A Chapter Shall End Soon.

For the umpteenth time in the last few hours, I read the letter neatly typed and signed and folded it again. I had known all the time that doing this would be difficult. Yet never had I anticipated that I’d actually end up hating myself for doing this. For reasons unknown and sans basis to me, I had started feeling guilty. Not wanting to prolong the wait further, I moved towards the door carrying the letter with me, and knocked softly. I entered the room with oodles of trepidation, knowing that my life would never be the same again once I came out of it. For this was the very room where I sat nervously almost 8 months back, nodding dutifully when my classes were allotted to me.

And in these 8 months, I have come a long way from what I used to be, so much that it actually seems 8 years’ worth of experience. Every moment I have spent in school has turned out to be a memorable moment for me. For what I joined as a job to keep me busy for a few months before I left home turned out to be much more than a job. It became my life.

And I was so happy with this life. If there weren’t a few factors to be considered, I’d have never even thought of quitting. But then, US has been a different dream altogether, and a much older one.

The tidings spread fast in the staff room, and it was a boon since I was spared the pain of having to announce it personally. But telling the kids turned out to be one hell of an emotional rollercoaster ride for me. I entered the class as usual and spent the next 5 minutes helping them to settle down in their places. I took the class attendance as usual. The kids had kept their diaries on my table for me to sign even before I had asked them to. They too had kind of entered into a routine life with me the last few months. Like everyday, I saw their Math textbooks opened in front of them. They looked at me in anticipation, wondering which chapter would be started today.

I just stood and looked at their faces. Not a word was spoken. It seemed that I had entered into a trance for a few moments. I just looked at their faces, my eyes drifting from one corner of the class to another. Finally, I cleared my throat and found my voice.

Children, I shall be leaving this month. And I want a promise from all of you that you all will behave yourself and will not give anyone the chance to complain once I am gone.

I somehow hurried through the seemingly rote lines, wanting to get over with the torture as soon as I could. What I saw in their faces was a stunned expression. Whatever is in their hearts gets reflected on their faces. In fact if telling them a goodbye wasn’t so traumatic a feeling, I’d have actually laughed at the remarks they had to make about the news.

Oh ma’am, are you getting married?

Who will teach us math now?

Ma’am, you won’t be there this year with us for our class photographs?

Ma’am, you will give us your email id?

And so on………….

Most of them were very curious to know if I am getting married. When they were told the real reason, some of them actually asked me how much more they have to study after leaving school to get a PhD. They were disheartened that I would be leaving before the Teachers’ Day. And so was I.

When I’d entered this school, I’d wondered how I would be able to remember the name of every student of my class. And now, I just have to take a look at their handwriting to know who they are. It was a strange period of adaptation for me when I would be treated as the junior most amongst the teachers and still the senior classes would treat me with all respect. On one hand I was pampered and kind of bullied (though it was great fun) and taken care of by the teachers. On the other hand it was weird to be wished by the kids, ranging from the boys at least half a foot taller than I am to the ones who barely reached my hips. I could probably end up writing a book about my experiences of the first job. And it is this very job that actually made me realize what is it that I really want to do in life.

Yet it is pointless to relive each and every memory and prolong the pain. Goodbye times are indeed painful times, all the more since I know things would never be the same again. If you have ever read Kabuliwallah by Tagore, you would know what I mean. Children learn to adapt fast to the changes in their surroundings. They get to forget people as quickly as they learn to love them. So even if I met them a few years down the line, I know I’d never find the same expression of joy on their faces again.

I am about to embark on a new journey of life, of working for a dream I have envisioned for long. Initially this job had meant to me nothing more than an opportunity to spend the next few months doing something useful instead of whiling away time. Yet now I am strangely engulfed with a strange feeling of sadness. These are the classrooms I’ll never walk into again. These are the corridors I’ll never take again. I’ll soon be expected to return the teachers’ copy of the text books. My personal cupboard would soon be empty. For a few more months, I’ll live in this school as some hundreds of signatures in the students’ copies. And then these copies would be replaced by new ones. And slowly things would get faint and I would be forgotten. Never again would I have to wait to take the 6-15 am bus. Nor would I need to conduct assemblies again. The various noises associated with a school, the kids running around, the bells ringing, would all be silenced soon. Never again would I have to sing the national anthem or say the pledge daily. Never again will I get a chance to sing “Happy birth day to you” in unison with the whole school. Never again would I be asked how old I am. Never again would a 2 and a half footer come running to me and say, “Ma’am, he is pushing”. Never again would I have to stay up at nights correcting answer scripts and laughing my guts out at the funny answers. I’ve already started feeling miserable.

Just give me the strength that I don’t end up crying on the 31st (which would be my last day here). I just don’t know what more to say.

sunshine.

My Daily Dose Of Laughter.

The 1st term exams are in full swing, and I have been especially busy setting papers, invigilating the examination halls, and not to mention, correcting answer scripts. Sometimes, correcting multiple bundles each consisting of 50 or more scripts becomes one hell of an arduous task. But then, you just have to read a few answers and you'll soon find yourself ROTFLYAO. For this is what happened to me when I was assigned to correct the Std. VI G.K. answers scripts. Here goes an assorted collection of the hilarious (and definitely wrong) answers.

Question: Who is the poet who has written "The Brook"?
Correct Answer: Lord Tennyson.
Answer(s) written: Kalidas, Tenny Lord, W.E.Yeast.

Question: Who is the Prime Minister of India?
Answer(s) written: He should not have murdered anybody, Man Mohan "Sing"

Question: Who had written the song Vande Mataram?Correct Answer: Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay.
Answer(s) written: Bumpkin Chandra Chattopadhyay.

Question: The pink city of India.Correct Answer: Jaipur.
Answer(s) written: Kolkata.

Question: The white continent.Correct Answer: Antarctica.
Answer(s) written: Asia.

Question: ESPN stands for?Correct Answer: Entertainment Sports Programming Network.
Answer(s) written: Entertainment Sports Production Network, Entertainment Sports Peculiar News.

Question: The grandchild of the first PM of India was a PM himself. Who was he?
Answer(s) written: R.N.Tagore, Rahul Mahajan.

Question: This is an extinct bird.Correct Answer: Bald Ibis.
Answer(s) written: Bald idlis.

Question: The full form of LPG.Correct Answer: Liquid Petroleum Gas.
Answer(s) written: Long Petroleum Gas.

Question: www stands for?Correct Answer: world wide web.
Answer(s) written: world wild web (err… how wild?).

Question: The national tree of India.Correct Answer: Banyan tree.
Answer(s) written: Cactus.

Question: The author of the Harry Potter series.Correct Answer: J.K.Rowling.
Answer(s) written: J.K.Roland, J.K.Rolling, J.K.Howling.

Question: IMF stands for--Correct Answer: International Monetary Fund.
Answer(s) written: International Memory Fund, Internal Municipal Fracture.

Question: The author of the novel "Devdas"Correct Answer: Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay.
Answer(s) written: Yash Johar (ahem!!!).

Question: The real name of Munshi Premchand.Correct Answer: Dhanpatrai Srivastav.
Answer(s) written: Munshiram Premchand Gandhi.

Question: This flower is also called the “Lion’s Tooth”.Correct Answer: Dandelion.
Answer(s) written: Daddy Lion.

sunshine.

Of Suitcases and Love.

Finding a love mate is pretty much like buying a suitcase.

One fine evening you visit a particular shop, look around and suddenly spot a particular suitcase you just can’t take your eyes off. You survey it trying to look intelligent and experienced, as if you have been buying suitcases all your life. You check on the quality, the material, the color, the durability. You tend to assess its reliability. You tend to take your best friend’s opinion. You suddenly imagine making a world tour, proudly showing it off. You check on the company. You check on the warranty period. You check on the price tag and are left in a dilemma. You know that it’s too expensive for you to afford. Yet you simply cannot bear the thought of leaving the shop without it.

You leave the shop, yet you can’t let the thoughts of the suitcase leave your mind. You try in vain to forget all about it, deciding that you could do with a less expensive one. After all, all you need to carry are a few clothes and a few books. You go to sleep deciding that you are better off without that particular one. Yet the very next morning, the thoughts of that particular one keep coming back and haunting you.

You have two options henceforth.

1st option: You spend a month making market surveys to find out reasons why you could do without it, doing everything to take your mind off that one. At the end of a month, you decide that you could not handle the pain anymore. What’s the use of such a life if you cannot afford a suitcase of your choice? Determined, you wear your best clothes, take out some extra cash from the bank, look your most confident self, and enter the shop, only to find the suitcase gone. Some customer had bought it a few days back. And no, there’s no second one of that particular model available, though the shop has been freshly stocked with hundreds of other ones with different colors and materials and designs, many of far superior quality and may be cheaper prices. Yet that one particular model is gone. You ask in vain if there would be fresh stocks arriving soon. Yet at the back of your mind, you know that it’s gone. Forever.

2nd option: You get impulsive, take out money from the bank the very next morning, go to the shop and buy it. You still don’t know if it’s worth the money and if you could strike a better bargain. Yet you are past caring. You have what you wanted, and that’s all that matters to you.

Now substitute the word suitcase with a man. It sometimes (though on very rare occasions) happens that you suddenly like a particular man for some particular reason, even if you people haven’t known each other very well. You know it doesn’t really make sense. Yet you suddenly feel a certain chemistry, a certain force of attraction, and every single man in the room ceases to shrink into being non existent for you. You know that this is crazy and that you are not really equipped to handle a relationship at this point of time. You aren’t sure if you are doing the right thing. So you keep analyzing the situation left and right, up and down. You try to find out umpteen reasons why it could end up in a disaster. You are scared of getting hurt. You have reached the age when you stop believing in love and you know that it is just one of the many routine processes you have to perform in life, culminating into marriage and kids and whatever. I mean a lot many people marry without love and then get used to the situation. You don’t really need to fall for anyone, let alone a person you have hardly known, at this point of time.

1st option: You spend your nights thinking and analyzing and finding ways to overcome the pull. You know this might not be the right thing to do knowing that you might always end up hurt. Your priorities are different. You don’t really need the unwanted hassles of relationships. You wait for him to make the first move since despite your modern thoughts, you don't think its appropriate for the lady to make the first move. You convince yourself of these facts for 29 nights. On the 30th morning, you dress up all prim and proper, ready to convey your feelings. You meet him over lunch. You guys get to talk and he excitedly tells you how he met a girl in the same party he met you a month back and how they got to be friends and how they are thinking seriously about things. Wham!!!! You see your dreams shattering into a million fragments and disappearing. Even the thought of having spent 29 nights pondering over it seems like a waste now.

2nd option: You decide to get impulsive and confront him. You aren’t worried about the outcome. Even if the answer is going to be a no, you would at least not spend further time and waste your energy thinking about the whole issue. And if it turns out to be a yes, then nothing better. You know that he isn’t a many things you want, and he is many a things you don’t want. Yet nothing really matters anymore.

We are always facing this dilemma in life, undecided about things. Most of the time, we don’t state things clearly. If we did, we could have saved ourselves from heartbreak. Yet we decide to keep things to ourselves and take our own sweet time to come up with a conclusion we should have come to months back. The possibility of getting a thing or not getting it always remains. Yet this way, we somehow increase the probability of not getting a particular thing we wish to have. And live to regret our actions (or the lack of it).

Maybe I need to take a lesson out of this post and talk to him soon. After all, I don’t really wish to increase my chances of hearing a no. I know this is crazy, but sometimes you have to get out of that logic-mode and let impulses take over.

I’ll meet him and talk to him on Monday after school. Wish me luck. I’ve just realized that I cannot do without he knowing about it.

I've never felt this impulsive about things. I need his help now. I’ve finally realized that I just cannot do without the deep blue Gior Dano cabin bag I’d seen in that showroom at Esplanade last week. Never mind the fact that it's exorbitantly priced. And the salesman of the showroom should be the first person to know this. Don't you think so?

sunshine.

What’s In A Number?

I’ve been unable to write anything for a long time now. These days, I am all busy getting and setting things to see me in the US. This whole episode of making it to the US has been the cynosure of my thoughts of late. I can’t help but think of all the effort I’ve put up the last two years to shape up this dream of mine. For this was not something like one fine morning I decided to leave for the US, took GRE dates, cleared the exams and there, started packing my bags. This has been one of the most complicated phase of my life I have ever faced. My struggle with things started the day I applied for my passport. Ever since, I have been running around from pillar to post, with 6 hours of spine numbing study at the USEFI library everyday, knocking the office doors of my recommenders, getting dollar drafts done, sending courier posts worth thousands of rupees, and the rest of the time motivating myself to see me through the process. In brief, this particular dream has meant and cost a lot to me. Naturally, people sometime tend to get superstitious with stuff that matter a lot to them. Yet so many episodes the last few months have reiterated the fact again and again that superstition and baseless assumptions have got nothing to do with fate. What’s destined to happen will happen.

It started the day when mom asked me not to wear black.
It’s your TOEFL. Why do you want to wear black?

Oh ma, do you believe in all this?

No. But I don’t want things to go wrong for you.

Oh, don’t worry ma. Things would go fine anyway.

Somehow, I knew she was not happy with my sartorial tastes on the day of my examination. But some stubborn mulish genes in my chromosomes just wouldn’t let me change. It’s not that I had deliberately worn black. But once I did, I did not want to change just for some baseless superstition (superstitions were baseless anyway). My TOEFL scorecard with the haggard looking girl with haunted eyes and a black tee shirt staring back at me (yeah, that’s my snap on the scorecard, the exhausted look due to all that tension and sleepless nights) still makes me smile. The scores actually make me grin. As I said, it’s not in what you wear, but how you perform.

Now I’ll come to the main content of my post, that is, the various instances when numbers otherwise feared and apprehended have proven otherwise for me.

Episode 1

So when have you taken your dates for GRE?, a friend asked me.

The 17th of August, I said.

Ummm.... 17? Did you consult a numerologist before deciding?, she asked.

What? Are you crazy? Why would a numerologist decide on my examination date?

I chose the 17th simply because it’s a Wednesday and I want to watch the Chitrahaar peacefully, I wanted to tell her. But the days of Doordarshan have long evanesced, and it wouldn’t work. So I told her the simple truth.

It’s a randomly picked up date.

She stared at me as if she had seen a ghost.

But this is so important an exam. Even I have consulted a numerologist.

Good luck to you then, and may God help you, was all that I told her in my mind. I wondered if my scores could be influenced by the lame predictions of a fortuneteller.

Episode 2

I had applied to 13 schools in the US. My mom was not happy with that. The huge number of schools had nothing to do with her unhappiness. She wanted me to apply to either 12 schools or 14 schools.

Can’t you find another school where you can apply?

Oh mom I have gone through the research interests of all schools. There are no more to apply.

So why don’t you cancel one?
It took me a while to convince her that there was nothing unlucky in the number 13. It was all in the mind. But somehow, she wasn’t convinced.

One by one, the decisions were made. Those were the four most difficult and mentally torturing months of my life. Some schools accepted me while some rejected me. Some that accepted me with funding were not so good. Some that were very good didn’t fund me fully. Some asked me to wait while I made some wait. Overall, it was a mess. I’ve never felt more uncertain in life.

Then came the 13th reply that made my life. I had made it to the school of my dreams, with a great financial package. And a lovely city too. What more could I ask for?

This was the 13th reply I got. And I am definitely going there.

So you see, it’s not in the numbers. Things are achieved by sheer hard work and a little bit of luck, but never by superstition. All you need is a loads of positive attitude and confidence in your abilities.

sunshine.

Occupied Space.

I was wondering about the concept of space in my life. Not the molecules of hydrogen and helium beyond the exosphere, but the one I occupy at different places, in different ways.

Home, sweet home. For 9 long years, I have lived here. The walls, the paint, the smell of my room seem so familiar. It is strange that all of a sudden, I have started to notice things I would not previously. My room has been my personal space for so long now. This is where I have studied for all my exams. When I was in my final year of school, dad had designed a cupboard for me. It is similar to the ones you would see on the Inside Outside magazines, where when you unlocked it, one of the sides would unfold as the study table. When you were through, you could close it like the door of an oven and lock it up again. Dad had designed it for me to keep my books, and that was perhaps the most special possession I had. Slowly, my books started increasing in size and volume, and dad designed another huge showcase for me (it is of the same height that I am) that covered one full wall of my room. I still remember how I would proudly show it off to my friends, unable to sleep out of excitement. Probably it was after that that I started buying new books and novels with greater fervor.

My room is where I cried in solitude when nobody would understand me. It is where I read those hundreds of novels to kill loneliness. It is where new thoughts and ideas have taken shape. It is where I saw the sunset from. My room houses all the normal things any room would have. Yet somehow, every bit of my space seems so special to me.

The bed, the pillows, the bed sheets, the cartoon wall hanging, the corner where I would hang my weekly planner, the wall clock, the large snap of mine on one of the walls, everything seems to have survived with me for years now. I have a huge collection of weird things. There is a black cardboard box where I have a huge collection of the greeting cards friends would give me. I love to collect earrings. And then, I have a habit of collecting dozens of pencils and pens of different colors. I have a huge collection of seashells of different shapes and sizes and designs. I love to keep all the letters that I get and read them over and over again. I have a few dozen albums filled with snaps of all occasions- our childhood, school, freshers’ parties, farewells, excursions, weddings, and so on. There was a time when I would collect hundreds of audio cassettes. Now, the collection has dwindled and shifted to CDs.

I know that I will be moving out of this place pretty soon. And since it is not possible for me to carry everything, I will have to get rid of a vast chunk of my paraphernalia. This includes all the things I have mentioned, and many more. These are things that I hold dear, these are things with which are associated so many memories. These are the things I have amassed over a period of years. I still remember how I persuaded mom to get me that black sleeveless dress from Metro Plaza. I would touch the particular page on my slam book for months where a former crush had scribbled. Almost every tee shirt I got myself, every dress, every accessory I bought would be the result of saving money and some mad bouts of endless shopping spree. Every thing I possess, every space I occupy, holds so many memories for me.

The particular dining chair I sit on, the window panes in my room, this swivel chair dad got me, this computer keyboard I am typing from, my favorite collection of songs I listen to, everything holds a different memory for me. It is the space that I have occupied for years now. I will soon be alienated from all this. Hopefully in a few months’ time, I will be living in a different country, breathing different molecules of oxygen, touching unfamiliar doors and windows, sitting on unfamiliar chairs, typing on an unfamiliar keyboard. I would soon learn to live without reading the letters that I almost know by heart now, or live without the same things I do now.

I have been touching everything of late, trying to get a feel of things. My wardrobe, my clothes, my books, my study table, my cupboard, even the huge cartoon wall hanging. Soon, all this would be from a different era. I will make newer memories with newer things. Things would soon change and spaces would again be occupied. But the memories associated would remain frozen in an ice of timelessness forever.

I must be feeling these things because this is the first time I would be moving away. I just don’t know.

After all, there are so many other spaces I occupy. Spaces in people's lives. Friends and family.

Speaking about space, there was this favorite bench I had in the classroom where I could sit and pull a prank on others, write instant poetry, all being inconspicuous to the eyes of the teacher. The last time that I had been to college, there was a different batch, a different face sitting on that particular bench. I wonder if that person shares the same sentiments that I have about that place.

And then when I speak of space, I think of the space I have created for myself here in my blogs. There have been so many people I’ve known in these last few months. And even after all these months, I would still type my mail id and wait with bated breath, eager to read the comments I get for each post. Somehow, all these are not just statistics for me, they mean a lot more. I thought the eagerness to read comments would subside and I would soon become lackadaisical. However, that is not the case.

Anyway, I should leave now. Get back to the favorite corner in my room. Touch and feel my prized possessions once again. I need to go through the files and sort out the novels. Maybe I am getting excessively sentimental about things. Or maybe I am just plain tired and exhausted and stressed out. I just don’t know.

sunshine.

In Fond Remembrance.

I don’t think I have ever spoken to you about my dadu (paternal grandfather). I was leisurely leafing through the family album this morning when I stumbled upon all of those childhood snaps of mine. Those were the days when everyone looked so young. One of the snaps had me sitting on my dadu’s lap, my face grumpy and my eyes red and swollen. I must have played a prank on my poor old dadu and ma must have punished me.

My early memories of dadu were that of a rather thin and short and swarthy man with an island baldness (where 90% of your head is bald surrounded by a thin patch of hair, the simulacrum of A.K.Hangal). Well, the baldness certainly suited him and age had nothing to do with it. My dad too had grown up seeing the receding hairline recede somewhat to the hinterlands of the skull. What amused me more was the fact that dadu would regularly apply talcum powder on the shiny surface after combing his hair.

Another thing I remember very vividly about him is the pinstriped shirt in blue and white he would wear. The image of that shirt is still so well imprinted in my mind that when a friend chose the same type of shirt in Westside for his placements, I exclaimed, “But this is the grandfather print. You would look so old in this.”

Many a friends of mine would boast of their grandfathers being freedom fighters who’d gone to jail during their time. My grandfather was just the reverse, the nervous types who’d faint at the sight of blood or violence (a trait I have rightfully inherited). But he was a famous classical singer. In fact, he had once got a chance to playback for a certain Bollywood movie (which never happened due to reasons unknown to me). I remember every evening, he would sit with the harmonium for riyaz for hours and I would be expected to sit besides him and pick up tunes (I was barely 5 then). What a punishment that was for me. This is one of the reasons I never wanted to learn classical singing despite ma’s wishes. I then wanted to go to a school that would teach me songs from latest Hindi movies, a far cry from the ragas and the man-mohan-ki-surat-pyari song he used to try to teach me.

I used to be a very naughty kid. I would never break windowpanes or break my bones. Yet I had this bad habit of talking too much, and saying the wrong things in the wrong places. I sometimes used to call dadu Dev Anand dadu (as he was born the same year Dev Anand was born in, and I was always so very full of such random information). And there was a private joke we used to share. I would crawl up in his lap and ask him, “Did you have a love marriage with dida (my paternal grandmother)?” to which he would deliberately mispronounce the word “love” as “laabh” (meaning gain in Hindi), look at dida and say, “Naah, not laabh marriage, nuksaan marriage”. (It’s not a marriage of profits but a marriage of loss). I would giggle happily.

Sometimes, he used to bring me back from school. And I would hate the broken Oriya he would use to talk to the rickshaw puller. He would always say “Kemiti jibu” (how will you go?) instead of "Kouthi jibu" (where will you go?). And he would always confuse the left turns with the right turns. After I’d get back from school and have my lunch (that was the time of his afternoon siesta), I would knowingly jump on the bed like a monkey, wake him up that way, lie in his arms and ask him to tell me stories. Dadu’s stories had taught me the difference between the varieties of ghosts and demons. A “rakkhosh” was the bad guy with mustaches while a “khokkosh” was bald and sans mustaches, with an olive-green skin (like that Onida TV guy). A “petni” (churail in Hindi) was the one who would live on palm trees and would sing in her adenoidal voice in the evenings. You could recognize a petni from a woman by looking at her feet (the petni would have upturned feet). A “cheledhora” was one who would walk down the streets in the afternoons with a sack, looking for children who didn’t listen to their parents and putting them inside the sack. And immediately after his stories ended, I would ask for the tail of the story. Typically the raakshash would die at the end, but a tail (addition) of the story would mean that the raakshash would wake up again and do a lot more damage before the prince finally killed him. Dadu would tell me stories in a bid to put me to sleep, yet I would be wide awake at the end of it while he would eventually doze off in the process.

I used to hide his glasses when he would take his bath. Knowing that he was a nervous man, I would hide behind the doors in the afternoon when everyone was taking a nap, and he would lose his sleep trying to find me (thinking that I have accidentally gone on the streets). He used to wear a few false teeth and once he wasn’t getting one of them. So the whole household had gone mad searching for them. One look at me and dadu told ma, “Your daughter must have hidden it”. Ma kept taking my side, arguing that why would a kid hide his false tooth. I kept quiet all the while. At last, tired after the tooth search, ma asked me if I has seen it to which I had taken her hand to the verandah proudly and had shown her how I’d thrown away the tooth right on top of the asbestos roof of the garage.

Dadu was addicted to the TV news at 8:40 pm. Yet I would always stand in front of the TV screen and start dancing when he was intently watching the news. Those were the days of Doordarshan when I’d picked up the tune of the Mala-D song. So whenever dadu would be reading the newspaper, I would sit on his lap and start humming- “Bol sakhi bol tera raaz kya hai”. I knew this was enough to make him go catatonic and give mom some good lambasting- “This is what you’ve taught your daughter?” I didn’t understand why would he make such a big issue out of that particular song. Nevertheless, I would enjoy the ruckus I created that way.

My cousin would visit us during the summer holidays and she was my competitor in getting dadu’s favors. I would not like her listening to all the stories dadu would tell me in the afternoons. So while dadu would recite the same stories to her, I would break the suspense in between and tell her the end of the story. She used to cry for silly reasons to gain all the attention and used to constantly sing to me purposefully- “Look, this is my dadu, not yours”.

Dadu had a very painful death. He had slipped in the bathroom and had had a cerebral hemorrhage. During the last few months, he had gone into coma and would constantly be fed through a bunch of plastic tubes shoved down his throat. Bedsores had infested his body and he never gained consciousness. Dida and ma would dress his wounds everyday (since no nurse would go near him, so unbearable used to be the stench). They used to use Cuticura talcum powder and that particular smell of his wounds mixed with the talcum powder still makes my stomach churn. I would often sit besides him after school, careful not to disturb him. However, he never really gained consciousness to recognize me. I was in the fifth grade then.

I miss my dadu. Even my sister, who was four then, hardly remembers him. I wish he was with us today.

I sighed and closed the family album. Snaps sometimes brought in a deluge of memories. Memories of the past that no longer existed. We live in the present. Yet a part of the past always lives with us. I wish I would not hide his glasses or trouble him. I wish I had not thrown his tooth on the garage roof. I wish he had not died that way. But then, I wish for so many things I cannot change.

sunshine.

Snippets From A Teacher’s Diary.

Why I Love Parent-Teacher Meets.

The parent teacher meet today heralded the completion of one session. Most of my students (I prefer to call them my kids) have done very well and have been promoted to the next higher class. Even I have been promoted. When I joined here four months back, I was the subject teacher teaching physics, chemistry, and math. I am the class teacher now. And this session onwards, I’d be taking more classes and teaching environmental sciences as well.

When my colleague asked me how has been my experience in a nutshell, I actually did not know what to say. I’ve had mixed feelings about the whole episode. I’ll tell you what does being a class teacher in my school mean. It means I’ll be responsible for some 40 kids, doing some extra donkey-work like taking the attendance everyday, adding up the figures at the end of the month and things like that. This is pretty menial work that requires no creativity or imagination. On top of that, I’ll be held responsible for whatever my kids do henceforth, be it my boys breaking the window panes while playing cricket or my girls proposing to the senior guys. Most kids find History boring (even I used to), so when they do not do the History homework, I’d be blamed. I’ll have to make sure that the desks and the chairs and the classroom remain shipshape and my kids do not whistle or do not throw a single paper rocket in school. If it’s any consolation for them, I already feel like a jailor in charge of innocent victims treated as convicts. You just can’t put a child with a football in a large room and expect him not to kick around. Kids are kids after all. They break windowpanes, whistle, come to school without studying, run around and dirty their shoes, and throw paper rockets at people walking on the roads. It’s wrong on my part to hush them up every time they open their mouth to say a seemingly silly joke. 

I have never enjoyed the parent teacher meets in the entire 14 years of my school life as much as I did today. It’s always different to be on the other side of the table and watch the parents and kids. I have also observed that while among Bengali families, only the moms turn up at the parent-teacher meetings, both parents show up for others.

After the meeting, we were sharing our day’s experiences over pizzas our principal treated us to. "How was your first meeting?", she asked me.

"Ma’am, I think the PT meets should be converted into fathers-teachers meets henceforth. Moms strictly not allowed"- I blurted out in front of more than a dozen teachers.

There was complete silence. Everyone was giving me a stunned look. No one reacted because they did not know how the other person would react. Finally, all of them including our dear principal burst out into relentless laughter. The typical side-aching, dentition-exhibiting, closing your eyes and contorting your face types.

What came next stunned me. Because when she asked me who I thought was the best looking dad, everyone screamed equivocally, almost at the same instant- Sakshi’s dad. And then, everyone gave each other surreptitious looks and guilty smiles and started the laughter round once again. 

At least we teachers agreed on one thing. All of us. Sakshi’s dad.

sunshine.

Maid In India.

I am one of those lucky kids who had never had to stay away from family, but for the occasional visit to cousins during vacations. So I grew up watching the everyday running of household very closely. The one thing I understood from this is- the one person who held the strings to my mother's perpetual happiness and peace of mind was not my dad. Not even my grandparents. It was our home maid, the person who came during particular hours of the day, usually twice a day to help mom with the household work. And we have had our fair share of eccentric and egocentric maids.

As kids, we used to have morning school. By the time we got back at noon, mom's face would always tell us if the maid had turned up that particular day or not. I've seen her irritable and grumpy, shouting and screaming at us for no reason, but she has always gone out of her way to be cordial to the maid.

Wait till you take charge of home. You will realize how important it is to have a good rapport with the maid for your own good- she would say.

Maybe. I've never had much interest in the household duties unless something was specifically assigned to me. Naturally, I wouldn't know.

My earliest memories go back to.... what was her name? Yeah, Laxmi. My mom is one of those I-Forget-Everything types when it comes to safeguarding money and valuables. She keeps bunches of 50 rupees bills tucked under the mattress or beneath the table cover and forgets about it. She is the emotional kind who would be so engrossed in watching a movie that she will start crying even when the hero is asking God- “Yeh kahaan ka insaaf hai?”, and beating up his head on the temple walls. In this process of forcibly upsetting oneself (a kind of masochism according to me), she would keep her earrings or money someplace and forget it. Naturally, Laxmi used it to hone her kleptomaniac ability to such an extent that she soon made a small fortune out of the things she would pick up from here and there. One summer, dad fractured his leg and had to take a month's leave. Now dad is a person who should have been in the FBI. One look at you and he will know what's going on in your mind. Naturally, Laxmi was so much into stealing things from the palatial 2,600 sq.feet home we used to live in that she had to quit once dad stayed at home.

Our next maid turned out to be a not so very maid-ish female. Barely 5 years my senior, she is one person I will remember for my life. We used to have a great time after her work. I used to teach her Bengali while the little bit of Telugu I speak is due to her. She used to hire a cycle and we would go for long rides. I did not know how to ride a cycle back then,and she had made quite some effort in teaching me that. God bless her, she had almost scared a guy who was stalking me when I was in sixth grade. She was almost like an elder sister

Dad got transferred and we shifted. Our new maid was a TV addict. She wanted to have unrestrained hours on the TV. She had cried when Julie had gotten herself pregnant and was being rejected by everyone in Julie. She had punched the bad guys, her fists moving in air when Amitabh Bachchan had beaten up those thugs in Deewar. She would smile coyly whenever hero heroines would kiss in the parks, a huge dahlia flower covering their faces. Thankfully, she left us before the Tip Tip Barsa Paani movie released.

Our next maid one day made it clear that she wanted to have food with us while we dined. The next one had a husband who was blind. And they still managed to have eleven kids. Gandhari would have turned in her grave. She wanted a Benarasi sari during the Pujas every year. Mom had just two of them in her wedding trousseau, and in her entire married life. 

By the time the next one came, my mom got herself a mixer grinder. Previously, it would be the maid doing the excruciating work of grinding the spices. Now, the roles got reversed. The maid used to bring all the stuff needed to be ground from her home and while she did the jhaadu-poncha, mom would grind the masala in the mixer for her.

The next one would change names for every home she worked in. For us, she was Pushpa. For Bose aunty, she was Bhagirathi. For Sen aunty, she was Sarita. Since she would take long leaves without prior notice, this was just to make sure that no one knew what other homes she worked in.

Well, there are numerous incidents that I could write about. There have been so many, and each one was peculiar in her way. Maids have come and left us, but mom has always been so nice to them. She has been rude to us, has screamed at us, but the maids always got the royal treatment.

Our newest one- She is a nice lady. Nice as in she comes at a specific time (you could actually adjust your watch when she comes, she is so timely), finishes off her work in 20 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the afternoon and goes away. She is not a habitual leave seeker. She doesn't give us any nonsense about gifting her benarasi sarees or making mom grind spices. Her level of gossiping is also tolerable.

Last week, she came and told us- Please save a number.
Mom- What number?


Maid- My new cell phone number.

With that, she proudly showed me the Nokia set she had got. Incidentally, I too use the same set. She has even used my charger twice. And when she decides not to turn up, she gives us a missed call. 6 months back, I was shocked to see our local vegetable seller with a mobile. 

The advent of technology and the influence of the maid in our daily life are the two things that amaze me constantly.

sunshine.

Empty Boxes.

Everything I dislike comes in the form of empty boxes. Let me explain.

I hate this uncertainty. Most of my friends who’d applied to the US have started getting their accepts or rejects. Not me. Last month, I got an admit from one of the places, though not from one of those highly ranked ones with a bankable funding scenario. Naturally, I am not even considering it. But what about the dozen other places I’d applied to? Most of them claim that they need some 2-4 weeks to review my proposals. But that they have been claiming for the last 10 weeks or so. And I actually sent the stuff more than 2 months prior to the deadline because admissions were supposed to be on a rolling basis. The sooner you applied, the better chances you had. Now, finishing off everything 2 months before the deadline is not a matter of a joke. Not to mention the exorbitant price I had to pay to the Blue Dart courier services, which made so big a dent in my pocket. Mom believes in the “no-news-good-news” principle. She is naive enough to think that since they haven’t sent me a reject either, they must be spending all their weekends and free time going through my seemingly impressive credentials. Not that I’d vouch for it.

So the moment I enter the main gate of our apartment, my eyes are automatically glued to the letterbox for some promisingly fat stamped envelopes. From telephone bills to electricity bills to LIC Policy mails to credit card offers to invitation cards for weddings and funerals to the free pamphlets for catering services, home delivery, and high income job offers working from home, my letter box seems to have it all. I have a weird habit of taking out the contents of the box, deftly using my two fingers without a key. And it’s highly frustrating to use your skills to take out some pamphlets instead offering mehndi and facial at attractive prices from the local beauty parlor. The same goes with my e-mail inbox, which is inundated with blog comments, orkut scraps, personal emails, yahoo group emails, emails conveying the news of admits/rejects of friends, and of course spam mails from unknown Bobs and Richards who want to share their inheritance with me and ask me for my bank information. Not to mention those emails from the grad secretaries stating- “We have received your application which is being reviewed by the department. It will take us 2-4 weeks to get back to you.”

My life is turning out to be one of those huge empty boxes these days. Of course this gives me ample opportunity to write philosophical blog posts that none wants to read. Someone wanted to know my reasons for not replying to blog comments nowadays. It’s nothing but the very fact that I am too tired to even open my mailbox most of these days. And I don’t see much point in sending one week’s stale replies to the comments. Okay, excuses apart, though your comments mean a lot to me (I still compare it with the number of comments Munnu gets), the lack of replies are due to the sole reason that I am emotionally too tired to communicate with people these days. Hopefully this phase is not going to last long. 

Correction work is something else that has a story of its own. With the final exams just over, I have been making and breaking records by correcting papers for some 6-7 hours at a stretch everyday. Try that when you have to read and mark every answer 50 times. 3 subjects, 3 classes, 50 papers in each. I’ve been amazing myself with my resilience. And what are you supposed to do when you have to correct some weird answers like this?-

Q: What kind of a triangle is triangle ABC where angle A is 30 degrees and angle B is 40 degrees?

Ans: This is an impossible triangle, since a triangle should have at least three degrees.

Q: How do you measure the length of an object using a ruler worn at its edges?

Ans: No problem. I can still manage.

Q: How can you prevent the spread of water-borne diseases?

Ans: By not drinking sewage water everyday.

No wonder the empty boxes on their answer scripts are being adorned by zeros and the single digit numbers.

God, please fill up my letterbox and mail inbox with some news I have been looking forward to. I long to be my old self once again.

sunshine.

Where Are Your Teeth?

This is something I love about teaching in a school. I love those Class I – Class II kids running around in school, screaming, fighting with friends over the tazzos or whatever they prefer to call it, and complaining when they can’t handle their irksome friends by shouting- Ma’am, pushing, Ma’am, beating. The moment you enter the class and give them the threatening look, everyone will be quiet. You might want to laugh your gut out, yet you have to maintain the grave and serious facade.

The class monitors are the worst victims. Every time the class is over, they have to collect the copies and carry them over to the teacher’s desk in the staff room. I seriously pity these kids who have to make endless rounds in school everyday carrying the pile of copies high enough to hide their faces. So all you see from a distance is a pair of legs and a pile of copies walking down towards you.
Naah, I don’t make them carry copies. I do that myself. And build my biceps in the process.

We teachers have devised an innovative way to identify the class II kids. Just ask them to smile and you’d see the front four teeth from each jaw missing.

There is this huge weight lifter monitor of class II. He has a bulging paunch and an equally bulging butt, his school belt barely able to hold his tummy in place. He has such soft cheeks that you’d wanna keep pressing them. We call him a weight lifter ‘coz in Annual Functions Day, there was this circus show where he had been the weight lifter. Wearing black boxer shorts and a red baniyan, he was proudly showing off his biceps, white powder in his hands, making a show of trying to lift the heavy weights which were actually made of foam. He surely made a hilarious scene out of it.

Hence we call him the weight lifter. And whenever we spot him, we pinch his cheeks. The poor fellow is unable to ward off the teachers and has to put up with this bit of bullying. And trust me, he thoroughly enjoys all the attention and lionizing.

When he entered the staff room with a pile of books today, one of the teachers immediately grabbed for his cheeks.

What is your name? – DB maintained that feigned authoritative tone in her voice.

Weight lifter- he almost mewed.

Weight lifter? Tell me your real name.

The boy mewed his name softly.

Unable to control the urge anymore, we just burst out laughing. The kid suddenly realized that this was just another innocuous session of bullying and we were merely having fun at his expense. The kid finally grinned.

But DB was not to leave him in peace.

Where are your teeth?

He was tensed again. He mumbled something incoherent.

T-E-E-T-H- DB pointed at her own teeth. Where have they gone?

I don’t know ma’am.

What? You have left it at home? Whhhhhyyyyy? Go get your diary. I will write a complaint.

The boy almost fainted. Not wanting to harass him anymore, we patted his head, hugged him, pulled his cheeks again and let him go. His relief was portrayed by the speed with which he ran towards the protective shelter of his class.

The moment he was gone, all of us burst out laughing. We laughed and laughed till our stitches ached. And then we laughed some more.

Reason?

5 minutes later, the kid came back with his diary, the complaint page open.......

This is why I love kids. Their innocence and simplicity more than anything.

sunshine.

Don’t Question Me About Questions.

Last weekend, I finally finished making all the question paper sets for all the classes I take. I teach Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics. Final exams will start pretty soon. I finally typed and got the prints of all the question paper sets. As I held them in my hands, I closed my eyes, trying to imagine myself as that omnipotent deity in whose hands lie the future of some 200 students. I know that I am exaggerating, but that is what this post is all about. The way some people have been exaggerating and overestimating my power and considering me omnipotent these days.

With the final exams coming, it seems that suddenly the children and their moms have been galvanized into action. Everyday I have some of those moms meeting me after school and trying to get hints about the questions. Considering my profession and my age (I just turned 24.5 recently), I am considered a kid here. So when the moms had initially seen a kid teaching in higher classes, they made no secrets of their skepticism (The dads were okay about it though). Allow me to digress a bit from the main content of this post. I actually had some of those pain-in-the-ass moms asking me stuff like-

Pehli naukri hai? Isse pehle kahaan padhaya hai? Educational qualification kya hai? Kaun se college se pass kiya hai? Kis year mein (that was to roughly calculate my age)? Aap to teacher lagti hi nahi hain, etc.

I have to deal with such finicky moms. So for the exams, all the necessary instructions have been given to the students. All the chapters are equally important. Numericals in physics are a must. In chemistry, equations have to be balanced. In mathematics, the entire book would be covered. Diagrams are important wherever applicable. Sums have to be with the proper units. Questions can be set from anywhere in the chapter. And so on and so forth.

Yet I have had moms coming and asking me ridiculous things like-

Kahaan se questions dengi? Chapter ke peeche se? Maths mein wahi questions aayenge ya values ghuma fira ke? Experiments padhna padega? Work book se questions aayenge? Please HEAT waala chapter include mat kijiye. Numericals kitne marks ke aayenge? Chapters ke beech mein highlighted portions important hain? Hydrochloric acid ko hydrochloric acid likhna hai ya HCl? Back questions karne se ho jaayega?

And the volley of questions continue. I’ll spare you the details (for my own sanity actually).

But I’ll share an interesting episode. One of the moms actually told me (with the son standing right in front of us, and old enough to understand everything) ..... Madam, mujhe itni tension ho rahi hai final exams ke liye, hormonal imbalance ke liye mere periods irregular ho gaye hain. Please kuch important questions bataa dijiye.

All I could do was stare stupidly at the mom, and the boy. God, couldn’t she have chosen a more apt excuse for her gynecological problems? Or for asking the questions?

I don’t understand what’s the big deal in performing well in the final exam. Just listen to the class properly, study the chapter from A to Z, practice the sums and diagrams, do the numericals, and that’s it. How does it matter whether chapter ke peeche se questions aayenge ya beech mein se? As long as the questions are relevant, how does it matter?

I wouldn’t claim that I've never been stressed during the exams. I would often ponder and wonder what questions would come. But these people have suddenly made a God out of me. If I happen to meet my children in the corridor, I would definitely know the expression in their eyes, urging me to divulge some kind of hints about the question paper. I would explain every sum from the chapter, discuss the type of questions and the expected answers, but would not give a single hint about the actual questions I've set.

So as I held those bunch of question papers in my hands, I tried to imagine how powerful I was and what amount of respect I could be commanding at that point of time.

I don’t understand what is so great about exams? It is just a school final exam. What’s so powerful about these few sheets of paper that I can inspire such awe? Give sleepless nights to so many even sans my age and experience? I wish I knew the answer to this. 

sunshine.

Teeth-ing Troubles- I.

If you are looking for your daily dose of laughter in this post, you’ll be thoroughly disappointed. I am in a lot of pain, and humor is the last thing I can sense now.

It so happened that I hurt my cheeks while having some popcorn. And I totally forgot about it. The next day, I woke up with tremendous toothache. Thinking that it must be the popcorn, I tried to fix things with a toothpick. The problem got worse. By the evening, my entire right jaw, right neck, and my right ear was throbbing with pain. Not to mention the fever. So I went to the doctor for the routine checkup. And then....

It’s very easy to write about funny stuff. But your pain and your insecurities, not so much.

If there is one thing that could turn me to jelly out of fear, it is the sight of blood. Doctors are a special breed of people I genuinely fear. But things you fear the most keep coming back to you again and again. Somehow, I keep having to meet my dentist every six months. I still shiver when I think of the last surgery. I’ve had some of the weirdest encounters with dentists right from age five. I could probably write a dozen posts on that alone. 

Coming to wisdom teeth, I had my first one operated at age eighteen. The dentist was a muscular, hairy man, about 6 feet tall who looked like the devilish version of Kumar Sanu. I still remember the way he had towered over me, blocking the lights from my face, had caught my wrists with his hairy hands and had pinned me down before he mercilessly punched an injection into my gums. I was so shocked by the way he had grabbed me that I could hardly protest. The toothache had seemed nothing compared to the mental trauma I’d felt on being treated that way. Of course he was the doctor and he knew what he was doing. But I never again went back to him, or to a male doctor for that matter.

My new dentist is a lovely looking Punjabi lady with smooth, hairless hands. She is barely a few years older than me and is very sweet. This time, she checked me thoroughly, and after an agonizing scrutiny for about 15 minutes and constantly gurgling and spitting blood, she decided that I needed a tooth extraction.

Me: What? But it was just popcorn.

Naah, the popcorn was in no way responsible, she found no popcorn, it was the wisdom tooth causing the pain and the fever.

Dentist: Get it extracted. Come Sunday evening. I am writing the list of antibiotics and pain killers you must take......

Me: Hey hang on, you mean this Sunday? Four days from now? But I need some time to be mentally prepared. 

Dentist: Girl, I would be with the scalpel and scissors, not you.

And this brought afresh the memories of the last time.

To add insult to the injury, mom tries to pacify me. She says- Toothache is much better than labor pains. What would you do then?

And the dentist says- Ah, with such an irregular set of dentition, problems are sure to arise. But then, you have to pay a price for having a sweet smile.

Very funny.

So Sunday evening it is then. And knowing me, I know that I am gonna worry myself sick the next four days. I am gonna behave badly with friends, am gonna be irritated and restless throughout the day, am gonna cry for no reason, and am gonna get mad at everything and everybody.

And I wonder, what would I do with so much of wisdom? This is the third one.

BTW, I just looked at the prescription and found out another reason why I could never become a doctor. I do not have an illegible handwriting.

To be continued..................

sunshine.

Braggart No.1.

If you want to master the art of bragging, you should meet my kids. Specifically, the second and the third graders.With their innocent faces and smiles, they can even get away with murder. Given their imagination, it doesn't take them much time to come up with ridiculous stories.

A few excerpts from some of the recent conversations I had with them-

X: Ma’am, my dad has a red car.
Y: Ma’am, ma’am, my dad drives a biig Wagon R and an Indica.
Me: (feigning interest) Really?
Z: (almost shaking me from behind) Ma’am, my dad bought me a new car as a birthday gift. Not a toy car but a real big car.
X and Y turn pea-green with envy.

P: Ma’am, my brother was vomiting yesterday.
Q: Ma’am, my uncle had white white things (which I interpret to be foam maybe) coming out of his mouth before he died.
R: Ma’am, yesterday I cut my hands and there was “so many” blood.R showed me his injured hand, but I could only find a tiny spot that might as well have been a mosquito bite.

A: Ma’am, I am going to Bombay for my uncle’s wedding.
B: Ma’am, my dad will take me to foreign in the winter vacation.
Me: Really? How far is foreign?
B: Very far. One hour. You have to take an aeroplane.
D: Ma’am, my dad took me to aeroplane yesterday (whatever that meant!).

J: Ma’am, will you play cricket with me in the picnic?
K: (before I could answer) And football and beyblades with me? I have 2 beyblades.
L: I have 4 beyblades.


M: Ma’am, my dad is a doctor.
N: Ma’am, ma’am, my dad goes to hospital also.
Me: Children, look out of the bus. This is a very big hotel. It is called Taj Bengal.
P: (feigning a blase attitude) I have come here. But I did not like the food.
Q: I also. I also.
Whatever that meant.

Well, there are endless instances of senseless conversations like this. But I have to smile and feign surprise and listen to all that they have to say.

We were in the school bus, going for a picnic. These kids were their usual noisy self, with their my-dad-gave-me-this and my-dad-gave-me-that talk. The bus had just crossed Rabindra Sadan and was on its way to New Alipore when the endless stretches of greenery appeared at my right.

Me: Look children. This is the Calcutta race course.
I was just going to add that they can see the horses running here when a small boy screamed in excitement out of nowhere-

I know this place. My father and my grandfather come here to run in the fields every morning.

sunshine.

The Golden Period.

If there has been a particular time in my life I have been the happiest, this is it. Sometimes, all this seems like a dream. School life ended years ago, taking away with it all the magic. College life was much harder, with competition, weird syllabus, weird questions,  and the inevitable “What Next?”. Same with university.

All this seems to have happened a whole lifetime of suffering ago. A job has changed it all. It has made me realize many a things about myself, and the people around me. People no longer take me for granted. Most importantly, I do not take me for granted any more.

I still think of the day I went for the interview, sitting uncomfortably among others. I kept telling myself that I had nothing to lose. The job has made me realize what is it that I want out of life. For more than being employed and earning, I realized what kind of work made me happy. I am sure working in a call center would earn me much more than I do now. Five of my cousins are already into it. But teaching is something that I immensely enjoy, so much that it seems effortless. The timings and the ambiance suits me fine. Correcting piles of copies can be draining at times. But I plan my questions well.

Also, when you are the youngest teacher, people always look after you. I have started socializing with the other teachers, and I like it. The occasional treats and the parties they throw feels good. I have the advantage of age. Children love teachers who wear bright clothes and teach enthusiastically instead of sitting on a chair and complaining. I discuss everything from Harry Potter to Beyblades with them.

My school gets over by 2 pm. I have all the time to myself after this. Sometimes I go to the library or go visit friends, maybe even go for a movie or lunch. But most of the time, I get back home, shower, and settle with a book till I fall asleep. Sometimes, I write. Unlike earlier, I do not have to burden my brains and study, go for tuition, or prepare notes. Sometimes, I pick up books from Gariahat, College Street, or Wellington market before heading home.

Life could not be better. Ma wakes me up every morning, makes me some coffee, and makes me lunch. The only thing I have to do is to get myself ready. Back home, my steaming hot dinner is always there on the table. The only thing I do is clean my room in the weekends. I can save up my salary and spend it whatever way I want to.

I have friends who are still putting in long hours to prep for the NET exams. I'm not going to write one, I know that. This job I have is a great one-year stint, perfect as a transition job. Hopefully, I will get into a good doctoral program in the US by next year. Until then, I have no responsibilities to cook, pay the bills, care for family, and raise children. The other teachers come here to work. It feels like I come here to picnic. I am saving up my salary for my dreams. And being with the kids at school is a great stress buster. The moment I get in class and start scribbling formula and equations, I forget my worries. I feel certain and more confident about myself. And even if things don’t work out in the US next year, I'll get a B.Ed.

This golden period might not last forever. But the fond memories definitely will. So I am trying to make the most out of it.

Time to get back in the arms of Morpheus. The God of Sleep. Good Night.

sunshine.

A Very Special Feeling.

I got my first salary yesterday. I guess the first things in life are always special. First boy friend, first date, first salary. When I was out of school 6 years back, I started tutoring English to a young girl living close by. The first time I had held those 3 bills of 100 rupees each in my hand, I had felt that I was the richest person on earth. I had the same feeling when I signed the receipt and held my first salary check yesterday. What more, I am a taxpayer now!!

Late at night, I had held the salary envelope this way and that way, swaying it again and again in front of my eyes, just to make sure that all this was true. I have friends and classmates who still haven’t managed to get a job. I feel so fortunate that I did. Dad treated all of us to some great Chinese food in Gariahat. I know I should have treated them, but dad never lets me pay.

Have planned my Christmas vacations. Am taking a week off. Just got my tickets today. Am going Switzerland. Wanna come? Just kidding. Switzerland will have to wait for a while. May be until a few more "first times" happen. Like taking a plane for the first time. 

sunshine.

Annual Function Day.

The last few weeks have been a very different kind of experience for me altogether. Everyday, I get to do a lot of “seemingly unimportant” stuff that I could not have done otherwise. I use the term “seemingly unimportant” because a lot of my so called over-achieving friends think that I am wasting my talents and skills with this job. They had the nerve to tell me a lot of things on my face. Like-

“You are meant for more meaningful jobs”.

“You must be kidding when you say your job is hectic. How can teaching be hectic?”.

“If you had to teach, you should have had a college or university in mind. Why a school?”

“Don’t you have ambition in life? A school teacher at last?”

I will not go into the other senseless remarks I keep hearing. I don’t even feel like explaining anything to anyone. The people who said this must have all studied in a school at some point of time. And my job is no sinecure. For, making a child understand the principles of Newton’s laws can be more difficult than making codes run in plush offices.

Well, I was a Ph.D applicant when I got this job. And I just love it now. I can be with kids all day. This might not be equivalent to participating in board meetings and making business deals, but to me, it means much more than that. I love the way kids wish me with a smile every morning, the way they cling to my sari while complaining about their friends, the way they give me chocolates and pens on their birthdays, the way they tell me- “ma’am, you are very sweet”, even if they don't mean it. I love the shine in their eyes when I play “quiz quiz” with them in the off periods. I love the way they give me their opinions when I ask them about the latest Harry Potter movie. The kids have accepted me as a part of their life. So though I teach in much higher classes, I sneak into other lower classes whenever I can.

But engineers and doctors and managers think that no job is more important than theirs, and their contribution to the society is way more than mine.

Tomorrow is the Annual Function Day. Today, the stage rehearsal was extremely tiring. Now don’t ask me what is so difficult in making a few kids sing and dance in rhythm. The kids are doing a great job. You should see them dressed as puppets and jokers and monkeys. Tomorrow, I am in charge of the green room. And that means trying my hand at another new job. I will have to dress them up and see to it that they have the proper make up. A good 300 kids. Can you imagine that?

Try telling me, what's so great in that?

sunshine.

Screwed Up.

1. Load X Load Arm = Effort X Effort Arm.

Mechanical Advantage = Effort arm/Load arm.

I devoted a good 30 minutes to explain this basic funda about machines to Class VI. And at the end of those 30 minutes, I gave them this simple sum to do.

Effort = 200N, Load = 100N, Load Arm = 25cm, Effort Arm = ?; Mechanical Advantage = ?

28 out of 30 students got a zero. The rest two did it half correct and managed to get a 2.5 out of 5 marks each.

2. What is the sum total of the three angles in a triangle? I randomly picked up three students from Class V, and asked them this, half dreading that they would laugh at me for asking them such an easy question. The three answers are respectively, 30 degree, 70 degree, and 120 degree.

I was shocked beyond expression.

What more, I ask them why cannot a right angled triangle have two 90 degrees? To this, one of them says confidently, “Who said so? They can have two 90 degrees in special cases”.

If I were a student now, I would not even step in this school, forget about studying here. And if I had given such answers in my schools, I would have been thrown out of there.

3. While correcting one of the chemistry copies, I find a CD inside, with Bipasha Basu’s pic on it. As suspected, the CD contains stuff you would not normally see in a sixth grader's collection.


4. My computer is screwed up for the last seven days or so. There are problems that I am unable to interpret. Okay, I know this for sure that the Norton thing has stopped working and the machine is virus infected. Also, the printer cannot be installed for weird reasons. Last Sunday, the printer just stopped taking in papers, and kept on printing lines and lines of coded expletives. And the machine just shuts down on its own and restarts without notice.

We do have a person who is supposed to fix these problems, all the more because we need the computer everyday. And this man has been telling me for the last 5 days, “I am coming first thing tomorrow morning”. And mom is like, don’t be rude to him, he might have been busy somewhere.

5. My ankle swelling is getting worse day by day. I am absolutely clueless about where all this is leading. On top of that, I get this splitting headache ever since I corrected those physics papers.

6. My project guide calls me up to ask me where have I disappeared. Snippets of the conversation-

Where have you disappeared?

Sir, I think I told you I got a job.

Yes, yes, I know, but why do you need a job?

The same reason as you need one, I wanted to say.

Anyway, he spared me a reply, and asked me to come to the lab tomorrow. We need to discuss a few research projects.

But sir, my job? The timings just will not let me work in the lab anymore. I am dog tired by the time I come back.

Just come over after school tomorrow. We will see.

I know what is coming. My weekends and Christmas vacations are gonna be screwed. And I am not even gonna be paid for it. Are the full time scientists there dead? Don’t tell me that a lab as huge as this is banking solely on a freshly graduated student.

7. Snippets of an argument with mom as I come home from work-

So you are not going?

Of course not. I cannot even move my ankles.

Is this your excuse this time? Why do you let us down? You do not attend a single wedding. But the moment you friends make plans to meet, you jump and go. 

I hate these weddings. There is nothing good to do there but sit and stare at others. I am not going. I have been up and working since 5 am.

She left without saying goodbye. Yes, she did give me a nasty look as she left. Intuition tells me that she will not be on speaking terms with me for the next few days.

8. Amidst all this, a small pin pricks my finger while I am arranging a few papers. It was like an ant bite I might not even have noticed. But then, I press my finger hard, and there I see two drops of bright red fluid oozing out. Blood! God, this is the life saving fluid called blood! I am bleeding. The next instant, strange images come to my mind. My head reels. My vision gets blurred and my tummy feels light. I rush to the wash basin and throw up.

From headaches to unruly and dumb students to sarcastic mommy comments to being pressurized by the guide to virus infected computers to objectionable CD contents to the sight of blood, I have had enough for a day. Right now, I just want to go to sleep, and never wake up again.

sunshine.

Role Reversal.

Strange are the ways of life. 5 months back, I was bunking classes big time, and whatever little time I would be in class, I’d sit in the last bench and talk non-stop! 3 months back, I was burning the midnight oil, studying for the exams, and cursing the teachers big time.

And now, I am supposed to control a pack of naughty kids and make sure that they do not talk in class. I have to set questions for them they will not be very happy to answer. How can I ask the kids not to talk? Their senseless chatter should fill up the rooms, don’t you think? It is a crime to shut them up. Yet, thanks to our strict principal who must never have had a childhood, I have to scream at the kids (at least pretend to be angry) to please her. If I were the principal, I would do away with exams, do away with the school uniforms, and never try to stop them from talking or giggling senselessly. It only shows their innocence, something we adults lack completely.

My life has changed drastically the last few days in more ways than one.

The alarm goes off at 4 am everyday. And everyday, I shut it up and go back to sleep. And then, I have to get up to the melody of mom screaming at me, "The day they fire you for being late, you will realize”. Well, my circadian rhythm has still a long way to go for these drastic shifts. I have to take the bus by 6 am everyday. And that means wake up at least at 5. I cannot even dream of touching the cold waters then, let alone take a bath. So these days, I shower after 10 pm, and read a book till I fall asleep by 11.

I can’t bring myself to have food early in the morning. And once I am in school, I just do not have the time. And this means I don’t get to eat these days till say about 2-3 pm, but for the cups of coffee. You bet, my family doc is gonna be rich soon, the way I am aggravating my ulcer.

My school is nothing but an army as far as discipline is concerned. Teachers cannot color their hair (mine is not), and cannot wear jewelry ( I usually do not). But you cannot wear jeans, or skirts, not even the longer ones, or anything that is sleeveless or is not a salwar kameez or a sari. Even a short kurti will not do! And that means 70% of my wardrobe has already become redundant.

It is great to hear “Good morning ma’am” thousand times a day. I was so not very used to this, I’d initially turn around to check if that was me they were wishing.

Last year this time, I was interning at a state government environmental lab for 3 months. Running gas chromatographs. Doing hardcore research. Grim faced scientists running around all day. Not a noise but for the constant drone of sophisticated machines. Speckless labs that reminded you of Robin Cook novels or a Steven Spielberg movie. People talking in hushed tones all day.

But this place is so very different. You will go deaf with the amount of noise children make. I had always fancied teaching in a school and being surrounded with kids all day. But I had never expected it to materialize so soon. It is amazing, how even a “very good” you scribble on someone’s copy can make his day and earn you their toothless smiles. And I just love those “ma’am, he is tickling me, ma’am, he is pushing me” complaints.

Plenty of stories to recount, but it is already past ten, and I should try and get some sleep. Have a long day ahead. Just a funny incident before I sign off.......

I find two boys from the last bench whispering into each other’s ears. Distracted, I roll my eyes and ask in a feigned but stern tone, “What is it so interesting that you boys are discussing in class?”

One of them stands up, guiltily smiles a rather toothless smile, and says, “Ma’am, he is saying you are very cute.”

Well, if you expect me to be harsh to these kids after this, you might as well put a few stones where your heart beats. As for me, I just love the kids, and all the indiscipline, and all the noise that they create! Makes me feel alive.

sunshine.

A New Chapter.

Two weeks back, there was a job interview ad published in the newspaper. I naturally overlooked it. And my sis naturally found it. And my mom was naturally like....... when would you grow up and learn to read the newspaper properly? Why do you just skim through the headlines?

Four days back, they called me for the interview. My sis naturally got all the credit. And my mom naturally started calling up all the relatives, as if I had already got the job!

Two days back, I had the interview. The first job interview of my life. I screwed it big time. Okay, I din do that bad, but I wasn’t that good either. Sitting in a plush air conditioned office among some 25 other candidates, I felt like Shashi Kapoor in Deewar....plain, simple, middle class with loads of qualifications and degrees, yet jobless!

The first thing they told me is.....Oh, you don’t have a teachers training? They then said..... Oh, you don’t have the experience either? When it came to salary discussions, they bargained big time. I was very upset by the time I got back home. They had said they “might” get in touch with me after 4-5 days for a second round of interview. For all the diplomacy, they might as well have told me on my face that I had failed to impress them.

My phone rang the moment I reached home. Surely I must have left my phone or purse in a hurry. Strange, I had both with me.

You have been selected ma’am. Please be there Monday morning, 7-15 am sharp.

Was I imagining things? It was not yet 4-5 days. Did she call up the wrong person? Naturally, I was dumbstruck!

Today was my joining day. My first job. The first time I have signed in the school register as a teacher. For the first time, I was on the other side of the stage for the Children’s Day celebrations. For the first time, I sat in the teachers’ staff room instead of a classroom. And tomorrow, I’ll be teaching classes for the first time.

I am sure a lot many first times are gonna happen for the next few weeks. My mom has already made a list of the places I have to take her out for a treat, not to mention the number of movies I’ll have to take her to.

The job is very well timed. Just when I complete my masters, clear the GRE/TOEFL, finish off with the SOP and recommendation letters, and am just about to parcel everything, and am still wondering, “what next?”, I get the job.

Among the many things about this job, the best thing is that I can be surrounded with kids all day now! I am already looking forward to it.

School starts tomorrow morning 7-20 sharp! A good 1 hour 15 minutes from my home. Someone wake me up at 4 am sharp, please!

sunshine.

My First Baby.

I still have faint memories of that rainy Monday morning. Nobody had woken me up or made me ready to go to school. When I woke up, grandma told me that a holiday was declared in my school due to the rains. Rubbing my eyes, I asked where mom was. She said that she has been taken to the hospital. Dad was there too. And I have had a little sister now.

That was way back in the first grade. Later that day, I went to see mom and my new sister. It was still raining heavily. I don’t remember much, but for the fact that my sister was sleeping wrapped in a bundle of clothes. Everybody was talking about what a healthy baby she was born. Even with my mom suffering from jaundice during her pregnancy, she was born a good 4 kg plus, and was very tall for her age.

The birth of my sis proved to be more of a disappointment for me initially. She would sleep or weep all day, she would not smile or recognize me; she would not say funny things or talk to me. I had expected her to at least ask me my name and my school’s name, or share lunch and dinner with me. But she did none of those. So when she would be sleeping and no one was seeing me, I would silently sneak into the room, tickle her tiny feet, and wake her up. They would not even let me take her in my arms.

With time, dad told me that she was my own kid. I would have to take care of her in every way. And from that day, my sis became my responsibility. I would help mom bathe her and feed her, I would funnily dance to songs in order to amuse her. She was so strong, she would crawl up to me and take a fistful of my hair in her tiny hands and shake my head. But I would never cry or complain. She tore my books, puked on me, and scratched my face with her tiny nails. When I was in the fourth grade, she started going to school with me. So I fed her food, arranged her school bag and carried it with me, helped her do her homework (most of the times I would do it myself while she would play), and made sure that nobody bothered her in class. She was a real lazy baby who would never be ready on time. So I would help mom in getting her ready for school as well. And when we would be real late, I would carry her in my arms, with the school bags and all, and run all the way from the school gate to her class. Most of the days, I would get late for my assembly doing all this. I always treated her as my kid, my responsibility.


sunshine.