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12: 5 tips on how not to handle Village bad boys!

The next class was Tamil and it took place on open ground under a tree. Mrs. Lakshmi must have had prior experience with the law of stink, she didn't even bother to teach us, she just let us sit as far away from her as possible.

Two hours of Tamil class was fun. I must add it was at my expense. Girls asked me to write various letters in Tamil which were 247 in total. And I knew about 12 letters. The script looks like this "அ ஆ இ ஈ உ ஊ எ ஏ ஐ ஒ ஓ க" What I wrote looked like shapes formed from badly spilled noodles, the actual script looks like spilled noodles too but that's a moot point.

I made three new friends Tamil, P.Saranya, and Ramya. Wondering about my new friends' names? South Indian people love their language; profound enough to name their kids 'Tamil'. I wonder why no one in England is called 'English'. Saranya is the most popular name here, there were 3 Saranyas in my class, so everyone calls her P.Saranya.

My new friends wasted no time mentoring me on how to navigate the school. Our class can be generally divided into 3 categories.

1. Padipali: Nerd or person who studies hard to become a nerd. Senthil is in this category. He is quite literally boring. I say, remove your shirt and be as boring as you want.

2. Rowdy: Yes! The Bad boy! But there was no custom leather jacket! No black bro dress code! No tattoos! No sunglasses! No gym body muscles! And importantly no queen bees! An only distinct characteristic of a bad boy is they refuse to button the "first" button on their uniform. Believe me, this is considered rebellious!

3. The Rest: This is a wide variety combined together. I am good-looking so people usually forget that I am a "Padipali" too.

Tip 1: Don't teach the difference between a country and continent

The next class was the physics lab. We were to find the value of gravitational force using a spring gauge. If you don't know what it is, just imagine a spring, you have to add weights to it and pull it down, timing each jump, do some complex math calculation and find the value of gravitational force. All you have to do is make sure the answer is always 9.8 m/s2. Because some scientist has already found it.

Since I was the latest admission to the school, I was given the last roll number. So I paired with 3 boys whose names started with T or more precisely Thiru - Thiruselvam, Thirupati, and Thirumalai. All three thiru had their first button undone. Senthil was paired with 3 Saranyas in an adjacent table.

"Me name Thirupati, How you?" asked Thirupati in broken English.

"Hi, I am Ananya Srivatsav. I am fine," I said in perfect Tamil, he looked at me as if I were an Alien.

"You know Tamil, but you got a zero and you are from USA."

"We speak Tamil at home and I come from Canada."

"That is USA correct."

"No USA and Canada are different countries."

"Everyone said you come from America?"

"Yes, I come from North America."

He looked at me as though I was mad, "North America, USA what's the difference?"

I completely gave up. There was no point in explaining the difference between a continent and a country to him. "Yes my bad, I come from USA."

Tip 2: Don't give vague instructions

Senthil was monitoring our exchange with narrowed eyes, how do I know he is watching me? You won't believe me if I say I have a sixteenth sense that lets me know when a hot guy is watching me without even looking. I set up the apparatus, making the spring gauge and stopwatch ready.