"Roll number 15....!" Ms Clare called out from her attendance register. It was met with silence. "Roll number 15...!" she slightly raised her voice. No response except for the general hub-hub of classroom chatter. Ms Clare looked up, adjusted the glasses against the bridge of her nose and positively irritated, she hollered... "I said roll number 15.... FIFTEEN". Mulraj was busy fidgeting at his desk. Sticking his tongue out, he was trying to scrape out the fresh coat of varnish from the desk with his nail. The varnish coloured his unkempt nail a shade of deep brown. Mulraj nibbled at his nail... to scoop out the varnish from the nail-tip and savour the after-taste. Evidently, he was in his own world.
This time, the sound of the word FIFTEEN did hit his ear. The auditory signal seeped into his seventh-grade brain. In a jiffy, it was processed and its response was dispatched. "PRESENT MISS!" Mulraj blurted out... in a sudden, strangulated reflex! Miss Clare was clearly not impressed. "Gaddha (donkey!)... dreaming... dreaming all the time! Go and wash your face!"
The roll-call was the ice-breaker. You needed it at the start of the school day. It produced laughs each time and helped the students to warm up to the classes ahead. Someone always made a mistake- we never knew which ones were involuntary and which ones deliberately instrumented.
Sometimes, two boys from opposite ends of the class responded to the same roll-number. The rhythm of the roll-call was broken and they looked at each other sheepishly. The roll-numbers marginally changed each year (with the addition/departure of a few students) and with this change came the inevitable confusion. Students who were used to a particular number over the years, found it difficult NOT to respond to that number.. especially at the start of the scholastic year.
Then, there were the students who were emboldened to "proxy" for their chums-when the latter played truant and hung around Five Gardens. Valentino had a flair for it- he could "proxy" like a pro- with no hint of suspicion and with no visible change in his voice or body language. Others gave it away- either they changed their voice to a squeak... or covered their mouth with their fingers to reduce the sound to a muffle. It was a strategy which was doomed to begin with- the teachers were trained to look for these obvious changes. Students were caught and caned!
There were no male teachers in primary school. "Sirs" started teaching once we moved to the secondary section. It required an adjustment in the roll-call drill too. "Present miss" or "present ma'am" had to be changed to "present sir"- which wasn't exactly simple. As the roll-call proceeded in a desultory manner, invariably someone bungled and shouted out "Present miss". The boys waited for this opportunity- there were giggles all around class with several imitations of "miss" doing the rounds. Pandey sir knitted his brows, visibly irritated. We never knew which one actually provoked him...whether it was a reference to him as "miss" or just the general commotion in class. "SILENCE!" he thundered and scared away a few crows sitting on the window sill, in his attempt to bring the class back on track.
Sridhar was a rebel. He had got used to the phrase "present teacher" right from primary school and insisted that he would make no adjustment. Taking recourse to the Wren and Martin's grammar textbook, he insisted that "teacher" was a common gender which could be applied equally to "sirs" and "madams". To an uninitiated student, this detail was lost. "Teacher" meant only a lady and applying the term to Pandey sir in his safari suit, was simply preposterous! The class looked forward to Sridhar's turn at the roll-call. His response evoked amusement and was just the trigger needed to turn the class into a little fish-market.
Offenders came in different flavours. There were occasional offenders who forgot to respond to the roll-call on a given day and needed a nudge from the partner. Then, there were serial offenders who answered the roll-call in a self-styled "high pitched sing-song" manner each time and deliberately broke the decorum. You couldn't fault them because it was difficult to pinpoint their crime. Then, there was Mehernosh. Mehernosh could never end the sentence in a clipped manner. If the word was "bamboo", he fell over the word for more time than he should.. so that it sounded like "bambooooooo". The slur was unintentional, but comical for the rest of the class. His "miss" just wouldn't end quickly till the whole class resounded with a crescendo of "hisses". Occasionally, someone pretended to have a problem of stuttering and would derail the class... with a caricature of "p-p-p-present m-m-m'am".
Substitution teachers had a rough time. There was no way they could rein in the students. They didn't know any names, neither did they have any idea of the notorious students in the class. It was the perfect setting for students to eject out of class after answering their roll-call. The plan was simple- the ones who wanted to "cut class" sat closest to the window- which faced the corridor. Just after their turn in the roll-call was over, even as the teacher squinted over the attendance register, the students needed only a hop-skip and a jump to freedom; freedom for at least a half-hour!
Occasionally, the story did not have a happy ending. One ill-fated day, Valentino's jump to freedom was badly timed. In his excitement, he lost his balance and fell into the corridor with a huge thud. In the process, he let out a shriek... and alerted the teacher's attention. To make it worse, Fr Lionel was doing the rounds... and was unpleasantly surprised to see students flying out of windows! Valentino hobbled around... and had to deal with a bruised knee and an impending punishment. The punishment was always the same- whoever was caught, was caned.
The attendance register was an elaborate tome. The monitor had to carry it to class each day and return it to the staff room at the end of the roll-call. Against each student, "present" was marked with a "P" and "absent" was left blank. Students explored loopholes all the time. They figured that if they took the monitor into confidence, the monitor could easily manipulate their absence on previous days, by simply writing a "P" against their name. All the monitor had to do, was to feign a visit to the rest-room with the attendance register, on the way to the staff room. As simple as that!
It took just a bribe of a few stickers or the promise of a "pepsi" to rope the monitor into this nefarious activity.
The best laid plans of men and mice oft go astray. As the story goes, our monitor accidentally dropped the attendance register in the rest-room as he tried to fudge the records. What emerged from the toilet was a soggy-dossier, dripping all over and of course, a red-faced monitor. To this day, no one knows exactly where he dropped the attendance register. Some said that he just dropped it into the wash basin. Others claimed... that it actually fell into the urinal!!!
For sure, the students didn't touch the attendance register that entire year....or if they handled it, it was with a lot of care, with inordinate care!!
This time, the sound of the word FIFTEEN did hit his ear. The auditory signal seeped into his seventh-grade brain. In a jiffy, it was processed and its response was dispatched. "PRESENT MISS!" Mulraj blurted out... in a sudden, strangulated reflex! Miss Clare was clearly not impressed. "Gaddha (donkey!)... dreaming... dreaming all the time! Go and wash your face!"
The roll-call was the ice-breaker. You needed it at the start of the school day. It produced laughs each time and helped the students to warm up to the classes ahead. Someone always made a mistake- we never knew which ones were involuntary and which ones deliberately instrumented.
Sometimes, two boys from opposite ends of the class responded to the same roll-number. The rhythm of the roll-call was broken and they looked at each other sheepishly. The roll-numbers marginally changed each year (with the addition/departure of a few students) and with this change came the inevitable confusion. Students who were used to a particular number over the years, found it difficult NOT to respond to that number.. especially at the start of the scholastic year.
Then, there were the students who were emboldened to "proxy" for their chums-when the latter played truant and hung around Five Gardens. Valentino had a flair for it- he could "proxy" like a pro- with no hint of suspicion and with no visible change in his voice or body language. Others gave it away- either they changed their voice to a squeak... or covered their mouth with their fingers to reduce the sound to a muffle. It was a strategy which was doomed to begin with- the teachers were trained to look for these obvious changes. Students were caught and caned!
There were no male teachers in primary school. "Sirs" started teaching once we moved to the secondary section. It required an adjustment in the roll-call drill too. "Present miss" or "present ma'am" had to be changed to "present sir"- which wasn't exactly simple. As the roll-call proceeded in a desultory manner, invariably someone bungled and shouted out "Present miss". The boys waited for this opportunity- there were giggles all around class with several imitations of "miss" doing the rounds. Pandey sir knitted his brows, visibly irritated. We never knew which one actually provoked him...whether it was a reference to him as "miss" or just the general commotion in class. "SILENCE!" he thundered and scared away a few crows sitting on the window sill, in his attempt to bring the class back on track.
Sridhar was a rebel. He had got used to the phrase "present teacher" right from primary school and insisted that he would make no adjustment. Taking recourse to the Wren and Martin's grammar textbook, he insisted that "teacher" was a common gender which could be applied equally to "sirs" and "madams". To an uninitiated student, this detail was lost. "Teacher" meant only a lady and applying the term to Pandey sir in his safari suit, was simply preposterous! The class looked forward to Sridhar's turn at the roll-call. His response evoked amusement and was just the trigger needed to turn the class into a little fish-market.
Offenders came in different flavours. There were occasional offenders who forgot to respond to the roll-call on a given day and needed a nudge from the partner. Then, there were serial offenders who answered the roll-call in a self-styled "high pitched sing-song" manner each time and deliberately broke the decorum. You couldn't fault them because it was difficult to pinpoint their crime. Then, there was Mehernosh. Mehernosh could never end the sentence in a clipped manner. If the word was "bamboo", he fell over the word for more time than he should.. so that it sounded like "bambooooooo". The slur was unintentional, but comical for the rest of the class. His "miss" just wouldn't end quickly till the whole class resounded with a crescendo of "hisses". Occasionally, someone pretended to have a problem of stuttering and would derail the class... with a caricature of "p-p-p-present m-m-m'am".
Substitution teachers had a rough time. There was no way they could rein in the students. They didn't know any names, neither did they have any idea of the notorious students in the class. It was the perfect setting for students to eject out of class after answering their roll-call. The plan was simple- the ones who wanted to "cut class" sat closest to the window- which faced the corridor. Just after their turn in the roll-call was over, even as the teacher squinted over the attendance register, the students needed only a hop-skip and a jump to freedom; freedom for at least a half-hour!
Occasionally, the story did not have a happy ending. One ill-fated day, Valentino's jump to freedom was badly timed. In his excitement, he lost his balance and fell into the corridor with a huge thud. In the process, he let out a shriek... and alerted the teacher's attention. To make it worse, Fr Lionel was doing the rounds... and was unpleasantly surprised to see students flying out of windows! Valentino hobbled around... and had to deal with a bruised knee and an impending punishment. The punishment was always the same- whoever was caught, was caned.
The attendance register was an elaborate tome. The monitor had to carry it to class each day and return it to the staff room at the end of the roll-call. Against each student, "present" was marked with a "P" and "absent" was left blank. Students explored loopholes all the time. They figured that if they took the monitor into confidence, the monitor could easily manipulate their absence on previous days, by simply writing a "P" against their name. All the monitor had to do, was to feign a visit to the rest-room with the attendance register, on the way to the staff room. As simple as that!
It took just a bribe of a few stickers or the promise of a "pepsi" to rope the monitor into this nefarious activity.
The best laid plans of men and mice oft go astray. As the story goes, our monitor accidentally dropped the attendance register in the rest-room as he tried to fudge the records. What emerged from the toilet was a soggy-dossier, dripping all over and of course, a red-faced monitor. To this day, no one knows exactly where he dropped the attendance register. Some said that he just dropped it into the wash basin. Others claimed... that it actually fell into the urinal!!!
For sure, the students didn't touch the attendance register that entire year....or if they handled it, it was with a lot of care, with inordinate care!!
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