Mohammed Yusuf PAPA, physics teacher, vice principal, Jamia senior secondary school.
Urdu poet of humor,
Simple person with a style of his own.
A brand with an ambassador within was all famous for many things.
Papa was a terror for students & every single student tries to even change the track on which papa used to come.
Still bright in my memories, whenever he enters from school gate, the track dividing the four lawns of middle & senior secondary school becomes utmost clear right up to his disappearance to one of the class room after crossing the centre stage.
Students disappear from his path like strong wind of a chopper disperses the grass around!
I already mentioned his onslaught on me in my previous journeys & that was the last for me, but there were some unfortunates, who had experiences it many times.
During practicals of measuring the current by ammeter in class XI, one of the very common episodes, iam sure many of the students may have gone through is,
Shunting of key & winding the wire on the knob.
Papa was very active all the times,
He saw QMD having some problems in taking the readings, he went & observed him.
QMD looked at him, he then said, “Shunt kar”.
QMD didn’t understood & papa repeated, “Shunt kar”
Papa lost his patience & shouted “abe soowar shunt kyoN nahi karta”?
QMD said, ok sir & he remove one connection going to ammeter!!!
“Tujhe shunt karma nahin aata? Din bhar bijar ki tarah ghoomta rehta hai”
Aa meiN tujhe shunt karooN!
He kept his wrist watch, as usual on table & praised QMD in every possible way he can.
After beating him, Papa becomes more ferocious.
It was bad luck of HZS who tries to play smart & come to papa & said, sir I did the shunting, but readings are not very good.
Papa went to his table, looked at the complete assembly, tried shunting & without shunting, same results!!
About to ask sami sahib to change the apparatus, he found the fault.
Now it was the turn of HZS.
HZS made a mistake while connecting copper wire, he winds the wire on knob at least five times & that was crime in papa’s lab.
He shouted again.
Soowar!!! Reading kaise aayegi?
Tu ne pagdi jo baandh rakhi hai.
(How you will get the reading? you have winded it like a turban)
Tujhe meiN pehnata hooN pagdi…..by the the time HZS said sorry, it was almost over.
These were little glimpses of our physics practical classes, English language is unable to express the real feelings we had experience at that time.
It was very common for papa to throw jokes while teaching, those jokes some times went out of proportion, but after all, he was PAPA.
Soowar (pig) was his pet word, chappan chhuri ka dance, tansen ki aulad, bahar kya teri amma nach rahi hai were few of his favourite dialogues.
Apart from all what I have mentioned above, every body might smell that papa wasn’t a good teacher or a good human being?
It’s not like that.
It is a reality that papa was not comfortable at all in numerical, but his theory was very clear.
I remember, during one of the sessional test.
One of my friends played mischievous.
It was papa’s style to provide spread sheet, thoroughly stamped, signed & stapled along with questionnaire.
With the same anticipation, my friend prepared some answers prewritten on loose papers.
Papa distributed the paper, students started attempting them.
As usual papa keeps close eyes on all.
My friend selected the required sheets & removed the pin from the original sheet & inserted the pre written answer sheets to the original by keeping the front page of original intact.
Papa, suspected him, went near to him, stands there for a while and took his answer sheet.
He then said, abe soowar, tu itna hoshiyar kab se hogaya ki saare sawal zara si der meiN hal kar diye?
(How you become so intelligent that you have finished all the questions in no time?)
There was no reply to his question & the ultimate thing has comes once again.
He beats him like a beast.
Throw him out side the class & assured him all the consequences preventing him to appear in exams.
Now, this was very serious.
After finishing the test, we assembled in muzaffar bhai ki canteen to seek a solution.
We have decided to meet papa to apologies.
The main question still remains?
Who will go & talk to him & where?
The way he acted, it means, he can repeat the same any time, any where.
Finally it was decided to go & meet him at home after Maghrib prayer.
A panel of four including me was agreed upon to seek his forgiveness.
Evening came & we all proceeded toward his house, at the entrance we encountered his son & our senior masood bhai.
We asked & he said papa is in.
We send the message that few students from school seek meeting.
He came out & looked at us!
We were frightened for some unexpected to happen.
Yes, it happened, but not the way we were thinking.
Papa, asked us, Kya tum sab iski sifarish lekar aaye ho?
We all said, we are here to seek your forgiveness & he was very afraid, so we accompanied him.
He then said, come in.
We went & sat in his drawing room.
He once again asked our fathers name & told us that whats has happened wasn’t good & we should be honest in what we are doing.
If we are not dedicated with honesty then it will be difficult to achieve the targets in our future life.
We were looking at him while he was talking, completely changed person, quite, smily & calm.
He then forgives him.
He offered us a cup of tea in nice bone china cups, totally different to the cups in muzaffar bhai ki canteen.
We all came out thanking ALLAH & Papa.
It was an achievement for us & we celebrated with Nihari roti in Batla house.
I think, he indeed was a nice person, because he had humorous imagination power.
It was his versatility that made him an icon in jamia millia islamia.
Later on after many years, I heard that students become “very bad students” & one of them has puffed cigarette smoke on papa’s face.
That was the end of one teacher & we never heard any story of papa from our juniors there after.
He has shouted because he knew that we listen to him, he beat us because he knew that we respect him like our parents, he loved us because he knew that we will never hate him.
He was a real person with no artificial flavouring of so called professionalism.
I still respect & love him & this will be conveyed to my kids forever.
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