Shedding Some Light # ! A First Class Nincompoop

At 4:46 am in the morning, I had this idea of a weekly series in which I will write about an incident from my life. And what I learnt from it. I am going to call it Shedding Some Light. There are some things that never fade away from your memory and from time to time, you visit those incidents. I am going to share those visits with you guys.

One day, in 5th grade, during the Geography class, our teacher called a guy from a grade above us. His name was H. He was a pompous ninny whose favourite past time was bragging about his London brought up. Naturally, I did not like him. He came into the class, the teacher asked him something but he kept denying it saying its not mine, its not mine.

A few days after that, while walking to the school, me and Huzaifa saw H standing outside the school gates with two older guys. One of them had a metal bicycle chain wrapped around his hand and the other had a cricket bat. H said Hi to us and introduced us to his older brothers.

I do not remember what I did next but I wish that I had slapped him or strangled him at least.

Than I proceeded to my class upstairs. After throwing our bags in the classroom, me and my friends were coming downstairs, lacing our skates, when we noticed the commotion around us. Everyone was running outside towards the main gate.

Had I been 18, I would have thought that someone was naked outside or there is a free ice cream truck.

On our way out, someone told us that H was beating our Math teacher. The same teacher who used to wear ill fitting suits with gigantic ties with rainbows and dogs on them. He even had a Happy Birthday one, complete with balloons and streamers. H had brought his gang with him and wanted to kill the teacher.

The teachers sent us back to the class before we made it outside.

All of a sudden, the whole school had something new to gossip about. Everyone was on H's side, claiming that the teacher had beaten him first.

Than I remembered something.

The true story was that that 11 year old jerk had written love letters to a girl on the back of her notebook. She took it to her class teacher, who called him in our class and confronted him. On his denial, she took the matter to the sir. H went on to make lame excuses, one of them being that the notebook is his sisters.

Sir was forced to read out loud the cheesy lines he had copied from some third rate magazine. He went on to being himself, which was selfish, rude, arrogant, show-off and a world class jerk.

Sir started lecturing him and asked him to apologize to the girl, on which H became more rude and said,

"Its none of your business. Keep out of it."

What happened next was that I heard the most beautiful sound in the world, that of a hand coming together with a cheek and going "Chatakh ! "

And for that the sir was badly beaten with three broken ribs, a hairline fracture in the arm, two fractures in the left leg, a split lip and a concussion.

I wish I could understand why H did what he did. As if a reason could ever justify his actions.

The age where my days were spent waiting for the next HP book to come out, attending all the after school sports practices, having sleepovers at our best friends and learning to skip in a week. He was planning his revenge. And his older brothers were helping him.

And the fact that that teacher has to live with the fact that once upon a time, his respect lay in a Cricket bat and a Bicycle chain.

P.S. And let me tell you that first class nincompoops are those who are well aware of their qualities.

P.P.S. My current on repeat song is I Will Be Waiting. This is actually an English version of a Hindi song "kabhi Jo Badal barse". Both of them are awesome.

...SAP...

When I Was In 2nd Grade

When I was in second grade, I had a Math teacher. She was just love. I do not even remember her name but I do remember her awesomeness. I remember the way she used to flip her hair and that boots she wore that told you from a mile that she was coming. In her class, my hand always used to shoot up just like Hermione's. My mom told me that I used to hold her finger tight in my hand and never used to let it go

Unfortunately, our teacher got changed and she started teaching some other section. I tried liking the new teacher but it just didn't work. So I went up to her and said that I do not like the new teacher. She should come back etc. And I started crying. She wiped away my tears and said,

"Sumaica, you know tears are actually your energy. So whenever you cry, you are wasting your energy. And you, you are a horse. You have so many races ahead of you that you have to win. You cannot afford to waste one bit of that energy of yours."

By now I was hooked up and her words were leaving an impression on my mind. She continued,

"And maybe the new teacher is not like me. But someday you will get a teacher who will be better than me. And then you will get to see a part of me in her. Because every teacher like every parent is the same at heart."

I am not even in contact with her anymore. But I want her to know. Ma'am, your horse has grown up. She is winning her races. She lost some as well. But she says, if not this one, then the other. She has learnt not to waste her energy, just like you told her. And yes, she did find teachers who were better than you. But nobody was you. She saw your reflection in the teachers that taught her. And your words still echo in her mind from time to time.

...SAP...

Anger - An Impulse

It was 5th grade and I was merely 10 years old. But my anger had always been very impulsive and I had a tendency to take it out on people. I never meant to but that is how it was. Somehow I used to lose my thinking capability. My brain used to shut down and hormones came over it. I said things I never meant. Sometimes that still happens. But now it is very rare. I remember once I was shouting at someone over something and my gym teacher saw that. He said to me that, Sumaica, take your anger physically out on non living things rather than actual people. So that whole year whenever something used to piss me off, I use to go to the gym and work out. Whatever work out a 10 year old can do. But my point is that it took 15 minutes of physical labour for my anger to pass like a bad storm. And that helped me a lot to keep my anger in control over the years.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, anger is a strong feeling of extreme displeasure. I define it more like as wanting to punch someone so hard that their teeth fall out and they have a toothless ugly smile.

Sometimes I think that kids are better than us in this respective. They take out their anger by punching someone or throwing a tantrum in the middle of a mall. It lasts only 15 minutes and then they let go of it and forget whatever happened. On the other hand being an adult makes you do what people call it "think rationally". So instead you just keep on spinning things over and over again like a cotton candy is spun. And if you take a cotton candy, compress it, there is nothing in it. And that is how things are when we are angry.

Everyone of us needs a solution to control our anger. Or to at least let go of it. It is like figuring out all the kinks of a damaged car, so that only you know how to drive it. I found mine after a long time. So today whenever I am angry, my diary or any paper finds me and words tumble out of my pen like men breaking away from a prison. But once those words have left my hand, then I never think about those things again. We all have that solution. Whether it is working out in a gym, writing, going on a drive or shouting at your loved ones.

Like Maya Angelou said,

"Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean."

So at the end of the day, I learnt that being angry helps no one. It effects only you and the damage done has to be repaired by you. So like a car, you have to figure out all the kinks and find a solution to let go of it. That is what helps everyone keep their sanity.

...SAP...

Just A Thought

An anonymous text from the Tradition says that, in life, each person can take one of two attitudes: to build or to plant. The builders might take years over their tasks, but one day, they finish what they are doing. Then they find they are hemmed in by their own walls. Life loses its meaning when the building stops.

Then there those who plant. They endure storms and all the many vicissitudes of the seasons, and they rarely rest. But, unlike a building, a garden never stops growing. And while it requires the gardener's constant attention, it also allows life for the gardener to be a great adventure.

Gardeners always recognize one another, because they know that in the history of each plant lies the growth of the whole World.
                                                 -Brida, Paulo Coelho

Our teachers are like gardeners too. They plant seedlings of knowledge in us and we grow up, those seedlings become plants. They efforts never go to waste. Because somewhere in the world, there fully grown plants are benefiting the world in one way or another. When you think of it, there have been so many gardeners in our life starting from the age of 4 years. Every single on one of them played a role in making us who we are today.

To me even writers are like gardeners. What they write, whether it is fiction or biography, its their plant. Their writing never stops benefiting the world and its people. The authors themselves enjoy the glory and the satisfaction of all that they have done. Maybe some day my writing will also benefit people. To me, there is no use of writing if it does not benefit me, my country and its people. Hopefully, one day, this will be a reality.

...SAP...