Storm is coming!

I am usually not among the kind who backbite their teachers. But recently, my faculties have been too vexing, I was losing my cool. After all the efforts I had put on to my studio sheets for the internal jury of sixth semester, first, they didn't let me explain the sheets, instead picked random students for the job, and then, when they failed to answer their questions, they simply wrote me down as inefficient.  

I was working on the studio report too, and they had given me a tight deadline. And when I finally managed to gather up works of all students and pull it up in a proper shape in to the report, I had already closed my deadline by a day. When I approached the available faculty with the report, he asked me to mail it to him. 

"Muqthar Ahmed <caamcorp@gmail.com>

May 17 (1 day ago)

to maqbool, aparna, raktimray

Kindly see the attachments.

2 Attachments

 Image

Cover.jpg

PDF

Studio Report 3rd Year planning.pdf"

"Raktim Ray

May 17 (1 day ago)

to me, aparna, maqbool

Dear Muqthar,

Its extreme pleasure for me that you made a serious effort to send the report to me through mail. Its better I suggest to give your (the entire class) jury through mail or some virtual media. So I believe there is no point to call jury members from various parts of India by spending government money. I am requesting the exam section as well as Sudhakar to cancel all the bookings for the jury members. Good luck to your overenthusiastic and benevolent effort. Have some fun in the weekend and coming days bearing the scorching heat of Vijayawada."

What a satire! I was no less good at it.

"Muqthar Ahmed <caamcorp@gmail.com>

1:32 PM (7 hours ago)

to Raktim, aparna, maqbool

Respected Sir,

I am honoured.

What would I have not done to submit to you the report physically! After giving us an insensible deadline of Friday, that's when the class had finally done its sheets, we needed time to sit and compile the whole thing into report, and after a sleepless night, when the report was ready, it was already Saturday and you were nowhere available.  So when I went to Maqbool sir with the report for his feedback, he asked me to make few corrections and 'MAIL' him the report. And when I asked him if he needed a hard copy, he said "NOT NECESSARY".

"Over-enthusiasm" made me forward the report to all my Studio coordinators, expecting their comments to improve upon, before the report will be finalised. But I was wrong to hope that there must have been professional communication between my studio coordinators.

Thanking you for the wishes."

Rohit warned me I had went over board. 

"Raktim Ray

1:49 PM (7 hours ago)

to me, aparna, maqbool

Oh really insensible deadline. Wat if u don't attend the jury physically. I guess u'll really appreciate that. Yes professionalism is a thing to learn from someone who has missed all the deadlines and has 40% attendance in a theory subject. It was very clear from the beginning that I'll not be available during weekends. And this is not our holy and pious duty to make us available all the time as per your convenience."

Oh please, where's your humour now?

"maqbool@spav.ac.in

2:12 PM (7 hours ago)

to me, Raktim, aparna

Muqthar,

The date of submission of report was conveyed long back and it was as a class your are at fault, you may need another semester time to complete the report work. As a coordinator, i reviewed your report at eleventh hour and suggested my comments.

My intention of submission of hard copy "NOT NECESSARY" was however you are going to submit your final report to jury on Monday and I thought it doesn't require right know to spend money for taking prints again at a draft stage thats it.

Secondly you are not professional and competent enough to decide and talk about us which is very bad to hear this thing from you even after considering attendance and overall performance in your studio.I think it was our mistake to show more concern towards you.

Never expected this atleast from you.

Regards,

Maqbool"

Or maybe... I crossed my limits.

"aparna

2:21 PM (6 hours ago)

to me, Raktim, maqbool

Dear Muqtaar,

As your studio coordinator and your teacher, who has been giving her energy and time, just to ensure that you know nothing less than what a student should know at your stage, I advice you to learn the art of remaining polite, in all odds.

The deadline was not impossible at all. Nobody would ever know it better than your studio coordinators.

Professionalism clearly talks about following deadlines. Your batch, which very much includes you, has never been able to keep to the deadlines. Does that sound professional, to bunk classes and studio hours for sports events, INYAN and other co-curricular activities? Still your coordinators have patiently managed all the internal reviews, just to help your batch not depend on a the internal final jury, for complete 100 marks.

But definitely this teaches me , Raktim and Maqbul that we should not think about students' ease but rather be professional with teaching hours, jury marks, studio deadlines and most of all attendance.

The message shall reach all.

Probably the equation of respecting each other has been distorted by you. I do not consider you as one student. For me you are a part of your batch. Thus the message should go to all your classmates.

Aparna."

Dang! What trouble had I got myself in to.

I sent them an apology right then, explaining how I meant them to take it with the same humour, and that I meant no disgrace, and how it was my fault, and not my batch's. But the damage was done.  When I showed my friends the conversation, some where frank enough to blame me on my face. Some took the opportunity to conspire against me from my behind, while the rest were enjoying the show, they encouraged me.

Next day, at the college, I went to them personally to apologize.

"It's okay, I am busy, You may leave." The satirist gave up on me.

"Don't ruin my mood yaar, just leave!" Ma'am had already declared a war on our batch.

I was restless whole day, so I went back to them the next day.

"Sir, I didn't mean to disrespect anyone, I just replied him at the same humour." I explained to Maqbool sir.

"I already left the matter, man. It's okay". He was the coolest among the three.

One down, two to go.

"Ma'am, I am sorry!" The faculties were all busy on their computers at the lab. Only Aparna ma'am was cool enough to acknowledge my presence.

"Don't feel bad about it 'beta', we all make our mistakes, it's just that it took us some time to realize our mistake. Enjoy your holidays." That was very deep. They had  concluded being friendly with us, the students, was their mistake. I heard Raktim sir coughing at her behind me when I left.

I can almost foresee a tough semester ahead for me.

Sa-adiya Product

“Why don’t you talk to us?”

It’s a question I have faced one too many times from counterpart gender of my own species.

Because I am a Sa-adiya product… I want to tell them. But then, it would be a long story.

When I joined Sa-adiya, a conservative Islamic institution, for my 2^nd standard back in 2001, after doing kindergarten and 1^st standard at MIC, I had a reputation to keep up. I was a class topper and easily, every teacher’s pet. I was enjoying much attention from fellow classmates, and for kids aged 5 to 6, the class topper meant national hero to them.

To build up the reputation here in Sa-adiya from scratch seemed a tough call. Suddenly I was facing pathetic nerds, who would make drama out of every mark they lose. When the first exam results came out, to my surprise, I was among the toppers in the class, second by a huge margin to a nerdy girl, and for a moment I thought my reign was over, but soon I found myself as the saviour of male population in the class. They have been long waiting for a hero to end the female domination in the class. But with great powers came great responsibilities. Class leader posts, spoken English leader and stuffs followed me.

I would like to picture myself to have been popular with girls back then. Other day, Kollambadi Usthad (Moral Education teacher) assigned me the responsibility to check if girls wore scarf properly, or I was supposed to report them. And on the second day, I reported against this class topper. Her brother came looking for me later, and kind of threatened me, and I reported that too, to get on their bad side. My stalking skills were evolving back then. When the third topper challenged me to find her phone number (land line, obviously), I was blocking her in school veranda, next day, with my gang of friends, and taunting her with her phone number, like in an Allu Arjun movie.

Kids were growing too fast. When we were in 4^th standard, the class was in “Eww… girls!” - “Eww… boys!” relationship. Thanks to the Moral education department, they had managed to convince us that the opposite sex were the filthiest creatures to ever happen on the planet. And in 5^th standard, there was this dreamer guy who was caught for writing love letter to this topper girl, and all of a sudden, he was a shame for whole mankind. People looked at him with utmost contempt. Love was the evil most sin you could imagine in Sa-adiya.

6^th standard was a major landmark. Girls were shifted to a different section in a different building block on the other side of the compound.  We were like India and Pakistan now. Now that they were gone, I regained my topper position. In 7th standard, class teacher fell for my charms and I was assigned as the Spoken English leader. I had to collect Rs.2 from students failing to speak English. Naturally, my pocket got bigger day by day, and I found myself getting addicted to sip ups, and cool drinks. That was my first take at handling public money. I will never recommend my name for any treasurer post.

Then came the pubescence, the kids were as nasty as they could get, biology was suddenly the most interesting subject, and biology miss, the most suffered teacher. They were being starved off the female company and the barrier only made the things worse. The kids with hyper hormone glands could not take it longer, and they comforted themselves with the little opportunities they could manage, ogling at the bus stops, flaunting their hair styles, and exhibiting their bike skills and stuffs. Mobile phones were getting popular. Insomniacs were raising out in the darkness with telephone networks promoting unlimited night calls.

Meanwhile a new class of species was evolving. The one with pathetically low count of teenage hormones, the victims of Moral Education, who found womankind too sophisticated that they instead preferred computers. They were contained with the little world they knew of games and movies. Fun to them meant Die Hard movies and their plots to take over the world with their computer knowledge. All they did, though, was to set and lock monochromatic wallpapers with evil quotes, in the school computer lab. And they would be crying with joy when they would find out next week that the lab attendant had to format the computer to change the wallpaper. They hired classic dialogues from movies, and made it their preamble. They had adventure smuggling game CD’s and escaping surprise raids. And I, unfortunately, was one among them.

By the time I got out of Sa-adiya, I could no more face a girl without my blood pressure going all high. I couldn’t talk to a girl without my mouth going all dry. My eyes would focus over anything and everything but the girl I am talking to. 

I was another perfect product of Sa-adiya. 

Aftermath

Prologue

Aromal wanted me to write a story for SPAV-Corridor.com and I knew exactly what I was gonna put up. So I wrote this story and titled it "Thattathin Marayathu". The post was a hit, but the excitement was short lived.

                                                                                   ***

Bob Marley was right!

I always worried that at some point in my life, I would look back, and regret at the things I could have done, but I never did. That’s why I finally gathered all my guts to let her know. I wrote my story, of how I met her, and named it ‘Thattathin Marayathu’ for the college’s online magazine. The editor was worried that I went overboard with privacy invasion. I had mentioned her name, her place, her dad’s occupation, even shape of her face, her dress colours and what not. He asked me to get her consent before publishing it. Now that was some hurdle.

Later when she was online in Facebook, I texted her

“I wrote an article for SPAV corridor which mentions your name couple of times along with few others, no harm meant, hope you don’t mind :P”

In my years of experience, I haven’t come up with a more powerful smiley than the tongue smiley. It had the ability to deal with the most tensed conversations light heartedly. A moment later, she replied.

“Which article?”

Silence. I applied Less is More concept.

“Ya…” She continued. I figured it later, she has a thing for full stops.

“It’s ok. :)"

There was a smiley! That was some achievement.

“It’s about fresh meat syndrome.” Later that night, I hinted her the matter in its most complicated term. I took my time to reply her, to show her I was least excited.

I couldn’t wait to tell the editor that I had my consent. Later that night, the post was published under the pen name ‘The Optimist’. And soon, likes and comments started flowing in. All of as a sudden, everyone was curious to see how much optimism the world had left. Next day, I came online to check on the developments. The post was nowhere to be seen. It was gone! And instead, the page said-

This article was accused of breaching the privacy of certain someone. So currently it has been put on hold. If any breakthrough happens, it will become available again.

Come on! Didn’t we have a discussion on this before? I had a message from the certain someone in my inbox.

“What’s with this article now?”

“Why not? I told you!”

“Ya… But you only said that you mentions my name couple of times… I don’t like anyone posting about me like that…” Full stops! Full stops everywhere.

“You didn’t mind showing it to your dad! And then wants the post to be taken down?”

Oops! That sounded desperate. My agent had reported me that she showed the article to her dad, and, fortunately, he was cool about it, and that she went all padre preaching and warning him about the consequences of keeping a grown up girl unmarried. Report even said that she threatened him to find her a groom before more headaches emerged. Was she for real?  

It took her a while to reply. Maybe she was outraged at the realization that there was some tipster inside spying on her.

“Personal reasons. I don’t want it up there… And ya, it’s your article, you can do whatever you want with it... but don’t include my name in it.”

That last full stop felt like a stab on me. She was talking like an untrained politician, with her contradicting statements! I can do whatever I want with my article, and I should not write about her?

I am done with womankind! I pictured Bob Marley with that ‘meme’ish troll face consoling me with ‘I know that feel bro!’ hug.

No Women No Cry!