The day ended on a sour note. I was at school. The school
that I had retired from a few months back had called me back when my successor
had to leave without notice for his own valid reasons. I was filling a vacuum,
in short. I could sense something alien from the moment I stepped into the
school. I felt like an unwanted guest. You shouldn’t return to a place from where
you retired and got a grand farewell. Was that the feeling in the air? I think
so. You should never return to your own vacuum.
Retirement is like death. The
farewell is the funeral. You shouldn’t challenge death. Least of all, your
funeral. Last life’s words belong to last life’s language, if I may paraphrase
T S Eliot. You need to invent the words for your new life that’s a potential
threat to many who were trying to create a new lingo that has no word for you
in its lexicon. You shouldn’t return to certain places ever.
The classrooms weren’t as bad,
however. The students are ready to try you out. Old wine can be more
intoxicating, some of them know. Those who are ready for such intoxications
know that unless you risk going beyond the conventional borderlines you won’t
ever find out how far you can really go. And so my classes were going quite
smoothly. In fact, I was beginning to enjoy them and relegate my sense of
alienness to the adult corridors.
Then something went flip-flop-ding-dong
in a class.
This boy seems to swing like a
pendulum between the classroom and the adult corridors. On my very first day in
his class he questioned me, “Are you sure?” I had just said that plain vine
and vine in vineyard are pronounced differently. His question stunned me
a bit because of the hostility on his face. I requested a student to get my
mobile phone from the staffroom and asked the questioner whether he trusted
Google. When he said Yes, I played Google’s pronunciation of vineyard to him.
His hostility turned to arrogant indifference.
Today, a fortnight later, he chose to
question the scores I had given him in the recent test. I had been more
generous with the assessment of his answers than those of his classmates
precisely because I knew I was going to face some question like ‘Are you sure
you’re fair?’ from him. In spite of my generosity, the question did come in slightly
different words.
I explained as gently as any teacher
possibly could how assessment is done in the CBSE system which gives equal weightage
to the content of the answers as to their linguistic accuracy and fluency. He decided
he knew better than me. About everything including what I was doing in the
classroom. But he chose to make his comments to his classmate by his side which
I objected to. “All comments to me, please, or to the class,” I insisted. He
was belligerently recalcitrant. Rather unusual in my class. The bell for the
end of the class saved me from him.
I returned to the staffroom and chose
to divert myself with a little reading as I normally do on such occasions. I
opened a Malayalam magazine on my Magzter App and the very first page carolled
to me the analgesic of a silken song.
I am a silk worm whom they
will fatten with mulberry leaves and lull into a cocoon. I will weave the
cocoon with the gossamer threads of my very being. The cocoon is my shrine,
built by me, built for my redemption from wormhood to the sublime flights of a
butterfly. But the day my shrine is built fully, they will throw me with my
shrine into boiling water. The threads of my cocoon will weave their silk
fabrics while I burn to death in steaming water. The silk that I weave becomes
my shroud halfway through my life’s adventure. What should have been my wings is
now my shroud.
I closed Magzter and then shut my
eyes before leaning back on my chair in the staffroom, and I dreamt of a
butterfly’s wings.
Hari OM
ReplyDeleteOuch. On every level... hope the pain is short and return to retirement sweeter than you'd have thought! YAM xx
I'll overcome this and get on because most of the students aren't like that boy at all. On the contrary, I've already built up a rapport with most. Moreover, I can't let down the director of the school who sought my help.
DeleteSimilar happened to a retired teacher around here. Her replacement abruptly left. I'm not sure if she was fired or quit. (I heard she was dealing with health issues...) So, retired teacher finished out the school year in the class she had taught previously. It's nice that you're able to step in to help out. There's always that one student. I bet he's overcompensating for some lack he feels, and he's taking it out on you. Not fair. But he's just a kid, after all.
ReplyDeleteYes, there's always that one student. That happens whether you are an old hand or otherwise. And I'm trying to figure out what lies at the root of his attitudes. That one desire alone is enough to ease the situation, I hope.
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