It seems people are finding many incidents of my life funny. Me thinks the same way. Of course, after years have passed after the incident has happened. Though I must not felt anywhere near to funny when it was happening!
I was thinking of my life at Tuticorin today. The two years I stayed there had long - lasting effects, not to mention the physical ones (the ballooning up of me!).
Take for instance the events at Sakthi Vinayagar Hindu Vidyalaya (!!) No no, I am not talking about my next street temple where hurried priests, shout mantras at the idols or where every Saturday you get puli saadam (tamarind rice). That was the school I studied. The bank quarters where we were supposed to say was in Chidambara Nagar which had a Chidambara Vinayagar Temple. And the school was in the same street. Hence THAT name for a school. So by default I was into that school, we didn’t need to go looking for a school.
You can conjure up images of an English Catholic Convent with an in - house church, only that you drastically imagine all nuns and fathers as hindus and the church as a temple right outside the entrance. You got the picture right? A Hindu Convent if I may say so!
Assuming you are an intelligent reader, guess what the uniform was like? Yes come on now that you have had a vivid description of the school you can have an easy guess. No, no! How can the uniform be the classic blue and white with a blue tie-on tie? It was saffron and white (gasp!). I mean the saffron that hits you in your face right into your eyes. ‘Slapping Saffron’ as I had named it. And to top it all a saffron tie (God give me strength how did I go like that daily there?!) with the letters SVHV in blue in the middle of the tie ( The cherry on the cake!!) So every morning you are in the school surrounded by hundreds of saffron whites all over the place. Mini-sadhus.
Poor girls, (Fine. This post is not about my escapades with lakshmi s or padma s. This is just about me and some characters) I had all my sympathy for them. Saffron pajamas, saffron kurtas, Saffron Ribbons!! The tacky ones made it a saffron riot with saffron bindis, saffron bangles and whatever else you can get in saffron in the market (After all, any sane shopkeeper won’t have saffron sandals or saffron bags on display!). Every Monday we had the assembly in the lawn (This one didn’t have a playground. But we still had a Physical Training lecture. Will tell you about it!). So imagine the assembly. The whole lawn in saffron, topped with white blobs. Saffron in the first floor all over the second floor!! Oh the walls of course! (You know the colour. Saffron and white. I had got tired by then. The blackboards were really black thanks be to Chidambara Vinayagar!)
The principal was a stout middle aged woman I don’t remember her name. (I do remember being scared by her on the very first day!). She would be any loving woman IF she spoke softly but her tone was one which would evoke a stammered response from a 9 th grade student even. Everything about her screamed “STRICT”. Her aide, the vice-principal, again a lady in her mid-life, was even more over powering. To my horror I found out later she took Chemistry for us! Her name was Rani by the way! (That was a needless bit of information. But anyways as much as these characters instilled a deep sense of fear, I was sure these were one-piece and I wouldn’t get to see any of them anywhere! I was in awe!) But still there was hope; the principal did not take any classes for us!
I remember this particular class of Ms.Rani, when she had asked me for an answer in front of the class. I answered “air”. That was the right answer by the way. She was mortified. I was paled to death. I was mentally chastising myself to have carelessly believed “air” to have been the right answer! I always believed she was pouncing upon hapless ones at the next available opportunity. She had still not recovered. I was 90 miles/sec into my upcoming coma. Shocked as shell, she turned into á la Queen Elizabeth ( you know “rani” .. Queen. It was a pun). Suddenly Chemistry lecture turned into phonetics class. She started teaching me how to pronounce ” a i r” properly. “It is not air” she said. “It is ‘yare’. Say it properly”. I thanked all my stars and blurted out the “correct answer” that she expected “Yare” I said. My soul resisted the ‘air’ to come out like that but it was “yare” as Rani ‘miss’ wanted. “Yare”. It took out the “yare” in my lungs as I said it. “Yes yare, that is right she said. I sat down. It has been 10 years since that “Yare incident” it is still in my memory as crisp paper.
Other than that eventful chemistry class, the physical education class was something to remember. I can challenge you about never having undergone such a P.T class for 7th grade students ever anywhere in any part of the globe. First of all, the unavailability of a ground posed restrictions. So we had P.T hour in class (!!). Okay so it was essentially a free hour you would think. Nope. A P.T sir used to come to class and teach (Would you believe this!!) about the dimensions of a basketball court, the length of a cricket pitch, all possible lengths and breadths of a football ground and all obnoxious numbers and measurements in connection with sports that you don’t even play in India!! To top it all we had quizzes about that crap! But in my second year there we did have the service of the bus (Same. Saffron bus. With a white line in the middle with the school’s name!! By now you must have been collecting a relief fund in my name I know!) which took us to a nearby ground and brought us back after the little bit of play we managed to squeeze in ( The bus ride back and forth ate up at least 20 minutes of the available 40).
If Mahalaxmi ‘miss’ in my 1 st standard was a memory, so is Ms. Rani and the booming principal. After all she made me sing in the annual day function. Guess what the theme was, national integration. And so it was colour themed. And so we were wearing clothes coded colourfully fitting to the theme. (Yes, you know where I am getting to?). It was a group song. We, in the group singing the song, all wore dresses with the colours of the flag!! ( Obviously.It had saffron in it too! Biiig mystery!) Luckily I was neither in the saffron, nor green, nor the white group. As the strict Ms. Rani looked on sternly to make sure we sung properly as we had practiced, I sang on taking in the faces of parents in the melee of saffron of students (The uniform was a MUST on such occasions!!). I sang in the middle of the group. In front of the mike. I didn’t have the jacket of the colour Ms.Rani had suggested me to buy. In fact no shop in Tuticorin (I believe in India too..) sells a coat of the colour Ms.Rani had wanted me to wear. So I had stuck colour paper of the shade of her choice on the brand new black jacket I had bought for this event. (I never wore that fevicol smelling jacket again. The fevicol smell might go but the stains of embarrassment in that jacket were unwashable!). I still have that photograph of mine standing in the middle of the flag formation wearing the jacket of an unvelievable colour! Dark Blue!
P.S:(For the lesser minded, I was the Ashok Chakra of the flag.)
