To teacher,with love

Sandalwood’s celebrities walk down memory lane and shared experiences with their teachers

Yelling teachers, dusters hitting knuckles, chalk bits flying in the air and over-enthusiastic and unruly students — here are some memories from a typical classroom.

On Teacher’s Day, Metrolife spoke to a few members of the Kannada film industry to find about their most memorable (funny or otherwise) moment with a teacher.

Here’s what we found out:

‘Janaki ma’am was very strict’

Sonu Gowda, actress

Once my school maths teacher, Janaki, said that she would be taking class on the eight period, which was supposed to be a PT period. Apart from a few of my friends and me, everyone else attended the class but we bunked class. This was in the eight standard and the concept of bunking classes did not exist. In every class attendance was taken, and a friend of ours had given proxy attendance for us, and was caught. We were caught and jumped over the building and fled into different directions. The next day, our school principal made us kneel in front of school, where all the students could see us.

And now: Janaki was a very strict teacher but later on we realised how she was guiding us to a better future ahead. We are friendly with her even now.

‘I used to worry about PTA meetings’

Suraj Gowda, actor and scriptwriter

I was one of the naughtiest students in the school. We had a strict teacher called Sarvamangala, who taught us social studies during my intermediate school period. She always had complaints about me and I used to always be worried about PTA meetings.

Once I flicked all the answer sheets to a surprise test and burnt all of them. The teacher instantly knew it was me, I was chided and my mother was asked to come to school.

And now: The teacher changed the way I look at life. She made sure I got back on track and studied well.

‘I would pull pranks often’

Virginia Rodrigues, film actor and theatre practitioner

I studied in a girls’ school and college. During my PU days, we had a new history lecturer Naveen who came as a replacement for another teacher. We were a class of 47 boisterous girls and I was extremely notorious. Naveen sir never got my name right and he would call me by my roll number: 44.

I would keep pulling pranks at his class. Once I sprinkled crushed chalk powder on the first table (which he used to lean on when he would lecture) and he came and sat on it. I pointed out that he had chalk on his trousers and he immediately knew that I was the culprit. Another time, I had brought a photo romance book and was passing it around and he caught me. He gently asked me to come to the teacher’s room and chided me there, but he did not raise it with the principal.

And now: I realised that he was very nice, and we ended up being friendly. My whole demeanor changed after that. My interest in history also grew by many folds because of Naveen sir.

‘I would get in a lot of trouble’

Hemanth Rao, film director, and screenwriter

I was petrified of my head of the department, AVM, during my engineering course days. I would get in a lot of trouble for low attendance or not getting the apt scores or messing up the lab experiments. He would ask me more questions in class as he knew that I wouldn’t have studied, which used to be quite traumatic.

During our course, our internal exam papers were handed to us by our instrumentation teacher, to be evaluated by ourselves. Most students would write the answers then and evaluate them. I kept this as my action plan for my third and final internals exams (where I had submitted a blank sheet) but the teacher evaluated it at home. I was called out the next day and flunked the exam. As a consequence of my failing the examination, the HOD called me and chided me a lot.

And now: I know AVM sir was trying to direct me to the right path, and I hope he found out that I turned out well.