Mercy Madam Mercy!

She is in her 40's but she looks as if she is a 60 year old...half because of her unruly Grey hair and half because of the way she bends while she walks ...She has a monotonous way of talking where one could easily get lost into the day dreams. Insomniacs too enjoyed her class since they could sleep under her purview, sure about her arrested gaze

Today, she looked worse! Obviously it was a disappointing day for her since the entire class has performed poorly in her subject (Social Sciences)…She has probably received a sound thrashing from the principal which explains the lack of smile or the absence of a humane look on her face.

At that moment Aditya chose to enter the class, delayed due to a long queue( you know where), after the short recess we were usually given before this class…

The teacher gave a scornful look…she walked to the wrong side of the blackboard to pick a old looking wooden scale and stood in the middle of the passage created by the two divisions of benches like an executioner. Aditya’s face turned yellow as he anticipated the worst moment impending on him…he began taking slow steps, not able to believe the utter silence that has taken control in the room, trying to make eye contact with rest of the students to get a telepathic understanding of what has gone wrong …

How can Madam Padma who was considered such a friendly teacher turn evil today and set herself to thrash her favorite student Aditya. Aditya disbelievingly stretched his arm slowly and hadn’t yet unfolded his palm when Madam Padma raised her hand to signal the imminent slash, all this happening amidst the pin drop silence and a bunch of scared teenagers watching the scene in anticipation & horror.

Whackkkkkkk…Whackkkk…Whackkkk….three shots in a span of little less than 5 seconds and one felt sorry to see aditya waving his hand in pain and holding it with his left hand to give comfort to it. His face was red and one could see twinkle in his eyes. Few minutes ago he was cracking funny jokes and now here he is, about to breakdown, in front of his whole class staring at his agony like a stage performance…

Just then to his horror the unforgiving teacher uttered “Aggain…”

“Show me your hand come on” she thundered…

Aditya sported a sympathetic face and this time stretched his left arm (pain sharing technique) and opened his palm with heightened fear. This time to every one’s horror the teacher lifted the stick very far into the air indicating that this is going to be a big one…the room was filled with nerve breaking tension and the shot finally came off…

Aditya couldn’t take it any more and just before the stick had to make contact with his hand…he slightly moved the hand away from the stick and this led to a wasted shot and embarrassment for the teacher…Embarassment because the shot landed on a table making a funny noise and a couple of us sitting in the last bench couldn’t resist the chuckle looking at this funny occurrence…

But only after we chuckled did we realize that the rest of the class didn’t find it funny which meant the teacher’s attention is diverted now…To escape suspicion and make the job easy for the teacher every one turned their heads and stared at us to give enough hint to the teacher about the culprits…Both Raghu and I were being sacrificed at the heat of this moment to goddess padma for our act of innocence; but more innocence was to follow. Raghu avoided eye contact with the teacher and began staring at me as if it was I who did it while I was submissively staring into the teacher’s man-eater eyes & preparing my ill-fated hands to be the next victim.

“What is your score” She asked

“85 I mumbled”. Yeah I was the topper this time and probably one of those few students whom she could point to save herself from the principal

But it didn’t impress her

“So getting more marks means you can laugh at people’s misery” she said

“Mam” (stunned at her words)

“Show me your hand you shameless creature” She said

I could now see students silently giggling at me as an undeserving punishment couldn’t get funnier.

Saddened and embarrassed I stretched out my arm and closed my eyes waiting for that deadly moment when a touch of timber would kill some skin cells of mine leaving a temporary color on my hand before I felt fresh breeze passing over my forehead and the sound of tiny droplets hitting my windowpane…Slowly the noise grew loud enough, to wake me up, to show me the morning rain that had just begun with mild thunders accompanied by black clouds that looked menacingly deep. It was hardly 7:15 am but it looked as if its still 6 in the morning and the breeze in deccan’s lovely city Hyderabad just got stronger to rip off clothes of their hangers, blow off the broken ceilings and shake the tall trees as if they were dancing to nature’s music.

Mom was watching me all this time and she asked me

“emaindi peedakala” (Was that a bad dream)

“em ledu (nothing)” I replied with a smile filled with nostalgia

Lovely old days I thought and got down to pick my coffee…