Growing Up

Our 5th year was splattered with all kinds of incidences. It was for this year's Teacher's Day that we howled at that chettan and got punishment for behaving like jackals. I'll tell you what happened.
This chettan came to our class and said he'll sing a song. We all waited for a hip-hop song and he started singing 'Aayiram paadasarangal kilungi.......'. The movie 'Niram' had just been released. We couldn't take it. We started howling, and our class was just next to the staffroom and the teachers came running in. We got a great deal of scolding and then they left. And would you believe it , that chettan said again,'So shall we sing another song?'
The next day during assembly, Venugopal Sir declared publicly that class 5 B had jackals; he described the whole event and we felt really humiliated. Our punishment was to clean the ground, collect fallen leaves and stuff. Our first period was Sreelatha Miss' and we spent the first whole Malayalam period out in the grounds. That was not a big punishment(actually we enjoyed it), but as soon as we came back in the second period, it was Jayanti miss' period, we started a torrent of complaints, that the chettan had goaded us into it, that it was actually his fault. Later during lunch, I believe, Ragi and someone went to Principal to complain. And what did I do??
When the great howling happened I was sitting next to Greeshma and she saw me joining in quite enthusiastically. When she confronted me later and declared that she had not even whistled, I denied the whole thing. I maintained that I had only cupped my hands arround my mouth and not made any sound. I was afraid to confess then, now I'm not.

Our Malayalam periods used to be sheer racing. Sreelatha miss would ask us to write all that 'artham' and all 5 times in rough book,and she would give a 'star' and 'verygood' to the fastest students. I believe, Aparna and Deepak used to be the competers for first place. Usually Aparna won and her handwriting was much better than Deepak's.

Nisha miss was our Maths teacher. She used to make us write multiplication tables daily. It was a compulsory homework and I've got loads of beatings for not doing it. Usually, when we got a freeperiod, we'll all get together and write a week's tables in advance.

It was also in 5th that I invented a game called'Deluxe' with Siddharth. I dont remember what it was, anyway it was stupid. Anyway, for me, games started losing their importance. For the first time in our lives we were allowed to take library books home and we were all really happy. We used to take that'Camey Jones'(I think) books about that girl with photographic memory. It was through them that I realized that UFO stands for 'Unidentified Flying Objects.' Later we started taking Bailey School Kids books.

It was also in 5th that Anu saved me from punishment. It happened like this:
I was reading Balarama, under my desk, again during classtime. Arunnath was sitting behind me, he saw this. He was a big 'para' in those days. Immediately he stood up and said it to miss. I closed the book and sat up straight and tried to look innocent. Miss came to me, and Anu who , I think, was sitting near me, came to my rescue. He said, 'Miss, the book is closed, she wouldn't have read the cover, right?' And so I escaped. I dont think I ever said 'thankyou' to him for that, but I'll say now, 'Dear Anu, Thank u'. I must also say that for years, I was afraid of, and didn't like, Arunnath, and it was only quite recently, during our Bio projects in 12th, that I realized that he was actually a harmless boy.

There were a lot of boy-girl divisions then. I mean when it came to games and all, boys wouldn't play with girls, they thought it was a shame. In those days too I was a big 'Upadeshi', I remember me and Aparna lecturing Ragi about her head-lices, that she'd better use 'medicare' or something and get rid of them, because, I said, the boys were just swarming around for some reason to criticise her.There was some problem when I called Anu 'dragon' or 'dinosaur' or something. There had been a more serious problem with Anjana miss when I'd told someone, as a joke, that 'DPEP' stands for 'Daridravaasi Pilleru Enganeyelum padichotte', but I'll skip that.


We used to play 'Ethu moola' (We weren't allowed to speak Malayalam, so we usually called it 'Which Corner') during intervals near the badam trees, and I remember seeing Nicey wearing a pinned up something over her shirt to make her skirt look like a pinafora, but Nicey says she'd never done anything like that, so it would have been someone else.

Ambika miss took SS, I believe. One of those days Pranav PM did something wrong in class and miss asked him to go and sit in front of the class and write imposition. I was sitting beside him. Just as he left his place he asked for a pen, I gave it to him. Result: Miss asked me to go, sit in front of the class too. Very neat!

Beena miss was our classteacher, I think. Any way it was she who made me class leader for the first time- it was done according to roll number. I wsa so happy I wrote it down under my desk: 'Christabella Thomas, the classleader' and stuff like that. Again Arunnath caught me. He tried to complain about it( we were not supposed to write on benches), but luckilly for me, no teachers listened to him, and I escaped.

One of the most important thing in those days was leading the class out after the National Anthem, I have never got a chance to do it, because the first benches were reserved and fixed for Anoop Roy and the other 'tharikidas' and they went out first. I used to resent them for that, and it was my biggest ambition to sit in the front bench. Years later, when I did get the chance, it was in 11th, and I didn't want it anymore, I was happy in the last benches, with hopes of a great deal of rule-breaking.

Ann came back in 5th, as she had promised, and she was full of Bombay stories, a boy called Chandan, who had a crush on her, or she had a crush on him, I forget which. It was also the year that Syam P came, and maybe Niranjana too.

It was in the beginning of 5th, I think, that I wrote a letter to Aparna. Until then I had had a best friend for two years , so I was afraid I'll lose her that year. I wrote a really touching letter indeed, expressing all my fears and worries to her, from my end of the classroom to the her corner, during a free period. I got back the reply within five minutes: that the letter was full of spelling mistakes, and that everything I had written was utter rubbish.