“Hi guys, I am Aarti. And I would be your Communication Skills teacher apart from being your class teacher. My first job would be to appoint a class prefect. C’mon! Volunteers please.”
I wasn’t the one who usually volunteered for stuff like this. I looked around and I could see almost everybody was doing the same. So I was not alone then! One guy from the first bench (why do such guys always sit on the first bench) raised his hands and thus we got our first class prefect.
“I guess I will start right away with my first lecture in Communication Skills”. She was young, in fact she did feel younger than many of us. But right now she was in command and made sure we felt it.
“Since its just your second day and almost all of us are strangers to each other, why don’t we have some fun and get acquainted”, she said cheerfully with an air hostess smile.
I knew what was coming. I had just managed to become comfortable with my neighbors and now she will jumble and pair us with different people. I hated it. We all were going to be together for at least an year. We had plenty of time to become friends. What was the big hurry?
“I want you to come in front and speak about anything you wish”.
Ok, this was different, but then what was this? Who would want to blabber in front of his future classmates. What if it turned out to be a disaster? How can anyone survive being the butt of all jokes for the rest of the year? I was almost going to be run over by the huge train of my terrifying thoughts, when up goes a hand. Again a first bencher! Damn!! There should be a law against having a first bench.
Anyway, the guy walked up to the ‘center stage’. Pretty gutsy. Pretty stupid too. Ok, but then, let me make try to maintain your interest generated from the title of this post, (and in case you are wondering, deja who?) by assuring that what he said was a roaring success. The first impression he slapped on everybody did wake up everyone from their afternoon siesta. Ok, enough of similes and metaphors (and if those figures of speech don’t fit here, just assume I am speaking in Irony where I tell something and mean something else. Go figure that something else yourself!)
This is what he finally did.
Acting as if dialing a telephone…call not connecting…getting frustrated…calling again…this time it connects.
“Hello? Ashish?”
“Oh hello uncle, is Ashish there?”
“Ya, I am fine uncle… ya, I’ll wait.”
Waits a bit
“Hey Ashish, how are you man? Did you get Vivekanand (a college).”
Pause…
“Oh…that’s ok. So you finally decided on RAIT (another college). That’s good enough. Don’t worry. You will have fun there. I heard its one of the coolest colleges. Great fests and cool crowd. Enjoy!”
Pauses… nods…
“Yaar, I didn’t hunt too much. I took the first college I got. Anyway this one is a decent one. Pretty cool profs. We have one Aarti for our class teacher. Good looker man! Pretty young and cool. Hope she can teach too…”
Giggles and smirks…
“Hey you know what? She started with her classes right away from today. She started with an icebreaker by asking someone of us to speak about any damn thing. Guess who volunteered? Hmm? Ok I will tell you. Me.”
Pause…
“Abey, style nahi maar raha tha yaar! Its just that this fundoo idea struck me like a bolt of lightning and before I could realize, there I was standing in the center facing everybody smiling at me. Man! That was unnerving. But you know what? I just used the technique you told me about. I just imagined everybody was sitting there naked!!”
Passes an impish smile at everyone…
“Man, I couldn’t stop smiling. All of a sudden I felt this surge of superiority and I went on talking for five whole minutes. Know what I talked? You won’t believe, but I talked this exact same thing I am talking to you now. I just did a mono-act of calling you up on phone and carrying on this phone conversation exact up to each word. Damn. Can you believe, I am saying the same thing twice in a day. It’s a kind of déjà vu for me. Heheheh…”
Covers the imaginary mouthpiece with his palm, looks to his left and shouts
“Yes mom. Just coming”
“Chal yaar, Mom’s calling me for dinner. See you later. Bye.”
Places the receiver and smiles contented.
End of incident. Cut to me again:
I don’t know what to say. That guy had created such a refreshingly cool situation out of the blue, I couldn’t imagine anybody not getting impressed by it. Now is there any need to say that he still remains the class teacher’s favourite almost a year later now. The way he praised her, I could distinctly remember that she did blush.
Epilogue:
Ok that’s it. I wish I could have cooked up this imaginary story before and implemented it on that day. It would have been great, wouldn’t it? 🙂
