Class 6.Subject Social Studies. Our much loved and feared social studies teacher Patnaik sir was explaining a concept in his usual eccentric way. He had a flair for making complex things easy to understand and to the delight of his students he always made the answers of questions in the textbook very brief and to the point. And he expected the students to be diligent and sincere in learning. His punishments were also very unique. For the boys he made them sit in between two girls. Yeah, that was 'punishment' back then. Sometimes when he was very angry he would give a good whack on our outstretched hands with a scale. So we knew that if he gets angry we were in for a bad time.
As he was teaching, suddenly out of the blue he asks the kid in the first bench the meaning of the word 'Republic'. The kid stands up but does not answer. Sir gets angry. He asks the kid next to him. He too doesn't know. Sir gets angrier. He then asks the kid in the second bench of the same row. He stands up and again no answer. By now steam is blowing from his ears. He asks the next kid. I was seated in the 4th bench and I asked my bench mate if he knew what the answer was because I did not. He replied in the negative. Sweat began to form on my forehead.I counted the number of kids in front of me and calculated when my turn would come up. I was 8th in line. I hoped the sequence would stop somewhere but as I was looking it was refusing to stop.Nobody knew the answer and Sir looked like he would have a fit. I was scared. Suddenly an idea stuck me.I always kept a dictionary in my school bag. I quickly took out my dictionary and started searching for the the word 'Republic'. I looked up once to see what number was going on. It was 6th. I had to hurry. Madly I flipped the pages and got to the 'R' section.Then I found my way to 'Republic'. Internally I screamed yes!! I quickly told the definition to my bench mate. No sooner had I told him his turn came up and he gave the answer. Sir was relieved and said 'good'to him and the witch hunt stopped.Before he turned away, he just swept his gaze over my face. I looked at him poker faced.I just hoped he wouldn't notice the tension or the sweat on my face. I think he didn't or maybe he did and chuckled to himself. Ill never know. The rest of the class heaved a sigh of relief.
