Shastri Tuitions - Part 1

“Bloody, road nalli hogo rowdy galigintha kade aagodhrallo neevu!, 15 minutes late agli, 30 minutes late aagli bloody thale bagsi odhtha irbeku, gottaitha”, screamed the voice,  burning red eyes, a plastic scale wrenched 120 degrees on either side of its axis, by strong forearms.  We students, standing still, silently applauding our ability to perfectly predict what the next sentence would be, waiting for the tormentor to walk out. Frankly there was no reason to feel happy about the ability, because these monologues  regularly purified our ears, day in day out for almost a year during our 2nd PU days.

Almost every engineer ( who by now would have become software engineer), who has studied in Bangalore since school days, lived in and around Rajajinagar, Vijayanagar, Malleshwaram would have had first-hand experience about the dialogue, rather monologue mentioned in the first line of this post. Yes, I am talking about Shastri Tuitions!!!

The roadmap for school kids coming from middle class families in these localities was pretty much written in stone, those days. Secure a rank or at least 85% in the SSLC exams (You would be a worthless carrot if you couldn’t score 90% in the SSLC exams), join the PCMB stream in either MES College, MES Kishore Kendra or KLE ( J Section, specifically!!), enroll for Shastri tuitions after the 1^st PU exams.  Get very very good scores in both PU and CET, to become either a doctor or engineer. So much was the importance laid to joining tuition that it was a belief that you would be left lurking in the dark, if dint join one. For a jackass like me, things weren’t much different even after joining one!!

Generally the highly motivated, wannabe engineers, with eye bobbling scores in 10^th, formed the majority of people who religiously attended and noted down each and every problem solved in Maths. The white apron aspirants memorized every word uttered in the botany and zoology class, almost instantly. PHYSICS and CHEMISTRY was of equal measure to both the clans, the aprons, because of the ability to remember everything, memorized CHEMISTRY with equal ease ( Sodium + Chlorine would only give Sodium Chloride, and nothing else, any amount of logic you put, the end result would still be same, hence easy to memorize) PHYSICS, a bit tough to memorize though, however wasn’t impossible. After all, even problems could be memorized!!!  The wannabe engineers weren’t  all that bad in memorizing things, either. And logic was second nature to them, hence PHYSICS too was a cake walk.  A few confused cabbages, like me who neither had the FLASH memory to store all that was uttered in BIOLOGY and CHEMISTRY, nor had the whiz kid logic to solve the problems in MATHS and PHYSICS, were left blinking in the conflict between the decision to join tuition in the first place and day/night dream about all the good things we were missing during the tuition hours!!

The ordeal started right after we finished the 1^st PU exams. Since, those were summer holidays, and we still had some time for the actual college to start for 2^nd PU, the tuition classes were conducted in full flow, in fact overflow. There were two batches, one for the morning and one for the evening. I dint have any particular liking for the timings of the batch. To some waking up early in the morning, going with fresh mind to the tuition would  deliver all the lectures directly to their FLASH memories, while for others evening batch would provide the convenience of studying right through the night up to the morning hours, so that they could dump everything in to their memories, during the silence of the night.

I was neither a morning person, nor had I the power of concentration or determination to sit through the night. Since my friends had opted for the evening batch, I also did the same. The batch timings sent my mind get into a whirlpool of depression!! 2pm to 930pm all seven days of the week!

The initial days, during the holidays in the tuition were a drag…The hot sun, the monotonous lectures, the barrage of tuition notes that were supposed to be written down….how much I cursed my lame decision to join the tuition. The monotony surprisingly was carried to Maths classes as well!!, miss 2 hours of maths class, and you would fall behind the class, by at least 150 maths problems. Amidst that marathon 7 and half hours of tuition, we also had a 15 minute break to attend nature’s call, which was our only access to outside world!

We got used to this routine, and meanwhile our college started, and I was very much happy with the change, for we got a chance to meet the civilization. The classes in the college were generally never paid much attention, as it is we wanted so much for a break from the monotony, of “listening” to the lecture.  So much was the disinterest that a 100 pages book, used to hold up two notes of different lectures. Flip the biology notes, and lo you would find the organic chemistry notes starting from the last pages. I dint even bother to maintain notes for language subjects; after all we were 1 year seniors in college, yeah!!!

Holding a book in hand, walking to the class, you look so cool!!, dumb age, dumb philosophy!!

Coming back to our tuition, we had 4 stalwarts one each for Physics, Chemistry, Maths and Biology. 

More about our stalwarts and their mannerism…in future posts!!!

A[V]I