The Science Lab

Chapter 1:  The Science Lab

Our school had a small science lab which stayed dark and musty all the time.
 In the late 60’s they had stopped doing most of the chemistry experiments in-house because of the lack of funds. The glass wares and curiously looking jars of chemicals remained in those huge closets covered with dust.

My father was one of the teachers who was in charge of the lab. So I could always go inside that gloomy room and stare at the human skeleton hanging in the corner next to his table.

 My classes started only in the afternoon  because of the lack of class rooms in the already congested school. 
It was my chore to bring lunch from home for my father. I hated that work even though it continued for almost four years till my father got transferred to another place. The lunch box was so hot and bulky ; sometimes the gravy scalded my hands.

After walking nearly half a mile in the sun traversing the neighborhood and the alleyways, I finally would reach the school almost on time for my classes. My feet ached with blisters from the hot sand and fingers molded into the shape of my father’s lunch box.

My father’s colleagues were always there to greet me with their sarcasm; they would open his lunch box and made fun of me . They liked my mother’s cooking and all of them shared his food. When I could not take his lunch, our maid, who was deaf and dumb, did take it and she would come back and describe the way my father’s colleagues dealt with questioning her. One of her favorite master piece was  the way they put their hands above their heads to describe BEEF to her.

The science lab had only one window and no electricity. Sometimes I had to open the door myself to put his lunch box on the table when he was teaching. I remember the day when the door closed on me and all I could see was the single skeleton hanging in the glass cabinet.

I had full access to the books they had in the library. No one was issued any science library books. No one actually wanted it. It took me few months to completely finish reading all of them.

I was fascinated with the text books my father brought home. In those days we did not have any other source of technical  information. I used to help him with correcting his students’ test papers. After many years, I developed critical thinking and my father possibly trusted me in my abilities.

 My father was known in school as moderately strict, but very well respected for his fund of knowledge and helping nature. Few of his colleagues exploited his faculties. I remember him going to school on weekends and staying late everyday to complete jobs because his head master left early without finishing his work.

When I came back from the school, I set out to play with my friends in the neighborhood. It was a village where everybody knew everyone. If I did anything naughty, before I could reach home, my parents would have been notified by someone.

My father always wore white. I could see his white shirt like a spot from the very end of the empty fields in the evening when he was on the way home from work. After a shower, he will lie down in his deck chair (“Easy chair”) with legs up. My mother used to call it “lazy chair” and  it had his body odor.

 His main job at night  was teaching my sister who was two years older than me. I watched funnily when she made the same mistakes and got scolding from my father.  Sometimes I wondered why he was pushing her so much. My father did not pay too much attention to my education other than occasional episodes of English Grammar teaching- which I hated- those days.  It was one of the books he actually brought for me as a present : The Wren & Martin’s. He had a certain fascination with that book , that, it was his Bible when he had a doubt when teaching me grammar, he would say “Why don’t you now turn to the page in the Wren & Martin.”

I am sure that he was getting good feed back from my teachers about me. But he never actually showed that he knew that. He forced my sister to join for the general knowledge quiz competition at the school; and without his knowledge, I participated and defeated  many of the senior students, he did not say a word.  I overheard him asking my mother,” From where he got all these answers from ?” Years later, when the news reporters called him to interview me when I got the University rank, I could  see that he was surprised in my achievement.


2. The Experiments