Teacher’s tale

The first term was taken care of by four months of rain which battered down the roof. The second te-rm had warm sunshine pouring ov-er the green hills. The days were du- tifull. We began with prep duty and ended with sports-duty. Play practice, dance practice and song practice, this practice, that practice took up the remaining hours. Sunday duties took care of the only day off.

Additional duties of a house mistress came my way. The young ones were affectionate and kept me on my toes. Past bedtime, I would hear them crunching on biscuits and chivda. During illness, they would cry for their mothers. One child from a broken home was prone to nightmares. One night he got up howling and refused to sleep alone. I sat by him all night driving away his demons. That developed a bond to be broken till date.

The co-ed school discouraged normal conversations between classmates. Yet, infatuations bloomed and romance blossomed with a rare one ending in marriage, many years later.

Some students were too big for their boots and knew all about the birds and the bees… and condoms. One day, I found Mehul lying down on the last bench. My inquiries elicited no response. One helpful classmate told me how Maleful Mehul had asked a girl if she knew what a condom was. The girl had let out a terrifying shriek that carried to the principal’s office and earned MM a severe beating. Hence his horizontal position. More drama followed. MM suddenly jumped up and picked up a divider. Fearing some accident, I tried to pacify the class. Some chivalrous boys tried to snatch the divider and Mehul overthrew them, slashed my palm and seeing the blood spurting ran out of the window with the half the class pursuing him. He was brought back and suitably punished but he never overcame the humiliation. He continued to be a backbencher and never passed the class.

As class teacher of a notorious grade, I had to train them for a singing competition. They wanted a hip-hop Hindi film song and I chose Ay Mere Watan Ke Logon. It was not by popular choice and the students put no heart into the singing. One angry session later, I told them to dump it and walked off. Minutes later, in the sound of silence, spirited, heartfelt voices wafted. Walking back, I found the entire class singing even those who brayed, lip-synched. The next day they walked away with the first prize.

The teacher-students affinity thrived. We shared small joys. Three batches graduated. Then, boredom struck. The system started to bog me down. I wasn’t willing for that. So I quit, returned home and picked up another job. But memories linger. Till date. Two years ago, I heard of fatal accidents in which two former students died. The heart twisted painfully at the loss of young lives. One was a colleague’s daughter and the other a fine young man. His `teacher’ fills my ears. Teaching is a noble profession, they say. Alas, I wasn’t prepared for nobility.