She walks into class, spreading her positive energy and excitement all around. She smiles in her usual sweet manner as her eyes twinkle passionately. Her smile really has the power to make anyone forget about all their worries. Watching her teach Chemistry is an experience in itself! Proactive and effective, her teaching clearly displays her love for the subject. I always thought that there was something seriously wrong with the people who like Chemistry; she changed that thought of mine. The way her head tilts and her eyes pop out is pretty amusing.

The doubts I come up with in Chemistry are just out of this world. Once we were discussing organic Chemistry and I said, “Ma’am, I can’t differentiate between the various organic compounds. They all look the same to me”. She said, “You’re dyslexic when it comes to organic compounds”.I’ll be honest; she made my day by saying that! Never in my whole life had anyone ever understood me so well until on that fine day when she called me dyslexic. Seriously speaking, organic Chemistry and I have a very strange relationship. I’m sure CIE reels under a state of shock when my Chemistry paper is checked. They see impossible and irrelevant compounds drawn so boldly in the paper. Maybe they also consider trying to make some of those compounds. Just saying, if anything destructive happens in Cambridge University’s Chemistry laboratories, I’m not to be held responsible. I was just trying to finish off my paper somehow; they took the random crap I wrote too seriously.

Chemistry has usually been the first paper we give in our internals, so once we’re done with it we badger her and keep asking whether she has checked our papers or not. “What you all had done in paper 5” she laughs. We laugh and wonder the same. Once somehow I got one mark more in Chemistry than in Physics. Her level of happiness was so high! I had never seen her happier. That PTM she couldn’t sit still. She was smiling wide and was extremely happy. If one mark could make her so happy I’d deliberately get less in Physics in the next internals! I’d leave the Physics paper blank if she wants! She keeps telling me that I have a mental block for Chemistry. Every time she says that, I wish she taught another subject.

When she’s clearing my doubts she’s all fluent and clear and very confident about her explanations. On the other hand, this is me –“That exists? Huh? Oh! Wait, what??? Uh…How on earth?! Oh! Now I get it! Okay never mind. I’m still blank”. She then sighs hopelessly, opens the textbook and points out the exact thing that the question asks for. ‘Oh! That exists here! Maybe I should consider reading the textbook’ I think to myself. Jokes apart, having said all of that, she has a record with me, at the end of our session somehow or the other she manages to drill the concept into my unwelcoming mind.

I have probably been one of the most difficult students she has taught, but she never lost her patience with me. I might have lost hope in myself, but she never did. “Keep your target high” she always said to me. She always tried to explain the concepts to me in each and every possible way. Her explanations always make things seem so obvious. When she explains certain answers to me I feel I could get 100% in the exam. That feeling lasts only until I try a question without her around. Sometimes just looking at her helps! That’s why I always consider keeping a photo of her with me during the Chemistry exams. One can never be too well-prepared for Chemistry!

We glance at the timetable and relax a bit. It isn’t HER period. We take a leisurely stroll outside to the corridor and stand there having ‘a gala time’, when suddenly a stern voice behind us says “Get in”. As soon as the voice registers, we all drag ourselves in and take our seats.

“Homework done?” she asks the class as she gets one of us to clean the board. A few nod in response while the others wait for someone to raise their hand and use all their courage to say ‘No’. After the first ‘No’ has been said, a few others get up and join the group.

She looks down for a moment as if gulping the words she so longs to scream, and manages to mutter a relatively soft “Why?” All sorts of clichéd excuses pile up as blood boils in her head. “Remain standing” she orders and starts going through our work. She controls her hands from throwing each book outside the window, as her pet dialogue finds its way out – “What kind of shitty work is this?”

“I’ll have to kind of start giving detention now. Why can’t you give me sincere work for once?” she yells.

Because ‘I like English’ said no one ever, we all think to ourselves.

“You don’t have to like me or the subject. You are expected to work” she says as if reading our thoughts.

“We will give you the work by the end of the day” we say.

She asks for the passage she asked us to comment on and quickly skims through it, her eyes darting about from line to line. Some of us utilize that time to engage ourselves in a conversation, while a few of us look at her, admiring her personality. Her sharp eyes, her sleek black hair that falls just below her ears, her radical thoughts and great life lessons inspire us. She tries her best not to pass on her biases to us, but I guess she isn’t successful in that especially with a few of us.

I remember asking her once whether she had read ‘Joseph Anton’ by Salman Rushdie. “I don’t like his writing” came the immediate response. “I’ve read his ‘Midnight’s Children’ because I had to, but otherwise…” she trailed off. “See, the thing is he’s too complex. I like things which are simple and direct you know” I nodded silently. “Rushdie never spoke to me” she added. I nodded again. “But don’t let that influence you! Try him out” she says quickly as if noticing how her few words changed my views. ‘Too late’ I think to myself. ‘My role model just asked me not to get influenced by her. That should be easy!’

She’s done with the passage in less than a minute and she looks up to find us lost in our own sweet world. She begins discussing the passage and asks us for comments. We respond with whatever little we understand. “Haaa….good!” she says as a subtle smile appears. “Now fine-tune it. Give me a tight-knit comment” she adds, crushing our short-lasted relief.

None of us respond, and all she gets is a cold, dead silence. She asks us for the comment a few more times, but none of us even move.

“Am I talking to the walls?” she asks pretty seriously. “Even the furniture will start responding right?” she asks, smiling at her old joke as we smile politely in return. Sometimes it feels like she waits for a chance to
say all this!

Our blank expressions annoy her, so she gives up on us and frames the comment herself. It seems so effortless when she does it, but when it comes to us it feels like we have to make a decision on whether or not to plan a nuclear attack on another country. Actually, even that decision seems easier than framing a proper comment.

After she is done explaining, we frown a little and nod to display the minuscule development in our understanding. “Am I reaching you? Does it make sense now?” she asks skeptically. We nod in unison as our insides scream ‘Whaaattt??!!”

“See, you need to kind of condition yourself for such work” she says. She goes on for a while and then says “Anyway, that was just a digression” (after talking about the ‘digression’ for 15-20 minutes)

“See, grades don’t matter. You need to grow up to be good human beings” she says. ‘Wait for it’ we tell ourselves, here it comes…and Boom! “Having said that, I still need the work by the end of the day” she says, smiling to herself.

She spots her favourite target sitting in his place with his expressionless face, and decides to have some fun.

“You’re thinking ‘when will this woman leave’ right?” she says to the student who I like to call ‘Dodo’. She laughs at his reluctant ‘No ma’am’ and turns to the class.

“You’d kill all your teachers if you could right?” she asks as we laugh with her. ‘No ma’am. We’d rather kill ourselves. Can’t take the risk of you haunting us later’ we think.

“Anyway, coming back to the passage. What is the tone?”

Ah! Finally that question. That horrible, horrible question. The one that causes more harm than any of the medieval torture techniques. As usual, no one utters a word. Our natural instincts make us look at the clock. She notices that obviously, nothing misses her eyes. “I’m not letting you go until you give me the tone” she says.

The bell rings, and the period ends without that question being answered. “Go for your break” she mutters and walks out thinking about what a hopeless batch we are.

In order to keep the person’s identity hidden (not that it is required as he thoroughly enjoys being the centre of attention), I shall refer to him as ‘King K’.

Taking small steps cautiously, I walk into class on a bright Monday morning, hoping that he would be absent. Trust my luck to treat me well; there he is sitting on his seat right next to mine, like a king waiting for his royal subjects to arrive. He sees me enter the class and smiles contentedly. I sigh in disappointment and proceed for my place.

“So Ashka, did you have a good weekend?” he asks for formality. And before I can even reply, he starts off like a bullet train about how he fought eleven guys simultaneously and how the pretty (the adjective has been changed to a more decent one) girls standing nearby were impressed by his swift moves.

Listening to his million important tales early in the morning was something I couldn’t avoid no matter how hard I tried. I lose myself in my thoughts and he asks me “You listening Ashka?” I nod in reply to the dim question, my mind clearly not ready to listen to any more of his stories. I pretend to listen to him for a few moments, and soon his talks get ignored by my brain as background noise, while an intense and fierce war begins within me between my heart and my mind. My mind determined to ask him to shut the hell up, and my heart being the softy it is, trying to convince my mind to be a little sensitive. My heart wins like always and my focus diverts back to the blabbering creature seated beside me.

No one is spared from dealing with King K. No way. He has no mercy. But the thing is that each and every person manages to escape from his talks, and they all leave me to deal with him on my own. There he is, standing 5 feet and 11 inches tall, in front of me, a tiny girl of hardly 5 feet and an inch. His dominant figure and proud carriage provide a great contrast to my petite image.

“Do you see any change in me?” he asks hopefully.

I stare at him intently from top to bottom, hoping to notice something new in him. Nope. Same old annoying chap, nothing new.

“Did you start working out again?” I ask, trying my luck.

His eyebrows rise in pleasure as he goes on to show off his arm strength to me. I try looking at him all starry-eyed, when suddenly he says “Don’t fake it! This is the reaction I always expect from ‘her’, but I never get it” he says, referring to his heart’s secret desire.

I console and compliment him, as another smart friend of mine who is sitting on King K’s left, looks at me with questioning eyes and raises his eyebrows as if asking me for a convincing explanation for my sudden sweet behaviour. I look at his mocking smile and I can’t help but smile too.

“What? I have a heart!” I exclaim.

Both of us expect King K to give some sort of a reaction, but surprisingly, he remains quiet for a long time (two minutes being considered a long time in this case) and nobody utters a word as we all prefer the silent version of him.

Then suddenly he asks me “Do I look like a killer to you?”

“Yes. You kill my patience” I reply calmly.

I shouldn’t have said anything. I regret speaking, as there he starts off all over again. I doze off into my own little dream world when suddenly he shoots me with another question.

“Are you even listening to me?” he asks. I nod in reply immediately.

“Prove it. Tell me what I said just now” he demands.

I narrate to him the entire story that he had just bored me to death with. I know it because he had already told me the exact same story a million times, and it had drilled into me permanently, there was no chance I was forgetting this story of his and it was dangerous to do so too. A series of thoughts go through his mind and he blurts out everything to me.

“I’m a changed person” he says proudly. Let’s see how long that lasts, I think to myself as I smile politely.

“People say I’m annoying” he says.

“Oh! I wonder why!” I reply sarcastically.

“What would I do without you?” he asks in a surprisingly innocent voice.

“You’d find someone else to annoy. Loads of options in school you know?” I say.

During one of our recent conversations I asked him to come and meet us all in school.

“These school management people don’t let me come up. Next time I’ll just use the pipes to climb right up to your class, I’ll bang my fists hard on the windows, and then you can let me in” he says in an excited manner. I shake my head in disappointment. What was I expecting from him?

I remember desperately wishing for him to be absent each day, and the sense of disappointment that used to fill me when I saw him in class. But even if he was not in school for a single day, the class seemed incomplete and oddly silent to me. Most of my other classmates used to enjoy seeing me stuck with him, but frankly speaking, I never felt ‘stuck’. Dealing with his problems used to make me forget mine, and never has a day gone by when I didn’t learn something from him. His absence in school may be felt by very few, but those few people very well know how precious a gem he is as a friend. I’m pretty sure that he and I will be having a long sentimental talk regarding this piece that I wrote about him. He will find out about it via mutual friends, and he will try his level best to show his immense appreciation for what I wrote. And I, just like always, will graciously accept it all, as that is much easier to do than argue with him.