Malsum wocs her talk

If I asked you to define just who a good teacher would be, the answer would possibly revolve around things such as erudition, communication ability, empathy, humility and so on.  On campus at IIMB, we had our share of such profs, but they are, for the most part, most uninteresting to write about.  What can one write about a splendid teacher, other than the fact that he or she is indeed a splendid teacher? 

Malsum was different, vastly so.  Writing about her is most motivating, only because she was supremely incompetent.  Indeed, any race for ineptitude would have been horribly one-sided, and any bets placed on others done, no doubt, by those entirely ignorant of facts or unable to afford the Official Guide to the Races.

It’s not that incompetence was absent on campus; if anything, it was significantly pervasive.  But none were in her league.  To stress the point further, we had some profs who were far from erudite, others who spoke but occasionally in English (including the redoubtable Bosky, who insisted on spelling 2 as ‘tow’ and would have imploded if you had asked him to spell balloon or Mississippi), a few who had been put out to pasture (notably in Personnel Management, as it was then called), who spent their time in class awaiting their retirement momento, and a large section of profs who saw the teeming humanity in front of them as an interference to their obscure research work on algorithms for logisitics optimisation.  But those who lacked knowledge made up, sadly, by their communication, others like Bosky inspired compassion and the algorithms-fraternity occasionally even smiled when students slipped on wet floors; they too, as you can see, had a few strands of human DNA.  All these folks didn’t quite combine their sterling incompetence in one field with that in another and hence may be excluded from analysis.  Malsum, I repeat, was different. 

She taught us Written and Oral Communication. At the best of times, this isn’t a subject you teach grown-ups who have passed a competitive exam that included an English language section and it struck me that the selection process for a faculty member for Woc had been simple.  There is no doubt that all those present and on the rolls had refused to teach the subject and the Director in charge then had put up a signboard by the backgate that read ‘Trespassers will be recruited’.  The rest, you will concur, is history. 

Also note that these were the days before email.  Hence, the days before clean wholesome entertainment such as flame mails, escalations at the touch of a key, sending mails to the wrong person, particularly when you were writing things about him that you shouldn’t have and so on.  We had none of these examples of hilarity, so this sterling lady had an uphill battle.   

When Malsum fetched up in class and took her chair (actually she didn’t, she just sat on it), what struck me was the long, pointed thingy that had been poked through the bun at the back of her head.  It was a particularly sharp instrument – the sort that you’d keep handy when you expected trouble – and the visibly finished keen tip suggested an attention to detail.  This spear fascinated me and absorbed much of my attention, for there was not much more to do.  In one class, this prolonged concentration prompted an outburst of creativity, resulting in my first nonsensical ditty at IIMB: 

No spear in this bun of hair

We have looked, I promise, everywhere

Just how do we tell Lady Malsum

That the bones have lost their calsum 

The students in her class – when they did attend, for in those days the Attendance Register wasn’t the Holy Grail and was not infrequently doctored – ranged from the distracted to the somnolent, from the fidgety to the fretful.  In the quarter of a century following her classes, I am yet to meet anyone who remembers anything of what she is alleged to have taught in communication– written, oral or in any other unexplored form – yet they all remember that she had a modest vocabulary and worked hard at keeping it modest and limited to words that had no more than five letters (and not more than one vowel); anything beyond this was truly overwhelming. 

Malsum would spend all her time in class seated in her chair on the podium, getting us to write entirely meaningless stuff or make presentations, while she thought of, well, whatever it is that she was capable of thinking of (it is unlikely to have been research insights into contemporary literature).  Her real skill was in grading, as the instances below will conclusively prove.

A classmate who had studied literature and is known to have read Kafka, Whitman and possibly Shaw was once berated by her for incorrect salutation in his letter to branch manager requesting a transfer of goods to warehouse.  When he saw his grade, I saw him cringe in horror and disbelief and he spent the remaining few classes with his head in his hands, avoiding the eyes of his fellows. 

When it was my turn to make a presentation, I did one on marketing and branding, ending with a recitation of a ditty that I read somewhere: 

A lion met a tiger as they drew beside a pool

Said the tiger, “Tell me, big boy, why’s your roaring like a fool?”

“It’s not foolish,” said the lion, with a twinkle in his eyes

“They call me king of beasts because I advertise.”

A rabbit heard them talking and ran home like a streak

He thought he would try roaring, but his roar was just a squeak

A fox came to investigate and had his lunch in the woods

The moral: if you advertise my friends, be sure you have got the goods.

Having recited this with flourish and to the modest applause from those who were awake, I turned to look at the lady herself.  The entirely impassive face suggested that I had probably made a presentation in a dialect spoken north-west of Reykjavik.  In essence, an entirely wasted effort.

Yet, her high point arrived when another classmate made a presentation on sunsigns and proceeded to describe, with gentle humour, the characteristics of those born under these various signs.  Malsum, of course, got it all wrong; she had written the title of the talk down as ‘Sunshine’, paid careful attention to the presentation with its description of Virgos and Saggitariuses and stuff, saw the clear correlation of all of this with the sunshine above the building and gave the student an ‘A’.    

This is the stuff of legends, the sign of unforgettable greatness.