Regular readers of this column would know about my phobia of online classes. My friends are sick of my rants about how online classes are the pedagogical equivalent of a war crime. But I am only human, and although it took me two years — from March 2020 to March 2022 — I managed to make my peace with the perversity of e-schooling. But in a cruel twist of fate, from the first week of April, Kattabomman’s school reverted to physical mode.
For the benefit of readers born after the pandemic, schooling in physical mode means extracting your entire child — including hands, legs, etc. — from the comfort of your home and transporting him to another location several thousand metres away. The transportation happens via wheeled metal cages known as ‘school bus’, to a building known as ‘school’. Yep. Overnight, the very meaning of schooling changed: it no longer meant staring into a screen where a face in a box talks at you. Now it meant sitting inside a much bigger box called ‘classroom’ where you stare into a face that talks at you — big difference.
United colours
For online classes, my only challenges as a parent were to make sure the iPad was charged 100% and Katta was awake at least 70% by the time his classes began. These are tough challenges, but they are not impossible ones — in terms of difficulty level, you could compare them to, say, doubling of farmers’ income in 10 years or listing the electoral bonds case for a hearing.
“For online classes, my only challenges as a parent were to make sure the iPad was charged 100% and Katta was awake at least 70%. But getting him ready for physical school is another matter altogether”
But getting him ready for physical school is another matter altogether (difficulty level comparable to creating two crore jobs while systematically helping crony capitalists). For Katta’s first ever day in a physical school, preparations began the previous day, a Sunday, when Wife discovered we had forgotten to collect his ‘House’ T-shirt from school. So I drove down to his school and joined the tail-end of a hydra-headed queue a hundred parents long.
Katta’s school had four Houses that, until two years ago, were named Nehru House, Gandhi House, Tagore House and Mandela House. Colour-wise, they were Red House, Blue House, Green House and Yellow House, respectively. I found it boring and outdated. So I wrote a letter to the Principal last July pointing out that the House names should reflect the latest cultural developments. I suggested they be should be renamed as House Stark, House Lannister, House Targaryen, and House Greyjoy. The Principal wrote back thanking me and promising to update the House names, which he did.
From this academic year, the four Houses will be known as Adani House, Ambani House, Tata House and Birla House. The colours are dark saffron, medium saffron, light saffron and Khan Market saffron — representing the full range of India’s cultural diversity.
After two hours of standing in the Delhi sun and downing three bottles of lukewarm Sprite, I finally made it to the shop counter, got the T-shirt and reached home, only to find Katta in the throes of a raging tantrum: he would not go to school, no matter what.
Battle ready
After hard negotiations lasting several hours, we reached an agreement: in exchange for him going to school tomorrow, he would be allowed to watch Peppa Pig for a full 45 minutes, get an additional hour of play time, plus immunity from prosecution for assorted crimes against minorities — okay, I made that last one up but it’s valid though.
On Monday morning, we gathered that the bus could arrive any time between 7.51 and 7.58. We had fixed Katta’s wake-up time at 6.30, which gave us about 75 minutes to get him ready. For the benefit of readers who have never done this, getting a five-year-old ready for school entails completing the following tasks: brush his teeth, disrobe him and apply cooling unguent on his body, bathe aforementioned body without yourself getting bathed in the process, dry the body and fit it into too-tight uniform, shovel food into uniformed body via clenched mouth, pack school bag with pencils, eraser, sanitiser, mask, spare mask and spare vaccine, and finish all of the above in the short window of time between the moment he wakes up and departure for the bus stop.
Naturally, we missed the school bus on the first day. So we had to go drop him. The second day, the bus broke down, so again we had to drop him. The third day, Katta broke down, so we let him skip school. On the fourth day, the school WhatsApp groups were buzzing with panic-mongering posts about rising COVID cases, and this time, it wasn’t the school authorities or the local administration but the parents who were clamouring for school closure, lockdown, and a return to online classes. Six months ago, I would have called them idiots. But today? I smile, and then call them idiots.
G. Sampath, author of this satire, is Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu.
sampath.g@thehindu.co.in
