It’s all in a name
Always inventive, teenagers are constantly finding new outlets for their creativity, from garage rock bands to poetic musings to blogs. But it is their delicious irreverence that comes to the fore with the apt nicknames they create for teachers, frenemies, nerds or even the class drama queens.
Bilal Inamdar, 19, gets a big kick out of recalling the fun he and his buddies had rechristening their teachers, “Our school principal was very strict and she had a cropped mop of hair. We nicknamed her kati patang and it stuck! The juniors picked it up too! Everyone was scared of her but we’d snigger in front of her without her realising it. Another teacher who’d come pancaked with make-up was nicknamed ‘powder ki factory’.”
A giggly Praneeta Rao reveals how her classmates took digs at the bizarre denizens of her college. The spunky chica explains, “Our professor for JAVA was very boring. He’d walk into the class with an expression that could make even the most interested student fall asleep. He always seemed morose, yet his signature move was to enter the class, wipe the blackboard with a duster and bang it on the table to clean it. Students named him ‘Duster Devdas.’ The superficial girls weren’t spared either — we’d call them ‘plastics.’ They would always play damsels in distress to get all the attention.”
From the hot teacher who the boys have a crush on to the PE teacher who is a terror on the field, no one is spared. The nicknames sometimes draw inspiration from movie characters too. Maneesh Sivadasin, a student of Mallareddy Engineering College says, “Our principal is a caricature drawn straight from ‘Virus’ of 3 Idiots fame. He imposes his rules with an iron grip and is only worried about studies. We call him Virus so we can talk about him amongst ourselves without him ever sensing that we are taking digs at him. Every student in college is miffed because he is known to take their case. This is our way of getting back at him.”
Singing the same tune, 18-year-old Shruti Hardat, says candidly, “Our school teacher who was nicknamed ‘King Kong’ was so intimidating. Actually, these are the things you look back at fondly after years. Fun isn’t just restricted to hanging out, these memories are to be cherished.”
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