – but that, as they say, is another story.

In the fullness of time the pater familias came to know that his First Born (on whose birth a month’s salary had gone into laddoos), had strayed from the straight and the narrow. And Pater was sore oppressed. Though Pater was well familiar with the parable of the Prodigal Son, yet on that day no fatted calf awaited this Prodigal when he pretended to return from a hard day at school. Instead, he (the Pater) proceeded to put into action a thesis he had assiduously worked on throughout his life: “The Salutary Effect on the Cerebrum of Resounding and Repeated Impact on the Fundament”. Having firmly established the veracity of his thesis, as evidenced from the loud and piteous lamentations of the Soul in Purgatory, he marched The Vanquished Wanderer, tail tucked firmly between the legs, eyes fixed on the ground, to the presence of the Dreaded Preceptor. Preceptor in front, Pater behind, one could not but expect the worst. But just then the Guardian Angel who watches over all Errant Schoolboys, but had, so far, been away on Study Leave (with full pay and allowances), returned. A nasal grunt and a gruff expression of grief escaped some chink in the rough exterior of the Preceptor, and all was forgiven. From the next day it was business as usual – theorems and growls and canes and all.

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