Mrs Pa’ris was my teacher in grade 3. Back in Sri Lanka, her name was pronounced, Paa-ris. Leading up to grade three, from kindergarten up, we had Mrs Cooray, Miss Yvonne and Miss Angela — our class teachers. Mrs Cooray taught us the alphabet on slate tablets. Miss Yvonne’s job was to make us God-fearing, devout Catholic boys and teach us complex matters like the Holy Trinity and life after death. Both of which we could not grasp as six-year-olds. Miss Angela prepared us to receive the holy communion and confession. But they were kind teachers.
Not so, Mrs Pa’ris, who taught in grade 3. She had a reputation in primary school, not a good one. She was a terror. As the year in grade 2 ended, we did not want to move to grade 3 and face Mrs Pa’ris. We wanted to bypass grade 3 and go straight to grade 4. But that was not possible in primary education. We had no choice.
With hesitation, we landed in grade 3 in Mrs Pa’ris’s class. There was a tiny bonus, a consolation bonus. Grade 3 was on the 1st floor of the primary school building. Kids love climbing stairs, so we loved going up and down, despite Mrs Pa’ris’s stares from her classroom.
In Grade 3, the boys had to adjust drastically quickly. Nobody was allowed to be kids. Pin-drop silence was demanded, and Mrs Pa’ris got that from the frightened kids. She never called students by their names. On top of that, she had squint eyes. Now, kids had no foresight to deal with this from the terror of a teacher. She interrupted her teaching to ask questions while looking at a student with crossed eyes, expecting a student to answer. Her right and left eyes were playing games, pointing in different directions. She thought her stare alone would be sufficient to make any frightened boy stand up and answer. A kid from the left got up to answer. Mrs Pa’ris was indeed looking at a boy at the right. She would quickly admonish the innocent kid on the left for standing and blast the boy on the right for not standing up to answer. She yelled at them for being disobedient, threatening to hit them.
The little kids, who just turned eight, had no way of figuring this out. After a little while, the kids figured out the root cause. A nickname was invented, ‘Bombay-looking-Calcutta’. It was our first geography lesson. Mumbai from the west coast of neighbouring India, vs Kolkata from the east coast of India, cities some 2000 kilometres apart, became our barometer of distances. One would not dare to say ‘Bombay-looking-Calcutta’ near her. The boys cheekily whispered it among them. That was the only way the boys could get some justice from the monster of Mrs Pa’ris.
Mrs Pa’ris carried a wooden foot ruler, punishing kids for silly mistakes. She called the students to the front and hit them with her ruler on their knuckles. When that thing hit the bones, it pained more than a hit on flesh. She hated boys so much that she was happiest when punishing them. A rumour circulated that she hated boys because she had three girls and no boys. So, we ended up as unwilling weapons in her biological warfare. We were her unfortunate human shield.
The only escape from Mrs Pa’ris was our sports period when Mr Herbert, the sports teacher took us out to the school ground to play. Boys played football, climbed pillars, and ran around the ground, trying to forget happenings in their terror cell of a class. During school intervals, some boys slid down the rails on the stairs from the first floor to the ground. They were the only breakouts the little boys had from Mrs Pa’ris.
Mrs Pa’ris invented other ways to get back at the boys she could not punish physically. The school finished at 3.15 pm, pretty late for eight-year-olds. Her punishment was to hold the little boys back to clean up the classroom, sweeping, picking dirt and wiping the desks. She caught me one day not paying attention. The punishment was to stay back after class and clean up. My dear grandmother was waiting at the school to take me home. While she sat under a tree waiting for me, I was left to clean up the entire classroom. After that massive clean-up that took ages, Mrs Pa’ris inspected my work and let me return to my grandmother. Too late into the afternoon, we missed our regular buses and reached home late.
Now, my mother was not the one to stand for injustices. She was furious that night that her little boy was punished for a silly mistake. The next day my father dropped me at school, and my mother came to school to pick me up instead. She waited until the end of and entered the classroom when the bell rang. She bluntly told Mrs Pa’ris that she disagreed with her methods of punishment and that she would not tolerate them anymore on her son. Out of respect for both, I did not go close when they had their serious arguments. Shortly afterwards, my mother fetched me from the corner of the class and took me home but did not say anything about her conversations with Mrs Pa’ris.
After that day, Mrs Pa’ris left me alone. I was fortunately spared from her humiliations, but not so many of my friends. They hated these gross punishments from ‘Bombay-looking-Calcutta’.
My English textbook in grade 3, ‘English by Stages’. The English teacher was Miss Peterson; all kids loved her.
The boys waited impatiently for the year to pass to finish up grade 3 and move on to grade 4, the class of Dulcie teacher. That could not come soon enough.
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