Teachers and angels

Playing the role of a teacher can be very tiring sometimes. It’s just not teaching pupils, it demands a lot of energy to keep the children disciplined and create an ambiance in the classroom to make them take interest in the topic at hand, make them respond both orally and in writing, convince them that whatever you are teaching is worth learning and earn their trust. It’s really important for a teacher to earn the trust of the students. It not only puts a lot of pressure on your vocal cord, it requires a lot of tact and thinking to save the teaching process from sinking into monotony. Sometimes children don’t listen, they remain lost in their own world and it happens so that you are seventy five percent in to your lesson and a child doesn’t open the book. Either he or she is talking to her friend or playing some prank while you are engaged in blackboard work. At the end of a working day full of seven or eight periods the teacher is left tired, exhausted, and fatigued. But a teacher’s life is not always full of din and hard work. It does have its moments of joy.

One particular day when I entered the class, the children were in their usual state. Some promptly got up and shouted ‘good morning’, some rose reluctantly as if they didn’t want to come out of their indolence. As I started to speak on that day’s topic, a girl, who always wants to dominate the proceedings in the class came up to me and pointing to a boy, told loudly, 'Ma’am, that Asambhab ( name changed) entered the girls’ toilet today, opened each cubicle and peeped into it'. I made the boy stand and started to ask why he thought of doing such an insane thing. The girl came closer to me and told in aloud,’ Ma’am, he also tries to hold girls.’ The children were of sixth standard only, so I couldn’t believe that the boy had the awareness of some boy-girl thing. Besides, the boy who was the target of this complaint was a clumsy boy, always fumbling with his books and note-books and never regular in his class work or home work. He would never sit steadily in his class and was often reprimanded for that. Students always dismissed him as a dull boy. The whole class heard the complaint and four, five girls shouted in support. I couldn’t contain my laughter looking at the bespectacled, guilty-looking Asambhab who, visibly embarrassed, refused to admit the charge and started to explain. If it had been another day, I would have shouted at him because he was already in my bad book. But, just the day before, while teaching, I was checking out if all the children were writing or not and I found a very accurate drawing of our solar system under Asambhab’s language note-book. I was quite surprised. On being asked about the drawing, he told that, Ma’am, I want to be a space scientist. At that very moment something stirred within me and I understood how wrong we are in understanding our children. He never did language work in the class properly, because his interest lay in space science! I felt terribly guilty and thanked God for teaching me a lesson. I understood what goodness lay hidden within the boy who seemed so clumsy.

I asked Asambhav why he went to the girls’ toilet and opened the door of each cubicle. He, still embarrassed and red-face, told that another Boyd had told him to chase that particular girl and he was just doing that. I had a good laugh and I told the girls to excuse him because he was just an innocent boy following another’s command and young scientists are generally mad. The whole class, including me was in splits. It was a moment we all enjoyed together. I told the boy not to worry and asked him to sit. He looked grateful and tears welled up in my eyes thinking how innocent young children can be. They don’t understand the critical world of the grown ups.

Very small moments teach us so many things! That day I understood that we teachers would have to be very careful and loving in our dealings with young minds. They are immensely talented citizens in the making and one wrong deed can affect them in a big way. Yes, we teach almost seven to eight periods each day and it saps our energy, we tend to get irritable if children don’t listen to us or don’t do class work, but we have to listen to both sides with patience when we deal with a complaint. We cannot afford to take decisions just on the basis of hearsay. A teacher’s role is very important in a student’s life, so we must give a chance to each child to express him or her and narrate their stories. Otherwise, we will, without our knowledge, be committing the sin of being unfair and unjust. We have to treat them all equally or we will not be able to stand with our head erect, in God’s court.

RAIN ! RAIN !

Oh heavens!!! It started raining after I reached my shed and it kept on pouring. It has been like this always. Whenever it rains, something builds up within me, something that I cannot express in words. When the clouds form a canopy in the sky and declare the arrival of rain, something very subtle and very romantic stirs within me. Given the freedom I would like to dance in the rain, or sit at home, listening to the incessant music of rain. Sometimes I think why rain brings so much of excitement with it. May be some weird people like me connect with nature and existence in a very different way, in the pure state of the whole existence or the universe. Living in an age of science and technology, when man is blindly running after petty things and material happiness, connecting with nature has become a dream. A few days ago I was sitting in the Planetarium with another fifty people. It showed how big this whole existence is and how our sun is only a small star. We are only a solar system and innumerable other solar systems would be existing beyond our belief and imagination. The vastness of the existence makes us realise how small we are, not even a speck of dust are we, yet so involved with the external world that we find our own greatness and even assert it.

In moments of leisure, I often think that one day we will have to leave this physical body and go. This mysterious universe, things inside and beyond it will exist and keep changing slowly, by human standards. We don’t know what lies beyond our planet, what lies beyond our solar system, but we see nature spread all around us in its full glory, but we don’t have time to open our eyes to these. We are busy with our small and petty lives chasing happiness which, in truth, in ever elusive. The mountain ranges, the wide rivers, the streams and waterfalls, the trees, flowers and birds, all these treasures of nature are gifts to us, but we remain entangled with our own egos, ambitions and aspirations, our enjoyments and desires and forget to count nature’s blessings. We have only one life and we don’t know even when our life will be snuffed out. The rolling seas and oceans, sunshine and rain, winter and autumn, birds flying in a formation, the beautiful expressive eyes of animals, the green corn fields, the blazing gulmohar trees in summer, the song of the cuckoo and thousand other beautiful things in nature remind us of God’s existence in numerous forms but we remain so occupied with our small little lives that we forget to communicate with nature.

I have, in my life, got the fortune of viewing the arrival of technology, in the form of refrigerators and televisions, mobile phones computers; have seen how people have drifted away from social bonding and communication towards TVs and computers. We have forgotten about God’s gifts to man. And the result is rising crime, isolation of old people,blind imitation of the west in everything except their work ethics, growing consumerism, loss of love and affection among people. Man has become an island. Still, everything is not lost. There is a possibility of growing with technology. It depends on us on how we use it without compromising on our personal and social relationships and most importantly, our bond with nature. We don’t know what lies beyond this life. So, while life is, let’s go back to our pure state and bond with nature. Let’s go back to floating paper boats in the rain water or collecting hailstones, climbing hills and travelling by boat. Nature’s purity is still intact in some parts of the world. Let’s preserve it before it’s too let to undo the damage. Let’s dance in the rain uninhibited.

The inevitable life

When the sole people

You call your own

Will go, one after the other;

They will go you know,

The house will wear the silence of death,

You can break it though with

The blaring of television or digging deep into

a popular best-seller.

The shapeless will haunt you with their unseen

presence, with their movements

and their old monotonously familiar gestures,

A few distantly known faces will drop in

At times, and you will see and hear

Patches of good life

In their voices and faces.

At the dawn of the night, silence will spread its

blue wings and loneliness will pounce

Upon you like a carnivore,

The faces of the two gardeners

Who nurtured you will flash and flash,

Drowning you in tears.

You will fall asleep towards the end of the night,

Clutching at the image of an insane person

And the distantly visible memories

Of love-soaked moments,

Which time will be trying to snatch away

From your psyche,

The only moments you lived

In transformation of a dream woman

Bustling about doing things for some loved one,

Wearing the wings of undying

and unfathomable love.

The Survivors

It was neither nonchalance nor indifference, just a passive mood. I looked at the people and their words fell on my ears alright, but I paid least attention as there was enough of turmoil going on in my mind. The din in passenger trains is inescapable A hawker came, another came, they kept dropping in as they usually do, in trains. One was talking convincingly; trying to sell some item which he claimed was very cheap in comparison to market price. I forced myself out of the indolence that had set in sync with the movement of the train and my lack of interest in the world around me, and saw that the lady sitting before me was holding a golden coloured watch in her hand and was turning it over and over to checking it was genuine or not. The article looked quite pretty and I was quite surprised to know that it cost only seventy rupees. Then only my eyes went to the seller when he told the lady that the watch will last at least one year and she could throw it afterwards. There was such honesty in his voice and manners that I turned to scrutinize his face closely. He looked a perfect gentleman and was neatly dressed. His face belied nothing; no joy, no sorrow, no anger or mockery.

When the lady showed enough interest in buying the watch, he took out many other articles like bangles, imitation ear rings, ear buds, pens, mirrors etc. In that compartment full of people, articles, which, otherwise, would have appeared completely lacklustre, looked divine. And he kept the surprise up, by bringing out articles, one after the other. Bargaining is an inevitable thing. The man disarmingly relented, yet, told that he didn’t make a lot of money so the customers should be reasonable while buying. The lady’s husband asked him how much he made selling things in trains. He told that he made around six thousand from the trade and had other petty sources too. He further told that recently he had a misfortune that beat him down or his business was going on pretty smooth. On being insisted, he told that he lost his wife recently in an accident. He escaped alive from it but his wife died on the spot. The people in the compartment were shocked to hear that, because nothing in the features of the man revealed that he had had such a terrible loss. He was calm, and went about his work in a very matter-of-fact way. Unconsciously, I kept staring at the man in awe. He looked at me and the other people in the compartment and looked away. There was still nothing in his face to betray that he was sad, only an empathetic heart could see the tears that never flowed or the pain and anguish the person had bottled up inside him at the terrible turn of fate. He was a living example of patience, forbearance, and quiet acceptance of life’s unpredictable twists and turns,

We often are knocked down by the blow of fate, we wail, grumble and whine that God has been very unkind to us, but there are people among us, very ordinary people, who have nothing extraordinary to claim, yet they face life with extraordinary quietness and courage which most of us lack. They are not beaten by the thorns, they stretch their hand towards the rose, and they bleed, yet strive for the flower. Whether they get the rose or not, that’s immaterial. Their immeasurable faith in life is what makes them unique. I was so moved by the predicament of the man and the way he handled it, I almost hoped that we all will be able to carry the huge burden of pain fate sometimes inflicts on our souls, throughout our life, and learn to live with it.