The Initial days of my schooling

During my initial days in school, my father always compared me to the Prithvi missile, which was designed and developed by Defence Research and Development Organization.

I don’t know what my father’s reasoning was…but I guess it had something to do with the fact that Prithvi never hit its intended target.

“You are just like that surface-to-surface missile, Prithvi. Can’t even find Pakistan,” he would say.

It wasn’t always my mistake that my father got called to the school often. Like that time when the teacher asked me that Pencil Box question. She said: “Robin if I give you two Pencil Box and then give you two more Pencil Box…how many Pencil Box would you have?”

I said: “Five Pencil Box.”

The teacher asked this question many times and every time my answer was five. I think after the seventh attempt, she lost her cool and called in my father. My father’s answer was ‘Four Pencil Box’ and even after I reminded him that we already had a Pencil Box at home, and the correct answer was ‘Five Pencil Box’ he only gave me a stare.

Now, I could get my progress report signed on the same day it was given to me by my teachers – not because I was getting good marks, but because now my classmates had stopped borrowing it to scare their parents.

Soon, I had realized that the lesser activities I did in school, the lesser my chances of making a mistake, and thus even lesser my chances of being nailed and hanged on the wall. In order to limit the activities, I avoided eye contact with teachers and when they asked me to do anything I would re-confirm if they were talking to me.

I think I was in the fourth standard, when I became the favorite student of my English teacher. She had spent the last 15 minutes waiting for one of us to give two examples of pronoun. I tried hard to avoid eye-contact but after 15 minutes, my turn did come. She asked: “You over there….give me two examples of a pronoun.”

I was quite. I didn’t look up.

She came closer, and said: “Hello…you…look up and give me two examples of a pronoun.”

I had no choice but to look up. I looked at her, looked behind me, and looked on both my sides and then looked back at the teacher and asked: “Who? Me?”

The teacher went ecstatic. Since then I became her favorite student. Unfortunately, I was promoted to Secondary School and the teachers changed..