PARVATI MADAM - THE BENGAL TIGRESS

The obituary reference that saddened me that cold Sunday morning was that of Parvati madam who was my class teacher when I was in fifth standard. Her teeth were protruding and her voice was raspy. She also often wore sarees with stripes befitting her nickname tigress. Instead of becoming a police woman she became a primary school teacher. She inflicted corporal punishment on children in a variety of sadistic ways.

The reason Parvati madam went scot free after terrorising her pupils was that those days’ parents welcomed liberal use of rods by teachers on their children. They had full faith in the proverb Spare the rod and spoil the child.  

In our class there were about five over-aged and oversized boys. They wore half trousers showing off their hairy thighs. They even grew moustaches. While other children spent a year in a class they lingered extra one year even two years in each class.

The very sight of them used to set Parvathi Madam’s already acidic blood on fire. She would start her day by beating the daylight out of these boys who always sat at the last desk.

Those desks were low ones, hardly one foot high. Sitting on a wooden plank we used to use these low desks to place our note book and books to write or read. 

As soon as she caught them talking to each other or among themselves which they often did, Parvati would go after them leaping from bench to bench.

Once she reached them she would rain kicks on their cowering bodies. It was like a ferocious tiger let loose among lambs. Even among these Big Five one named Kandasamy the eldest was fated to be hated most by Parvati.

His sitting in a fifth class room wearing half trousers proved too much for Parvati. Every day she shouted at him “Are you not buffalo ashamed of coming into the class wearing half trousers. How many times should I tell you to start wearing dhoti? "

Balasundaram, another of the five overaged boys of the class took a fancy to a fellow girl pupil and took her somehow to his house and hid her. Her parents came searching for her to the school. Parvati conducted her own investigation.

She lined up the big boys and started beating them back and blue till one of them spilled out a clue.

Within a short time the girl was rescued and restored to her parents. A week after this, Romeo was given TC. He came to the school and threw a knife at Parvati Madam. Fortunately the missile missed its target. Parvati madam never raised her hand against me.

The secret reason was that I swept her off her feet by telling her  that but for her prominent teeth she would have been really beautiful, when she asked each one of us what he/she thought of her a week after  we entered fifth standard. From that moment I became a cub of hers.

It was true, not flattery when I gave her that compliment. Though I disliked her harshness towards the children of her class, I liked her for the softness she treated me with. The one thing a woman cannot resist is flattery about her looks even if it comes from a ten year old boy.