punish meant

When the Gods want to Punish us… They answer our Prayers              Oscar Wilde

When it comes to punishing its folks, Crescent comes across as one of the most liberal institutions around.. and sometimes the Punishments beg a question, as to whom are exactly the punishments meant for:

Crime: Shabbiness

Indications: Dirty Clothes (Not Ironed), Dirty Shoes (Un Polished), Long Hair (Only for Boys), Long Nails

Punishment: Spending the 1st lecture in front of office and consequently missing important studies in the 1st Lecture

MEANT:

Now tell me, how can standing outside class, not attending it, can be a punishment  !!!,                              especially when the student has not the Home Work that was Due in the First Lecture.

Surely someone should have noticed the discrepancy when students were not being caught by the Prefects, but were themselves surrendering and standing in the line of Shabby Students to be Punished…. It Meant, escape from Home Work, spending and idle 40 mins in the light sun, discussing the significance of what was seen on TV the day before…. after all stamping your own shoes twice is way easier than writing 2 pages of homework

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Crime: Home Work not done

 Indications: Returning  with no Home work and innocently asking “What was the home work, I did not know it was due today”
Punishment: Varied, Students had to stand for a good 10 mins, get a nice dressing down from the teacher and then…and then.. well Sit Down…
However for a few Years ( err Correction months….Err Correction may be weeks) Crescent experimented with a Detention Class…basically an extra hour after school, the student had to sit and complete the home work and then only was allowed to return home.
MEANT: Nobody really understood for whom the Detention Class was a Punishment… for those students who continued their idyllic conversations about TV shows for extra hour it did not seem so… however it really was a Punishment for

the teacher, who has to sit monitoring the students, and went home an hour late, for no fault of theirs.. Eventually the folly was realized and the Detention Class was abandoned…
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Crime: Talkative

Indications: Excessive Chattering with neighbours
Punishment: Spending a Good 29 mins standing on the bench.
MEANT: I do not know, how standing on the bench affected the vocal cords of the student,, and the measure seemed worthless especially when the first sentence the student uttered after getting down from the bench was “Upar Fan ki hawa acchi lagti hai, fresh lag raha hai”…
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Crime: Long Hair

Indications: Hair covering the ears (Only for Boys)
Punishment: Sometimes (very rarely) a scissor was brought and the students hair was cut from the side, ensuring a bald portion was visible,
MEANT: This punish meant, proved really controversial, and even featured in the papers, as “Parents complain of mental trauma at hands of teacher”, apparently some students did not take the punishment in the right spirit, and their sensitive parents destroyed the spirit of the punishment itself… anyways long back, all it meant was a trip to barber before going home.. because the victims could not possibly go home and then face inquest on “What were you doing on SUNDAY, Couldn’t you cut hair !!” and it really meant good business for the Barber on an otherwise dull weekday