The Characters - HB

HB is one of our Math teachers. HB, I think, stands for Harishchandra Bhat. I think. I am not sure since when this "initials thing" caught on, but I think it was triggered off by our time tables in Deeksha which were basically matrices with random letters on them. ["What is Deeksha?" is one question which immediately comes to mind. But the answer to that will be found in a future post. No, I am not a soothsayer.] Only later did we realise that these letters were the initials of our teachers.

I chose to start with HB, not just because he is the craziest and most hilarious teacher I've ever seen, but because his was the first class we had in Ace. That was one hell of a first session, let me tell you that.

Here's the setup. We're all scrambling around trying to find our bearings, belongings and pieces of our brains in Deeksha, not knowing what was going to happen to us in the next seven-eight hours. We finally manage to figure out the room we're supposed to place our buttocks in and are just settling down. Okay fine, we were noisy. But it was our first day, we were meeting new people and old people (not old people, but you know, people we'd known before, people who had been in Kumarans last year. But I guess you got that), and fighting over seats.

Suddenly, this shortish man with a bristling mustache the colour of overused roads in India walks in. He has just enough hair on his head to cover the back of it and a little of the sides. The colour of his hair is very similar to that of his moustache, except that as soon as you see it, you feel that the hair has been given a paintjob so many times that it will puke if even a small amount of dye is brought near it.

He shouts, "Silence!". We obey his order. He then slams the door looks at all of us in disgust and says, "This is DEEKSHA." I don't know about the others but I almost peed in my pants. Only my supreme courage and love for my pants prevented me from doing so. Now, I was really scared.

He then started giving us a long lecture about how our goal was to reach IIT. In his own words: "Your goal is to what?, reach IIT. IIT. What? IIT. IIT. IIT." After that I realised that I shouldn't have judged this hilariously stupid and insecure man so soon. Now I know that he is, in fact, hilariously stupid and insecure.

Nowadays, we treat his classes like a free period. Well, most of us do. But I don't. I am very dedicated. I sit there, poised, with my pen in my hand and my notepad open, ready to jot down anything funny he says. It keeps me quite busy. On an average, he says something really stupid and hilarious every 72.5 seconds. (I'll put up all his quotes in a later post.)

HB has this habit of calling everybody "his children". Almost each sentence is finished off with a "my child" and a click of his tongue. So, this would be HB scolding someone for not knowing the answer to a problem:

"What is this, my child? Don't tell me I don't know this one that one! If you don't know this also then... out of the window??"

This would be him checking up on a random student:

"My child, what is wrong with you?"

This would be him when he is trying to be funny:

"Aaaaallll issszzz WEEEEELLLLLL!!!"

This would be him talking to Vikas:

"Ey! Chotu.....!"

The last word (Chotu) is to be said in the following way. You must first do the groundwork with the "Ey!". It is pronounced like the letter "a" and is held for approximately 1.5 seconds. Then you start off with "Cho-". The emphasis is to be laid on the "Tu". You start with a normal "tu", then go on increasing your pitch till you can't go any further. This word may go on for anything between 5 to 7 seconds.

He is also known for sticking his tongue out and curling it upwards trying, in vain, to reach his nose. This act of his has been interpreted in many ways. Some think that this is his way of showing his "children" the finger, some believe that it is his insecurity that is making him check every 5 seconds to make sure that his mustache is still there. But I personally think that doing that helps him think better. Surely, you have heard of the nerve ending present just above the upper lip of this species we call Teachers (Terrora profis, some falling under the subspecies, terrora profis bitchis).

At the beginning we would count the number of times he would stick his tongue out. The day he reached 112 stick-outs in 1 hour, we got bored, and started counting the number of seconds he would hold his tongue out for. His current record is 22 seconds, if I am not wrong.

That was a brief summary of HB for now. New and more interesting facts and opinions will be revealed as they come.