Phyjicks and Compooters

Despite the rumours you may or may not have heard, I'm still alive. Alive and kickin'. I kicked a piece of furniture yesterday out of sheer joy when Kolkata Knight Riders won by 5 runs. This angered me and it really hurt which is why I kicked it hard again, out of scorn. This hurt some more and now the red swelling on my shin looks really suspicious. Atleast it's a sign that I'm still alive. The days somehow seem dreary, drawn-out, boring. Even the pitiful days spent drawing phallic objects on the school walls as righteous retaliation for being sent out of class at various times of the day seem bright and more full of life. Aah nostalgia!

It's a funny word - nostalgia. It somehow reminds me of nasal hair. Maybe it's the 'nos' and 'algia' in the same word. Or maybe it's coz my own nasal hair seems to have found some kind of super-fertilizer in my snot. You'd think I'd have learned better than to make fun of Bar's nasal hair by now. Well you're wrong! That guy has creepy-crawly, oily-boily,hey-hey-jolly-jolly strands of mucous tentacles sticking out of his nostrils( I swear, you'd probably be able to see his brain through his nose if it wasn't for this bush of despicable cilia). Sometimes, I could distinguish well-formed hands with opposable thumbs and everything! Sometimes, I'd think they were curling the fingers inwards, summoning me by this more than horrific gesture. Sometimes, I'd think they were deliberately showing me the middle finger! And all this while Bar would be looking at me with a mild hatred buried somewhere in his swollen eyes( or nose). All this from nostalgia, it really doesn't mean anything beyond home-sickness.

Then there was good old Sircar. Well, he was not really good but he was pretty old. Again, he wasn't really pretty but he was kinda old. Umm, he was never really...you get the picture. Not a day went by without the familiar "Are you crajjeeeeee?" thundering through the green corridors and frightening some poor creature off his plastic seat as he sits on the floor, staring with a sinking heart at the guy in the colourful clothes disappearing in the black oblivion at the bottom of the monitor, and the psychadelic letters displaying 'High Score' rising up and realises he is unable to save his record! Level 322 damnit! God knows why this guy could never straighten his hands or wear trousers that fit or play something other than spider solitaire. It's true, he was a bloody genius. This is probably the only reason I despise him. Well, used to anyway. He was also the only real person who could stand up to Holt and tell him to 'suck it' in a perfectly civilized way, looking him square in the eye. This is probably the reason everyone respected him. The fact of the matter is that this guy knew his subject through and through and could recite algos, keeping pace with us reciting the school song. Despite this he could not teach for shit and didn't give a damn if anyone understood shit and was an expert at delivering bouncers. The T-rex style hand deformity enabled him to deliver them with gut-wrenching speed and knock your brains out, without ever giving the impression that it came anywhere near your head. Oh ya, and he always made it a point to scribble words like "Nonsense" and "How can this work??"(both question marks inclusive) in your answer paper. He also made a kind of rolly-polly motion with his hands when he said something like "Samaltanous" and smiled with cold malicious fury when you appeared in his class after the period bell had rung and greeted you with a line like "It takes 5 minutes to teach it but a life time to miss it!" Well, I could never understand head or tail of this liner. If it takes 5 minutes to teach, it takes 5 minutes to miss is my logic. But then again I could never understand most of what he taught( indicated by the ubiquitous "nonsense" scribbled on my paper).

Sircar's dearly beloved Mr. Dasgupta( known affectionately as Dogga), is known throughout school as a man of principle. Yes, it is a matter of principle to grade everyone below 40, it is a matter of principle to shake your ass like a hoola dancer while rubbing the blackboard, it is a matter of principle to scratch your armpits and comb your hair in a sleek right-parted way and wear 3 sweaters and a jacket in mid February just coz your mom tells you to! This guy really took joy in teaching us physics, in crushing the essence of our desire to live through words like 'diodes' and 'transistors'. Hell, he could've been talking about dildos and reindeer for all I care! Needless to say, Dogga is the most meticulous guy I have ever met. Not once did I find any error with the way he had corrected or marked my paper, not one addition mistake, not one stray mark. Sometimes it got really pissing off! His lame humour was unconventionally funny, not coz they were actually in the true sense funny, but for the sole reason that we always knew what was coming and most of the time could read it off the book before he did! When he caught somebody bashing up some other guy, the favourite line was "Please dont hit him, I can see your biceps rippling out". Talking about graphs, saying something in the line of "Don't emphasize your dots till your pencil nib breaks off" was a must. He probably saw the world at twice its normal size through his prehistoric glasses, which might well have been windshields, for he took everything seriously at twice its importance. Sports was always a big deal with him. The fact that half the Lefroy house guys were out in the canteen, drinking coke while he toiled on was irrelevant. He even spent hours figuring out the 'most advantageous' position for pulling the rope in tug-o-war!

Dogga's partner in crime, known since the beginning of time as Shibu, is for some weird reason blessed with a name like Shibnath Chakraborty and proudly coaxed us to call him the same."The teechars call me Shibu becoj they labh me. You will call me Mr. Chokroborty!" This guy shows no mercy while marking papers. He had his own brilliant one-liners. "Staady phrom Bhatnagor and you will get into IIT!" Somebody seen not taking down his notes( usually read out from the text) was given the usual lecture about how he would fail( phail) in physics. I guess it was a calculated judgement as more than half the guys phailed in his class. Once, he asked a student to answer true or false. The guy obviously had no idea what Shibu was talking about and so said true, but blurted out false when he saw Shibu shaking his head. Immediately Shibu burst out with the one line I'll never forget in my life - "Kya bhaya, hoye chokka noye phokka?" It was never so much what he said, but the pathological bangalibabu image and finesse with which he delivered his genius that made the tears roll down our cheeks as we drowned in wild hysteria( whether we laughed at him or with him was never an issue). He pronounced words like "Bhibjyor"(Vibgyor) and "Shayon"(cyan) with a special fondness and threatened to complain to Mr. Ireland whenever anyone was spotted taking a doze in his all-essential physics class. Well, we all knew Ireland didn't give a shit who slept in Shibu's class and we didn't give a shit who Shibu thought slept in his class, and so dwelling in heavenly slumber is probably the most cherished memory I have of his classes.

Yeah, yeah I know, this seems a bit blown out of proportion. Bor's nose hair didn't actually beckon you to come join them in the grand canyon, did they? Sircar never actually told Holt to suck it, did he? Dogga's mom didn't actually tell him to give us all a 40, did she? Well, all we can do is imagine. What if we didn't have them as our teachers? They'd just be some other boring random guys who wouldn't be worth this post! It seems impossible to post about so many teachers in one mammoth post( and my fingers hurt), so I shall post soon enough about our other favourites.

Today: Computers and Physics
Coming soon: Chemistry and the like......(suspense music fades away).