These were teachers who gave me space and tutelage — all at once

Mrs Nalini Kumaran, our junior-school music teacher, found my singing to be good enough to warrant my joining a group of children that performed at school, for All India Radio, and at gatherings across Delhi. Through her hard work and inspired training, we performed several favourite songs of Mahatma Gandhi for his birth and death anniversary annually at Birla House in Delhi, often with the Prime Minister and other dignitaries gathered to honour the Mahatma. Ustad Amjad Ali Khan sahab accompanied us on the sarod, the most prized blessing of all blessings. We learned songs in several Indian languages — poems of inclusion and diversity, of harvest and love, of secularism and national pride. The songs were recorded so that children across India could sing long and learn about India and its plurality.

Mr Shashi Pal Sharma, our strict and sweet, fun and austere Sanskrit teacher, had few periods in which to give us a strong base in the language Mark Twain called “the mother of human speech.” Through his teaching, we developed linguistic rigour and a strong foundation in polyglot evolution. The hours that he gave to me after school moulded me into New Delhi’s undefeated inter-school Sanskrit recitation champion for several years. It wasn’t the winning that had me hungrily learning the strict rules of reciting the ancient language; it was his lessons on the rich allegories, fables, parables and traditions of India that the words embodied as hidden heft and depth. Today, as I travel far and wide, I hear words with a Sanskrit root, and when I do, I discover meaning and messages, directions, and purpose that others so easily miss.

Mrs Sabiha Hashmi, whom we lost earlier this year, was one of my art teachers and perhaps the one who impacted my life most holistically. Even though I was years younger than the youngest students in her senior art class, she saw in me what I didn’t see in myself and gave me a vehicle to channel my angst as I questioned my existence as a gay man at an age and time in India when there were no role models to help me feel any sense of positivity about the hand dealt to me by life. Because she gave me room in her class and, more importantly, in her heart, I was able to avoid much of the shame and depression, dark and dreary questioning, lonely teenage mood swings and harsh bullying by students as broken and challenged as I was.

Mrs Mary George, Mrs Savita Shahi, Mrs Vanita Mehta, Mrs Dandass, and Ms Kiran Bhatt — these were my English teachers in middle and senior school, and from them I learned of the gravitas attached to the written and spoken word. They were tough teachers, exacting, precise, inspiring, and patient. Each of them brought a certain flair and energy to the classroom, and each was totally connected to the power of verbiage and the masterful majesty that grammar and punctuation, rich imagery and haunting metaphors can bestow on our lives. I never got the highest score in their classes, but I was given access to their teachers’ room during lunch break and in between classes. It was in this room that I recited my poems, bared my soul, and revealed my inner struggles. Years later, several of them keep in touch with me, and it is their trust in me and my overall sense of self and my place in this world that keep me thinking and discovering, writing and sharing.

Mrs Mahajan, our geography teacher, was stricter than strict and had us travelling the world during class as well as in the summer homework that she assigned. Deep studies of continents and nations, oceans and mountains, rivers and peoples, peppered with the study of political systems, social norms and traditions, languages and attire, prepared us to be global citizens who could find something familiar to embrace and be in awe of, in the farthest and most remote corners of the world. I am never at a loss in most foreign lands about their topography, terrain, weather and flora and fauna —as Mrs Mahajan had that covered.

Mr Shankar Dasgupta, the senior school music teacher, and Mrs Punia and Mrs Rana, the meal-planning teachers in senior school, gave me classrooms where few other boys found greater joy and sense of belonging. I learned to stitch, embroider, crochet, knit, macramé, fold napkins, set tables, iron tablecloths and linen, and create menus that brought forth delight and also gave comfort. In the music room, I found a safe haven of escape from my anxiety about my identity and my utter hopelessness in being all alone and full of self-hate and doubt as I navigated my teenage years around classmates who were transitioning most smoothly and finding their first loves while I was still seeing shame in myself and the choices my heart would make in that department. The notes I could sing, the songs Mr Dasgupta would teach me, the morning assembly that he would have me and a few other students lead daily —these were my moments of self-healing and distraction. Those were moments when I found some space to be alone, a cathartic release of hateful dreary feelings, and an escape into a world where fantasy would meet reverie and hope.

There were those two amazing principals of our school, Mr Ved Vyas and Mr Kuriakose Vari, visionary educators who encouraged us kids and teachers in ways words cannot describe. There are also so many more teachers I could name and who have affected me in most positive ways that I could write odes and books, sequels, and further sequels – such has been the power of inspiration and aspirational growth my teachers at Modern School endowed me with. They rose to the demands and challenges of their noble profession and, in doing so, gave this unorthodox, lisping gay kid a safe haven in which to grow and learn, find inner calm and outward expression, and make his peace with education and self. The thing I most love to do in my life is teach, and I owe that joy to the teachers who taught me to live, learn, study, grow, discover, and doubt and believe, in my own fashion, while respecting the norms of society. To these teachers I owe many of the smiles I smile daily, and a lot more. These are teachers who learned alongside me, who gave me themselves, and let me in. In growing into more accepting and intuitively elastic versions of themselves, they gave me space and comfort and tutelage and academic rigour – all at once.