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.