The Fluke Horse

‘Fluke Horse’. I heard this term for the first time at the age of six. I was in my Upper kindergarten.  I was the person to who this epithet was applied. By my class teacher. For what purpose? To explain my feat of securing the first rank that term. My parents had been in cloud heaven when they had heard of my performance and had come expecting to receive words of glowing appreciation. After an unremarkable Lower kindergarten, I seemed to have turned a new leaf and was progressing in the direction of their dreams. But no. That was not to be. All they received was “He is just a fluke horse”.

Over the years, the term was to become all too familiar to me for my parents kept flashing it in front of me all the time. As the teacher had predicted, I never ever managed to get first rank in her class after that. I did manage to get the coveted first rank yet again the following year. But that was the last time ever for the next eleven years of schooling. But still why would a teacher say that of a student who gets the first rank in the very first term with her? To understand that we should start a couple of months earlier – the beginning of the term.

We called her Sumitra Miss. She was a Tamilian in a school where most of the students and teachers were Kannadigas. So, she had something for Tamil students. She would single them out and talk to them in Tamil and expect them to chat with her in Tamil and discuss things that happened at home with her.  She had tried the same with me too. Somehow, I did not feel all too enthusiastic about this kind of attention. So, after a few days, as a form of defiance I began to respond to her in Kannada whenever she asked me something. She felt snubbed and that started the cold war between us.  The cold war turned into an all-out war when my father out-bided her husband for a flat they had wanted to buy.   

She began to behave way stricter with me than she was with any of the other students. A Snape Harry kind of dynamic was fast developing between us. I too was not the one to take her jibes and punishments lying down and began to find ways of getting back at her.

As soon as she started her class, I would stand up.

“Miss, my rubber fell out of the window. Can I go and fetch it?”

 “Go fast and get it. And don’t sit near the window. Go and seat in the seat back there away from the window.”

Few minutes later, I would rise again with only little finger open.

“What now?”

“Can I go to the toilet, Miss?”

“Whatever. Be back fast.”

After I returned and few minutes passed, I would rise again. “Miss!”

“Not you again. What now?”

“My pencil has gone missing.”

“Where did you lose it?”

“I think it rolled under the desk to the front seat. Can I go there and fetch it?”

“Now this is limits. Come and sit in the front row.”

Now I would be right under her nose. I would immediately start sniffing and blowing my nose every few minutes. That would irritate her no end but she could not say anything about it. After all one couldn’t help a cold, could one?

As a mischievous kid who paid scant attention in class, she was expecting me to do poorly in the exams and then her time would come. She had preparing herself to say cutting things about me to my parents. But all had been in vain. She did not know that my mother meticulously tutored me at home and made up for whatever I missed in class due to my antics. So, to her utter disbelief, she found not only had I done well in my exams, but actually topped the class as well.

So, the only thing she could say was ‘fluke horse’. As I discovered over the years of my academic and professional life, she had not been too far from the truth. I guess one positive thing was I got to learn a new word. However now looking back, I think I would have preferred ‘dark horse’.

Original link