A Noble Deed

One who is worth idealizing does not care whether others idealize them or not- Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

After a long time I grabbed the opportunity to watch a movie. The movie was the Hindi Movie ‘Chalk and Duster’. It was a student who managed to send it to me through mail. As I was unwell, I could  do nothing more than enjoying the movie. The movie caught my attention well because of my long years of experience as a school teacher. The movie pictured many aspects of teaching and focussed the life of teachers in a private institution. Every incident refreshed happenings in my life. I wondered how the director of the movie understood the role of teachers in a private institution so intricately.  The schools I had worked for proved to  have  similar situations like the absence of chairs for the teachers, there were schools where teachers were penalized for coming late, there were schools where the teachers who marketed themselves were  well appreciated, yet I had always taken these as a part of life. I never let it linger beyond a particular moment as the aspiration we looked towards  was imparting knowledge and guiding children towards their goal. What moved me most in the growing years as a teacher was that each student looked forward to a kind word, a response to their greetings or just a beautiful smile. I found this played a great role, even in the college.  One  of the students in the college where I taught  sported an unhappy look saying ‘ma’am, this is the fourth time I greeted you a Good Morning’, It would take me time to help him understand that by and large  the teacher is predisposed with other pressures in the institution.

Values and moral judgements of a teacher are well assessed by children, the teacher on the other hand needs a keen sense of judgement to understand the moral philosophies of the child. It requires the teacher to be multidimensional as a class has forty students from varied backgrounds, each one reflecting different viewpoints making the job of the teacher utmost difficult. Here the teacher is responsible for the collective transformation as each student is a reflection of a mini society. The forty minute period has to be well planned and articulated well without hurting sentiments. Each little one feels its world is the best like the frog in the well and hesitates to step out of the closed mindset. It is the teacher who actually does the job of saddling the student with attitudes and aptitudes into a larger world.

The movie helped me recollect numerous incidents, but I wish to narrate about a little girl who brought all the children in a class closer. It was one of the sections of class seventh then. I was their class teacher. The little girl was lean, brownish with an oblong face with waist length hair woven into a braid, not very tall and was not extraordinarily brilliant. She loved to listen to me as I would talk to the children sometimes as a scientist, a doctor or a chemist. I taught them general science, but the class was bright, enthusiastic and astonishingly punctual. During the lunch break they would discover new things and drag me to show new phenomenon and their observations. This little girl remained lost, smiled less in the proficient class. I could read the students easily, the ones scolded by their parents carried an awful temper, the well appreciated ones were eager, filled with zeal, the sick ones were lethargic, waiting to reach home while this girl was thoroughly anxious. She would trail behind yet hesitate to tell me. I believed in giving space and time to kids as I knew they  would definitely unburden their heart to me.  The faltering was to be sure that I would not discuss it in the staff room.

She would carry books, linger to see what I did. I would drive her away saying I was busy. One morning I reached very early, I felt I would set things in the cupboard in the classroom. As I reached the classroom, she sat clutching her stomach. I smiled and pretended not to see the painful expression and asked her how she had reached earlier. She now came to help me and toyed around and asked me ‘ ma’am, what is the uterus and is it important in the body’. I told her it was a bag for carrying the baby and I would be teaching the lesson very soon. She asked me many questions, it was a heart to heart conversation and at the end she said ‘I am going to be operated next week. My uterus will be removed. My mother says it is the best’. I gathered my wits and sat with her. The classroom was slowly getting filled with boisterous kids, my hand kept supporting the little girl’s hand. I never knew that till one of the girls came running and said ma’am hold my hand too. I held her hand with my other hand. I quickly wrote a note in the little girl’s diary asking her mother to meet me. I rushed to the office and made a call to her mother nervously as the girl had told me that in a couple of days she would stop coming.

The next day the mother came, she seemed fine and happy. I took her aside to understand whether what the girl  had told me was true. The mother burst into tears saying, she had a malignant growth of cells in the uterus and the doctors had advised her to go ahead with the operation. She looked at me and said that her daughter’s life was more important to her than her uterus. A second opinion was taken and only the malignant cells were removed due to the intervention of the school. The uterus remained safe.
 We never looked back. The whole class pumped the little girl with tremendous energy and get well cards. She came back happy and stood in front of the class and said ‘ Ma’am, it was good to be ill as I got lots of love and concern from my friends, I never knew how I recovered miraculously’.

My class learnt many lessons that day. They learnt the art of giving happiness, they learnt the art of gratitude for the life they had and learnt the art of being united despite diversities. It taught me many lessons. It gave me the understanding that I may teach many students, but for an individual the teacher is the sole one, and so the teacher needs to share a special consideration for each one. I learnt that being with kids never let me know whether the institution I worked for cared about me as an individual or not, I had many more responsibilities above that to lead a meaningful life.