The
best ever cricket team to lay its foot on England soil was the 1948 Australian
Team, right from the beginning of the tour till the end, the team never
lost a single match, be it a tour game
or a test match! No bowler could challenge the batting might of Don Bradman, Arthur
Morris and no batsman from the England team could stand the hostility of Ray
Lindwall and Keith Miller. In short,
they were the Invincibles, for they swept aside the opposition with such
audacity and ruthless professionalism that England were very much happy to see
the back of Australians sailing on their way to Australia!
Approximately
4 and half decades after this historic Australian cricket team, in the Indian
sub- continent, in Karnataka, in Bangalore, in Rajajinagar, an equally
invincible group of women, who for all their capability and mind bobbling
memory power had the prowess, to churn out 1st class results, from each
and every student who attended their classes! They were battle hardened to such
an extent that any kind of student would fail to fail in the exams, even if he
wished to do so, thus making them Invincible! I am not sure what kind of magic
potion that they fed on, but they ensured that we fed on the text books along with
every morsel of food that we ate during our last one year of high school, which
happened to be during the 10th standard!! Yes, I am once again
talking about Sardar Patel High School, and the invincible group of women, who
year after year dealt with all KINDS of students, churning out consistent 100%
FC results, form the main cast of this Sardars’ Invincibles!!!
The
teachers whom I am profiling in this post, taught us corresponding subjects for
my class, i.e. 10th C. The same teachers could have taught different
subjects for other sections, however I am sure, the experience would be almost
similar, if not the same. Please go ahead and enjoy, as I profile few of them,
and I am happy if it brings a smile on your faces!! So, time to unwind, and say
“Good Morning, miss!!” (Oops!! by the way, in high school we were told not to
greet the teacher in one loud voice. It would be sound like donkeys braying in
unison, juxtaposing with the sweet voices!)
So,
here goes the list:
KNM(K
N Mangala), Maths-II: Our class teacher, who bore the brunt of all the
complaints against our class. More than geometry, she had to contend with
teaching moral science to her pupils (it was all about adolescent moral science,
not that something nasty had happened, but whatever had happened was considered
nasty, then ;)). A smart guy in our class had got stenciled letters from
smarter students (the author’s gender was a big question till the end of the
academic year!!) which caused unprecedented hoopla in the class, a concern for
the class teacher, thinking that such “diversions” would affect the students’
performance in the exams! She also had to contend with a frail boy, who for all
his goodness in studies, was forced to being a class leader, although for a
very short duration! Unable to cope up with the newly given responsibility, the
boy had the audacity to speak up to the big boss of the school that he would
not be interested in the role, for which she was reprimanded by the big man!!
She also had to contend with constant battles between the two races in the
class, the Martians and Venusians for all the trivial issues! Amidst all these
contentions, she had to contend with finishing the portions for her assigned
subject, Geometry, which in itself had fewer contentions in terms of the
concepts! Because for all that I understood about mathematics, is that you
either get it or you don’t! and I used to get most of what was taught in Maths,
however, there was one more sublime subject for all its facts and figures put
together, was subjected to sublimation in my brains!!! SOCIAL STUDIES!!!
NRS(N
R Sukanya), Social Studies-I (History and Civics): The owner of the softest
voice you could never hear! The barely audible whispers would pick up pitch
only in situations when the lady found that even students sitting in the 3rd
bench had started dozing off in her classes! It was very difficult to dislodge
her of her composure for we never found her shouting at even a single soul in
the class; this can be attributed partially to the subject which she taught! I
was almost in awe at the accuracy of her memory in remembering dates! (Not the
ones that is the default meaning of “dates” nowadays, but those which made
their way to our social studies text books) and to instill such unbelievable
retention capacity, she had found a unique way of framing questions for the 1000 odd
tests/exams we wrote during that year! She could manage to frame a question on
each and every paragraph in the text book! I am not sure if this was her sole
contribution, or other invincibles had a role to play in this plot, but our
text books had paragraphs marked within square brackets, with numbering 1,
2,3,4… etc. Each number representing a point to be answered for a question on
that paragraph and each point worth half a mark!!! (Till high school I never
knew that decimals were worth their weight in gold, at least for the students
of SPHS!) Some meticulous types (the top
notch rank holders), had gone one step further and highlighted some text within
the paragraph, apart from the numbering!
The real history buffs, had notes written down at all angles across the
text books along with these marked ones, with only them having the power to
decipher what they wrote!! As a result, the Social Studies text book was a butchered
tattered lump of printed paper, loosely bound by a thread, strong enough to
bind together the pages until the end of the year! Another text book, that was
bruised and battered by these savage markings, was Sanskrit!
TGK(T
G Karuna), Sanskrit-I : The lady who had the capacity to memorize text written
in one language, translate it on the go and explain the same in English to a
bunch of confused kannadigas!! (I can’t recollect anyone who was a non
kannadiga in my class). The sole purpose
of studying great plays written by kalidasa, brahthruhari, bana bhatta was a
target of 75 marks! Tuck in a few shlokas from the text book in your answer
paper and you would be awarded additional marks!, not more than the
quintessential half mark, mind you! But the toughest part was the confusion of
quoting the shlokas! Of the hundreds of shlokas mentioned in the 10s of
chapters in the text book, it was purely a guess work as to which shloka would
fit in which answer!! I swear by the almighty, I dint even have a blinking idea
about the appropriateness of its placement in the answers! Since, there was no
logic to linking the text and the shlokas, my efforts in making the most of
what Kalidasa, Brahthruhari etc had written, had become my struggle during that
entire one year! Add grammar to the already existing confusion, and it would be a venkatesh Prasad/javagal srinath pair batting at the crease with 10 runs to
win!! What’s the fuss about Sanskrit grammar? After all it’s worth only 50
Marks! Read on….
MKL
(MK Lakshmi Devi), Sanskrit - II : What is the sapthami vibhakthi bahuvachana for
munihi shabdha? Jaws as well as heads drop, few drop the pencil/pen on the
floor and bend down to take an eternity to pick it up! Akaaraanth pulling raama
shabdha prathama vibhakthi (raamaha raamou raamaaha) is the only shabdha each
and every student can recite! Don’t even dream about the sapthami vibhakti, I doubt
even Lord Rama himself would get it right!! With every student slouching to the
lowest possible level, one of my dear classmate was made to stand to give the
answer!! All the other heads in the class went up, sympathizing for the (ill)fate
of the chosen one, and eagerly awaiting the answer! After about a minute, Phat!
The familiar sound was heard! The cheeks of the boy were visibly red, and
ooohhh an anxious sigh from the class was heard! This was the summary of the
class which was attended with utmost attention and concentration by all the
students. MKL m’ams love for Sanskrit grammar made her behave tough on the
students to get it absolutely right, and right every time. But for all her
efforts I must confess that I personally found it very tough to identify the
alankaaras and chanddassu from the various Sanskrit shlokas! The only alankaara
which I could clearly identify was Keshaalankaara :). Yeah the word at least sounds
familiar because Yeah! This is kannada and kannada is easy, because it is
maathrubhaase! But writing in kannada was tough, why? Up next….
PC(Padma
Chikkerur), Kannada : “Sphutavaagi bareyodhanna ondh chawllenge (no its not a
spelling mistake, this is the verbatim of the pronunciation) antha thogondu
neevu bareyodhanna abhyasa madbeku” class after class, day after day, week
after week, there was at least one session on hand writing improvement in every
class! A female protagonist from our class was her ideal and was lauded without
fail for the artistry in her writing! What pen does she use to write? How does
she hold the pen? This girl seemed to have mesmerized the teacher by her hand
writing!! She was the grapho-celebrity of our class!!! So in the interest of
students to reach her level of calligraphic writing, PC m’am made us write one
page of text in Kannada every day! This exercise which began in right earnest
(mind you only by the teacher) fizzed out after students found ways and means
of hoodwinking the purpose ;)! For
a book that had a standard 20 lines per page, the first line of the page was
dedicated writing the date, the second line for writing three letters “Kannada”,
a line gap after that, and then start the text. Thus the students got away with
writing approx. 16 lines per page. One of the baby einsteins of the class got the
brilliant idea of writing poems for this activity! Great!! Each line would have
two to three words and then jump to the next line! Writing hardly 50 to 60
words would fill up the page! Realizing that the kids have outsmarted her, PC
stopped this exercise, half way through the academic year! Had we continued
probably we would have had alternate careers as calligraphy experts!
By
the way, our female protagonist wrote “numbers” artistically as well :), so what’s the big deal!! Ahaa,
yes, our Mathematics teacher was also a fan of her hand writing! Fortunately we
dint have to write a page full of numbers! but yes, Malini Sampath m’am had a
weakness for handwriting!
MS(Malini
Sampath), Maths-I : The most affable of teachers for a mathematics subject who found
more beauty in hand writing than logic. Her insistence on neatness and
legibility was justifiable, however when it started inclining towards artistry
we students found it a bit difficult to relate the logic behind the artistry of
writing numbers! Her unique ways of making students realize what is wrong was worth patenting!
Picture this: MS m’am starts writing on the board the solution
of a problem and 50 odd buffaloes religiously bend the head down and start
copying the same! Almost at the end she gives a pause, turns around a gives a
cold stare at the whole class, carefully searching length and breadth of the
class, hoping for someone to raise their hand and say, “ but m’am…..”. Realizing
that the “Dimaag ki batthi” has a blown fuse for the buffaloes of both the
genders, she says….”this solution is wroooooooooong!!!” Boooo!! The sound
emanating from all the corners of the class, few giggles... The gentle lady
could scold no more than the following statement, “Don’t howl like owls!!” the permanent
rhyme we used to hear throughout the academic year!
Apart
from the above mentioned teachers, there were others, in whose class the
activity of teaching/studying passed through uneventfully :), not that those classes weren’t fun, but were less
eventful! However, for all our monkey pranks, the above mentioned teachers and
others molded and chiseled us, for what we are today, and I would forever be
indebted to this bunch of wonderful women, who shaped the future of every
student they taught and made sure they pass out of school in flying colors!
My
heartfelt wishes to all the teachers who taught me at 10th C, in VVS
Sardar Patel High School
KNM
m’am, NRS m’am, TGK m’am, MKL m’am, PC m’am, MS m’am, PN m’am, CVP m’am, GK m’am, PR m’am
and last but not the least PV sir, A BIG THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOU!!!
A[V]I
