Bad Vibes

1997 was an eventful year. I had got admitted to Cadet College Hasanabdal after passing a pretty tough entrance examination in 1992. My parents were happy, I did not know if I had any reason to be elated but I was. I was extremely good at studies and my teachers, parents and class-fellows had taken my admission to this prestigious institution for granted so I was under quite a lot of burden of expectation. My elation perhaps was more a sigh of relief than genuine joy. Of course I did not know it at that time. I was only twelve years old. This is all retrospective analysis: Careful piece-wise integration of flashbacks and memories of events as they passed; over a period of several years. Anyway I took my matriculation in 1995 and as was expected of me got a position and a Federal Government Gold Medal. Hopes were high and I seemed to turn everything I touched into gold.

In 1996, to be exact, on 26th of May, one year short of my graduation and one year after that Gold Medal was awarded to me, I was expelled from Cadet College Hasanabdal: On the grounds of rudeness to a teacher, indiscipline, using vulgar language, damaging the college property, un-gentlemanly conduct and a plethora of similar charges. Not that I am going to contest them right now. Except for one, I was guilty on all counts. Parents, of course were at first shocked and then, quite logically, devastated. All the goodwill that a set of middle-class parents can draw from the fact that their child was excelling in an institution that welcomes crème de là crème of Pakistani adolescents evaporated overnight due to my untimely and humiliating, to put it very mildly, exit from the “College”. I had, hence, to take the Intermediate examination from outside the college. This hadn’t been previewed and hence wasn’t a part of my parents’ best-laid plans regarding my upbringing: More of it in a few lines’ space and a few minutes time.

Let’s leave the things regarding my expulsion from the college right here and move to another matter. Tafhim Sahib was appointed as a chemistry professor in “College” at about the same time as our class was admitted to it. Apart from being an excellent teacher having full command over his subject, really a rarity at the “College”, Tafhim Sahib was an excellent batsman. He was instantly appointed co-incharge of the College Cricket Team and those who did not have the good luck of being his students just fell for his cricketing abilities. Needless to say, he immediately became immensely popular with both the nerdy (that’s me) and the sporty types alike and was nicknamed Kapil Dev due to his resemblance to the great all-rounder.

I was a back-bencher: Way more laid back than any of the students in my class. I made it a point never to interact with a teacher in the class. The motivation for this exercise was the fact that being an un-conspicuous, short, fat, bespectacled, apparently harmless fellow helped me realise my ulterior and in many ways my ultimate motive: Reading mystery novels. I devoured them. Being faceless can be beneficial, provided that one is ready to bear the humiliation of being perpetually and habitually ignored. In my case, I did not even have to fulfil this condition. My classmates knew exactly what I was and more importantly what I was up to and my consistent appearance among the top-three of the class kept my parents happy.

But Tafhim Sahib wasn’t exactly your typical chemistry teacher. His cricketing ability had given him a new dimension. He commanded the respect of trouble-makers because most of them had a good sporting relation with him on the cricket field and he did not hesitate to beat the shit out of the inexistential losers who were neither good at sports nor at studies but had taken it upon themselves to express their teenage angst during his lecture.

One fine March morning (Pakistan had just lost that now-infamous World Cup quarter-final from India) Tafhim Sahib caught me reading a really badly-translated account of Titanic’s sinking: Of course during his lecture. He tried to tear the book but failed (It was a hard copy). In his frustration then, he threw the book out of the window (We were on the first floor). The book landed on a car parked outside the main “Academic Block” that belonged incidentally to the Principal and was in the process of being washed by his driver.

Then, judging from my very un-assuming appearance, Tafhim Sahib made the mistake that many teachers had already made and the drastic consequences of which I had to bear every time in the form a thrashing, more severe than expected. He, assuming that I am used to reading extra-curricular books in the class (which was very right), calculated that I ought to be really bad at studies. Now my being bad at studies combined with the fact that I was not paying attention to his lecture would have placed him on a higher moral ground and he would then have been able to scold me well, apart from beating me. This was not the case however. Unfortunately I had topped in Chemistry in that term and I told him so. I think this was a multi-dimensional blow to his ego. First, I had proved his judgment wrong and secondly I had (Although it was not my intention) implicitly made the subtle point that I was above and beyond the need to be taught, lectured, coached or guided and he could have given a lecture about the Great Depression instead of Ethanol synthesis and I couldn’t have cared less.

Tafhim Sahib was an intelligent man and in my opinion the second reason did really hit him hard: Much harder than it had ever hit his colleagues, who had committed the same error of judging me by my habit of not paying attention in the class. One should, at all costs, try not to enrage an intelligent man with authority and if one has to, it should be by the expression of one’s stupidity and not by the display of one’s intelligence. Tafhim Sahib therefore produced a cane from his dais drawer and started an erstwhile process of destroying the epithelial tissues of my buttocks.

Meanwhile the driver of Principal’s car had informed him of the calamity of “Raining Books” and after a bit of trajectory-interpolation the Principal had rightly adjudged the exact launching point of the book. So like a true seeker of knowledge, he (A retired Brigadier) headed towards our room. When he entered the room, I was in the famous “Murgha” position with the canning of my backside was ain full swing, punctuated with jibes only Cadet College Hasanabdal teachers can get away with. The principal ignored me inquired Tafhim Sahib
about how the book found itself landed on his car’s roof? Tafhim Sahib explained. Mr. Principal told him to be a bit more careful in the future while handling library books and just to express solidarity with Tafhim Sahib’s cause gave me three or four cane-lashings with his own blessed hands. Hence the delicate matter of “The Mysterious Flying Book” was settled.

I on the other hand made it a point never to read a novel in Tafhim Sahib’s class and to pay full attention to his lecture. I started sitting in the front row during his lecture but he was irrevocably pissed off. He never spoke to me after that day: Never even once. I started raising my hand to every question he posed but he never told me to answer. He just ignored me. Anyway I got myself embroiled in a controversy during the first week of May that was going to get me expelled eventually. Since I was under-investigation, I was forcibly moved to the College Hospital during that period to isolate me from sympathetic students that might pass on to me some useful piece of inside information that would help me in preparing my defence. News did filter out to me however; through the waiters of the Mess, through laboratory attendants and through my brother’s class fellows who happened also to be at the “College” but with a lag of two years.

And it was here in the hospital that I heard this comment from Tafhim Sahib that although the boy is extremely good at studies and has a clean disciplinary record, he has such a “bad vibe” that he must be expelled. After a summary hearing the disciplinary committee announced its verdict and I was expelled. 1997 hence became a very important year. This was my first exam of note from outside the “College” and my parents now wanted me to perform much better than I had done while I was at the “College” so as to restore a bit of their lost social standing. The importance of 97 was evident to me but of its eventual eventfulness I was unaware.

A month before my exam, my paternal grand-mother died. The house was filled with all sorts of relatives and friends and colleagues of my father and my mother (My mother is a working woman) but I concentrated on my exams. On the first day of my exams my father fell ill, so ill that at a point we thought perhaps that he would die but I still concentrated on my exams that lasted one full month. I did not even go to the hospital during my exams to check-up on him for the fear that his state would depress me and I would do badly in exams. Anyway the exams did finish, my father did recuperate and to top it off, on the first day of my post-exam vacation Saeed Anwar played that brilliant record-breaking innings.

Meanwhile the “College” had been gripped by a new controversy. Tafhim Sahib was accused of being Mirzai/Ahmadi. More than that he was accused of preaching it and worse of all he was accused of trying to convert two students. The teachers of Islamiat department at once created a united-front kind of thing and demanded his immediate expulsion. A meeting of the Board of Trustees of the “College” was called and although none of the charges levelled against Tafhim Sahib was proven, it was decided that Tafhim Sahib should be made to tender his resignation because his continued presence at college would create a “bad vibe” and so did end Tafhim Sahib’s brief stay in college.

Hence culminated a tumultuous year my friends; from the summer of 96 to the summer of 97. A year that started with a “bad vibe” and that ended in a “bad vibe”.

A propos, I secured exactly the same marks in second part of the Intermediate examination, which I had taken from my hometown, as in the first part that I had taken from the “College”.