On my Ini "TY"al days...

English is not my mother tongue.My English
vocabulary grows as and when I hear new words
all the time,right from my childhood.The below
incident took place when I was in class V (CIRCA 1990).

I hail from AECS (Atomic Energy Central School)
from kalpakkam,Tamil Nadu,INDIA.The school is
situated on the coast of Bay of Bengal.
When classes got bored I used to gaze at the bay.
(No babes at the bay, even if it had,
I was not in that age).

It was a mathematics class, Eighth period on a
Saturday(C.B.S.E schools works on saturday as well).
We were all geared up as it was the last period
of the week.As usual the maths teacher came and
taught some algebraic expressions.She asked
Shiva (The first bencher)to read a problem in the
text book, so that she can explain.

Maths Teacher (MT): Shiva can you read the
problem in Exercize 5.1?
Shiva : yes madam..

"Raju had some amount of money with him.
He spent 5 Rs on buying sugar
candy , gave 7 Rs to his sister suja and
remaining he gave it to his mom.
If the amount of money he gave to his
mom was 2 Rs, How much money
did Raju have ini'TEE"aly"?.

MT : What?..read the last sentence again?
Shiva : Sure .."If the amount of money he gives to his
mom is 2 Rs,How much money did Raju have ini'TEEEE"aly?.

The Maths Teacher with a grin face,asked subbu to read the last sentence

Subbu : "How much money did Raju have ini"TEEE"aly?

The Maths Teacher got vexed and narrowed down .
the question to the class.How do you call the word
which has the spelling " I,N,I,T,I,A,L".

(Now only we all got that something is wrong in
pronouncing the last word.Maths teacher was picking on persons
because volunteership was always missing in my class.
Unless one was put on spot,she would'nt get the answer).

MT: Krishna , can you pronounce the word?
Krishna : in"I"teal (happily)

MT could not control her anger and shouted at me.

Raj??? can you??
Raj: Sure!! ini"TY"al.

My maths teacher really got irritated, slashed me left and right in
her bamboo stick.She asked the entire class if anybody knows the
answer. There was a pin drop silence.

The fed up teacher commanded the entire class to kneeldown.
We all knelt down.Then she called Shiva(The first bencher)and
asked "What's your full name?"

Shiva: K.shiva Rama Krishnan.
MT : what is the first letter of your name called?
Shiva: S

MT got angry and said idiot, the single letter before your actual name

Shiva: K
MT : sssss..Whats that called?.
Shiva: in a shouting voice "KAYY".

The teacher got still more fed up and gave him
left and right with her bamboo cane.
I was very much relaxed (even smiled within myself)
at this time as I was not the only one
getting slashed by the cane.

Now, the poor teacher puts the question in a
different way to Subbu (M.Subramaniam).
Whats your inishal?.
Subbu hurriedly said "M".So whats "M"??.
Subbu in a low key said inishal.

MT : Hmmm...loudly
Subbu : 'INISHAL" (Shouting)
MT : Thats what I was trying to hear from you all..you geesy fools..

Everyone saw each others face.I was hitting my forehead with my palm"..cha..this is it"..hmm

By this time, the school Bell rang.We were seeing each other and also starring at the teacher now and then for any signal to go.But no signal from the teacher.After 5 minutes, She looked at her watch.She asked everyone to write the word "INITIAL" 500 times and show to her tomorrow and dispersed the class.

(Note: Similarly , I thought the word kneel down was a single word initially.We used to say "he/she is not kneeldowning madam"..I came to know kneel and down are seperate words,very much later.It was not our fault then.It was the way we were brought up..rather I was brought up.I think the education system is lot better now)

Cursing the Cursor

Always I had the frightening feeling within myself that I did'nt know anything about computers. My dread was to an extent that I used to get nightmares on that idiot box.

Having come from a First Group Biology Background in my higher secondary, I was blindfolded to computers. When people say some computer jargons, I tend to stay away from them. My computer illiteracy was so famous in my college, whenever my friends come across any jargons or any tech stories they tend to turn and look at me. I felt awkward when they did so

It was my first day on computer lab. No wonder I was sweating my palms and face when I heard the first task. It was a basic FORTAN LAB. We had the code written in the theory class. We just need to write it on the computer and execute it .There were not many computers for all. So each computer is occupied by 2 people. I was the odd man out and I ended up in using without sharing. Someone switched on my monitor, someone switched on the CPU and some one navigated to the portion where we write the code.

I was busy typing the code and got stuck up with something (I guess I needed some compilation help) .so I called my computer lab instructor to help me out .He asked all my other class mates to come to my place so that he can demonstrate to everybody using my computer. I called everyone and asked them to assemble at my place. I was typing some changes to code and came to an end of the line. At that time, the instructor asked me to “MOVE THE CURSOR” .All of my friends knew that I did not know that word .So they kept quite. I was so frightened and was sweating a lot

The instructor again said “MOVE THE CURSOR” .Not knowing what to do, I just looked at my friends assembled near my place for some clues .Everyone was keeping mum in a planned manner and was giggling.

Again the instructor frightened me in his rough voice “MOVE THE CURSOR”. As soon as I heard his voice I moved the MONITOR hastily (just gave a shake).All my friends giggle busted in to an uproarious howling. The tumult was so louder that the neighboring classes also came to our class thinking something fishy had happened.The cursor was the first computer jargon to get my CURSE


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For people who don’t know what’s cursor?
Cursor stands for [CURrent Screen Oriented Region]. It is a moving placement or pointer that indicates a position in a computer