Howlers

sent in by Irshad Mahmud in Germany - Mar 10 2012

Dear mates,

Who can remember those socalled howlers let out by the boys and masters? They appeared quite often in the Royal-Thomian magazine. I remember a few howlers, sayings and oddities.

 

I came in the pouring sun. 

 

Go up downstairs and bring a chalk piece.

 

Please give me a green orange barley.

 

Wait for a minute I'll come in two minutes.

 

Why are you outstanding, come and understand.

 

Now we will read the book" Gulliver's travels by  Joe Nathan Swift" (Tamil Master)

 

A man who has a hole in the pocket, feels cocky all day.

 

A man who goes to bed with a problem, wakes up with a solution in hand.

 

Mst Menon ('parana coat' and tennis shoes) who used to read books and walk in

corridors and on the road. Boys used to knock on him purposely just to get a 'sorry'

from him as he used to just say ' sorry' and continue walking without even seeing on

whom he knocked. Once on the road he knocked on a tree and said 'sorry' and kept

walking.

 

Arul (Chemistry master) was also called Beaker, 'cos he used to drink his tea in a beaker.

 

I wonder whether Arooz Sheriff remembers this episode. Cantley came as "acting master" 'cos our sinhala teacher was absent to teach us the "ummagga jathakaya". When C spoke the front row would have very much  liked sitting with a raincoat on. Arooze marked every  drop of C's spray on his  book with a circle. After some time C saw many "O" on Aroozes book and gave him a beating. That was the first time I saw C beating a boy.

 

Sellamuttu was with  me in the 4th form. He was called "tube light" for when a master cracked a joke everybody laughed and S would laugh after a few minutes when every body had forgotten the joke and were busy with the work, 'cos it was now that he had understood the joke.

 

Its a pity that Sella, Chandrakanthan and RSR are no more. But I quite often think of them , when i recollect my school days. Chandrakanthan was in form 3 with me. Ruperty was our class master. Many got caned  quite often. Me too. I've been beaten by almost every master in the lower school.When C got cained, he used to cry pathetically  before caning (winking at us at the same time) and after the caning, once the class had settled down, C used to get up with terrible cry of agony in carnatic music style arousing the class and R would  go mad. He used to do it about 2-3 times during the period.

 

Form 3 was the best , we had many mad guys in class. Once we had an exam next to the little theatre. RSR (Ramlal) Gunawardena was seated in the front row just below Ruperty's desk, which was on a platform. The class was still busy with the paper but RSR had already finished, 'cos he could not go further and idling about. Just at that time, a film was been shown in the LT , a car race , screeching of brakes and taking sharp curves etc. We could hear very clearly since the clas was silent. RSR was imitating  the race bending to his right then leftand so on distracting others and all were watching him driving . Ruperty, noticing that somethings going on in front of his desk, stood up to see RSR, whom he could not see while seated. RSR was so absorbed in the driving and ultimately the car chase ended up in a crash and of course RSR slided from his chair almost below the desk to match with the accident. Ruperty had been watching the whole scene and sent the monitor to bring the foot ruler.

 

M.R.Perera was another car crazy guy. He sat in the last row and I sat in front of him. Mostly during Ruperty's classes he used to very loudly change gears, as if he was driving. R could not place it, from where the sound came. One day , he changed gears when R was seated at his desk. R then knew, it came from our row. So he stood up tilted to a side, raised his glasses and looked at RSR, who was in the first row. RSR looked behind, the guy in the second row did the same and  so on till the look came to me. I also looked behind and MR as last man also looked behind at the wall and that was it. R sent the monitor to bring the foot ruler.