This was so long ago I didn’t even pay attention to the girls in my violin class then. Then again they were so plain I think I mistook them for guys sometimes. Asked violin maami when ‘he is coming?’. One of the girls used to give hand drawn greeting cards on a fellow student’s birthday. There is something terribly frightening about a full grown young girl well into her menses using crayons in a greeting card. But more on that girl’s incredible story, later.
The genius of a primary school teacher largely manifests itself in writing humourous lyrics for well known film songs, which are then performed by little brats whose command over their voices is as bad as, if not worse than, a preschooler’s command over his bladder.
At the (tender, hehe) age of 10 I conceived a violent passion for Miss. A.
Oh yea. Really violent. Ms. A., or more precisely, A. miss, was I think my English, Maths and History teacher. She also took other classes, in fact, she ended up taking almost every class except for Hindi, which I think was taught by some ridiculous shastriji who didn’t know anything else. I had grown fluent in Hindi by then, to the extent of using words like yadi in the place of agar and (seriously) pratiksha in the case of ‘wait’.
‘Yaar mein toilet jaane tak tum mera pratiksha karoge?’ (wrong sex.) I am almost sure I didn’t use that word with a girl but with a boy.
Mehta sir was still blind as a bat and was getting a lot of trouble from us. We were all growing up, and tormented him. The girls also, which led to an early altercation with the class monitor, who had clear ideas about behaving in Mehta sir’s unfortunate classes. The little brat bitch never told the girls’ names to sir, but always ratted out the guys. Of course when this happened there would be a chorus of girls’ names, shouted out or muttered by boys getting ready for the blind justice of Mehta sir’s scale (its scale, always was, always will be, fuck you, ruler.). When these girls were called out, I would settled down happily to watch them flock to get whacked. No violet rose ever looked so bruised…
For some reason I said one day in class that I wanted to be a microbiologist when I grew up. I think I said it because it sounded like a big word that was about small things. A. Miss looked at me with that look all primary school teachers get when a kid who still doesn’t know his ass from his brain uses big words. Then she said she did MSC microbiology. Our love was secure. The Graduate was gonna get remade, desi style. She gave me a book on microbiology. I read a few pages, and then started looking at the pictures. It was awesome. Almost all the pics were basically cross-sections of tissues or cells. I searched for the female ovary, and then for the wolf’s blood cell, after watching Omen 2 one day and not sleeping much for the rest of the week.
Omen 2 gave me clear ideas on how a villain should behave, because the villain was such a little wimp in it. What a fail. You can manipulate all human minds, and you use it to take over the world? How about taking on some girls? He had his priorities wrong.
The class monitor was my next target. She was going to be mine. Like all children, I reasoned that intense hatred was only of course, a charming disguise for intense love.
There was an abandoned shack at the outskirts of the KV complex. It was seriously dirty, and a crow had recently breathed its last there, making it hard for all of us to breathe. We would go there sometimes during hide and seek. Essentially I would go hide, and wait for some girl to seek. It should have been the other way round, but I was confident of my abilities then.
I had a cunning plan formulated around the abandoned shack. It would work. The school festival or something (I forget what) was going to be in two weeks time and there were few classes and too much of Mehta sir, who was of course teaching us how to exert at least some control on the voice-box. He had already gone through three scales.
A. Miss had already written clever lyrics around songs such as Pardesi, Pardesi jaana nahi and others. It was I think some story about the Wolf that wanted a new coat of skin….I don’t remember the folk tale, some wolf amongst foxes or something? In any case, the foint was that the wolf would go to a darjee (tailor) and ask for the new coat, and then have some money issues or something, and then would sing darjee maamu, darjee maamu, mat kar phikar….mujhe dekh kar…mujhe dekh kar…This would also form an integral part of my cunning plan to correct the class monitor.
Watching the Titanic automatically made me draw. I am surprised nobody noticed the organic (hehe) link between seeing a nekkid wimmun on screen and rushing to practice drawing the next day. Perhaps my parents sniggered about it behind their palms while appreciating my ‘drawing’. I drew, sigh, Sherlock Holmes. Not even the older, badass version, but the young Sherlock Holmes made by Spielberg. We had an illustrated book on that movie, you know, the ones with a lot of glossy stills and lame writing. I was going to use the drawing to shattering effect.
What of A. Miss though? After all, violent lou was for her. Why did the class monitor suddenly become the center of such an elaborate plan? Take A Wild Guess.
It was the day of the school function. Mehta sir was looking murderous, he had bought a special 1 metre scale to ensure good behaviour and better bruises. When he got impatient he would swing it like a whip, while we leapt out of the way into the girls’ rows, which were always very well behaved and never targeted by that randy blind bastard. I just ended up sitting with the girls.
I had to make my move pretty soon as it would be evening. It had to be done at dusk, when the man turns into the wolf, and the wolf into the hunter. I was about to slip out of the rows and make it to the abandoned shack when-
Stay tuned.
