Haare Zameen Pe!

When I got newly admitted in my school in Std 1st, my big and scary (to me, in those days!) class teacher Mrs. Gilbert sternly told everyone in the class the following- “The boy who remains most silent in the class will be made the monitor” (it was a boy’s school, by the way)

I took her advice a little too seriously. I spent the next 3-4 years being absolutely silent, the quietest and the shiest in the class. However, the title of the class monitor continued to elude me- although I kept getting similar accolades even in parent teachers meeting. My parents listened to my praise with a little incredulous expression on their faces, wondering how this rowdy, boisterous kid manages to remain so quiet in the class room!

Only after I grew up a little did I realize that it was not actually the quietest kid who gets to be the monitor, it is actually the noisiest, most talkative kid! The only thing is that the noise must be made in the right manner and all the talks be done under one pretext or the other. Nothing significant should be done in contravention of the orders of those sacrosanct teachers. Like so many things in life and careers that come up later, one should “manage” their aspects of personalities and behaviour!

Another thing that happened due to my shyness was that I never got selected to be a part of dance/acting troops. I was never a great dancer or actor to begin with but always felt I could do better than many of those guys on stage. I tried to get in but my then close friend Deepak told me that it won’t be possible. He said that I had “visibility” issues and only those with good visibility are selected. I retorted that I had created some visibility for myself and was doing well in quizzes et al. He replied that actually the thing was that the teachers were too lazy to teach a new entrant like me all the dance steps (despite that being the spirit of their work, if not the letter). I gave up at this point.

Time flew by and in higher classes, I managed to become everything I had wanted- act in skits, become a monitor of the class, editor of the school magazine and as the coup-de-gras, become the house captain as well. But now when I look back to those days, I wonder at the parallels that emerge between our current life in the corporate world and what we were in primary school. One can only say that some things never change! Even now, you need to manage yourselves, keep looking around constantly, remain in the right peer group, make the right noises and keep impressing the powers-that-be. And of course, you should not take their words literally- always take them with a pinch of salt!

P.S. - One of my classmates who was a regular in the song-dance-act routines did well enough to become an actor in saas bahu serials!