For us boys of a certain city School, Miss Biswas’s chemistry class was the loveliest place on planet earth. Our creative faculties never failed to cease here. It was how we began our week, tolerating the archaic smell of N-butanol, Beta-mercaptoethanol, paraformaldehyde and many other mind jaunting chemicals whose name I don’t need to mention in this internet age.
I still remember every set of mischief we ritually performed on Lab-day. This was how our week began – perfect round holes in our dresses, broken round bottom flasks, splattered sodium carbonate, colored Glycerin, dabla dabla dabla da, among other things. We purposely kept the right things in the wrong places, applied weird chemicals on other unknown stuff (very dangerous I know), we threw and wasted away milliliters of chemicals that perhaps on other days would have helped to cure cancer. Even in the decibel level, fish markets would have been proud of us.
Come to think of it we did pretty bad stuff back in the days but somehow got away from crafting big accidents. Such was the order of that class that it was not a common sight to occasionally sprinkle acid and burn our hands here and there, never to the enormity of anything serious.
Miss Biswas never said much, we hardly listened to what she had to say anyway, her voice was soft like a summer bird and more than often her words were lost between the bottles of magic potion. But whenever we had ached in those silly burns that we conjured on our skin, she would swiftly walk to us, hold our hand and take us to the nearest wash basin, repeating those words over and over again.
“Apply water, apply water.”
Those are the words that had stuck with us boys, the mellifluous chant of a lady whose voice we would rather ignore on sunny days. We even passed our exams applying the right amount of water (yes, I am telling you the truth man) - the chemicals were insignificant, it was all water play. This amount on this would give you this and then apply this on that and heat for this amount of time and write down your conclusions. What did you infer? Well, nothing much.
‘Apply water. Apply water.’
That’s all I can remember. That’s all I needed to know back then.
I am writing this now, because today I met Miss Biswas in the park. She was graceful as ever, except with strands of grey hair on her head. Her voice was as soft as it had been back then, but I thought she wouldn’t recognize me but to my surprise she did. She even remembered my name, she remembered a few of our classmates name too and enquired me about them. I could hear her every word now, and in a way it was really nice to hear her speak. In a world where everyone was shouting and screaming to be heard, she was indeed an anachronism. I couldn’t place her here in the park. To me she was the portrait of our chemistry laboratory. When she asked me how I was doing, I deviated myself from my usual formal pleasantries. I had this sudden urge to speak out (perhaps it was her comforting presence that made me react this way) and I did so.
I was so verbose that hell, I don’t even remember how long I whined about my flaccid confusions, my existential problems and my general distaste towards life. She listened patiently and at the end of it all she smiled. In a tone so old and familiar, she said,
‘Apply your dreams. Apply your dreams.’
I think that’s when I
woke up.
I still remember every set of mischief we ritually performed on Lab-day. This was how our week began – perfect round holes in our dresses, broken round bottom flasks, splattered sodium carbonate, colored Glycerin, dabla dabla dabla da, among other things. We purposely kept the right things in the wrong places, applied weird chemicals on other unknown stuff (very dangerous I know), we threw and wasted away milliliters of chemicals that perhaps on other days would have helped to cure cancer. Even in the decibel level, fish markets would have been proud of us.
Come to think of it we did pretty bad stuff back in the days but somehow got away from crafting big accidents. Such was the order of that class that it was not a common sight to occasionally sprinkle acid and burn our hands here and there, never to the enormity of anything serious.
Miss Biswas never said much, we hardly listened to what she had to say anyway, her voice was soft like a summer bird and more than often her words were lost between the bottles of magic potion. But whenever we had ached in those silly burns that we conjured on our skin, she would swiftly walk to us, hold our hand and take us to the nearest wash basin, repeating those words over and over again.
“Apply water, apply water.”
Those are the words that had stuck with us boys, the mellifluous chant of a lady whose voice we would rather ignore on sunny days. We even passed our exams applying the right amount of water (yes, I am telling you the truth man) - the chemicals were insignificant, it was all water play. This amount on this would give you this and then apply this on that and heat for this amount of time and write down your conclusions. What did you infer? Well, nothing much.
‘Apply water. Apply water.’
That’s all I can remember. That’s all I needed to know back then.
I am writing this now, because today I met Miss Biswas in the park. She was graceful as ever, except with strands of grey hair on her head. Her voice was as soft as it had been back then, but I thought she wouldn’t recognize me but to my surprise she did. She even remembered my name, she remembered a few of our classmates name too and enquired me about them. I could hear her every word now, and in a way it was really nice to hear her speak. In a world where everyone was shouting and screaming to be heard, she was indeed an anachronism. I couldn’t place her here in the park. To me she was the portrait of our chemistry laboratory. When she asked me how I was doing, I deviated myself from my usual formal pleasantries. I had this sudden urge to speak out (perhaps it was her comforting presence that made me react this way) and I did so.
I was so verbose that hell, I don’t even remember how long I whined about my flaccid confusions, my existential problems and my general distaste towards life. She listened patiently and at the end of it all she smiled. In a tone so old and familiar, she said,
‘Apply your dreams. Apply your dreams.’
I think that’s when I
woke up.
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