The Zoo -School

The Valley (a school I moved to in fourth grade) was more of a zoo than a school! It housed a panther (or two), scorpions, snakes, mongoose, monkeys, wild boars a wide variety of birds (I even saw a bird of paradise once) a whole lot of birdbrains and of course strange kids including us! A geography teacher whose idea of teaching us about sedimentary rocks was to make us watch "Cliff Hanger" with her in the theater! A chalk chewing history teacher!A games teacher who used to wear a great neon green stone ring and threaten kids including your's truely with "Shut it your muth before I cut it your pants and make it your shorts"! A math teacher who sang more than he taught! A stoned sociology teacher who attended classes (rather taught- I liked her) in absentia. There were of course several strange creatures such as Sam (he was from Amrika) who taught us or rather attempted to teach us topography. I have a vivid memory of him since he always smelt of dog powder and he believed we were all so poverty striken in India that we couldn't afford paper or pencils (plus his head was always dirty!)! Weird! We also had shoe flinging kids (belonging to teachers) who would run into class and casually fling some footware into the class maybe trying to distract the class little knowing there was hardly anything he was doing for there was no class and we were distracted to begin with!

I guess kannada classes were the most fun- for several reasons. We got to sit cross legged on the floor and place the hard bound kannada text on the low table and doze behind it's hard bind to the background of "Chinte matu etra kathegalu or Kanyakumari matu itra kataglu"!If Babbu caught you dozing which he did once all hell would break loose with "An maduta iddiya? Nenge gotta nanu tumba freocious agbid thene!" Well he did have reason considering once the dust bin we placed on the door unintentionally fell on his head when he walked in instead of our intended target! Considering all things Babbu was a kind soul- with not a bit of fierceness in him!

Us zoo animals were given a regular diet of ragi malt at 10.00 am, lunch consisted of apparently vegetarian food which included dishes like bolt garnished upma, papad fried with a spider, cockroach flavoured buttermilk etc and snacks (in the similar range) and the director (a true speciman) believed coke was unhealthy (but grass was not????) and took it upon himself to help us "grow" (in twisted ways?) by taking "culture" class (what culture meant to him he still has'nt been able to convey) and how one should "not" make money yada, yada! We leared that people differ(and how!), learned to grow in harmony if nothing else ! And think of strange things as not so strange!