Monkey business

Until recently, some of the most vibrant spaces were classrooms. The most enjoyable hour for the young learners was when they rushed out of the gates after the bell.

In my school days, this was a time to demonstrate our sprinting skills. It was a melee which happened during the lunch break too. Inside the classroom, the ephemeral breaks between one class and the next were a time to settle scores; a friendly punch or just a slap on the back. These ceremonies were conducted under sacred rules. Smaller spats were settled thus; graver issues waited for the lunch break or the closing bell. The rules were unwritten but no one dared to cross the ‘Lakshman-Rekha’ and complain.

An insipid lesson prompted us to invent mischief. Scribbled notes and articles made clandestine travel across the benches. Paper projectiles aimed at a friend sitting across from you needed great expertise. When it misfired, the whole class went into an expressionless mode; with faces turned serious and serene, like that of a statue of meditating Budha. The whole class then stood in punishment but no one ever gave out away a name, doing so was sacrilege.

There were teachers in whose class even the most mischievous sat attentively. Such teachers made learning enjoyable and pure fun. One always looked forward to such lessons when learning would become an indulgence.

Fast forward to the present times, all has changed to an extent that no devil of devastation could have planned this in the wildest of intrigues. Today, the halls of learning are deserted. With online teaching, the once prohibited mobile phone has turned a saviour.

I once read about a school teacher in the United States who was sent on paid administrative leave after she had compared her students to monkeys. “ The monkeys of my zoo came back today,” she had written on a now withdrawn Facebook post.

We couldn't afford to be that touchy when our teachers addressed us as donkeys and monkeys. Instead, we loved it. Also, we coined a moniker for every teacher. From the ‘specky’ to the embarrassingly funny ‘LLTT’ (looking London, talking Tokyo) and so on.

Presently with no students to establish an ambrosial bond, teachers must be bored to death. The ‘donkeys’ and ‘monkeys’ must be yearning to be back to school and the teachers must be wishing for new monikers as their code names.