Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Pandit Sir !

Pandit sir was as famous for his ten sit ups as he was for his random shrugging of shoulders. Though I do not know why the ten sit ups was his favourite punishment, the random shrugging of shoulders was attributed to an electric shock he got while teaching students about electricity which came under the purview of a subject called as Work Experience. Reliable sources state that there was a time when some of his close relative was abroad and Pandit used to sell coins to the students in the class. Like most teachers in our school, Pandit was a specialist in more than one subject. He taught us Marathi in the eighth standard and he used to teach English to some other class too.
Pandit : You. Ten sit ups.
Student : But Sir.
Pandit : Twenty
Student : But Sir.
Pandit : Get out of the class.
This was what used to happen during his each and every lecture. I remember a time when almost a fifth of the class was given the punishment under some pretext. I often wondered why students settled for sit ups when they had the option of standing out of the class. When we were in eighth standard, Pandit was due to retire. And in his last year, he showed how eccentric he could be. In our terminal (mid year) exams he failed almost half the class in Marathi. Now, I speak Marathi at home and failing in Marathi was something I could not even dream of. I got thirty out of hundred and fell short by five marks to make it to the passing mark. Everyone was stunned after seeing their corrected paper. Even most who had passed had their marks in thirties. 'A' and 'B' divisions of our school had the best students in the standard - often referred to as The Cream. A few people in these divisions too were failed by Pandit. But then, their papers were reevaluated and finally everyone over there managed to pass. I sometimes hated the step motherly treatment accorded to the rest of the divisions by the teachers. I tried all the tricks so as to avoid that red mark on my report card. I requested grace marks from Pandit and supervisor Joshi ( immediate boss of our teachers) but they said that grace marks can only be given if someone fails in the annual exams. I even requested Pandit to deduct five marks from my English paper(Pandit had checked my English paper too. I got about 65) and allocate it where I needed them. But then all my tricks failed and so did I. I got that red mark on my report card. I avoided showing the report card to my parents for almost a month, but then finally had to show it to get a signature. Forgery was something I could not think of then(not that I can think of it now). One more thing that I remember about Pandit is that he used to look after the United Nations and General Knowledge exams. I had given those because they distributed some nice certificates with embossing and stuff and enrolling for the exams cost just twenty bucks. When I went to collect my certificate from Pandit, he asked me to clean his drawers(Furniture. Pun not at all intended). Finally Pandit retired after the mid term exams and I never failed in Marathi again.

5 Comments:

Blogger Dewdrop said...

Reminds me of a few eccentric Parsi teachers in my school. The worst of em was my PT teacher. Leave alone the physical exercises, she would ask the lil students to massage her fingers.

And my marathi sucked big time. Although my mom's marathi was/is extremely fluent, I would never get my lessons from her and would only manage a bare 35 in every exam. I still cant imagine how I scored 65 in my tenth std board exams.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005 10:46:00 PM  
Blogger Neel Arurkar said...

:-)

Friday, July 29, 2005 2:53:00 PM  
Blogger roya parsay said...

I wish I had sit ups for punishment to lose some weigh1 interesting1

Monday, August 01, 2005 3:14:00 AM  
Blogger Neel Arurkar said...

:-)

Monday, August 01, 2005 8:41:00 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

hey!quite interesting to know that you too had the same reason to attempt the GK and UN exams.infact, so tantalising were they..right?

Saturday, August 18, 2007 7:05:00 PM  

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