One of my favorite pastimes these days is to travel into an
imagined future, where I’m a popular and successful public figure. In my
autobiography and in talks at events, I often dwell upon events which ‘shaped
my success story’, those ‘inflection points’ and such jargon. So, what I am
going to tell you today, Reader, is born out of such reflections….er, musings,
rather.
‘Back when we were children’, it was popular and preferred
among teachers to select class leader/s. ‘Class leaders’ were never ‘class
representatives’ because of the way they were chosen, especially in primary
school. In the absence of better evidence/parameters, our teachers chose those
who scored well to be leaders. These students were again chosen, more often
than not, to participate in extra-curricular events. By the time we were old
enough for our social skills & leadership abilities to be gauged, these
‘leaders’, with a head-start of 2-3 years, would become default choices. A
small consolation in the entire process was that even though the leaders
themselves were not entirely representative, very often, our teachers ensured
there was atleast one girl leader, thus implementing ≥33% reservation long before our legislators even
thought of it.
The primary function of the class leaders was to ‘mind’
the class and ensure silence, or tolerable levels of noise, whenever the
teachers were absent, or had any other immediate work to attend to, or simply
preferred to take a nap! The last one was the riskiest proposition, because in
case the noise woke her up – I use ‘her’ because we hardly had any male faculty
in our school then, except for the universal ‘P.T’ – it was the leaders who
were first in the line of fire, not to mention their loss of face in front of
the class. This was the best way to settle personal scores with a leader you
didn’t like!
The leaders went about their task by writing the names of
culprits on the blackboard. However, here, one of the leaders encountered an issue
– how to deal with those who repeat the crime? If a first timer and a habitual offender
get the same punishment, people would lose faith in the system. It was
escalated and a meeting of leaders across sections and across years was held to
discuss this quandary. One of the more ingenious members in the meeting came up
with the idea of adding a ‘+1’ against the name! Along with it came the idea of
‘pardon’ and ‘remission’ of punishment, by erasing ‘+1’s and names for good
behaviour. That day, so the legend goes, the seniors gave that particular leader
a treat of bhel puri from the cart stationed outside school.
Favoritism and influence were prevalent even in primary and
middle school. If you were a close friend of the leader/s, s/he was far more lenient
and your name hardly made it to the blackboard. Even on those rare occasions
when it did, the name would magically disappear just when the teacher was about
to punish them. You could even make deals with the leader/s: for a couple of
extra toffees on your birthday, you could purchase the goodwill and friendship
of the leader, thus ensuring your name was never written. Power corrupts.
This system was flawed at many levels. Though based on
skills, it led to the concentration of authority and opportunity in the hands
of a select few, widening the gap between them and the rest – pretty much like
capitalist societies. Naturally, the proletariats were unhappy at such an
arrangement and wanted change. So, it was in Class 8, if I remember correctly,
that our teacher experimented with the idea of “leadership on rotation”, thus
distributing power among a wider section of students. The idea lost steam after
a few months, because people came to realize that ‘minding the class’ was a
thankless job and more of a pain.
Class 7 & 8 was also the time when we became more aware
and conscious of the people around us, especially about those of the opposite
sex. Rumors of who had a crush on who, across sections, started doing
the rounds. Random girls were paired with random boys and “FLAMES-tested”. We
never really cared if the persons whose names were invoked were embarrassed by
it. However, sometimes, these young men and women enjoyed it, even subtly
encouraging their friends for more. The leader/s derived some perverse sort of
enjoyment, much to our giggles, by writing the names of that boy and this girl
next to one another, while minding the class. Most of our teachers never
understood why so many people were sniggering. Or did they only pretend to not
understand?
This system of class leaders ended in Class 8, for in 9th
and 10th, we were expected to be “mature enough to mind ourselves”.
Moreover, captains and vice-captains for the school as well as the various
houses would be elected from these two batches. Having an alternate authority
within the class would lead to a ‘constitutional crisis’, like in Delhi today!
However, I think there was another reason at play there: it is the age when the
adolescent ego sprouts, which does not want to bow before any authority, let alone
peers. Lack of a class leader was, hence, a prudent decision.
It was in Classes 9 & 10 that we had the true taste and
test of power, however minimal. Class 9 was a metaphorical coming off age
moment, because the school vice-captains were expected to outgrow differences
of opinion and work with students across sections in the batch. Every year, while
Class 10 students organized Teachers’ Day celebrations, it was the responsibility
of the vice-captains and their team to “mind all classes” – from Class 1 to Class
8 – in the second half of the day.
Until Class 8, I genuinely looked at those seniors who came
to our class as figures of authority who were to be respected. Enter the
vice-captain, with an entourage of two or three people. The halo around these seniors
dimmed in front of the aura of the vice-captain! Surely, the position of the
vice-captain must be of great significance and power? Or was it the intrinsic
awe for hierarchy that made it look so grand? Or was the vice-captain making an
extra effort to stamp his importance, especially if his crush was present?
Strange as it may seem, I don’t remember any female vice-captain trying such gimmickry.
Perhaps they were more self-assured and secure.
I was in Class 3 when my brother was Vice-Captain. On
Teachers’ Day that year, like all Vice- Captains before and after him, he was gracing
all classes with his presence. When he came to my class, for whatever
reason, my brother decided to walk upto me and warn me – absolutely
without any reason – for the whole class to see. Maybe he wanted to be revered as a paragon of
impartiality - ‘Oh! Look at him. He does not favor even his brother!’ Maybe he
just wanted to showcase his authority. Maybe he was just settling personal
scores for some fight back home. When I ask him now about what he was actually trying
to achieve that day, he, conveniently and along expected lines, does not
remember the incident at all!
Class 10 was more about minding our conduct. Especially as
captains and vice-captains of various houses, we were repeatedly told by our
teachers – directly and indirectly – that our juniors and peers looked to us as
examples. Yet, even under such constraints, some of us managed to bunk classes
in the name of organizing or participating in events, backing each
other up everytime. We were busy creating memories, you see. Power, indeed, corrupts!
I don’t remember if we had class leaders or representatives
in PU/+2 levels, simply because I spent a significant amount of time not
attending classes! In college, there was a paradigm shift in the concept of
class representatives. Because it was a national institute, ‘representation’ and
‘leadership’ took a whole new connotation, leading to some interesting events
over the course of five years. However, more on it some other day…
