The Teacher who was once a Student.........

The year was 1981. I was in the second year of Hr. Sec. in Delhi. Nothing much has changed when I look back to the feelings I experienced and compare them to those of the Hr. Sec students of the present. Anxiety, irritation and above all, a constant need to doze off! We were so desperate that we would invent jokes out of mundane happenings and would laugh at the slightest drop of the hat as if we’d witnessed the joke of the era!! We were on a constant quest for entertainment.

Given these conditions, it was not surprising that one day, when we had a ‘rare-free-period’, our excitement hit the ceiling. To top it, the next period was PT. …and the PT master was supposedly absent since nobody had sighted him in his den, the PT room. Like a kid holding a double sundae and eagerly wanting to do full justice to the treasure in hand, we started planning meticulously….science students that we were :P Being the ‘Pundit’ of the class, (that was the price I had to pay for being a sincere student), I suggested moving to the library to polish off the remaining adventure novels that were gathering dust in the shelves. But to my utter horror, the girls sitting next to me were longingly listening to the boys of the class. Eavesdropping was not my style…but how could I miss out on something that was seemingly tantalizing?

Without wasting precious time, we marched off in the direction of the playground with a determination akin to the crusaders of the middle ages! No…it was not for a match of basket-ball or hand-cricket…our usual PT routines….rather we had nothing to do with the play ground at all! The idea was to cross the ground and climb the steep ridge on its extreme end. …for on top of it was the mysterious, sinister Ridge Road …a road on which Sanjay and Geetha Chopra….the kidnapped siblings were found murdered in the recent past!!

I guess it was the adrenalin rush that made my classmates climb so nimble-footedly and quickly, while I lagged behind wondering whether to collect specimens of Adathoda vasica for my herbarium on the way back or immediately, for I could not suppress my passion for biology! But eventually, the bright flame colored blossoms of Beautea monosperma gained precedence over the muted flowers of Adathoda vasica…and they happened to be sprouting on trees on top of the ridge. So, gathering my might and looking more behind than in front (for the fear of being caught by a wary staff), I too joined the bandwagon.

While my fellow classmates were climbing like mountain goats, I was struggling to keep pace. The boy who was leading had made it to the top and the shout he let out to mark his victory was more like a blood curdling war-cry to my anxious ears!! And even before my shivers could subside, there came from behind us a shrill, earth-shattering whistle that almost converted my shivers to a seizure! Spine-chilling silence followed. All eyes reverted to the play ground. Standing at its entrance was the supposedly absent PT sir, somehow appearing life threateningly menacing even though the actual size we could perceive at this distance, was that of a peanut!

With neither Adathoda vasica nor Beautea monosperma in my hands, I looked back at my friends. To my utter horror, the tables had turned on me…I was to lead them back to the ground as I was the last to climb!! With knees knocking and palms sweating but my facial expression not depicting any of these, I lumbered towards …Apocalypse???!!!

Silence can be more threatening than din…I realized this when without a word, our PT instructor led us to the office of our Vice Principal, VD – the inventive nick name by which we(biology students , remember?) addressed Mr. Vikram Deva, our VP. I’m sure all belonging to the student community will agree to the universal fact that VP s are the terrors of the school. Anticipating a big tirade in Hindi (for VD being a Hindi PGT, spoke only in Hindi), we stood in a huddled group. I had this hysterical urge to giggle…such were the facial expressions of my beloved classmates…the already sobbing girls and sheepish looking boys! He threw a “Maine aap sabko suspend kiya hai, ab aaplog jaa sakthe hain!” at us. For the benefit of non-Hindi readers: this translates to :”I’ve suspended all of you. Now you people may go!”

Not having the guts or the gumption to ask for how long the suspension would last, we climbed up to our classroom in the second floor…..how different this climb was from the one we had ventured into a few minutes back!!...OMG I was getting philosophical too…a ‘Pundit’ to the core! Only philosophy could prepare us for what ensued…the classroom door was locked …and we were left outside for half-a –day..more importantly, without lunch for our lunch bags were inside the room. It was not common for us then to carry much pocket money on our selves. While the boys borrowed money for lunch from their friends in other sections, we girls decided to starve it out….self-punishment seemed to sort of soothe our pricking conscience.

Evening came, the final bell rang…the final bell stopped ringing and the evening almost went too…we were still stuck outside our classroom. Going home without our school bags was a possibility that we did not even want to imagine. Even the guys who were gloating that this incident had not affected them one bit, started looking edgy. A good one hour later, the watchman came with the keys in his hand and a condescending look on his face. He gave us all a royal sneer and opened the doors with a, “Chalo le jao, jaane kahan se aate hain, padai to karte nahin…harkat ki hadh ho gai!” (“go, take your bags, heaven knows where they come from, never study…there’s a limit to mischief!”

Rushing to the bus stop, I panicked even more because the street lights had already come on (it was winter time) and I and to take two buses to cover a distance of 16 Km to my house. That I devised another master plan to fool my mother by concocting a story for the late coming, and that it failed miserably and that I spilt the entire truth and nothing but the truth to her is something I would love to forget…but have never managed to!!

WARNING: Readers are requested not to try the above stunt even under experimental environment.

Random Rantings

It happened just like that last Friday. No heartrending BGM, no deafening thunderclaps, no flashes of lightning…not even a whimper!!! I just walked out of the school campus on the last day of my teaching service (atleast for now that’s what I think it is!). WTH!!! Man, leave alone the multimedia fx of nature’s elements…am ‘I’ feeling any different? That’s the trouble! The irony was that even I didn’t feel any different! I walked up to my car and went through the routine movements of plunking on the seat and looking out of the window..what was I hoping to see? Gray clouds and the gloomy patter of raindrops against my window? Mmmhmmm..why does reality s***? >:( Why can’t things get a bit more dramatic and give me the consolation of having covered another significant milestone in my life?

Its now five days since that fateful evening and still I don’t feel anything significantly amiss. Maybe I’d mentally prepared myself for it through the year. Teaching was so much a part of me for the past seventeen years that to be without it seemed very daunting. I won’t say that teaching in school has always been pleasurable. It does come with a fair share of irritation and fatigue..but the tradeoff has always been profitable. Sticking to the lesson plan and meeting the deadline being the major dampeners. There have been many occasions when I had wanted to freak out and do something out-of-subject as much as my students wanted to..though they must’ve been much more desperate than I ever was!! ;) :D and this desperation is what makes people like me innovate loopholes to escape boredom. For instance in the pretext of teaching Inheritance in C+ +, I could lapse into types of vehicles and spin yarns about types of cars and have the cheap thrill of mouthing fancy brands like Lamborghini, Mustang, Beetle etc etc.

Another big pain in the ****(wondering what? Naaah..its something as harmless and decent as NECK!!) is the assessment. Any teacher who is even of mediocre intelligence can easily gauge the understanding level of students..but no… our education system will not have it. The student has to be put through the hell of filling up some twenty odd pages of his so-called knowledge on the subject which happens to be the exact copy of whats in the text book and the teacher has to read through 50 odd such scripts before the much awaited( I wonder who wants them) results are out!!

All these irritants are more than compensated by innumerable blessings - the biggest one being the students themselves. Being amidst a bunch of youngsters is like experiencing youthfulness in virtual reality!! 0:) Their permanent state of euphoria gets on to you…sometimes it borders on sheer lunacy..but the experience is extremely enjoyable. Especially so with the plus 2 students who always seem to be keen on making the most of even simplest excuse to have fun. They are bent on enjoying each day as if it was their last!! A teacher’s smallest move incites laughter..so much so that she starts wondering if she is turning into a Mr. Bean clone!! So what if I’m Ms. Bean? I’m okay as far as I’m laughing too.

It is said that education is what you retain after middle age and I’m sure a good majority of the students remember not even 0.1% of what they read from the text books. The learning process is what they imbibe by observing their teachers or what comes out of the most informal moments like jokes cracked in the class or the games played or the competitions and cultural programs they attended. Surprisingly the same holds good for a teacher! I enjoyed teaching the most under the same conditions. It is the many pleasure trips that I accompanied them on or the quizzes I conducted for them or the small games that we played in the classroom that endeared them to me. Of course there’s a great deal of satisfaction when a student scores a centum or the class performs well but more gratifying is knowing that one’s students have grown up into men and women of substance!

Why have I turned all preachy, emotional and serious all of a sudden? Am I really getting that old? I realize that it is because I take teaching seriously. It is something I shall cherish forever. It is something I think of highly. Can I ever take the teacher out of me? I wonder if I’ll exist after that! A BIG THANKS to all my students for making me feel this way!!!

P.S: If the whole thing sounds like the ranting of a madwoman, that credit too goes to you students!! ;)

Statutory Warning: Reading my blogs can be fatally boring!! I write solely for my pleasure and only mine!!! And BEWARE facebook friends…I’m UNLEASHED…here I come FULL THROTTLE…and U r my TARGET!!! ;) :P :D