I wish I was a schoolboy now. And not because I dreamt rather inconclusively of Ms De Costa — Class 4 teacher and first crush — a couple of nights ago. (She’s 73 now, has only one eye, and lives in Alice Springs. We would need to get her wheelchair into a time machine.)
It’s because of what kids today can get away with in class.
People who read my column needn’t be specially told that I wasn’t a particularly gifted student. If I was, would I be here in Chennai writing tepid humour pieces?
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Anyway, the point is, in my day, there was only one right answer to any question we were posed in school. That was it.
Teachers were ruthless even when we made honest mistakes. Like when I wrote a long, moving essay on the immortal love story of Shah Jahan and his beautiful wife Noor Jahan, Alavandan Sir, our history master, beat me repeatedly with his bound copy of Vincent Smith.
My cries of, “Sir, sir, both their surnames are Jahan, dammit! If Mumtaz Mahal is his wife, shouldn’t her full name be Smt Mumtaz Jahan?” fell on deaf ears.
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Today, school must be fun, man.
For instance, if you are asked to write an essay on the evolution of man, you could say:
“First, the Almighty created Bharat. Because it was floating in space and felt lonely, he created a small ball to support it and called it Earth. The ancient and purified land of Bharat came pre-populated (like a smartphone with built-in apps) with superior, patriotic men and slightly less superior, obedient women, who covered their heads in the presence of fathers-in-law. While in the rest of the world, some monkeys turned to humans because zoo life got monotonous. That is why we were zooming about in high-speed, eco-friendly pushpaka vimanams while they had not even invented the wheel. And we lived happily ever after... till Nehru came and spoilt everything.”
Guaranteed 100/100. Otherwise, I can tell my teacher that it would be easy enough to have it re-evaluated at Yale.
If you were asked, say, to state and explain in brief Newton’s ‘Laws’, you could answer:
“Firstly, there is no such person as Newton. It was a British conspiracy. The person’s actual name was Sage Nutan Prasadji, and he lived in the Himalayas eating nothing but grass, and kheer made of yak milk. And what they refer to wrongly as Physics is just Culture, or in other words, sanskar . And Sage Nutan Prasadji’s only Law of Sanskar is to stand up really quickly when elders come into the room. Thereby proving that there is no such thing as gravity. Plus, it wasn’t an apple that fell on him. It was a mango.”
You can’t beat sages and sanskar : 100/100.
What is 2 + 2?
“Depends, you could say, which era the ‘2’ is from. If it is before a certain period, it should be counted as only 1, because those figures were always inflated in that terrible period. Then comes the second ‘2’. Were the Mughals involved in this ‘2’? If so, it doesn’t even exist.”
So you could have a minimum of 14 different answers.
Also (this is where it gets to be real fun), you could answer your Tamil paper in Hindi.
Imagine, your test question is, “Who wrote the Thirukkural ?’ and your answer could be:
“Raju achcha balak hai . Raju har din yoga karta hai . And, in conclusion, ek gaon me, ek kisaan Raghu Thaatha .”
The best part is, your Tamil teacher won’t know Hindi. ROFL!
Yet another 100/100 guaranteed. Otherwise, you could quote the leader who said South Indians better learn Hindi... or else.
The sky is the limit for today’s student. How I envy them.
Krishna Shastri Devulapalli is a satirist and novelist. He was given a double demotion in UKG.