Top TV hosts Shahzeb Khanzada and Tabish Hashmi seem to have bonded over their respective traumas of being thrashed by their teachers, with Shahzeb going on to recall how he was once saved by his mother in the 6th grade.
The rather relatable school-era stories surfaced when Tabish, on his show ‘Hasna Mana hai’, asked Shahzeb how he managed to make it big.
Shahzeb said that even though he was from a small village in Sindh, his parents were the ones who always made him ask questions, recalling being slapped really hard by his teacher in the 6th grade for asking too many questions.
The journalist said he was extremely embarrassed and went home. There, he added, his mother asked him why he was upset, over which he started crying and told her about what had happened at school. Also noticing the fingermarks on his face, his mother got up and said she was going to go to his school to talk to the headmaster.
Shahzeb recalled that he told his mother that she shouldn’t because, at that time, women would not go outside as much, especially to their children’s schools. But his mother was determined to go with him and “wore her black burka”, taking him to school with her.
His mother then met the headmaster and told him that her son had been slapped and she was angry about it not because he was slapped but because he was slapped for asking too many questions.
He recalled how embarrassed he was that his “mother had to come to school to save him” and how other kids made fun of him because of it. But, Shahzeb added, while every other child would get beaten, teachers stopped beating him.
This prompted Tabish to share a similar story of his own, recalling how he would be beaten by his teachers for no reason. He said that once he dropped something from his small table and his teacher hit him upon reaching down to pick it up. “You dirty boy,” the comedian and host recalled the teacher as calling him.
During the show, the two also discussed how bad the situation was in their youth and how it was actually part of the law of Pakistan that children could be beaten by teachers. The law, however, was later changed to ban corporal punishment, with several legal cases being reported over violations in recent years.