“Amiya okay now stand up!” I stood up slowly and hung my head, my face still red from laughing crazy. I stifled the treacherous torrent of laughter making its way up as Mr. Hussein said: “Okay now Anantthhha stand up okay now.”
“Idiot!” hissed Anantha.
The little embarrassment I had felt a second before evaporated as fast as it had come. Anantha Venkatraman was one of my best friends and partner in crime. We were the bickering twosome. All our fights usually ended in uncontrollable spurts of laughter.
“Now okay if you continue this okay behaviour it will affect your okay performance. This is not a joke,” continued Mr. Hussein. I tried my hardest not to laugh when I caught sight of someone in the next row making tally marks on his desk to count the number of times Mr. Hussein said “okay now”. Anantha, eager to get back into the teacher’s good books, said: “Sorry Sir”, resetting his features to a grim and sorry expression. I feared he would get away with it because Anantha was one of Mr. Hussein’s favourite students.
There wasn’t a time the guy passed without distinction in Hussy’s subject, which was Maths. But not today, no sir! Mr. Hussein said with tightened severity: “Now okay Ananthhaa! You will okay now say you’re sorry now and repeat this nonsense. Do you okay know the meaning of sorry?” I could have exploded! Stifling your laughter is worse than stifling a cough. The lecture continued for another fifteen minutes and every third word punctuated with ‘okay now’. After he had sobered down, we humbly said sorry again and took our seats.
The class always enjoyed Hussy’s lectures, which sometimes lasted more than half a period. There were times when we would throw some random topic at him making it sound very important just to waste the lesson or postpone a test. Once we told him an exaggerated story about the unhygienic water in the cooler and that kept him talking till he realised there were only ten minutes to the bell. We kept silent for the rest of the period and listened to him faithfully. When the bell rang I stood up to check the day’s score. Apparently Mr. Hussein had hit 121 ‘okay nows’ that day.
Being Hussy’s pet peeve was one of the things that made grade 10 unforgettable. There were many other funny incidents in Mr. Hussein’s class. Once Anantha and I were caught with our mouths full of chocolate chip cookies. I can still laugh thinking of Hussy’s werewolf-like face glaring as we were trying to come up with an excuse while trying to push down the delicious cookies. The class roared with laughter as we brushed off the crumbs and smacked our lips as we queued up to Mr. Hussein with our school diaries for a bright red “Eating in class!” remark.
When sometimes life takes little nasty turns I bank on these lighter memories to get by.
The promised posts about school! I laughed pretty hard at the tally so religiously kept :P
ReplyDelete'Eating in class' remark! tch tch :) what did aunty say?