#3 - Sky Diving

It is fun to look back into your past and blame all the mishaps, all the unfortunate turns your life took, on someone else. My favourite scapegoat is my 7-10^th standard class-teacher, Mrs. S. Now, Mrs. S was a pretty good teacher. She was sincere, actually cared about her students, and was fairly knowledgeable. In short, she is one of the few teachers who did not lose my respect even after teaching me for a number of years. No, wait, that’s not true. I still respect most of my teacher’s from back then. Well, certainly not Mr. Y (devout fan of corporal punishment, had a killer headlock which was well supplemented by his smelly armpits), or Mr. G (brilliant hypnotist, could put a bottle of amphetamines¹ to sleep), or Mrs. K (good at knitting, also rumoured to have been knocked on the head by a falling ceiling fan, which may explain her blatant bias towards girls) for that matter, but certainly most of them were pretty good. I was pretty surprised by how good our teachers actually were in comparison to the more famous public schools of the town.

Coming back to Mrs. S, I can recall several incidents where her behaviour harmed my long-term physical, emotional and social health. Neglecting her biggest fault of keeping me interested in Science through that crucial period of mental development, she can still be blamed for some of the most axe-on-my-foot decisions I’ve ever made. I had joined the school in the middle of the 7^th standard, a consequence of my father retiring from the navy just when life had started to seem good and comfortable. Now, changing schools and cities wasn’t really an issue. It wasn’t like I had to say good-bye to some girl who would grow up to be the love of my life. I didn’t even have that many friends to leave behind. And I was fairly good at forgetting old friends (fortunately, that habit is long gone), even if I sucked at making new ones (unfortunately, this one isn’t). The only friend that I really regret getting out of touch with is Vince. Vince was probably the liveliest person I’ve ever seen. He was always smiling, even after he returned from a summer vacation with his leg amputated. He still laughed like mad, still played cricket with friends, and still acted as goofy as generally possible. We both loved reading, and on my last day of school he gave me a book, a 3-in-1 digest of ‘The Three Investigators’², with his address and phone number written on a small piece of paper stuck on the first page. I promised I would write, I never did; kept putting it off week after week till it was late enough to convince myself it would be too awkward to write that letter at all. We would probably have drifted apart anyway, but I hate that I didn’t even try. Sometimes I ask myself why I never had the kind of friendships they show in movies and tele-serials, and I try really hard to repress this memory, and many others like it, as they threaten to answer the question for me. It’s much easier to just blame my parents.

I really should do something about this habit of digressing from the topic at hand. Anyway, so one of the earliest pushes-down-the-cliff I got from her was the day I went to collect my 7^th standard report card. She was talking to another teacher as I reached the staff-room, and as she gave me the proof of a wasted year and patted me on my back, she said something like ‘He’s a really bright boy, he’ll definitely go to IIT.’ Before that day I was an innocent boy who had never thought or dreamed about anything except from school exams and the occasional Cynthia, besides the being a scientist dream I mentioned. In 5^th standard, in the second round of the interschool magi quiz, I had passed when they had asked me the full form of IIT, and smirked in disbelief as someone else gave the answer: it’s not a part of the UN and not even in the US, how would someone expect me to remember something so stupid and unimportant? To be honest I didn’t think much about it after that day either. But I guess the phrase contaminated my subconscious. And when the time came to make a decision, this infection raised its ugly head.

There were a few more pushes along the way, the most notable one being in a PTA meeting in 10^th standard, when she told my dad I might end up scoring 90% in my boards. Now, 90% was a big deal. In the history of my school, only one student had ever crossed it. I gave a sheepish smile and screamed internally: “How dare you? I’ll show you what I can do. I’ll score 93%, no, 95%!” My big fat ego...I wonder how things would have turned out if someone had ever challenged me to get a girl (or even worse, sports). Thankfully, no one did and so my ego survives relatively un-bruised.

The final push I got was when my dad went to collect my admit card for the board exams in 10^th standard. As I mentioned earlier, Mrs. S really cared about her students. So she felt obliged to tell my father the merits of changing my school, and of joining FIITJEE³. My father, the simple man that he is, agreed to follow her advice on both counts. I was happier than hell: I was going to be a public school guy! I had heard the last two years of school could really change your personality. I had also heard about the ‘open’ atmosphere there, something I was really looking forward to. I was also going to start preparing for IIT, which was the best place in India for bright people interested in Science and research. I would become a scientist after all, with a great public school personality to boot. I had no idea what anything really meant, I wasn’t even sure what I really wanted. It was just exciting as hell. Someone had opened the aircraft door, and I jumped. They didn’t tell me to pull the green cord before the light-green cord⁴. Even worse, I didn’t know I had jumped from an airplane, and I didn’t really know about gravity. When will the bloody parachute open?

1. 1. Amphetamines: A stimulant used to treat certain disorders causing abrupt sleep. Also, a fairly popular soft-drug for getting high. Wiki it for more…

2. 2. The Three Investigators: Good, old-fashioned children’s mystery books. Amazing storylines, really good characters, and no magic brooms.

3. 3. FIITJEE: A coaching institute, to prepare for the extremely difficult entrance examination of IITs. Also holds classes for 8^th and 9^th standard students to give them the much needed ‘early edge’.

4. 4. Phrase lifted from ‘Malcom In The Middle’. Amazing show, really funny and occasionally inspiring.