Me, English teacher!

Life has this strange way of giving you what you really want, if you're patient enough. Many times you don't even see it coming. Sometimes that longing has been buried under so many layers of “given up” that it doesn't hit you till you're deep into it. I took some time to realise that I am living out my childhood fantasies of teaching. No more was I teaching imaginary students in my room using the black rusted trunk as my blackboard with precious chalks bought out of pocket money. No more was I creating fantastic theories of Maths or Science. No more was I correcting reams of make believe answer sheets of real paper, signing good, very good, poor, satisfactory with a red flourish (several red pens have been sacrificed on the altar of pretend playing).

It's all real. Except for the technicalities. I don't comment good or poor, there are no marksheets and the subject is English. There is an endless supply of white and coloured chalk (dustless) and huge blackboards on which I can write for however long I want. (I know that little Tania's heart would have leapt with delight at such a prospect!) There are real, eager souls looking up at me with their sparkling eyes, asking incessant questions. Someday, twenty years hence, some child may remember his first class teacher at Sahyadri. And if we meet, may narrate some tiny incident that only the sponge like mind of a child can absorb and retain.

And who would have thought that being a teacher would in a strange way reopen my beloved world of words! To dig into and savour. And write. It had seemed to me that I had lost forever my ability to write. But slowly, the words are trickling out... hotch potch sometimes...but with a glimmer of hope that I will once again regain the fluency that I once had and enjoyed. I've been able to make up a little bit for years of not reading. (No, I do not consider Stoner and Freeman, Luthans, Kotler or Economic Times “reading” material. Only Ricardo Semler maybe.) The lost world of literature is being found. I have begun to look at poems too, in a new way.

I, the English teacher am learning so much...