Skip to main content

My Teacher’s Days

My first colleauges in the profession


When I took up my first teaching job in Shillong, it was more because I needed a job than because I wanted to be a teacher. I had already attempted a career in hoteliering and failed. My first days at St Joseph’s School in Shillong didn’t turn out to be very promising either. The people were good but I wasn’t quite sure whether I was on the right turf.

The people were too good, in fact. The headmistress was a nun who went out of her way to make me feel comfortable at the school. She even took the trouble of finding me an accommodation. The colleagues were the unassuming Khasi tribal people whose geniality was very disarming. St Joseph’s was a convent school and my students were all girls which made the job all too easy.

I don’t think I was good at the job initially though I had some experience in it earlier as a tutor at an institution in Ernakulam where I did my graduation. The truth is that I didn’t like the job really. My first Teacher’s Day was just a couple of months after I joined the school in 1986 and I felt rather embarrassed when my students offered me a gift. I thought I was in a wrong place.

Eventually, however, the job became less unappealing. In fact, I began to enjoy it as I mastered the tricks of the trade. I came to be known as a good teacher and the reputation went to my head. Since my colleagues as well as students were a convivial lot, my conceit didn’t show itself too much.

Joining St Edmund’s College later as a lecturer in English was the biggest mistake I made in my life. It undid me entirely. The management, staff and students there conspired with my own conceit to make me feel as out of place there as they could. I began to hate the job. I hated myself, in fact, so much so I would have destroyed myself had I continued there. Fight or flight was the only option I was left with and I chose the latter having become incapable of the former.

Delhi’s Sawan Public School revived my spirits soon enough. It was a boy’s residential school and I, like all other staff, stayed on the campus in constant touch with the students. When those students voted me for the Best Teacher’s Award after a few years of my circus there I was both amused and amazed. In fact, my Edmund’s experiences had shattered not only my conceit but also my self-respect so much so that anything good happening to me was like a gratuitous miracle. Sawan was quite a miracle, in fact. It presented me a renewed love for life. I enjoyed my job once again.
 
Good things happen too!
Good things don’t last, however. As Narendra Modi rose to power in India, a godman transgressed into the school campus. Within a year the godman’s women ensured the demise of the school. Those two women were teachers by profession but witches at heart. I learnt from them what a teacher should not be.

Now I work in a village in Kerala. I know I’ll put an end to the career soon not because I don’t like it but because I feel I belong to my own private world more than anywhere. I find myself withdrawing from the active world, the world out there. Solitude enchants me.  

Teaching is one of the noblest professions and I am blessed with some of the finest students who offer a stiff resistance to my longing for solitude. The profession has taught me more lessons than I have taught my students. The profession has been my teacher. My students have been my teachers, in other words. Maybe, I should wish them Happy Teacher’s Day!


Featured post on IndiBlogger, the biggest community of Indian Bloggers

Comments

  1. Happy Teacher's Day, Tomichan Matheikal!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It was really good to go through your experience and journey, very honestly penned.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am glad you were able to make a success of the profession, and enjoy it too. I can fully relate what you have described.
    My father was a teacher in Sainik School, Thiruvananthapuram. Though he didn't like it much, he used to say that the good students made his work enjoyable and successful.
    Though I am in the media industry, I have been visiting colleges to interact with students helping them understand the fast changing media landscape.
    From these occasional experiences of mine as a teacher, I can say that it's an extremely satisfying job. It is a great feeling to be of help to someone who is looking for guidance.
    Wish you (a belated) Happy Teachers Day!
    And wish you the best in the years to come!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Kejriwal’s Arrest in Modi’s Kurukshetra

For some mysterious reason, Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest reminded me of Haren Pandya. Maybe, because Pandya’s 21 st death anniversary is approaching (26 March). Have you forgotten Haren Pandya? He was the Home Minister of Gujarat before Narendra Modi assumed dictatorial powers in that state. Modi chose to teach humility to Pandya by making him the Minister of State for revenue. Pandya chose not to learn humility from Modi and resigned from that post in Aug 2002. Remember Gujarat of 2002? You should. A fire engulfed a train on 27 Feb 2002 killing 58 Hindu pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya where they had gone to discover their god, not very unlike Christopher Columbus undertaking a voyage to discover India and messing it all up. What caused the fire in the train? Lord Ram knows probably. The upshot was that there was a riot in Gujarat by Hindus against Muslims. Haren Pandya is one of the BJP leaders who gave statements in many places indicting Modi for the riots. He asser