"It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning." - Calvin
Thats a line from Calvin and Hobbes. And applicable in its entireity when you think about Teku the trustee. For a trustee, he exercised far more power in the college than a trustee is meant too. Usually, the Principal is the highest authority in any college. But since our college had a way of going about things differently, the organizational hierarchy too was tweaked. The superme boss was Teku. Rarely have I seen the man not angry, his eye-brows not in a sharp V, his face without a scowl, and fumes not coming out of his pores on the skull (maybe the last one was just my imagination). But I think I will talk in his defense. Because, unknowingly he has shaped my character and prepared me to face all the worldly evils that exist.
Money, the universal language, was also the mother tongue of teku. And yes, that is important. I mean, come on, why should he let go of an opportunity to earn an extra buck by fining students for grave crimes like keeping their bags on library tables, or having their I-Cards not laminated. He was just inculcating discipline in us. And it was not as if fines were in thousands or anything. Rs. 500 is not exorbitant, is it?? And since money is important, one should not hesitate to run after it. And whatever Teku lacked it was not dedication. Sprinting across the campus with Teku hotfooting it behind, tends to leave some indelible marks on your psyche. Particularly the kind, that wakes you up screaming in the middle of the night.
The Rs. 500 fine also extended to reaching college after 9:00. In a normal world, a fine for coming late would only have inculcated punctuality in its denizens. In Tekuland it taught us a lot more; like friendship, fitness and oh, how can I forget, first-aid. The only way of circumventing that half grand penalty was to scale heights; 14 feet, to be precise…which was of course the height of our campus boundary wall. One way of going across this barrier was by performing some daredevil acts of freestyle climbing that would have put Dan Osman to shame. The other and distinctly less attractive option (for all parties involved) was to have someone climb up the wall, perch at the top and then pull you up. Overall this 10 minute episode involved trusting your life to another, heroic physical feats and scratches to assorted body parts…and all this character building stuff, even before you had stepped into the classroom.
And I don't understand why people were so against the T-shirt rule. It was in our best interests that T-shirts were ot allowed. The college looked so lively in the Hawaiian shirts that people wore. And with the top buttons undone, that enhanced the personality of some by leaps and bounds. Some of them came in formal shirts most of the times. Like apna Maurya... So basically Mr. Teku was just preparing us for the corporate world. Hawaiian green, blue, red shirts, or corporate attire. Both were so much better than plain ol' T-shirts.
Teku was against placements. And rightly so!!! Weren't we capable enough to find jobs ourselves? Didn't we have any pride that we would want our college to get jobs for us. So what happened if our counterparts in DJ Sanghvi, and Thadomal, or Atharva, or Rajiv Gandhi got placed and did not come close to having a heart-attack because of the uncertainity of the future after BE. Sure the students of other colleges started with their jobs 6 months earlier than us. Sure we were worried about what to do after BE. But that just built character. Thank you Mr. Teku.