11 posts tagged “hac”

My daughter's vacation ends and school starts tomorrow.  She is pretty indifferent about it unlike her mother who is shaking with excitement and also nervous and is behaving much like a cat on a hot tin roof.   Excited because her little baby is going to first standard now - she can still vividly remember the juicy kicks she got when the kid was inside her.

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Back during school years, I would always look forward to the first day of school after summer vacation.  The glow on every child's face, the sights and smells of school (not near the toilets though), the new uncomfortable uniforms, biting new shoes, the new school satchel, newly covered books, the excitement of knowing who would be in my section that year (there was "shuffling" every year), who my class teacher would be...and so on.

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While at school, I was part of the school choir.  The dramatics club would stage musicals now and then and despite my secret hope of being chosen to play a part on stage, I was always delegated to the side stage, as an alto, which in itself was not necessarily bad; at least I did not have to wear makeup.  A lot of effort went into these musicals, and I wonder where the teachers got the energy from, to herd a group of children and bid them do their stuff.  I distinctly remember a musical called "Thumbalina" where the title role was played by a rather short classmate of mine.  I don't remember any of the songs in it though, it was staged when I was in primary school.

We also staged a musical called "The Prodigal Son" (from the Testament), and for some reason, one of the songs in the musical has been running in my head all day today.  It seems to fit my own ruminations of the past few weeks. The song goes thus:

There seem to be several people
Locked up inside of me
Fighting a constant battle
For my identity
Sometimes they keep me prisoner
Sometimes they set me free
Is one of them my true being?
Is one of them really me?

Who am I? 
Just a dreamer of dreams?
Who am I?
Quite a failure it seems?
No, A Hero.
The Idol of the crowd.

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I can't seem to get over the vacation mood.  Got a deadline in a week, and not even a semblance of sense yet.  One of these days I am going to go into hyper panic and I hope my Vox will be ready at that time for verbal outflow of tension.

This deadline is weird.  The requirements are so abstract that I am not even sure I can write anything.  Which is not good because right now, I am the only one in the company who can write, and if I get into a real or perceived mental block, the boss is not going to be a happy camper. 

HELP !

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Read an interesting book (for sake of internet censorship, I won't mention the name of the book), which is an ancient Indian treatise on some essential social umm...customs and practices....that mentions in the passing what makes a good wife.  Of course, it is all atrociously chauvinistic.  It says that one of the requirements of a good "house wife" (which itself is an aggravatingly cliched term) is that she maintains a thriving garden.  I suppose the author would find me an adequate "housewife" in that regard.  My garden, after many years of toil and sweat is just about beginning to respond.  But I won't talk anymore about it lest I jinx it.

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For a birthday treat, we had dinner at a restaurant called "Georgio" in Besent Nagar (Thanks for the tip Gayathri).  Good place. Decent ambience. They even had a projected show of the live World Cup cricket match that junior insisted on watching while eating.  Their Mamos were to die for, and main course was good too.  Desert however, was sadly lacking.  Try it out if you have some moolah to burn and event to celebrate.

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End of Ramble. 

 
    

  

We all have pockets in our life that profoundly influence who we are and how we came to be what we are.  My most influential periods yet, were the age of 12-18 (high /higher secondary school) and 24-31 (My years in the US). Years before 12 are blurry, and I remember snippets such as my friend Sou asking permission from my kindergarten teacher Ms. Daisy for ME to go to the toilet (yes, I am eternally grateful to you, Sou, and will take it to my grave),  Mrs. Mason tearing up a calender in a fit of fury in class II, because it contained a picture of a Hindu god, Mrs. Nirmala accusing me of speaking bad English in class IV that still hurts badly, a classmate Kalpana bullying me to no end in primary etc..and as you see, most of them, except Sou being my spokeswoman, are not pleasant experiences. I sometimes wonder if I would have been any different had the above instances not happened. Apart from peeing in my pants in kindergarten, of course.

My 12-18 are branded indelibly in my mind.  And my teachers are an integral part of that era.  Every single teacher who entered my life at that period of time has left some mark in what I am today.  Most of them in a good way, and some, unfortunately in a bad way, but I guess it is the good with the bad that has shaped my character today.  Despite the horrors of art class, I can't help being thankful to Mrs. S for showing me what creativity is all about, and creativity is the most essential trait in my profession today.

Mrs. Renuka Paramanand, my English teacher in higher-secondary.  This is not the first time I mention her in my blog. She is the one that instilled the love of writing in me.  She somehow believed that I had style and constantly encouraged me to write.  She would enroll me in competitions even without asking me, because it would help hone my skill, and hone it did.  She left school halfway through our 12th class, but I wrote to her for a few years after.  I would write voluminous letters to her, and she would write back reviewing my letters and pointing out slips in language and lauding good portions.  I owe to her what I am now , and would be most grateful to anyone who could convey the message to her.

Mrs. Saraswathy was my class teacher in 9th and 10th, who taught us Math.  I am not sure I learnt too much math from her as I would like to claim, because she was a genius who could not quite put into words the magnificience of her knowledge.  But, she was a wonderful friend and confidante.  She could instantly see through our growing up pains and would be most happy to sit with us and discuss our issues - our premenstrual cramps, the roadside romeos, the short-tempered geography teacher, our childish squabbles with classmates and so on, with no inhibitions.  The last I heard, she was living alone in a small apartment not far from where I live, and I would love to be able to meet her and tell her how much she has meant to me.

Ms. Sulochana was my biology teacher in seventh class.  She was the one who gave us the birds-and-bees lecture, although, to be honest, most of us knew them already from clandestinely reading medical books in our home library and discussing in detail with peers over lunch. But, I am still impressed with the style in which she "taught" us - not too scientific to make it sound boring or scary, not too flippant to make us giggle.  I hope I can take my daughter to Ms. Sulo when it is time for her birds-and-bees story, that she would undoubtedly know already by reading clandestine books and discussing with peers over lunch.

Ms. George was my English teacher in ninth and tenth.  A rolly polly woman, with a perpetually beaming face, and mischievious eyes that twinkled everytime she mentioned the prince of Morocco, on whom she claimed to have a crush because he was as dark as she is. 

And then there were Ms. Meenakshi, Mrs. Peace, Mrs. Vijaya, Mrs. Kameshwari, Mrs. Antony, Sister. Leena, Sister Catherine, Mrs. Subbulakshmi,  and a few others whose names slip my mind at the moment.

It seems that my life has been ruled by teachers.  And it continues to be, I am married to one.  So, I guess, there can be no one more suitable than I, to wish all teachers out there, a very happy teacher's day.  May your tribe increase and continue to shape lives and thoughts for a better future.

The title means: Obesience to the teacher

 

A recent spate of emails in our newly formed high school batch mate group launched me off on a nostalgic trip, as usual.  The victim this time being our art teacher, Mrs. S.

We had art classes from Std. IV to VIII, and there was ONE art teacher, Mrs. S.  Twenty years later, I can understand what made her the way she was, a spate of domestic problems that included being set on fire in the past by a vindictive mother-in-law and escaping by the skin of her teeth, a chronically ill husband, perpetual financial troubles of running a household in a teacher's salary and a big group of artistically challenged kids.  But at the age of 10, what strikes you is the terror that would envelop the class on Wednesdays in anticipation of the two periods of art class and Mrs. S after lunch. 

In retrospect, her art projects were very interesting, but the misery of art class and Mrs. S. shadowed any benefit we could derive from them.  There was one where we would use sandpaper to create a desert scene on paper.  We would cut camels (mostly looking like a cross between a sheep and an alien) out of art paper, use soft sand paper for sand dunes and water color the sky a blue (or  if we were imaginative enough, flaming orange to signify the heat).  At the end of the class, there would be sand in our socks (how did they get there?) and all over the classroom floor. 

Another project was contours.  My eternal nightmare.  We would buy a map of India or USA (Why USA?  I don't have a clue) from R. B. Store.  Then under the huge banyan tree (which has sadly been cut down now) in front of the toilet, we would make a big tub of paper mache with newspapers brought from home, and use the goo to show the various landscapes over the country.  For example, we would make huge mountains at around the Himalayas in the map, smaller plateaus in the Deccan and flat plains in the Gangetic and coromandel sections.  And once they dried over the week, we would paint them with watercolors. Brown for the hills, yellow for plateaus and green for plains.  The one Mrs. S does would look like a miniature country.  What we make (or more specifically I make) would look like a sample from the toilet behind.

Perspectives.  That was another of those nervous breakdown-inducing projects, where we would have to draw various objects as seen from different angles.  Not just draw.  We had to make calculations.  For example, if you were drawing a television, to get the straight up view, you would draw an equilateral triangle and draw a line three quarters of the distance from the corners of the parallel side and so on, if you get the drift. I was more interested in drawing knobs on the television. Yes, you imbecile, immature young things, televisions had knobs, not buttons. And were in black and white. And had lovely teak wood cabinets.  But I digress.

Ah, how can I forget the art book cover?  We had to make our own cover for the art book - the standard brown paper or the more common newspaper cover would not do.  The process involved having your father fill up the biggest bucket at home with water (at a time when Madras was reeling under a water scarcity), add a few drops of India ink exactly at the middle and let it diffuse by natural convection so that it forms random patterns on the surface of water, and your dad gingerly dips a chart paper on one side and lift it abruptly, all the while cursing himself for putting you in this school, so that the random pattern stuck to the paper, and you carefully place it in the sun so that it dries.  If you think that sounds easy, try doing it without letting the pattern run, or the paper becoming mache.

Vegetable block printing.  Moms would give us ladies fingers (okra) and carrots for class grumbling about the cost of vegetables these days.  We would carve out nondescript shapes out of the carrots using half a blade (yes, kids, dad shaved using razors that used blades that were tightened on the razor with nuts and bolts and used blades were given to us for art work) with a lot of blood shed and carefully deseed cut okras so that the crossection looked like a flower.  We would paint them with water color and print on our notebooks which would soon smell of decomposed vegetables. This art form, I must add has been dutifully passed on to my daughter who makes me buy okra every day so she can block paint her diary (see proof).

There was one more where we would bend some metal string after poking ourselves in various internal organs into, what is supposed to be, a human form, fill it up with cotton, wrap kite paper and make stick dolls. If someone knows what I am talking about, I would be obliged if you could describe it in more detail so I can teach V to do it for the rest of her summer vacation.

Mrs. S had an impressive repertoire of art ideas.  With my new found interest in art, I regret not having paid more attention to her.

It is said in Indian astrology, that if you had the attention of planet Saturn, you would never find clothes comfortable or becoming.  If I believed in astrology, I should say I must be Saturn's all-time favorite.  I cannot remember a time when I found clothes comfortable.  Or, fit me well. Or made me look good.  Sometimes I really wish I lived in a nudist colony, where it would not be quite as much a taboo to live as nature intended us to live. 

Back in school, we wore a uniform of brown skirt and checked collared shirt made of Terricot. I would remember wanting to curl up every morning at the thought of having to wear it.   My skin cannot tolerate anything that is not really old and worn-out cotton.  The more worn-out  the better - think grandmom's well-worn chungudi saree.  The first touch of the terricot on skin would make it smart and it would take a few hours before the skin came to terms with its fate.

The ritual of getting new uniforms was relegated to once a year, which did not quite suit the schedule of my outgrowing uniforms every two-and-half months.  So, while the year started with wearing over-sized clothes, there would be a brief period (say, three quarters of a day) when the uniform would actually fit well after which, the skirt would be either too tight at the waist, especially after the thayir-saadam-maavadu lunch, or above the knee, making bending over a feat-of-sorts (or fete-of-sorts if you were a voyerous pedophile), or the collar would cut off circulation neck upwards, which would not matter too much after lunch hour anyway, or the buttons on the blouse would threaten to snap.  The last was especially a problem during adolescence, when the human anatomy was having a makeover and moms were still wondering if it was time for those uplifters yet. It was especially horrible with the sports uniform (thanks for the photo , Viji).  As you can see from the photo in which I was perhaps 12, I could not look more uncomfortable.  Just looking at this photo makes me itch all over.  By the time I was in 12th, I was ready to graduate to no-more-uniform days of college.  Had I but known.

College.  When girls are supposed to bloom into women.  When the good, bad and ugly converge in the world of fashion.  When clothes-challenged-pets-of-saturn metamorphose from awkward to awkwarder.  Especially if the college were one of those that ride high in the city's fashion map.  Three years did nothing whatsoever to improve self-image.  If any, self-image plummeted into the dark abyss, propelled by designer clothes and pearl facials all around.

Then some amount of self respect returned in the seat of higher learning, where hopefully, brains mattered more than brassier size, and hostel-living boys would give any ugly girl a superiority complex.  This was followed by a stint in a really cold region, where most of the time, you were covered by dull, large overalls to beat the cold, and it did not matter what went underneath it, as long as there were many many layers of it inside.  Oh, bliss.

Now, I am a grown up.  I have a fantastic family and a sky-rocketing career.  I even have a blog that is read by 32 people all over the world.  So, do I walk with a confident stride, ready to take on the world?  No.  And why not?  Because I am always uncomfortable.  Saree makes me conscious for the show of mid section, which has expanded beyond my wildest dreams over the past decade.  Besides, the blouses never fit. Trousers make me hot (thermally, that is) at my legs.  Salwaars are consistently tailored badly that either they slip at the shoulder which have been designed by a very unfair almighty to slope at a highly obtuse angle w.r.p. neck that reaches for the stars, or compress the lungs so hard that the face is usually blue within two minutes of wearing it.  Skirt and blouse is fine, if I can find a cotton skirt that snug fits at the waist, but it involves having to shave, an activity I am not particularly fond of.

And don't even get me started on footwear.

This has been a fortnight of getting in touch with school buddies, it seems.
First was the embarrassing meeting with S.L. in India.  This was followed by M in Singapore finding me on the internet - Hail Google. And then a school friend I have been in touch with (SS - USA) gives me the ID of another friend (A - Quatar). 

The latest is P.P. (USA), who got my number from S.L. (India) (who, it seems, has not deleted my number from her cell yet) and has invited me to her sister's wedding reception next weekend.

That makes it four old friends in two weeks.  And it has been 18 years since we finished school. 

I am impressed.  Makes me 16 all over again.  With all the jokes cracked,  teachers nicknamed, lunches shared, beach excursions, heartburns healed, tears dried, boys oggled at, lessons learned, exams written, books borrowed, fights and make-ups. 

Only now it is over four different countries.

Should I feel disgusted or proud about the fact that my f-i-m syndrome is not restricted to pregnancy issues alone?

Last week, during one of my Grand-Sweets errands, I ran into a school-mate.  After a few microseconds of initial groping around for her name inside my hardware, I remembered it and we said the usual "Hi, how are you? It has been YEARS...".    Let us just call her S.L.

So far, so good.

So, S.L tells me that she works in a local arts & sciences college and is the VICE PRINCIPAL of the college.

I could have replied "Congratulations".
I could have said "Wonderful".
It would have been great if I had said "I knew you would become someone important"
Or at least I could have said "Good for you".

But what do I say?

"How come?"

I know vice principals of colleges don't blog hop; if they did, they would not be vice principals in the first place.  Still, if by any remote chance S.L. visits this blog site, despite her very probable vow never to have anything to do with me ever again, the following message is for her -

That's not what I meant.

The CBSE board's school leaving certificate exam (translation: XIIth std. public exam) begins today.  When I went to drop V at her school , the road was jam packed with all kinds of vehicles and parents waiting outside after having deposited their wards at the exam-hall.   What struck me most was the look of terror in most of the parents' faces.  There was pin drop silence, some parents were biting their nails, a few others sitting in front of the little pillayar temple at the entrance, deep in prayer and a few more trying to look cheerful, but their hearts quaking their entire being.  Oh, God, I thought to myself, will I go through this too?

As usual, the wheels spun.  I studied in a state board school (Anglo-Indian until Xth), and having not scored as much as I had expected in the X std. public exam, I had put in every possible effort into the school-final public.  I had finished studying the entire portions in December and revised and re-revised until D-day.  And on the first morning of exams, I remember being in panic because there was a big blank in my head, and I believed I had forgotten everything.  Which was far from the case, once I started writing the exam, but I still get palpitations at the memory of the day.  Math was especially excruciating - I was sure I was going to pass-out with all the dy/dx's staring at me from the question paper.   From then on, every exam continued to haunt me.  In W.C.C., at I.I.T., my GRE, TOEFL, TSE, Qualifiers at SU...  they continue to bully me in nightmares now.

But something good came out of it too.  I have grown to believe that exams are not the ultimate shaping factor in life.  Scoring a century in Math, or being the topper in school does not really make you knowledgeable or intelligent by a long shot.  If any, it gives you a false sense of self-worth, which when thwarted (it WILL be, in real life) can plummet your confidence into the netherworlds.  This I can say from personal experience.  The self-esteem that burrowed deep after I discovered that the school-first award does not make you a genius is just about beginning to slowly wake up from rock-bottom.  And I am handling it with extreme caution lest it decides to call it a day and goes back to rockier-still areas.

I hope my daughter does not grow to believe that studying for exams is more important than learning.  I hope she gets more education out of school than I did.

And I hope I don't join the ranks of the nail-biting parents I saw outside school today.

It is "sports day" at my daughter's school today.  And as ever, it takes me on a trip to past.

Our school (Holy Angels Convent Hr Sec School, if anyone is interested) would have sports day during the end of February-beginning March. About the time when the sun rubs its hands together in glee, getting ready to scorch the earth in the following months. 

Preparation would commence a couple of months before the event.  The athletic types would begin to train under coaches recruited especially for the event. A few more of us with athletic aspirations but less skill (and no permission from home to wear shorts required for formal training "What? in front of the male coaches? What is the world coming to?") would watch them (the athletes, not the coaches) longingly, waiting for them to take a break when we could go into the high-jump (or long jump or javelin or discus throw or hurdles) field and try our luck with it.  Lunch break would be spent gobbling up the food in record time, and dashing off to the field to do what catches our fancy ("high jump" for yours truly - personal record being 2.3 meters).

But what we would look forward to, would be the last period, during when, regular classes would be canceled and we would assemble in the vast playground (most of which has been usurped now to build more classrooms, as I sadly noticed recently) in our respective "houses" to practice "March Past".  P.T teachers, Ms. Daisy, Mrs. Rao and Mrs. Anna Mary, with whistles hanging around their neck would lead us around the ground, bellowing "Left... Left.... Left Right Left..." into the microphone.   This is one event that would make the best of friends enemies, if they belonged to two different houses.  I remember personal amimosity between my otherwise good friend V who belonged to "School House" and me ("Assunta House").   Pep talks from house leaders (Geetha for my house, on whom I remember having a crush) would buck up the fighting blood in us and nothing, just nothing would matter than getting our house to the top.

And the much awaited D-Day would arrive.  We would pack off to Rajaratnam Stadium wearing our house uniforms ( divided skirts in house colors - Yellow for Assunta, Red for Teresalina, Blue for School and Green for Hermine and cream blouse) with a bag full of standard snacks - Bun-butter-jam, cream biscuit (reserved for the occasion, they were a luxury item, not meant for normal days - good old Marie biscuit would do otherwise), chicklets, and lots of water and lunch (invariably Thayir saadam, with mavadu, in stainless steel "Carriers"). The more affluent kids would bring Cadbury's five star that the rest of us would salivate at. There would be stalls selling cool drinks and "kuchy ice", and in the era when pocket money meant money in the pocket of the father, it would be a great honor to be given five rupees on sports day to spend on the ice cream.  You'd be surprised that it was as late as the eighties, although some of our families continued to live in the fifties.

There would be mayhem at the stadium.  Parents were invited and usually moms gladly came.  As a parent myself now, the only question that comes to mind is "Why?".  I mean, if the kids have to roast in the sun, it would build them character and what not.  But I thought parents had their characters built long ago.  The only reason I can think of is that moms were so stuck at home with kids that any opportunity to meet other people (if only moms of other kids) was more than welcome.  Maybe if blogging had been around then, we would have had less spectators ?

There would be events on simultaneously, out of eyeshot of the audience.  The P.T techers would run around in their caps and try to gather kids wandering aimlessly.  The English teacher would be at the PA system, with a commentary no one cares to listen to.  The last event of the day would be the march past that we had been practicing for months ahead.  Despite the heat beating down, and the exhaustion from participating in events, the clarion call would get us all  braced up for the final fight. We'd march around the entire stadium to a professional band leading us, and come to stand-at-ease at the middle of the stadium for the announcement of results.

Oscar and Academy Award winners could learn a thing or two from us when the results were announced.  Tears of joy and disappointment would abound when the march past winner house is announced.  And then, when the all-disperse signal finally came, the parents would literally scrape off the blackened pieces of us from the ground and carry us home.