#5 - "2 + 2 = 5"

“Hmm... so you are Mitesh’s son?” I realized that it feels a bit weird when someone you are meeting for the first time addresses your father by his name. But this was Mr. NPB. Beside the fact that he was my grandfather’s age (or near-about for sure), he had quite an intimidating personality. I couldn’t make myself come up with an adequate reply.

“You see, he was a brilliant student.” He continued. “He was the best in his batch. Showed real good results. I’ll expect nothing less from you.” Of course this was the common ploy that teachers adopt (where they praise your relatives, whom they have taught earlier, endlessly) in order to motivate you (or frighten you maybe...). I was at Mr. NPB’s house which also doubled as his tuition centre. Shine was with me, we were there to get a batch allotted.

“What kinda name is Shine? Who names their child like that?” Shine too was at a loss for words just like me. Of course he had been caught off-guard for something that had been his strong point till then (he had impressed a lot of people by his name but to someone so old, it was plain stupid, much to my liking of course).

“Why don’t you say anything? You stupid or what?” We remained silent. He sniggered (it was offensive but I thought it was kinda justified).

“Come at 6 p.m. and do come prepared for speaking, you see it’s necessary in this world we live in.” We were more than happy to run away.

We returned, some 10 minutes before our allotted time. Mr. NPB was teaching another batch inside. Waiting for our turn, we started chatting with other students of our batch. That’s when we heard those rumors for the first time. I was amazed to find that almost everybody except us knew that Mr. NPB was a drunkard and a gambler (part time of course!). Obviously enough it was hard to believe. These were a bunch of fools, I decided (I refused to believe any crap about my would-be mentor). Previous batch came out, we went in and Mr. NPB went for a break (old guy needs a break, no evidence to prove that it’s a “drinking” break, I thought). I took a lazy look around, all my batch-mates appeared quite ordinary, nothing special. Though I was very disappointed to see that there were no girls in my batch (except for one, but she was like 4’6” tall, needless to say I didn’t notice her). It was depressing.

About half an hour passed, Mr. NPB didn’t come out. Rumor mills were churning at top speed.

“Maybe he passed out, too much vodka I bet” someone said. Everyone agreed. I was getting restless. The wait was getting on my nerves. I didn’t come for this, this was too much shit. What kind of teacher was this? I wanted to beat the crap out of Shine for dragging me into this stupidity. He was doing his usual looking skywards routine, abnormally calm. Everyone else too was happy; they found it quite amusing, unlike me (it was like constipation, you’re sitting on the damn pot, waiting and waiting, and for what...). Thankfully, he appeared (just before I was about to stab Shine in the eye with my Reynold 045).

He appeared tired, or maybe sleepy. I wasn’t really sure if the rumors were false after all. Anyways he started teaching us. He made jokes in between lessons. And I had to agree, he was a good teacher, but that was that. 15 minutes into lecture (it was some vague crap about “iota” and “Euclid plane”) it happened again. Mr. NPB dozed off. Yes, he just dozed off. I know it might sound unreal, but he just fell asleep right there in front of us, sitting upright in his chair. It was like the most bizarre thing I ever saw outside of TV. No one knew what to do. It was even crazier than their rumors. With nothing to do (obviously!), we just sat and stared at him (or at each other). Nobody dared make a noise (some of us weren’t even sure if he was alive or not, but no one dared confirm).

Guess there’s no need to tell you that my first day there sucked. Yes it was crazy; yes it was unthinkable and unbelievable. We almost laughed in his face when Mr. NPB’s son told us later (after he was called and he woke up his father and took him inside) that it was a kind of reaction which was normal due to the “tonic” Mr. NPB was taking (Of course we didn’t believe a word). We’ve had a completely different picture of “tonic” in our minds since that day. For me, it was so bad that I had decided never to go back, and I wouldn’t have, if not for my father.

He made me go back the next day and asked me to persist for a bit longer. And as much as it amazes me today, I loved him. It took us the first few days for getting used to, but eventually all devotees, gossip-mongers and baffled ones (like me) liked him alike. We still made fun of his drinking and gambling behind his back, but we all liked him a lot. For the next one year, that one hour of studying math under him was probably my favorite time of the day. And I never thought I would say this but Mr. NPB was the best and my favorite math teacher ever (he didn’t make me mathematician or anything but seriously, who was I kidding anyway..??).