The teachers of school years past...

Random teacher memories over the years from school (St John's Jr College in Mandaveli):

- A substitute history teacher of whom I was terrified because I was always afraid he would pick on me like he did with another girl who was fat. He found it very funny to sing a corrupted version of an old Tamil movie song at her. (His version: "Miaow miaow poonai kutti, class-la sutthum yaanaikutti" – literal translation "miaow miaow little kitten, a baby elephant in the class"). He never did pick on me, for whatever reason, but 45 minutes of sitting in the class waiting for him to "discover" me was almost worse than any actual teasing. I wish I could remember the b*stard's name. To that girl's credit (cant remember her name either) she never seemed intimidated by him, whatever her feelings on the inside.

- A very pretty geography teacher who spent a lot of her time standing at the entrance to our classroom, flirting with the senior PT master (their classes coincided that way) in the next classroom. She had a somewhat nasal voice and would insist on calling me "SYAAmala". I liked her – well, the entire class did, because we could pretty much do as we pleased. She would only exert herself if the noise level rose beyond tolerable. Occasionally if we were really noisy even after being warned by her, the PT master would poke his head into our classroom and threaten us with dire punishment. We kept quiet for a little longer when that happened. Oddly enough, I cant remember the names of either teacher now.

- A bad-tempered physics teacher, whose name was Miranda. He was disgusting – oily lank hair with a parting far over to one side and combed over, although he wasn't balding. Longer than normal, his hair came up to his earlobes and if he was seated when he called you to the blackboard, you could sometimes see oil-stains on his shirt collars. Yuk. But the worst part was that he was a closet pedophile… he always made me uncomfortable, but I didn't know why until a much more worldly-wise classmate (who was my best friend for a brief 9 months before she moved to Bombay) made us aware of his sleazy tendencies. She told me and another friend never to be alone with him in the staffroom.

- A history teacher, a Mallu lady who was terrible at her job, and who was utterly unable to earn the respect of our class because we knew exactly what button to push to get her flustered. All one of the boys (sitting nearest the corridor) had to say was "The Princi(pal) is coming, miss" and she would rush to cover the blackboard with dates and names as proof that she had been hard at work, raising her voice and trying to get us to be more responsive. She never seemed to twig on to the fact that he hardly ever turned up. ("It's okay miss, he's gone into VIIIB miss").

- A chemistry teacher who never picked on me, but was renowned for the nasty painful nips she gave with her fingernails as punishment for not answering questions correctly, or for making a noise, and so on. She was very fond of my sister, so that could be why I escaped the nips even though I was dismal at chemistry. She was quite kind at heart, really, but her attitude in general was as politically incorrect as you could get. Her usual way of addressing the 2-3 guys in the class who were Jains, was "You, moneylender" or "You, pawnbroker". (Jains were mostly from Rajasthan, and the majority of them were pawnbrokers or money-lenders, usually on a small scale although reputed to be as tightfisted as they were rich.)

- A young(ish) botany teacher who, along with a couple of other Christian teachers, was in charge of the school choir. We referred to her as "Vidi miss" – I don't know if that was her surname or her given name, or even if "Vidi" was the right name! Her most favourite instruction to us was to "open our mouth wide" while we sang. I didn't understand that until much later, when I saw a proper "Western" choir sing. They certainly opened their mouths wide!

- An assistant PE teacher, Alagappan, a minor tyrant and wannabe head PE teacher. Unfortunately named, because he was the opposite of good looking. He tried to terrorise the boys in my class (when we were in the 12 th standard) but ended up with egg on his face because those young thugs were more than a match for him. The way they dissed him was pretty awful, but then Alagappan shouldn't have tried to bully them. The kids in the lower classes bore the brunt of his bad temper, sadly.

- Our English teacher, who looked like Rabbit in Winnie the Pooh. That exact same pinched look, that fussy air, skinny and high-strung, with thin hair pulled back very tightly into a bun. (It's because of her that I was convinced for YEARS that Rabbit was a She rather than a He.) She stood absolutely no nonsense from anybody, wasn't afraid of slapping down – literally – recalcitrant teenage boys twice her size and was the first to tell us off for calling her "miss". ("Call me 'Ma'am', or "teacher" or even 'Hey you', but for god's sake don't address me as 'miss'. I'm a married woman.") She was my favourite teacher by far, although I'm not sure she returned the favour. I do know from personal admissions that a couple or three of the boys, who argued with her all the time, had a crush on her! Go figure.