That which doesnt break me, makes me stronger

It was my first day at my new school...and the very first period...in walked our Hindi teacher. She was short, plump and had a thick layer of dark red lipstick.
Now now..its not my fault...i come from a place where teachers hardly had time to comb their hair properly. So you see i was literally caught staring at her...oh yeah..i was standing there like a fool still gaping at her, while the rest of the class had settled down wishing her a lengthy and a rythemic "good morning teacher". She seemed not to notice me as a new face...new teacher..i thought..Test she said. what? test on the 1st day of our class? Ok i did not panick.. i thought there would be a strong resistance from the class...no ..it was absolute silence...i was expecting atleast a small commotion. Without noticing how smaller my face had become, she started dictating a few words and asked us to write its "paryayvachi"....a what? i just sat there dumb.. everyone around me had already started scribbling down the answers, some with their heads so low that there was hardly any gap between their face and paper.I seemed to be such an outcast there. whats wrong with them? why werent they behaving normal? I wanted to scream my head off!
Anyways not withstanding the isolation i went up to the teacher and introduced myself, "Hmmm...new admission" , she glared down at me, "welcome" she said..and returned to do her own work...well, you see, that was not the reason i was there. So i stood there hoping she would ask me why i was still standing there. No...she seemed to be totally immersed in correcting her paper. "er...mam...mam...MAM...the whole class looked up..so did my teacher. "what?" she asked? "Mam i dont know Hindi much...blah blah..". She crossed check if HIndi was indeed my second language ..i confirmed it was...just that the place i was from, we were taught small word and sentence construction. Anyways, i was talking to her in english and she in Hindi...though i was not that good in talking hindi i definitely understood it. we had a not so pleasnt chat for another 10 mins about where i came from. Then she finally asked "what do you want"? "mam"..clearing my throat..."i would have atleast tried to answer the question if only i understood what paryayvachi means!"...after a pause... "YOU DONNO PARYAYVACHI??"... by now i had become the centre of attraction. Everyone had their eyes glued on me.I was almost in tears...i guess she saw that and then explained in her own english..."paryayvachi means "RHYMING" words".That is when i should have guessed her english was worse than my hindi!

since i was still ignorant,I took a deep breath and got back to my seat and started answering.
1st question "ghar"

ans: "sar, mar, par, dar"

there you go..what you want is what you get!

rhyming words huh? thats a piece of cake!
That day i wrote down all the rhyming word i ever knew in hindi.

Next day during the class my answers were read out aloud to the whole class....aah!! what an entertainment at my cost!...and one doesnt need to guess what i must have scored. yes...it was the first zero i had ever got, she even completed it with eyes and ears for it.... and It was just a beginning of the series of cartoons that followed the next two years...At the end of it, my dad got another transfer... i felt so relieved... i am not so sure if my teacher missed drawing cartoons on my paper!

But the day i left that school I swore to master that language, which i eventually did. It took me years but it was well worth the effort!

P.S- For those who still havent figured out what paryayvachi is..it means synonyms ("synonymous" words) :-)