Showing posts with label Humor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Humor. Show all posts

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Five Dons of AIMS: Some Interesting Facts about My Professors


We come across many teachers every day in our years of schooling. Our encounters with them gradually become ordinary and insignificant as we progress in our careers. However, I believe that our teachers deserve admiration and gratitude for what they have done in influencing us as students.

There are many great teachers who have made an impact on my life. Most of them have been kind, hardworking, and patient, and every quality a good person should possess. They appreciated me and motivated me to help in my life. They were the epitomes, and watching them, taught me and has definitely impacted my life to be patient, caring, and empathetic. Today, I’m glad that I have had such a wonderful teacher who made an impact on my life.

I have by now understood that a good teacher requires a good ability to give his lectures to his students; his humor and a vivid teaching style bring into school life by a teacher with this kind of characteristic. A teacher with humor can not only enhance the relationship between students and teachers but learning and studying can be a fun and good thing. And a teacher with humor can make students pay more attention in the class.

Five Dons of AIMS
To pay my respect and homage to my past and present teachers, I have briefly described (having nothing to do today as such) my present batch of professors. The views below are purely personal expressions, and they may not be true always. They are my afar observation and do not intend to hurt anyone explicitly or implicitly.


Mr. Prabha is as humorous as his looks. I think he was a Charlie Chaplin in his previous birth. He imitated exactly like Charlie’s walks once in a class. I remember that. My first intuition of Mr. Prabha was callous and harsh. As every now and then he throws up unwanted remarks like “foolish,” “useless,” and he has always negative sides to very positive sides. Gandhiji was great ‘BUT’… Your answer is okay ‘BUT’… And there is always ‘BUT.’ I think his half portion of mind is filled with that ‘butt!’ He tries to argue Derrida’s critic of criticism - one of the head-breaking theories. I am afraid he does that successfully. He is not an easy guy to fight with. Last time, a talker of the class argued about something (I can’t remember exactly) but his cogent arguments made his face as red as a ripening apple.

Mr. Prabha is the most reliable teacher in the college. He follows his daily plans precisely and sincerely but he can be sometimes as careless and mindless as he can be. I don’t know why. He would talk and talk and talk on the topic, sometimes as useless as the topic itself. He would, I would say, cleverly watches every individual, especially girls…hahaha. He knows who has understood or who has been listening to his lectures. Mr. Prabha has also presented himself as a scholar of other subject and areas. He is kind of a jack of all trades. He, not only teaches us American literature, he also teaches us Post-Colonialism, Literary Criticism, Gender Studies, but he himself has confessed that he cannot teach Linguistics and grammar and such. I think he is well-rounded in his own way. Just as teachers love well-rounder students; I also admire a teacher who is well-rounded in all areas.

Mr. Prabha, you are the teacher who can stir or shake the milk very well. We understand your lectures better than we (I) can understand you. You are a great critic, but (I use your word) try not to de-motivate with the negatives beliefs of your own understanding. I personally like your personable way of cracking a satirical joke and asking rhetorical questions to brighten up the atmosphere. Life is a mixture of great varieties, both positive and negative. Thank you for that.



Mrs. Mamta is another all-rounder professor. She is very pleasing to the eyes of the beholders. Her demeanors are as elegant as she is. She would say “Hi” if you pass by her. She is good. Truly good. I would like to sum up madam: you have the best qualities that a human being should possess. Last time, my friend who is in another department told me how good that you were to him. I feel lucky to have you so that I can instill some of your good values, habits, works, etc to my students…Oh no, before that I have to instill myself first!

Mrs. Mamta is sometimes humorous, especially when she contorts her face after hearing some remarks from students. She has a habit of folding her hands and resting her hands on her hips in a typical manner and making her face in a comical way. I like it. She wears colorful traditional Saris most of the time.

Mrs. Mamta has also presented herself as a scholar of other subject areas. She is kind of a jack of all trades. She not only represents English Department and fights on behalf of it, but also teaches us American literature, Post-Colonialism, Literary Criticism, TELL, and even tried her hands in teaching how to answers the questions. She works very hard. I have seen her textbooks with so many colorful marks and so many papers notes in-between the textbooks.  I think she is also all-rounder, just as teachers love well-rounder students; I also admire a teacher who is well rounded in all areas.

Mrs. Mamta, you are the teacher who can speak eloquently. Your sweetening speeches and presentation thrash and crash all difficult topics. Thank you, and thank you for giving concern to every individual.


Mr. Samuel is a lost guy from the college. If you are looking for Mr. Samuel, one must come before everyone wakes up. He would be there in the college for a very short time in the morning. He would have vanished for his evaluation for months. And when he comes back, he would open his mouth and make a very big ‘O’ and bulges his eyes with a great surprise. He has a great sense of fun within him, and he throws out often in his limited time in the class. He looks very intelligent and kind of high-class as well as a high-flyer. He looks great when he wears his spectacle.

Mr. Samuel is a very friendly person. I know that. He speaks in a superficial way but his words are full of meanings. He is very trimmed, a kind of brief loving person. Some lectures are as succinct as topics. He takes it easy. Life is not that easy, Mr. Samuel. His first semester and second-semester teachings were far better than the third semester, Linguistics. I think he is dwindling, and I am afraid he would not even turn up in the fourth semester. Let’s pray.  I think this is not his fault; the fault always goes to the administration for not giving us proper class for many lecturers. 

Mr. Samuel has a lot of knowledge. He knows. He is confident. Only recently, I chatted with my classmate that he has the potential to be the best teacher, given the chance. Anyhow, you are already one of my best lecturers and models. There is somewhere in my mind asking me to book your ways. Only some people can affect. Thank you Samuel for your impact.



Mrs. Parveen has so many good qualities, such as tolerance, kindness, sympathy, empathy, etc.  And I most admire for these. I have not seen many teachers like her. She has been trying her level best. Her teachings were well organized and arranged in the first and half of the second semester. She used to have prepared well and presented well with the help of a projector. I don’t know why, the third semester has been tiring teaching for her. Like Mr. Samuel, she also is busy with evaluations and cannot catch her even with a spy trap.

Mrs. Parveen sometimes treats her master students like elementary students. She scolds and bullies for no reason. She catches a stick and threatens students, which becomes a sort of a joke. Many students hardly listen to what she says, and because, a few listens to her, there would be a small remark on her at last. The big mouth would complain of her saying that she has not taught and provided any notes to them on the topics.

Mrs. Parveen is as worried as her students about the exam result. She would poke her nose in the exams, clear some doubts, and disappear. All of us smile at her goodness. But for this third semester, the subject TELL has become a real HELL to some people, especially those who have not attended classes and those who have taken very easily on her lectures in the class. No worries as such; it all talks about the method of teaching and some mechanisms of teaching. I myself have not even lifted any Xero papers. I have decided to look at the topics and bluff on the paper. That’s it. I shared this happy news to one of my friends yesterday, and guess what he said; he limped high and said, “Let’s go to the party.” It’s party time Mrs. Parveen. Don’t worry too much about your subject and no need for poking inside the hall this time. This time we have to drag Mr. Samuel instead…hahaha. We will do it, madam. Thank you for making us (me) do ourselves.



Mrs. Chitra Das Gupta is a dolly and jolly lecturer. She left us in the middle of the semester leaving us in a rolly-polly mood. Now she has left us, I don’t feel like writing. I don’t understand why Critical subject teachers should be out of the ring. Now she critics us from a long distance. She has a huge knowledge of English, and I respect her.

Mrs. Chitra has a peculiar habit of making hush-hush business. I wonder sometimes whether it is her hush-hush things that she is not seen around the college. She dares to do it in front of the class. She would keep her palm hand on the side of her mouth and whisper to a certain group of students. Don’t whisper madam, even walls have ears.

Mrs. Chitra was a great teacher except for her repetition. She would sit and mull over some lines again and again—most of the time outside the topic. Her favorite lines were, ‘Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, little star…” I remember she would repeat these lines not less than three times in a class. Her examples sometimes were very limited to this twinkle rhyme and her family lives, especially of her husband. I miss you madam, and I think your husband is doing good.

Mrs. Chitra was a generous woman. If I have something to miss about her, I will miss her sweet Ladoos. She would bring Ladoos and other sweets once or twice a week. I regret now, I ate her sweets and had nothing to give her back. I understood after that how good is sharing. Thank you for sharing; sharing criticism as well as Ladoos. I have learned to share.



Teachers have the very important responsibility of shaping the lives of impressionable learners. With this responsibility comes great pride and joy. Therefore, all teachers should strive for what can be considered to be a “good teacher.” A good teacher can be defined as someone who always pushes students to want to do their best while at the same time trying to make learning interesting as well as creative. A positive or negative influence from a teacher early on in life can have a great effect on the life of a child.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Chick

(Readers' restriction: The humor below is only for the mature group as it contents some offensive terms, and the writing does not necessary blame any languages.).

Born and brought up in Eastern Bhutan, and the only language I knew was Sharchokpa, I always wanted to learn others' languages. And Lhotsampa being quite popular, I was quite excited to learn. In class IV, luck was on my side, Bishnu Kafley was my Lhotsampa friend(and we had been friends for many years, till we graduated class eight, and after that we lost each other…hope, we will meet one fine day, and now I will surprise him with his language). In those times, I didn’t know his language and nor did he know my language. So, we spoke headless-legless-English. ‘Come,’ ‘go,’ ‘eat,’ ‘play,’ with various body languages.

As the chick become cock, I graduated from the Samtse College of Education. By then, I could speak here and there Lhotsampakha. My first posting was in Tsirangtoe Lower Secondary School, Tsirang in 2005. It was both fortunate and unfortunate; fortunate; for I was there in the place where the majority of the population were Lhotsampas, and unfortunate; to live in the remote windy, damply place. Anyway, I was eager to learn their language if not, master some words and semantics orders. Great!

My students always knocked me out, and they do even in my sleep; with their beguiling faces, naughty-dirty faces, and rough-murky behaviors waken me up.

That was the class, probably my third class, and the third chapter. I jumped two chapters to start with the easiest one - that was the domestic animals. Being a geography teacher, I taught geography. We talked about domestic animals. I asked them to name some animals, and, which they did one by one. I wanted to go a little further; animals and their young ones (a teacher always adds something more on the topic, and that adds the teacher’s persona and his high erudition!).
‘Cow-calf, pig-piglet, horse-foal, chicken-chick, and others.’ I said.
The students gave a sudden laugh.
‘Chick,’ I told them sensing funny.
Their laughter continued.
‘Chick,’ I repeated playfully, but loudly.
By then, there was a little laughter and girls begin to bend their heads.
‘What is fun with the chick? You know chick?’ I seriously asked them.
‘We know sir,’ the faint voice shot up.
‘Sir, it’s a dirty word,’ a student said.
‘What is it? I want also to learn.’
‘Not in the class sir,’ the captain in the class said.

I asked the captain after the class.
‘It means sleeping together, and having sex together sir,’ he shyly, decently, and indirectly told me.

I never thought I would go to that extend. It literally meant f**k. I didn’t go to that class for three days. And chick was to be strictly checked, I promised them. My impatience to learn the Lhotsampa language certainly waned from the day.

Friday, May 11, 2012

The Long

(Readers' restriction: The humor below is only for the mature group as it contents some offensive terms, and the writing does not necessary propagates nor it’s propaganda or blames any language or so).



I was born in the society of ‘The’ and the ‘Long.’ Much as I am equipped with these phonetics, it’s still difficult to utter these sounds and at times I wonder why these two words having similar pronunciations have different meanings all over.



 ‘The’ and the ‘long’ words can contort faces and they can be the most reprehensive to a certain group of people in Bhutan especially Sharchokpas. Whenever I have to use these english words ‘The’ or the ‘Long,’ I use it with much care. A Peculiar American, ‘the’ accent is very close to our brother’s slang ‘the’ and we love distinct American articulation. Anyways, I just look around to throw out these English words -quickly. If it were rowdies, we would have a real long guff-talks-no matter the subject using these 'slangs'.


 I have some kind of uneasy neurotic hunches to use these two Bhutanese slangs with my students and most of all with my Sharchokpas students (But everyone knows these slangs, be it Ngalops or Lhotsampas or others in Bhutan). The worst part of this is that the hesitant words come out often unnoticed to the wrong people; but as an English-speaking class, I shouldn’t take any blame for it.


 In one of my classes, the students had got bored with series of classes, and they asked me my free time.
“We have a long class, sir. We want to enjoy long now.”
Were my students making fun of the word ‘long’ or was it just mockery to me as I use it often?
“To enjoy (the) long.” I flashed a small smile and continued, “Thus, we will have long break then.”
“Yes, thus, thus,” some naughty students weirdly twisted their mouth to pronounce the word thus as t(h)ues that made girls buried their heads for sometimes.


 No problem, I was forced out from the class after exchanging some quick laughter with boys - those mischievous boys.


 The ‘long’ and the ‘the’ are very derogative Sharchokpa’s terms for the male organ -penis, and as such ‘thus’ if mispronounced is a female organ.


I try to substitute the use of words ‘long’ with many others synonyms like lengthy, extensive, elongated, etc. However, for the small children in the school, the word ‘long’ has to be understood as long only and the ‘the’ likewise. These two words are also the most offensive words uttered when one is angry or in utter hopelessness.


And ‘the’ and ‘long’ are commonly used words in English.



And Take care and THE LONG Goodbye…and see you next time.