The Nosy Girl

Growing up in Bombay in the late 70's and early 80's, we had all the makings of a polyglot. English was the language of instruction in school, We had the option (really?)  of picking up one of Tamil or Malayalam, as the School offered these subjects and in grade 4, Hindi, the national language was introduced and the next year, Marathi, the state language was added too. So we were formally learning 4 languages. And living in a cosmopolitan  society, other tongues like Gujarati, Kannada, Konkani, Tulu etc. were never really out of earshot.

I don’t know if it was due to the early start I thought, we took to English, as ducklings take to water. Tamil or brahmin Tamil the lingua franca at home and friends, made the subject Tamil a little nuisance that we could tolerate , Hindi was a tad uncomfortable, when realization dawned that what we spoke among friends and what we studied in school felt like two different subjects. But it was Marathi, that filled my heart with dread. Even though much later, coming out of University, I loved and respected that language for its affinity to Sanskrit, but as a 11 year old, I could only muster just one feeling towards it - dread.

I was just waiting for 7th grade to get over so that I could get rid of that subject and take up Sanskrit, a subject more to my tastes.

Shridhar Rajgopal, had moved from Madras and joined us in Class 7. I imagine how comfortable he would have been with Hindi and having to learn Marathi too in one go, my heart went out to him. Though secretly, I felt elated, atleast my grades may not be as bad as his in Marathi.

Shridhar and I became good friends. I normally sat in the first few rows, as my height qualified for that….but that day in the autumn of 83, during that class before the teacher came into the classroom, I went and sat with Shridhar, a few rows to the back.

The cause for that change of seats was that day, Praveen a roly-poly, kid had got a couple of Tintin comics and come hell or high water, I decided to finish reading that book, and what better time to put to use than the Marathi period. Mrs. Jadhav entered without much fanfare and we all stood up and sang 'good morning teacher', as was customary. We had our Marathi text books on the surface of the desk and the comics open underneath the desk. We thought that from the teacher's perspective, that will look like two sincere boys pouring over their Marathi text books and were we smart.

The class was in session, I believe Mrs.Jadhav might have probably noticed two boys who were paying more attention to the print on the text book than the entire class and felt good…. The comics reading too was in good progress. We had nearly 30 minutes…. 20 mins had passed, we were coming to the finale…when to my utter shock and despair, I espied this girl, Uma, standing up and pointing to the teacher, 'Teacher, these two boys are reading comics' Not sure if it was the sweat or mortal fear, which ran down my spine, as Mrs Jadhav came near us, seized the comics and asked us to go, stand outside the classroom.

The humiliation of it all… I just prayed that I would disappear or become invisible. The corridor outside the class was normally empty, but for the lone teacher who was rushing to her class or some other work. On top of the humiliation, was the concern, the tintin books were not mine and had to be returned to that plump kid. I thought, Mrs. Jadhav will be reporting this to the principal and therefrom to my father and probably, I would be rusticated and taken away from school. My world was in a tizzy…. Just could not think and not think either.

In that tizzy, probably lasting 10 minutes, I came back to consciousness, as the school bell rang, marking the end of that accursed period. As Ms. Jadhav made her way to the teacher's room, we followed her, first objective was to get hold of the tintin comics! There at the teacher's room, the first time I visited one, she laid the comics on the table, gently asked us not to repeat what we did again and returned the books. We said our apologies and We were sorry genuinely, because our method as it turned out was not that fool-proof.

Now, the comics safe in our hands, and no danger of word leaking to my father or any catastrophe of having to leave school, we came back to the class, now all emotions transforming to indignation at that girl Uma Mani.

I think Shridhar gave her a piece of his mind. I was too angry and shy and embarrassed to talk to her… But that day it dawned on me to be very careful with girls…

In class 8, I took up Sanskrit and moved to D division, that Uma Mani took up Tamil and continued in B div. Wow, I had got rid of two dreadful things in one stroke or did I…. Many years later, I had warm feelings for that language and later I chanced to see Uma, who had by then grown to be an attractive lass.