Skip to main content

Two Teachers


There are two teachers who have left indelible marks in my psyche.  They are not my teachers in any traditional sense of the term.  They came occupying certain eminent positions in the school where I taught for well over a decade.  That school had been taken over by a new management, a religious cult, and these two ladies belonged to the cult.

Together they taught me some of the greatest lessons of life which nobody else could have taught.  One of them, an elderly lady with a beatific smile on her attenuated  lips, tried to teach me English as soon as she took charge as the manager of the school.  She began editing a report I had written for the annual sports day of the school.  Every now and then she looked at me contemptuously, without losing her beatific smile, as she massacred my report and gave it quite a shape that I couldn’t ever have.  My education under her began that day and the lessons she taught me will stand me in good stead till my last breath.  

She had been a primary school teacher all her life apart from being a close aide of a godman in Delhi.  The latter position catapulted her into the manager’s chair in my school which had earlier been occupied by far worthier personalities.  What the godman wanted, however, was someone who could kill the school slowly.  She did it with enviable efficacy within two years.

All the while she gave the impression to everyone that she was doing everything for the welfare of the school.  She organised workshops and seminars for teachers as well as students.  People perceived as inefficient were sacked without mercy.  Criminal charges were framed against those who dared to question her.  

The beatific smile never vanished from her attenuated lips whatever she did. In case it threatened to leave her, she assigned charge to her assistant and vanished from the office.

The Assistant was quite a contrast to the beatific smile.  She appeared formidable with a physique that towered above all normal people on the campus and a nose that promised to look down upon everyone.  She was a self-professed educationist who was a co-founder of a self-financing teacher training college.  One of the first things she remarked after taking charge of our school was, “You people are paid much more than me!” 

She made us do all kinds of work in order to justify the pay we were taking home.  She gave us assignments.  Of all sorts.  This week’s lesson plans on MS Word.  Next week’s on PowerPoint.  And the next on MS OneNote.  Then Excel.  And so on.  Overnight we became curriculum developers, test developers, ADHD experts, and even laptop experts.

We learnt to use the laptop given by the new management quite usefully.  WiFi connection was provided in school.  The Assistant “shot” mails every hour assigning new tasks and homework for the teachers.  [‘Shoot’ was her word for sending a mail, very appropriate too.]

We learnt a lot about using a laptop and the internet, so much so that I became a hyperactive blogger. 

Before my love for teaching was smothered totally, the school stood in ruins.  But I learnt the most in those two years.  About life and its peculiar ways especially when religion comes too close.  I am sure I will never come across such efficient and effective teachers in my life anymore.


PS. This is written specifically for Indispire Edition 134: The teacher you wish to meet again, at least once. #Teachersday


Indian Bloggers

Labels:

Comments

  1. Gita MadhuSeptember 15, 2016 at 12:38 PM

    Intriguing. And in some strange way utterly plausible, universally speaking.
    With some development, maybe the help of the very same "capable" teachers, this could make an enchanting short story.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownSeptember 17, 2016 at 5:13 PM

    Awesome, yes that attenuated smile that religious cult which brought nothing to education but abhorrence to the profession and its dedication.
    Where a school was now it's a drain land a parking lot for 6-8 wheelers all for education has been crushed under d wheels and that smile

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 17, 2016 at 10:32 PM

      I'm glad you are making more frequent appearance here.

      I visited that place in April and left with a pang in my heart. They converted the school into wasteland, T S Eliot's Waste Land where women come and go talking balderdash.😣

      Delete
  3. antashSeptember 28, 2016 at 8:10 PM

    Superb satire.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
11 comments
Read more

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Levin the good shepherd

AI-generated image The lost sheep and its redeemer form a pet motif in Christianity. Jesus portrayed himself as a good shepherd many times. He said that the good shepherd will leave his 99 sheep in order to bring the lost sheep back to the fold. When he finds the lost sheep, the shepherd is happier about that one sheep than about the 99, Jesus claimed. He was speaking metaphorically. The lost sheep is the sinner in Jesus’ parable. Sin is a departure from the ‘right’ way. Angels raise a toast in heaven whenever a sinner returns to the ‘right’ path [Luke 15:10]. A lot of Catholic priests I know carry some sort of a Redeemer complex in their souls. They love the sinner so much that they cannot rest until they make the angels of God run for their cups of joy. I have also been fortunate to have one such priest-friend whom I shall call Levin in this post. He has befriended me right from the year 1976 when I was a blundering adolescent and he was just one year older than me. He possesse
8 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
16 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
37 comments
Read more