The inveterate spanker at school

WHEN dad got posted from Poona to Delhi in the summer of 1953, the first thing on his agenda was to get my two brothers and me admitted to St Columba’s and the Convent of Jesus and Mary (CJM), affiliates of St Vincent’s and CJM Poona, respectively. So, dad took me to CJM first, where we found the principal, Rev Mother Francis, pacing up and down the corridor of her office, shaking her head and repeating, “no place, no place…” But dad was a tenacious charmer. He proudly stepped forward with my topper’s card and this gained me entry into the school’s hallowed portals without further ado.

Miss Rondo, the Class V teacher — a reed-thin, dour-faced, Anglo-Indian spinster who didn’t approve of mid-term admissions — threw me out of class the first day, declaring, “This child knows nothing.” Thus branded a dunce even before the race had begun, I stumbled blindly into Mother’s office clutching my report card and sobbing uncontrollably. On seeing me so distressed, she sprang to her feet and said kindly, “Why, what’s the matter, child?”

When I held out my card between sobs, she was quick to acknowledge the slip-up and promptly despatched me to

Class III, where a smiling Miss Saldana welcomed me warmly, introduced me to the rest of the class and seated me next to a bright girl who shared her notes. Resultantly, I stood seventh in the September test, and the whole class clapped for me.

But as luck would have it, I landed in Class V of the ‘Goddess of Spleen’. So when she remarked sarcastically, “Oh, so you’re back”, I cringed. As soon as we settled down, she firmly voiced the rules in her class. Each time you dropped something you were to pay a fine of four annas. Additionally, a repeater was made to walk up to the “hand ‘n’ ruler-happy” maid who would then proceed to whack you good and proper across the bottom repeatedly, muttering viciously, “Butterfingers! What you need is a ‘putt putt’ in the right place”, till you smarted with humiliation.

The spanking was often followed by the legendary hundred lines: “I shall not be clumsy in class…” I took my neatly written homework up to her, hoping for approval. One spelling mistake and she tore the page out, slapped the book back into my hand and thundered, “Do this again!”

During selections for the school choir, the teacher sent me back to class, stating that I was off key. So here I was, Miss Rondo’s bête noire, shame-facedly swallowing her derisive condemnation, “This one can’t even sing!” Even when I was among the chorus singers for the enactment of a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or won a prize for eurhythmics, she refused to acknowledge any talent or merit in me.

Thus Miss Saldana and Miss Rondo stand at the opposite ends of my childhood spectrum of good and bad teachers.

Musings