Std V , Government Model High School

This incident happened in 1970. The school, Government Model High School, Thpuram. I do not remember sharing the incident I mentioned with anyone else. Certainly not to the folks at home. Then  the schoolmaster was divine, and anything he did was accepted by folks at home ; the teacher was infallible, and the master was always right. To complain at home about your school teacher, let alone inappropriate behavior by a teacher, would invite rebuke, and they would not believe me. I’m certain that none of my classmates who were victims of the wired punishment that day  would have forgotten that shameful ordeal or dared to confide the matter to another.

 I had moved out of the Holy Angels Convent, where I had my early formative primary schooling (kindergarten to IV STD), and was admitted to the Government Model High School, which then was the foremost among institutions. And I was in strange, bossy, rough terrain, a far cry from the school managed by nuns.

The class I was in - STD V, E division. Male tutors were frightening, scarier than the ladies and nuns who managed class in the convent, and corporal punishments were a common fact those days. Krishnan Nair, a diminutive, slightly bald-headed teacher, was to teach us the second language, Malayalam, and Social Studies.

Daily, we were required to copy in a two line book, two pages from the Malayalam textbook. This was to improve our handwriting. Krishna Nair called us each to his table at the head of the class room and surveyed our home work of “two line writing." He began reprimanding the ones whose writing was not good. The boys were literally shivering when they noticed the form of punishment he meted out for poor writing. I do not recall what went through my mind while waiting for my turn. Finally, I was called to his table. He opened my book and surveyed, tapping quite sadistically the cane he held in one hand. It was not the possible caning that scared me. And,that day, he had decided not to use caning as a form of punishment. He smirked, looked at my copywriting, and had a wry smile. He twitched the fingers in his other hand gleefully; the long nails on his thumb and index fingers threatened like tigers' claws. I knew what was coming next. Then, like he did to the boys before me, he put his hand under my tousers and started gleefully pinching the soft skin on my testicles. His long clawed finger nails, I remember, dug deep into the supple skin. I writhed in pain and involuntarily lifted one leg. The torture, I guess, went on for perhaps half a minute. Then he caned my bottom and sent me to my bench.

The former was awfully humiliating, compared to the caning on the derrière. The burning in the skin and, most of all, the shame and ignominy of that man meting out that pervert treatment put me down considerably. There were quite a few boys who escaped the infliction, and they were giggling in hushed laughter. But nobody, I understand, went home with the story, and no parents turned up with any report against Mr. Krishnan Nair.

I do not know if Mr. Nair had any condition that made him inflict that awful treatment on us. It was horribly distasteful. However, no repetition of the incident happened.

I wonder if he is alive this day. If he is, he must be in his eighties.