A STRANGE IDEA

Do you remember doing exercises like "fill in the blanks" in your English classes? Well, I do. And particularly one episode that I am going to talk about, here.

It was a fine Monday morning (actually I do not remember what day it was. But then, as if you do...) The morning assembly had just got over and we were all, as was the custom, sitting in our places in utter silence waiting for the teacher to come.
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Whatever! You didn't believe that, did you? The 21st century students that we are, is something like that even close to being possible? 

So, it's understood that we were all, as always, taking advantage of the teacher's absence and creating a hullabaloo, total ruckus inside and around the classroom—gossiping, passing around (or rather throwing) things to/at each other, sharing each other's woes (all of us were girls, may I add) and doing everything else that didn't matter at all. Now, though I don't remember if something like this happened or not, but in this kind of a situation—which is a teacher's truest nightmare, of all other things— Mrs.Romila must have come to the class; to repeat her most unwanted lecture—on utilizing our time better by 1)studying, as it was going to be our first tryst with the boards (huh! The tenth standard boards, how they scared us to hell about them and what they actually turned out to be!) and 2)doing some pranayam and meditation in our free time till the teacher came. (YES! she actually imagined we could do so—something so sO SO not in the '100 THINGS TO DO WHEN THE TEACHER IS NOT IN CLASS ' list of students!

Anyway, so it was supposed to be an English class, taken by Mrs. Elizabeth Chacko. Mrs. Elizabeth Chacko:a very experienced and a very very boring teacher who didn't indulge in any kind of 'out of the course' discussions, murmured her lecture to a class of 40+students, could dare think that we would 'actually' do an English homework (imagine!) and taught lessons in the most monotonous manner possible. How interesting, no? 

That day, we were going to do the English workbook—the most boring part of English classes, I guess; comprising of exercises like 'fill in the blanks' , 'make sentences' ,'choose the correct answer' and all that.

Now, here was an exercise that Mrs.Chacko asked us to do in 10 minutes. But, as was customary in her class, we spent the entire period chatting and each time she asked in her gentle voice, 'children. Done with it?' we'd yell in unison, 'ma'am we are doing. 5 more minutes!'

Finally, when just 5 minutes were left for the bell to ring she asked one of us to read out what we had written. And that 'one' was, me!

Nothing to panick about, for I had done it. I read what it was. A fill in the blanks exercise of which, one of my answers didn't really impress her. 

Q. If I were god I would ______

and I had written :

If I were god I would destroy the whole world.


and she suddenly showed an "expression" (not very typical of her, you see—to show any expression for that matter.)  She raise an eye-brow and said, 'what ? What did you say, just repeat it?' I followed the instruction. But didn't elaborate on it, her expressions were weird enough to refrain me from saying anything more. Further then she asked me simply 'but why do you say so?'


 trinng..trinnnng...trinnnng....trinnng.......trinnnnnng!

Sorry for the interruption; but that is exactly how the school bell interrupted at that time.


Thus, I got a little distracted from the idea that had made me say what I said and write what I wrote. Plus, I just wanted to get her really big eyes off me, she was staring at me as if I was an alien who had come to actually destroy the planet. So I decided to just wind it up with a callous, 'umm, just like that.' (as we say in Hindi , "aise hi" )


She gave another, scarier, look and started collecting her books to leave the class, but only after making this statement: 'I don't know why you say so. But you sound very destructive.'


I felt odd, really odd. even though she hadn't really meant to call me destructive, but then, even I hadn't meant what she took it to be. Now I'll tell you what had brought me to the noble idea:


I thought, as god, I'll be able to do just about anything: with anyone, everyone, anything in the world. 
So, what should it be? Rid us all of terrorism? Or to do away with the multifarious (albeit self-created) barriers—of caste, creed, color, region, status e.t.c? Or to reduce the level of global warming which is putting Earth's future at risk? Or teach the basic lesson of happiness through contentment to humans? or...or...or...

And I just realized, there are way too many problems in and with this world, this planet and us. 


Actually, the universe has come a long way since its inception, not only in terms of advancement but also in terms of its extirpation. The only way to make it free from all the hostility between human-beings and nature would be to start it allover again, and in a more fool-proof way this time, so that, we would be able to live in the world that we all want, but don't truly strive for. 


Now, was it that bad an idea?
Or maybe, my fault was that I didn't  fill the blank completely—the way I wanted to.
But then, they say we should be very precise and to-the-point in our answers in the subject. Don't they?