I remember this from some speech my sister gave once in school. Must be standing under the sun and hating the orator then, plainly. She was saying ”….thirteen years of the schooling are the most formative years of one’s life…”! That stuck with me. Rest dropped dead. That didn’t cling to me just because my sister said it, obviously. But the various minutes and seconds of those days, still stand tall till today and continue to ring bells, and are probably the only vociferous friends I love.
Schools were made when children were produced exponentially and people still needed more. They needed a zoo, too. Some volunteered as keepers and were christened Teachers. Thence the kingdom of entertainment began. They were schooled the things with which they could entertain their parents and then the neighbors.
Some took animals too seriously and began teaching them. She was one of them. She was fifty-five, and I eleven, when the destiny first thought to prescribe her to me. The thirty-some years of her teaching had already squirted quite a few unpleasant stories. Her good morning, the first for us, trembled because of age, ours because of fear. The timid good-mornings we floated in reply probably died down mid way. She called for them again, with higher decibels. They were generated. Good morning. We sat down on desks. The sun must have also set, somewhere, then.
Her face was quite honest to the age. The frowns had settled permanently. The skin was loosely following the motions. The hair, ruffled at the forehead, barely reached the mid-back and bore the dramatic orange. The eyes were big, and without any trouble could strangulate a few meek ones. They, apparently, needed no spectacles but the doctors must have asked her to wear them. Thankfully. Just the perfect ozone layer. They rested on the nose, most of the times, clinging the support string which fell over her shoulders and then hid behind the neck. Usually, when the spectacles came down, the adrenaline rush was ubiquitous in us. Absence of ozone. The summation of all the physical elements was not very attractive, now! Must be age. Her speech failed to age, though. Ripples tried to cripple it, but it had enough magnetism to carve in you the opposite pole. A big cylindrical leather bag, enough to stuff a kindergarten child, hung over the right shoulder, always, which looked all the more dreaded, when from it popped our answer sheets or such rubbish stuff.
Before her arrival to the class, the composures were hailed. The hairs were released. The benches aligned. Volumes brought to the brim. The sleeves down. Ink pens, red pens, pencils, books, minds - all were borrowed, begged or stolen. Everything was made possible. All Lilliputians ready. Her class went the way she scripted it some decades or centuries ago, it seemed. She was an actor on the stage, in front of that black setting. A perfect actor. The stories she read from the books, always had the wrong authors, she inadvertently proved. She knew the stories so well, every character came alive when her lips parted. She was the hero, the heroine, the villain. Yes. The classes went smooth, decorated with some figurative and literal smackings.
One hot day, the departure of noise from the class was made just a second later after her arrival. A bunch of handsome boys had a long run of jokes and fun poking. The orange from her head dripped down, some chemical reaction happened along the way, and the face appeared red, magically. All red. The bunch, after the sighting that red, could have been gifted to a cheap Madame Tussauds. Six breaths had decided to run. They were brought to life when the call was made for them to congregate again, this time in front of the blackboard. She, like an artist, knew precisely which elements to etch out to make the creation, the class, perfect. She etched out exactly those six figurines. No questions thrown, as if she knew that answers will not stand any chance. Hence, the same six, sans the jokes. I, for one more time, cursed the belly, that has been tagging along since birth, for making me helplessly protrude out of the group as I failed to hide. Those twelve ears were ordered to write - I will learn to behave in the class. Ears passed that to the mind. And mind had almost passed a tear when the shout said, a thousand times, by tomorrow! A glance at those petite hands and that salty tear, then, approached the brim and was then allowed to fall on the lips to console them. Equilibrium, hence, prevailed.
Such days provide entertainment to some, the rest get swollen knuckles. The overall consequence of such events is that it keeps the jokes to whisper and the ensuing laughs to mime. For some days! Just like the ascent of moon, the beaming smiles reappear gradually, day by day.
She seldom tried to experiment with humaneness. She looked so clean, a fresh, endearing Ms. Pandey when a humane decree of meet me for a minute, after the class is over was issued at some penultimate minutes of the class, days after when the knuckles had relatively slimmed down. The remaining minutes were expended in dreams. What would it be on the other side of the bell, on the other side of the sun?
Another decree followed outside, in the same tone, as if the intermediate minutes never occurred. She wanted me to host the annual function of the school. The Annual Function! What, I was hardly a decade old, just graduated from knickers to full lengths, was gifted the swollen knuckles by the same Cleopatra of English some days ago and today, I seemed worthy to grace the stage, be at the epicenter. The stage was as foreign and flagitious to me as Antarctica. But when in zoo, the lion surrenders to the meek keeper flaunting just a little better hunter. She flaunted those big eyes. And for the matter of fact, I was no lion. Even before the signals reached, the neck shook, to do the formality. It surrendered. The rest could follow. When back in class, I could have almost upped the collar but the sight of me at the dais brought a frightened oh shit to the lips and tremor in the legs. The rest of the hours of that day, couldn’t bring much relief. The night needed to move in.
The show, as the class, went exactly the way she intended it to be. Every minute of rehearsals was converted to the applause. When I was approaching the wings at the end of the show, I could see a little smile on her face. I could confirm that she has not rehearsed much of it. It looked so young, unused. This completed her. The smile. I looked back at the stage, at the dais where I had laid my hands few minutes ago, at the microphone which carefully sieved my words, at all those eyes forming the audience which were once set on me. I could hear some faint claps, as I descended the last step. I again looked at her, the smile was almost breathing the last breath. The feeling of contribution to that smile, gave meaning to her prescription in my life, it seemed.
Once, in the winters, when in eighth grade, we were proceeding with one of the very funny exercises of checking and marking our neighbor’s copy. She used to write the correct answers on the board, and we, robot-like, equated every word in the copy with that. A commotion began at one corner of the class. The hands, writing on the blackboard stopped and she turned and zoomed in that corner. The spectacles were brought down. I, along with my neighbor, were in focus. Her hand waved, in the manner that from far seemed to be inviting us. We yielded. On a seldom occasion of explanation seeking, my neighbor explained her incapability to interpret my cursive x and I was further being blamed for creating nuisance over that. I was helpless. I had no answer. They hibernated. I murmured a not-so-ingenious sorry. A chalk laden palm just then crusaded my face from the left. The blob rocked. Some white gunpowder fell on my hands, which were embedded in each other at the pelvic, now. The moment was so new, the first to be exact, to me that I did not know what was to be done next- to say a further sorry, or to adjust my glasses. I decided to do them in order. The flick ended when she ordered us to get back to our seats. I glinted at my partner, while returning and passed an unsaid I just got a reason to kill you twice. She got it, right away.
From that day, I refused to acknowledge her. She came, read, taught, discussed the usual way. I just heard the voice. I just saw the white chalk dotting the blackboard. I saw the bag hanging. I saw the orangeness. The eyes below them never met. Never.
Two years later, in some other building, with some other set of teachers, I proceeded with my education in a new zoo.
Just when sun was setting after a hard wrestle with the clouds that August, I got a call from my ex-classmate. That was not unusual. What followed the little hi of hers, was. I could hardly separate it from being gibberish. She just grumbled Ms. Pandey passed away today. The mind itched to smile. The same mind she all those years tried to train, to teach. It was ditching her, again. The heart, which she never reached for, was hammering. The beatings had reached the wrist. I think, I just said, oh! Mind was still an animal.