Skip to main content

Me-time



One of the parents who met me today during the Parent-Teacher Meeting at school told me, “My daughter is your fan. She often wonders how a teacher can be so innocent like you.”

I was too stunned to respond. Just yesterday I mentioned in another class that I was blessed to have such innocent students. My initial fear when I came from Delhi three years ago and perceived such innocent students in my present school in a small town in Kerala was whether I would corrupt them with the craftiness that Delhi had taught me as an integral part of the survival game we played normally in Delhi.

One of the lessons I learnt even before I took up my teaching job in Delhi in 2001 was to stay away from people as far as possible. Shillong taught me that lesson, in fact. That’s the only place where I ventured out into the society at least to some extent. I turned out to be an utter failure. Shillong was my undoing. It was inevitable, perhaps. I needed to learn the lessons that the little hill town taught me in the most rigorous and steadfast ways. There were people in Shillong whose sole mission in life seemed to be to reform me. And they were successful.

Their success was that I learnt to stay clear of society. I withdrew into myself except for the professional encounters I had and still have with my students. I learnt that I was a misfit in society. This gave me a lot of ‘me-time’.



I love spending time alone. I’m in love with the tea which I drink standing in the yard looking at the leaves nodding in the evening’s gossamer breeze. I’m in love with the books that give me company in the me-time that begins with the tea. I love to sit before my laptop and type out my thoughts for anyone who cares to read them.

Today that parent taught me that I have retrieved my innocence. I love that innocence too. I love the students who gifted me that innocence. I love the distance between them and me where the innocence blooms like the gossamer breeze that plays on my leaves and my evening tea.  

PS. Written for In(di)spire Edition 230: #MeTime
Top post on IndiBlogger, the biggest community of Indian Bloggers



Comments

  1. MansiJuly 14, 2018 at 9:23 PM

    I guess one who survive in Delhi, survive all odds. Great post. Me time is a bliss

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nima DasJuly 15, 2018 at 9:31 AM

    Delhi is terrible. So much politics and flashy lifestyle. Glad you went back to your roots. I wrote something about my stay in Shillong. We have so much in common- Teaching, Kerala, Dehli, Shillong! Always enjoy reading your post.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 15, 2018 at 9:58 AM

      I didn't know you had a Shillong connection. I lived there for 15 long years. My forthcoming memoir, 'Autumn Shadows', has a few chapters dedicated to Shillong.

      Delhi has too many masks. What shocked me, however, was the mask of certain religious people belonging to Radha Soami Satsang Beas. Some of them have the most angelic smiles on their faces but the most venomous fangs behind the smiles. I couldn't learn the survival strategy among them.

      Kerala has been a refreshing change for me though the place has its own share of nasty politics.

      Delete
    2. Nima DasJuly 17, 2018 at 1:47 PM

      I have written about Shillong in this post-http://nimadas.blogspot.com/2018/07/a-brief-sojour-at-pine-mount-school.html
      Radha Swami Lol!! Yes I have seen some of them in white dress looking very angelic.
      All small towns have some amount of petty politics. i am half a mallu myself by the way. Keep blogging. stay blessed.

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 17, 2018 at 2:23 PM

      Going to keep a closer watch on you. 😉

      Delete
  3. pushpendra dwivediJuly 15, 2018 at 6:25 PM

    nice to narrate your story

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rakhi JayashankarJuly 16, 2018 at 5:25 AM

    Life teaches us some lessons the hard way. You have a beautiful heart. All the best for "Autumn Shadows" Loved your first book.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 16, 2018 at 6:47 AM

      Thank you for the wishes. 'Autumn Shadows' is a serious memoir, quiet philosophical .

      Delete
  5. Aura Of ThoughtsJuly 16, 2018 at 3:31 PM

    Yes students teaches a lot to a teacher.And I am happy that your innocence remained intact in your journey:)

    MeenalSonal

    ReplyDelete
  6. Arvind PasseyJuly 18, 2018 at 1:36 PM

    Being with oneself and being alone are different. The first is about finding what to do with choices and the latter about choices being unable to find you.
    Your interpretation was also interesting. Nice post.

    Arvind Passey
    www.passey.info

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 18, 2018 at 8:47 PM

      My aloneness is my own choice. Life teaches us to make certain choices.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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
47 comments
Read more

Bihar Election

Satish Acharya's Cartoon on how votes were bought in Bihar My wife has been stripped of her voting rights in the revised electoral roll. She has always been a conscientious voter unlike me. I refused to vote in the last Lok Sabha election though I stood outside the polling booth for Maggie to perform what she claimed was her duty as a citizen. The irony now is that she, the dutiful citizen, has been stripped of the right, while I, the ostensible renegade gets the right that I don’t care for. Since the Booth Level Officer [BLO] was my neighbour, he went out of his way to ring up some higher officer, sitting in my house, to enquire about Maggie’s exclusion. As a result, I was given the assurance that he, the BLO, would do whatever was in his power to get my wife her voting right. More than the voting right, what really bothered me was whether the Modi government was going to strip my wife of her Indian citizenship. Anything is possible in Modi’s India: Modi hai to Mumkin hai .   ...
16 comments
Read more

Nehru’s Secularism

Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, and Narendra Modi, the present one, are diametrically opposite to each other. Take any parameter, from boorishness to sophistication or religious views, and these two men would remain poles apart. Is it Nehru’s towering presence in history that intimidates Modi into hurling ceaseless allegations against him? Today, 14 Nov, is Nehru’s birth anniversary and Modi’s tweet was uncharacteristically terse. It said, “Tributes to former Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Ji on the occasion of his birth anniversary.” Somebody posted a trenchant cartoon in the comments section.  Nehru had his flaws, no doubt. He was as human as Modi. But what made him a giant while Modi remains a dwarf – as in the cartoon above – is the way they viewed human beings. For Nehru, all human beings mattered, irrespective of their caste, creed, language, etc. His concept of secularism stands a billion notches above Modi’s Hindutva-nationalism. Nehru’s ide...
14 comments
Read more

The Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...
15 comments
Read more

Duryodhana Returns

Duryodhana was bored of his centuries-long exile in Mythland and decided to return to his former kingdom. Arnab Gau-Swami had declared Bihar the new Kurukshetra and so Duryodhana chose Bihar for his adventure. And Bihar did entertain him with its modern enactment of the Mahabharata. Alliances broke, cousins pulled down each other, kings switched sides without shame, and advisers looked like modern-day Shakunis with laptops. Duryodhana’s curiosity was more than piqued. There’s more masala here than in the old Hastinapura. He decided to make a deep study of this politics so that he could conclusively prove that he was not a villain but a misunderstood statesman ahead of his time. The first lesson he learns is that everyone should claim that they are the Pandavas, and portray everyone else as the Kauravas. Every party claims they stand for dharma, the people, and justice. And then plot to topple someone, eliminate someone else, distort history, fabricate expedient truths, manipulate...
14 comments
Read more