Math Class With Mr. Adhikari

Mr. Adhikari taught us Math for a while. I think the best way to describe him is a man with a brain of a Math PhD with the attitude of Lucabrazzi in The Godfather. Or for those in the know, Saif Ali Khan in Omkara. He would walk into class, head low with hands behind his back, smelling of fresh cigarettes and cologne. 56 of the city's best and brightest would rise in attention and wish him good morning, which would typically be met with a look of disdain and an exasperated "yeeessss yesss good morning". A cherubic, phenominally talented man with a short fuse and a tongue to match.

There were days he'd just go straight to the board and start writing - anything from a quadratic equation to a geometry rider he wanted us to solve. On other days, he'd pick out his favorite text, OP Sinhal and before the 56 pairs of legs had found there way back onto the seats start reading out a problem "ABCD is a pentagon..." to which some smart-ass would immediately interrupt "Pentagon.... ABCDE you mean sir?". Adhikari scowles... "Arrre vvvai Sambit, E is aaanderstood".

Then there would be days in the middle of class he would pick on random people - we'll call one of them RS to protect the innocent. RS was, well lets just say his career trajectory seemed to be pointed in a direction other than a PhD in Math. After a vigorous game of soccer over the lunch break where he defended the goal expertly for 50 minutes, an afternoon siesta would very much be in order. The slight problem being he wasnt at the back of the class, rather in row 1 of the 8 rows of desks, and in column 1 next to the door. Or as Mr. Adhikari's brain worked, at point (-4, 0) since the Cartesian coordinate system started with him at (0, 0).

The exchange would go somewhat like this:

Mr. Adhikari: "So Raoooul, whaat is the cosine of 47 degrees?".

RS as we had mentioned before, would, if we were all lucky be asleep - and I mean literally asleep with his mouth open and quite possibly a little trickle across his chin. Supine with his elbow and shoulder across the wooden desk on which he had carved names of all the girls who loved him, the teachers he hated, and other memorable doodles that would make the Google homepage proud. Mr. Adhikari would at this point, as he was wont, pick up a piece of chalk (the soft kind which he usually preferred) and throw it at RS, nailing him somewhere on that rather long, defenseless frame.

RS, awoken from the deep slumber would flail out his arms, knock a few pieces of paper and look up, with the afterglow of a man who was so far into the dreamy love scene with Madhuri he wished he had been left alone. But in true Bosconian spirit, he would recover... "yyyessss... sirr.... yess... yess".

Mr. Adhikari's scowl would have grown at this point to a full fledged look of distaste, as if the coffee he just had was just that one cup too many, his pH level close to 5. "I saiiiiiid WHAAT is the cosine of 47 degrees?!"

By this time, a number of indicators would have suggested to RS that it was 2ish in the afternoon, he was in math class, and Mr. Adhikari was asking him a question which could be related to one of three things: arithmetic, algebra, or geometry. Drilling down and picking trignometry would not have occurred to him this early on in the proceedings. The other obvious aspect to this whole thing was that the options at hand were limited. It didnt seem like a "Yes, No" question. Also the mean bastard wasnt exactly offering him multiple choices one of which he could pick. Even the IIT entrance folks were less devious.

So what RS would do is fidget into his little school bag and pick up the log table.

Now one may argue that of the ways to try and deflect the question or even as a delaying tactic, this was not a very good choice. Be that as it may, we now had a scene set up for a classic confrontation - the Math whiz teacher with a student who had just picked up a table of logarithms to answer a question about the cosine function. Some of the rest of us may have considered that perhaps genius was at work here and we all just didn't know it - RS would magically come up with an answer to the question using log tables. But seeing Mr. Adhikari's face made it clear he had not placed a non-zero probability on an Euler-like being casting its mighty shadow close to (-4, 0)

Now, Mr. Adhikari's options were also not boundless. The school discouraged capital punishment, and for all we knew RS was connected. Not sure to what or who but he could have been connected to something or somebody no one wanted to mess with. You could almost hear the grinding wheels of an exasperated man wishing someone was dead but not having the power to execute on such lustful thought.

Mr. Adhikari: "Arrre vaaai I am aasssking you what is cosine of forty sav-aiiin. And you are picking up logarithaaam table?" Al Capone shake of head follows. A cricket bat not being close at hand was a good thing. "ARRE VAAI RAOOOUL, YOU SHOULD GO TO VAVA ATOMIC RESEAAARCH CENTER - THEY USE LOG TABLES THERE. AND NOW JUST TAKE A DAANDA AND HEET ME ON MY HEEAD!" The anger turned inward, heck the Buddha would have been proud.