Father Mario

The last 2 years that i was in Loyola High School, Pune we had this vice principal called Father Mario....i dont know what I should be calling him.....humorous, funny or sadistic....I think its a combination of all three...lets say he was funnily sadistic in a humorous kind of way....he would say the funniest of things with a straight face and mind you...even if you show anything that even resembles a smile...he would come running towards you shouting your name with a certain attachment to the end...something like......Puneri of the Gold House....you were laughing in class...and he would hold you down and hit you hard on the back...or then he would go to the blackboard and scribble something and wipe it off and then come running towards you with the same "Puneri of the Gold House....." and hit you on the head with that duster.....or then if there was nothing else he could do he would just fling his bunch of keys at you......but the funniest part of it....we never took offense..instead we would keep teasing him by laughing in class and that irritated him even more.....

He was strictly against any guys wearing any type of rings on their fingers....in 9th standard our football team lost agaist this ekdam sidey team in the first round because this guy called Samuel from our class hit a self goal.....now it was a big disgrace that Loyola lost to St Patrick's in the fisrt round and our cross town rivals St Vincents were having an awesome time teasing us about it and probably some Father from St. Vincents must have said that to him and he was mighty pissed....from then on he blamed our class for bringing disgrace to the school......so this one day.....while teaching us Moral Science...ya...thats what he taught us....he looks at Samuel and says...Samuel of the Blue House.....why are you wearing rings to school...so Samuel gets up and defiantly says......" No Father .....these are God's rings".....and Father Mario looks at him and shouts at the top of his voice...." God soes not help those people who hit self goals!!!".....and there was no way anyone could control the laughter ...and we had the whole class in tears while Father Mario stands there arguing with Samuel why he cant wear a ring to school

Another time while teaching Histroy...he was taking this quiz....so he goes..." Jai of the Green house"...when was the battle of Plassey fought....and Jai said..."Pardon Father"....and again in his thundering voice he looks at Jaideep and says "Wrong!!!!!" and asked him to sit down.....these are just some of the stay incidents which made life really awesome in school.....

But the best time we ever had troubling Father Mario was during exams....our examination hall was next to his office...and every morning...this guy Riot and me would gather a bunch of our friends and walk into Father Mario's office with a very sad and worried face....and start cribbing that this paper is very tough and we dont know anything and we dont even know if we are gonna pass....so he would have this expression which conveyed..."So what can I do????".....and we would say..." Father we have come to take your blessings so we may do well in our exams!!!"...and he would have this pleased look on his face and say "My blessings are always with you"....but it did not stop there...one by one all 10-15 of us would start going closer to his table and say "Father we want your blessings....we want to touch your feet so that we may do well!!!" and while saying this we would keep walking closer to his table....to the point where he would get up and stand behind his chair with one hand on the handle of his drawyer ...and he would threaten us that if we came any closer he would gives all a pink card.....now whats a pink card???...its this warning that you get from the faculty for misbehaving...and two pink cards is equaly to one grey card and two grey card amounts to rustication from school....and we would still continue going closer till he would get all agitated and then we would leave....and this continued for every exam we had.......and none of us ever got a pink card for this......but I would surely give anything to try this once again on Mario Man.....

Father Mario was this awesome guy who had left his brains somewhere though and would say the stupidest of things like ..." Raul , you are Sindhi...so tell me ...in which Swiss Bank have you hidden all your Hong Kong Dollars".....or then ..." Darpu..you have typical Marwadi nails...very dirty".......

I could go on and on.....its wierdos like him that schooling truly memorable.....maybe the next time I get drunk on MGD's I will write about Mr Contractor...or Math prof.....