Tikekar Sir

In the last post I wrote about Tikekar Sir. He is no more. He passed away last month. A reader of my blog told me this. Here are the contents of the mail that was sent to me "all I heard was that he was riding his bike, when he met with an accident & was rushed to the hospital…..he was not wearing a helmet & later on suffered a brain haemorage. He was only 35 & is survived by his wife & a 1-year-old son. He had moved into his new house only one day prior to the day of the accident.". When in school, I hated him for being a strict enforcer of discipline, but later I realised how necessary that was to manage a school as big as ours. One incident that I remember about Tikekar happened when I was in standard IX. Abhishek and Gurudatt, who were sitting near one of the windows in the classroom, were talking about something, when Tikekar walked by. Stunned Abhishek, shouted "Tikku". Tikekar sir heard that, but I fail to recollect if some punishment was meted out. Though the incident appears crude now, it was something over which we laughed a lot when we were 15 year olds. Sorry for that Tikekar Sir. A man who loved discipline and taught many NCC Cadets to march, the IES family will miss him.

Baaye Mud

The other day I went to Shopper's Stop with Harish. Harish bought a pants and wanted it to be altered. When we asked one of the sales men where should we proceed for the alteration, he pointed towards his left and told us, "Take the right". Confusing left with right is not uncommon. As he said that, I remembered how we would remember(and I still do it that way) daaye(right in Hindi) and baaye(left) when we were in school. Mr. Tikekar was our Physical Training teacher and we had marching as part of our physical training course. Mr. Tikekar used to shout, "Left..Right, Left, Right, Left....Baaye Mud(Take Left)", and I, more often than not, used to take the wrong turn. That was when some bright chap told me this. I was asked to remember 'B for Baaye' and 'B for Badge'. On our school uniform, we had a badge that was stiched to our left(baaye), above the pockets for guys and on the left pinafore strap for girls and I was asked to turn in the direction of the Badge for Baaye and the opposite direction for Daaye. And it was not long before I realised that almost everyone in the school memorised it in the same way!

How Old Is Our Sun?

This probably happened when I was in the ninth standard. All our science curriculum was split into two - Science I and Science II. Ms. Bhalekar taught us Science I. However, I forget the name of our Science II teacher. She was tall and slim, and till this happened, I thought, that she lacked sense of humour. Her classes used to be monotonous. Not that she was not knowledgeable, but we used to get bored in her class, as used to be the case with most other teachers. The chapter that was being discussed on this particular day was 'The Sun'. After the chapter was over, she proceeded for the Q & A. And then came this one. How old is our sun?. And when no one answered, she proceeded and said, "Sun and not Son".