2086 Views -| Comments (6) | Jan 17th 2006

 

Ding dong, goes the gong. With that, believe it or not, back in the nursery school, the next forty five minutes is called ‘sleeping hour’. We all, the under fives had to put our elbows folded on the desk and nap on. Now how can anyone, albeit a stern looking ‘miss’ make thirty hyperactive brats sleep? Of course she had a wooden ruler in her hands, which she wielded with devastating effect, no, she never struck us, but she brought down that lath of wood with such ferocity on the desk close to our heads – that each one of us kept our heads flat down.

 

Of course, mischievous eyes darted about, and lips spoke unheard words, whispers rent the air: then ‘crack’, the sound of wood, and hush for the next two minutes. How thirty kids could keep a silent conversation going, heads down, and eyes shut amazes me, but we did. This was at a convent school at Assam, which I reached astride a bicycle ridden by a house servant. If my memory is dependable, we had to cross a long broad bridge across a river to reach the kindergarten.

 

One morning, as I sat on a mini seat on the cycle bar, legs crossed in front of the fork, one of my ankles slipped into the wheel and got itself wedged between the spokes and fork. I and my chaperone fell in a heap on the road, where some Samaritans extricated my foot from its lodging. A couple of sutures, and an impressive looking gauze bandaging, along with another of broader strip of material wrapping my forehead – the latter swathing to seal off a nasty scalp laceration that oozed blood.

 

Now, ask any kid: there is nothing more manly than going to school with bandage or sling. And, I was quite a hero that day, for a few days more, sporting dressings and stitches. Of course the nuns clucked in sympathy and sent me to the ‘infirmary’ every two hours. The switch wielding ‘miss’ was very understanding too, and let me keep my bandaged head off the desk during ‘sleeping class’. The ‘up’ instead of ‘down’ position of my cranium gave mea bird’s eye view of the classroom. I observed that the ‘miss’ actually wasn’t minding the class, nor was she singling out non- nodders for her desk decibel smack – she was walking across the room between the aisles, just whacking a desk or two at random, creating an imaginary scare in the minds of those pretending to be asleep, that ‘you are under the scanner’ and woe awaits anyone daring to move.

 

I also noted that no classmate had his head in position for longer than a minute. They just first laid their head on the left ear sixty seconds, then turn it to the opposite side to lie on the right ear for another sixty. This way, they not only kept a half open eye on the perambulations of the ‘miss’ but also managed to keep a three way whispering campaign going. I did discover though, that one or two sops actually slept during the period, and that even the periodic cracks of ruler on desk hardly raised an eyelid in them.

 

There was another weekly session for singing: here the corpulent nun sat at a piano banging away on the ivories, exhorting us to join her in the chorus which went thus:

 

If you go down to the woods today

You’re sure of a big surprise

If you go down to the woods today

You better be in disguise

For very bear that ever there was

Would gather there for certain because

Today’s the day,

The teddy bears have their picnic

 

Now one had to drop one’s voice when it came to the word ‘pick –nick’, stressing on each syllable separately: we kids knew nothing of what the term ‘drop your voice’ meant, and continued chorusing nary a care for meter or score, much to the chagrin and ire of the obese nun, who to me, looked very much like an overfed black & white bulimic penguin.

 

Till today, I have no idea, whose brainwave this enforced session of sleep was: but I do know that, a few years later, every one of us, has had the mortification of being hauled up and humiliated for daring to contemplate dropping into nap-realm during lectures. Nothing irks an academic more, than to discover some last benchers in snooze-land. The problem is many of the senior dons were so boring, that their lectures induced ennui and somnolence. But who dares questioning the methods or mores of the mandarins of education? Get smacked for not sleeping when you are five, and get whacked for sleeping when you are fifteen.