Chanta Laga

Me and few school friends were chatting recently and were laughing over various childhood memories. Here is one of them -

When I graduated to 6th grade, my father got me enrolled into HAL School, Lucknow. It took sometime to secure the admission and hence I was nearly 2 months late in joining school. As expected, I was pretty nervous on my first day.

Picture this - a young boy coming from a small school (which had all the classrooms on a single floor in a single building) who hasn't seen any big school in his life, enters a large school.
You can imagine his bewilderment from the first sentence that he told his mother after school - "Mummy, this school is so big that they couldn't fit all kids in one class. They had to create many sections for each class". कितना मासूम था न मैं!

So, on my first day in school, I (the masoom boy) was escorted to the class and the class teacher introduced me to everybody. First lecture passed alright. Since I was already 2 months behind the syllabus so I didn't understand anything.

Then, 2nd lecture started - Mathematics. Our maths teacher was Siddiqui sir and he had a peculiar way of announcing his entrance in the class. From the time he entered into the class, and till the time he got settled, he would point random students and ask for random values in multiplication table.
It was like - "you - 17 X 7 = ?", "you - 12 X 3 = ?", "you - 19 X 4 = ?". Needless to say, everyone had multiplication tables on their fingertips.

Like many other kids, I was already afraid of maths at that time, and when I saw Siddiqui sir's way of teaching - I was scared witless. Also, I knew only tables upto 10 at that time; so that was another nail in the coffin!

Pretty soon, he started his lecture in regular way and wrote a question on the black board. Then he turned around and started looking at the class. I don't know whether it was my good looks or bad luck; of all the regular students, he picked me up for solving that. Later I learnt that it was neither my looks nor my luck - it was my stupidity that I was the only one looking at him; everyone else was avoiding eye contact with him.

Of course, I didn't understand the problem at all. While I was walking towards the black board I heard some boys saying "सर, नया है! सर, नया है!". I didn't understand that either.

Seconds later, I was standing there, in front of entire class, with a chalk in my hand and looking dumbfounded.
Before I could say something there was a sound - "Chataak"!!!
Seconds later, I was still standing there, in front of entire class, with one hand still holding the chalk and other hand over my cheek; and still looking dumbfounded.

I went back to my seat without making eye contact with anyone (lesson learnt) and didn't look up. Meanwhile, someone else was solving the problem on the board.

After 5 minutes or so, I heard "You! Hey You". The kid sitting next to me poked me lightly and I looked up and saw Siddiqui Sir pointing to me.

"Yes sir?" I stood up thinking "अभी और भी बेइज्जती होनी है क्या"
"You are new" he said. It took me a second or two to understand that he was asking not telling.
"Yes Sir".
"Ok, Sit down"
... and that my friends, my grandest entry to any gathering, ever! Not quite what one would expect, right?

I sat down with this dialogue echoing in my head "Dr. Dang Ko pehli baar kisi ne thappad maara hai, First time. Is Thappad ki goonj suni tumne? Ab is goonj ki goonj tumhe sunai degi. Rana mujhe tumhaara thappad bhoolega nahi". It's pretty easy to guess the movie, right? Well, I was able to relate to it completely!