6 minutes reading time
I am not a smart kid. I’ve said this before, and I’ll keep saying it, because the world is obsessed with labels it doesn't understand.
I’m just a curious fellow. Or maybe I’m a sick man. A spiteful man. I don’t know. I’m just tired. Sometimes, thinking about the past makes my chest tighten, a cold weight pressing down until I want to crawl into a hole and let the dirt cover me. I’m not fit for this world. I should die.
There, the thought is out. It’s a clean, dark line on the paper.
Let’s talk about the cunts who ran the asylum.
NK Tiyagarajan. He was the physics teacher at SRNV Higher Secondary School in lakshminakenpalayam. A rural dump surrounded by dry fields. Now, this school is apparently a good one, an old one. But my section, 11 E — a recently added bolt-on English medium class — is where this shit bastard was. It was shitty.
He didn’t know physics. He knew the syllabus, which is a very different thing. In India, if you have a degree, people treat you like a god. Doctor, lawyer, teacher, they bow. There’s a caste undertone to it, a historical habit of bending the spine before anyone in a position of authority, but let's not get into that mud. The point is, NKT was an insecure, show-off cunt.
I had my dad’s Motorola C168 back then. A plastic brick that could access the mobile web via GPRS. I read things. I found stories. I discussed them with another student.
NKT found out. He didn’t ask what I’d read. He brought Thirumurthy, the PT teacher—a violent man who functioned as NKT’s personal muscle—into the room.
"Why are you spending time on GPRS?" they screamed. "GPRS is bad! It's not allowed!"
Then they started hitting me. Actual slaps, in front of the class. They treated GPRS as if it were a digital narcotic, a moral collapse delivered at 40 kilobytes per second. Thirumurthy didn't know what a GPRS packet was, but his hands worked fine. My classmates, Harish and Arun, told me later: "If you know something he doesn't, this is what he does. He has to beat the difference out of you."
Then there was the Sultanpet Primary Health Center.
I had a severe ear infection. A sharp, drilling pain that made me feel like my head was being split by an axe. I went to the government clinic, got treated, and missed the first half of school the next day.
NKT demanded proof.
"Show me the doctor’s pad," he said. "Get a sign and seal."
"They don't give papers," I explained. "You go in, they write on a slip, they take the slip at the dispensary, they hand you the pills, and you leave empty-handed. That’s how a PHC works."
He called me a liar. He made me stand outside the classroom. I had to go back to the hospital, walk through the dust, and beg the doctor for a signed letter to explain four hours of absence. For a half-day leave.
I irked him because I was bored. I’d fold pages in the textbook, reading three chapters ahead. Valarmathi, my previous physics teacher, had made the subject alive. So I knew the answers. NKT noticed me turning pages, marched over, and tried to grill me in front of the class to humiliate me.
I answered every question with absolute clarity.
He didn't look pleased. He looked like he wanted to spit. He scolded me, ordered me to stay on his page, and spent the rest of the year nitpicking my homework.
Others were different. Krishnaveni, the math teacher, was a peach.
I couldn't write derivation steps. Polynomial equations, arithmetic, it all happened in my head. I’d write the final answer. She called me to the staff room, compared my two-page answer sheet to the five-page piles of the other kids.
Another teacher asked: "Did he mug this up?"
"Jaibharath mugged up?" Krishnaveni laughed. "No. Ask him."
She pointed to a problem. I solved it mentally and said the answer. She turned to me: "Jaibharath, I know you. But the public examiners won't. They want the steps. Write them down." She didn't want to break me. She just wanted me to survive the machine.
But the machine preferred sticks. Virgin Mary, the Tamil teacher, used to beat my knuckles with a cane because my handwriting was horrible. Knuckles up, the stick coming down on the bone. The skin turned red, then black. My Tamil handwriting didn’t improve. It got worse. Pain is a terrible teacher.
And then, the zoology teacher.
She loved homework. I didn't do it. So I stood outside the classroom for more than half her classes.
The door was next to the blackboard. Standing outside, I had to look at the board at a sharp, perpendicular angle. The letters were just white smears of chalk. I couldn’t hear her. When I was allowed inside the next day, I had no context. I fell behind. I hated zoology.
The exams were a joke anyway. The Tamil Nadu state board had predefined questions. You didn't study the animal; you memorized the paragraph written by the board. I read the chapters instead. I wrote answers in my own words. She gave me full marks, but she still complained: "Why aren't you writing the exact words I gave you?"
She wanted the script. I only had my own brain.
I look back at all of this, and the anger still tastes fresh. Like copper on the tongue.
I shouldn’t have gone to school. I should have been a shepherd. I should have bought a few goats, taken them to graze in the scrublands of Coimbatore, milked them, sold the milk, and lived in the quiet. No GPRS panics, no knuckle beatings, no perpendicular blackboard angles.
Just the animals, the grass, and the sun.
I’m sitting at the keyboard now. I used to think writing this shit down would empty the vault. But the weight doesn't shift. The keys click.
And I still want to die.