The stories of persons you pass in the crowd [2]

He was introduced as the Discipline Master and already the auditorium had descended into a hush. He all but mumbled his name, Mr Peng, Mr Teng, Mr something, but nobody minded because we would know him as the Discipline Master anyways. He was tall, so as to cut an imposing figure on students of course, and possessed a gravel like voice, so as to haunt even the dreams of rebellious students of course. The DM simply molded into his job, too uncanny a semblance to the caricature of the perfect Discipline Master that it almost seemed staged, as if he had been acting his part dutifully and without a crack all these years.

The DM warns us that through his 12 years as a faculty teacher, he has never forgotten the thousands of names he had come across. He meant it as a threat, but to me it sounded more like a pledge to respect and sit up attentively as if we were having lunch opposite him. He was a stickler for equality as well. He seemed to have rehearsed many times when he said that regardless of what school we came from, we would be treated equally by the school rules. Except he later excused the girls for not wearing the collar pin due to not being in the habit of doing so.

The key guiding principles of discipline were Respect and Responsibility. The way the DM delivered it sounded as if those were his life mottos. Respect the teachers, your friends. Respect the Institution. His guiding principles didn’t seem to include the notion of self and individual. We need to grow up to be respectable and law-abiding citizens. The way he says it, it sounded like law-abiding citizens were in high demand. Responsibility. He did put in a lot of effort to make his delivery memorable, with multiple punch lines that struck me as uncharacteristic of a DM. He succeeded in making me feel bad for not remembering anything he said.

Undoubtedly the stern Discipline Master was someone with strong personal values, clear as day to anyone who heard him talk, clear that he hates Mohawk hairstyles and tight pants, clear that he was more exasperated by the boys rather than the girls when it came to looking the part.

The DM shared similarities with a Japanese soldier, or a character straight out of Murakami’s books. He struck me as a guy no one would ever get a peak of his private life such that he would forever remain an indomitable, impenetrable stoic Discipline Master.