Dubey - The History Teacher

Higher Secondary
The final and the most crucial years of our school were from 9th Standard to 11th. That is when we made our first career defining choice – Arts or Science. The Non-Medical option had Higher Mathematics instead of Biology. Oh Yes ! Nerds like Hemant Hegde and Deepak Shah lined up for this class. There were some souls who opted for Higher Sanskrit instead of Hindi as well. Interestingly, Sanskrit was a very ‘technical’ subject and you had a good chance of scoring centum marks in it. It wasn’t subjective like English where you could write and write your arm off and still get a low score.
I was never an ambitious student and Arts served my purpose very well. Which means I missed the whole Dattani/ Kobi circuit and came firmly in contact with the likes of Ramji Sir, Dubey and the squat, dark individual who taught us Eco-NO-mics (forgotten his name  Please update if you remember)
I wish to wax forth on Dubey, the guy who taught us History.
Why was Dubey special? He was an ordinary looking guy (I have a picture! Will post shortly). He was about 5’8” or so in height, a nice girth, slightly balding, had a round face, wore glasses. He was quite Dickensian in his looks, a jolly fellow.
One thing was for sure, he had no special love for his subject. He knew his text book well enough, if it lay open before him, as it usually did. He liked to read out of it too, expertly as if it were a teleprompter.
Dubey and Movies
He loved referring to historical bollywood films. It certainly used to spice up his lectures and jolt us out of sleepy stupors. Sikandar-e-Azam starring Prithviraj Kapoor and Dara Singh was a big favorite of his. He loved giving examples out of it. The crowing glory of the film was the face off between the defeated Porus (Prithviraj Kapoor) and the victorious Sikander (Dara Singh). “How do you wish to be treated?” asks Sikander to the imprisoned former king of Hindustan. “As a king treats another king” replied Porus. We never heard the end of this. Once, the movie was being re-run in Jamnagar and Dubey gathered his entire History class to go and watch and glean historical lessons from it. I saw the movie years later on TV and there was precious little by way of history in it, though I am sure the students were mighty informed by the dance performances of Mumtaz in the film.
Other pet movie references of his were Akbar-Anarkali-Salim in Mughal-e-Azam, Noor Jehan - Jahangir in Taj Mahal, and Shahjehan – Jehanara in Jehanara. If Dubey had his way, we would have learnt our entire history off poorly researched bollywood flicks, and would have believed the kings of yore strode around in silk gowns and pearl necklaces and spouted poetical Urdu, and sang and romanced to music by Naushad.
Dubey and the Mughals
What Nadir Shah took away from India was a favorite topic of his. Millenniums had passed since Nadir Shah struck, but the angst of the loss lived yet in Dubey’s heart. He mourned personally for the likes of the priceless Takht-e-taus (peacock throne) and Koh-i-Noor diamond.
Dubey was particularly fond of the e or i used to separate the mughal name. It was NEVER Ibnbatuta. It was always Ibn-e-Batuta. When he spoke he put a little emphasis on the separator and paused dramatically at it, his face askew. If you wished to please Dubey, you said Ibn-e-batuta, Mughal-e-Azam,
Dubey the Prolix
Another distinguishing feature of Dubey was his insistence on long answers. We were being prepared for the time when we would be writing our MA exams, where nothing less than 4 foolscap sheets were accepted as an answer. (I did sit for my MA exams eventually and it is true – we were required to write long answers, and I did think of Dubey as I filled out my foolscaps effortlessly, grateful for the early training).
WHAT you wrote was quite a different matter.
You could fill the pages by sub-titling your answers, darkening and underlining them, and writing your matter in a large hand in a paragraph below it. It occupied more space and made your answer look neat.
You could go bi-lingual and repeat your options. For instance, when listing out the number of things Nadir Shah took out of India I wrote a paragraph on ‘Takht-e-Taus’ and a few para’s later, repeated the whole thing under the head ‘Peacock throne’.
You could just blabber. Several people wrote completely unrelated stuff. For instance, the screenplay of Bobby!
Lazy Dubey could be counted upon to NEVER read the long answers and marked your paper solely on the strength of the length.
Dubey and CSD
In middle of a class, during a lull, Dubey was quite likely to start quizzing some hapless defence kid about the availability of things in the Canteen. For quite a while he was on the lookout for a mixie. He would keep enquiring after it, the price, the brands, the number of attachment. We would be pleased at the change in the topic and encourage the inquiries to keep him off track.
When the Princi is away the teachers will play:
This is how our HSc. Classes worked. The whole class met for the mandatory English and Hindi lessons. Arts and Science would separate for other subjects. When we had History it was either Biology or Higher Math for them. Similarly we would separate for Geography/Physics, and Chemistry/Economics. As the science students had to have long stretches of 3 consecutive classes for their practicals and Lab sessions, we would have to endure long stretches of History or Eco or something. Luckily Dubey wasn’t very fond of these sessions either. He would conveniently clutch his jaw and plead a toothache. We were dismissed from the class and sent to the playground, while Dubey would relax in staff room. At times, when the Princi was away, we would see him making off towards the bus stand, his bag tucked under his arm. Ameeta and I would use this time to chat endlessly about stuff, and eat the killer kharabi (peanuts) available in a shop just outside the school campus. My brother and other boys would make a beeline for the cricket ground.
The memory of Dubey brings a smile to my face. He is sure to have retired now, his kids grown up and married. I hope he is living happily somewhere, some place in Uttar Pradesh.