Ma146;am146;s school bag

Everybody has heard of schoolkids carrying school bags but here is a tale about a teacher8217;s school bag. I became a school teacher after...

Everybody has heard of schoolkids carrying school bags but here is a tale about a teacher8217;s school bag. I became a school teacher after long years as a training assistant. I found that this promotion entailed carrying a school bag. It was a school bag in the truest sense. It weighed about five kilograms. In it I carried my textbooks, a pocket dictionary, a canister of water, my tiffin box, some chalk sticks, stationery and other paraphernalia.

On reaching school, I would take out my canister of water and leave it on the table. The tiffin box went into the hot case. The rest went where I went. The other senior teachers were intrigued by my school bag. One even ventured to ask me why I carried such a heavy bag everywhere. I told her, joking of course, that it was my fashion accessory. It was a remark that aroused great curiosity among the teaching staff.

The bag has a history behind it. It was a modified rucksack which my brother brought from Korea when he was posted there. I used it in the previous school and there it was the object of much ridicule.

So I shoved it into a remote corner of my cupboard. Out of sight out of mind. When I joined the new school as a proper teacher I found that nothing served my purpose better than that voluminous bag. It had a broad strap which made it easy to carry, two spacious outer pockets on one side and one large pocket on the other side 8212; roomy enough to carry my canister of water and lunch. Inside there was a small inner pocket to carry my time table, money and other important papers. The bag was also capacious enough to hold two to three books.

One day, however, while I was teaching my class, one of my students remarked that the bag was very stylish. The remark set me thinking. By carrying that bag my image as a proper teacher was being sullied. The bag seemed to have become my trademark. With my first year in the school coming to an end, I realised that the time was ripe to make the transition from the rucksack to a handbag that carried only the bare essentials.

However, this transition did not go unnoticed. The same student, who had made the earlier observation about my bag, asked me about the fate of the old bag. I told him that I had discarded it. 8220;Ma8217;am , you could have given it to me,8221; he shot back.

The bag, it seems, had acquired a personality all its own!