Throughout my 19 years (I took UKG twice) of academic affiliation with the languages have shown me the shades of two different languages and also the way in which my teachers who taught the languages differed. If something can be said about the English teachers in my life they have always been encouraging at good times but take a condescending tone when things go bad. But with my Tamil teachers they have always understood the conflicts within me and supported me in my bad times too. In my early years when I lost a close family member all teachers in general were nice to me. But when I got into trouble the same English teachers to whom I had been a pet, took me to task. They did not beat me up (thanks to the Montessori type of school education I was in till my fifth grade) but still their tones were admonishing and rather than make me understand my follies I was forced to apologize for the sake of apology. And I had been in my fair share of troubles right through my school days. I don’t know whether curiosity killed the cat but it sure did me in. Even as a six year old my overt curiosity near the combined restroom in my school got me in trouble when the caretaker Mr. Seetharaman caught me. My father was called in and it was my class teacher Geetha teacher (an English teacher) who filled my father in on the details of my mischief. That may well have been the prelude to the fall from pride I will experience throughout my school life as far as English teachers were concerned. On the other hand my Tamil teachers’ attitude towards me never changed at any point. Maybe the language let them be that way or maybe they were not told about my misadventures
And in my third standard I had this very santa-clausy nice teacher called Rukmini teacher. She was the sister of our schools Principal. We called her Rukku Akka. One fine day we were asked to write an essay about ourselves like the one they ask during Campus recruitments- ‘Tell me about yourself’. In a similar context we were asked to write this essay. There was a girl near me (I was more a player when I was a kid then I am today) and so to show off I wrote that I like to have pins for my breakfast. Don’t ask me why I wrote that. I thought it was something to be proud of, you know, like when kids used to say ‘I have a rare Undertaker WWF card’. And incidentally after finishing it I showed it to my best friend. He wanted to disprove to that girl (I don’t remember who it was) that I was bluffing. He took out a safety pin from his ID card and told me “Eat that”. That sentence would mark the birth of a moron in the history of my school. Because I took the pin, closed it and popped it into my mouth and down it went into my intestines. Supposedly my best friend happened to be smarter than I was because he turned to Rukku Akka who was unware of the happenings, and shouted for all to hear,” Heeee swaaallooowed a piiiin!”. She turned to me and said something. But I don’t remember exactly what it was but this is what she meant “ loosaapaa nee!”. Everything after that was a blur. Clinic. X-rays. Tablets to make me poop. Father . Interrogation on why I did that. I tell him about my best friend (which was the biggest mistake of my life because till date he is the only friend my father remembers and not in a good way too). I remember Rukku Akka shouting at me all the way till we reached the clinic. At one point she told me “At least you had the sense to close the pin”. Thinking back I have always wondered why I closed it. It was not like it was my daily breakfast and I knew what to do with it. And coming to the point I am sure my Tamil teacher would have been more understanding and she would have made me understand that swallowing pins was bad for health and that if I had swallowed an open one I would have seen Gandhi. Amidst all the commotion and all that scolding I only knew one thing- I was getting a lot of attention and I wanted to swallow a few more pins!
Come sixth grade- different school- new teachers. I have to say here that from sixth grade onward till twelfth I have had different English teachers but only one Tamil teacher throughout. She was the best. We learnt to cherish Tamil when we learnt Tamil in her class. We learnt to look at Tamil as something which is ours and we learned to be proud of it. The teachers name was Mrs. Malini. And because we liked her classes so much that when we had a substitute teacher we did everything to show our hate for her because she was nowhere near our Tamil teacher in ‘class’ and she could never really replace her. She managed to make language class boring and sleepy. So I took it upon myself make it interesting. So I started pulling stunts in class to distract everyone from this morbid excuse for a Tamil lesson. I started making fun of her and started harassing her in a way that only 11 year olds can. She was not able to handle me because afterall by nature she was a compassionate Tamil teacher and this abominable pain in the name of an 11 year old was not something she could handle. So one fine day in a very boring Tamil class I got up and told her I am leaving. She was taken back and she pleaded not to disturb the class but I wanted to exactly that. So I walked around the class clowning around, doing stupid stuff while the class was enjoying it. In walked my English-cum-Class teacher. She saw immediately that I was being a pain in the rear. She asked me to come to the corridor. I obliged, shaking with fear in my pants( thanking god for giving me control of my bladder). She grabbed the front of my shirt and gave me one hard slap across my face. The shame associated with the incident hurt more than the slap and I spent the rest of the day outside in the corridor. I tell you my Tamil teacher would have handled this better but if she had been there this never would have happened in the first place. But the same year when I received an award of merit for Proficiency in academics my English teacher was one of the happiest persons. I learnt one of my most valuable lessons on that day. Even if you sell dope in school, if you are a good academic they can’t and won’t treat you badly. Everything is jolly and merry for the brave and intelligent. That in short summarizes everything that will happen in my 21 years of Education.
7th- We had a new English teacher. Her name was Sarayu, like the river. She had great command of the language and she was one of the first people who inspired me to take an interest in English. I remember her well for the following incident. It was during this incident that I revealed to myself my disbelief in the concept of God. We had a discussion about God when the subject came up after we finished a lesson in which a man sends letters to god telling him about his financial problems and the guy at the post office sends him money after reading his letters. So after this lesson during the discussion I told her that I don’t believe in God because I lost my new pencil box. Not only did I lose it but two weeks after I lost it I found out that another girl had it and when I tried explaining to her Class teacher that it was mine she started crying and in the end everybody looked at me like I had committed murder. I did not think if there was a God he would ever do such a cruel thing to a twelve year old. And she asked,’ You don’t believe in God because of a pencil box?’ I told her that that was one reason and along with the fact that he seemed to enjoy taking things away from people and enjoy the whole process and that if there were a God he would not have taken away a close Family member when I was just a kid and when my brother was just an infant. She said still that was no reason for me to not believe in God but more reason to believe in him. How? We did not see eye to eye and i did not want to push my luck. She did not understand my reasoning but my Tamil teacher would have. My Tamil teacher was always receptive to inquisitive questions and she always had been ready to discuss anything without sounding biased. The incident with my English teacher was the first time I voiced out my thoughts and after that my Agnostic nature only got stronger. Sometimes I just prefer agnostic because it is too arrogant to presume something does not exist because there is no proof now. But for now God is just another fantasy like Superman or Time-travel or Aliens. My English teacher to whom I had been a bright student till then thought I was being stupid.
8th and 9th – The most influential English teacher in my life. Tara teacher. Like her name she was always had a twinkle in her eye and had the enthusiasm of a teenager. She was a cheerful teacher who brought a great ambience to the class. She did not just teach us. She tried to educate us. She used to bring newspaper cuttings and would make a game out of guessing what it was about. About Bill Gates and how he was handing over the company to his partner. About Indian politics. She told us to give up reading Hardy boys and M & B and try reading Archer and Wodehouse. My affair with Archers novels started at that time. And for the first time English exams were fun because they required no preparation but pnly creativity. If there is one thing I never lacked that would have to be creativity. She used to say to me,’If only you tried harder you could be in IIT’. Well, she meant JEE and what can I say? English teachers are such romantics and they believe in so many things. So if she believed that I could crack JEE I did not want to burst that bubble. Things were fine with her too but the trouble maker in me wanted some action. So eventually I got into trouble with her too. The screw up happened during an India- Australia series held at Chepauk If my memory serves me right. To know the score people had brought radios. And since she was a very amiable person when she entered the class we told her the score but for some reason that day she did not find it amusing, as radios or any electronic gadgets were not allowed in the school. But after the class an over-enthusiastic friend of mine went and apologized to her as we were passing her in the corridor. I asked him, within her earshot, why he apologized, because an apology would mean that we had done something wrong and this for some reason enraged her. All I could say in brief was that my foot in my mouth got me into trouble for sure but for a change there was no slap but the shame went to a new level. Because we started arguing in the corridor and it was end of school and other students from other classes were passing us just as we stood there having a clash of words. My brother passed me and he got nervous. At that point he was not the stubborn ass he is now. And the next day I was at the Vice Principals room explaining my actions along with my Father. My father has been asked to meet with teachers only on three instances. One during the restroom incident, second during the tasty pin incident and third was this. And it so happened that the other guy involved in this incident, the one who apologized, and my best friend from 3rd grade share the same name. Kaushik. After this incident this name will forever be imprinted on my Father’s name. He came to believe that the name is a jinx for me.
And soon after in my Board year I had another teacher who was no Tara maam but she was good in her own in her own right. Tara maam on the other hand was never the same after the incident. Something was damaged that day that was irreparable. Or maybe I was just imagining the coldness I felt whenever I saw her after the Clash of the Titan and the Timex.
In high school I saw something which I had not seen before. I saw English and Tamil work together to protect the future of a person who was lost in the distraction that is high school. While my English teacher (Mrs.Rama) brought me lunch daily to make me stay back and study because I was not performing to my capacity, my Tamil teacher (Mrs.Malini teacher) counseled me in her free time and offered to take me to her husband, a doctor, when I started having episodes of epilepsy. An alliance of English and Tamil, Rejuvenation and Compassion, Yin and Yang to protect this being with a frail mind, I never will see again. But it helped me understand what people expect from me and how I nearly threw away a chance offered to me because I could not adapt to State board culture. But the prevalent rumor in the school at that time was quite different. Everybody thought that the reason I was not performing was because of something else and they even had my section changed.
Sometimes I feel that the Principal calls the English teachers and Tamil teachers and asks them to play Good cop, Bad cop as far as Students are concerned so that they can attempt to protect their innocence. So that they can teach them, impart knowledge but not educate them to the realities of life because we have a lot of time to understand realities by ourselves. So that they can help us imagine, dream and create a magical world for ourselves where we are on our own. Where we make decisions, where we can make people do what we want, where we can create the future we want. While English teachers played the role of a correcting Father away from home the Tamil teachers seemed to have played the role of a caring Mother. And in my life these teachers have made a lot of difference along with a certain Maths teacher Mrs.Bhuvana.
In my life the two languages have played a role in making my imagination fertile. Essays, poetry, diary entries, letters. Everything became a medium to express myself. Though 11th and 12th grade gave no room for creative writing I made use of them wherever I could to compensate for my laziness. Now after so many years when I sit before my laptop I still seem to have remnants of the creative industry alive and I am trying to revive it so that I can revive myself spiritually!
I am Krawida and this is a tribute to my English and Tamil teachers!
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