As I flipped through the pages of my school magazine, I could hear the thunders outside. As I peeped out of my window, a gust of cold wind slapped my cheek and I noticed a streak of white lightning as it swept over the dark grey sky! Rain was finally making a comeback! The roses lined outside in the balcony swayed madly at the breeze and I watched the first drop of rain as it landed itself on a red petal.
My gaze turned back to the magazine and the page that was right in front of my eyes framed a picture of all my teachers, a very special and dear face amongst them seemed to light up a lot of memories. Memories that lit up my thoughts on an otherwise dull day. My first ever English teacher in school. Ma'am I addressed her.
She was our Moral Science teacher during her early days in school, and now finally to teach me my favorite subject! A subject that dealt with words and words for me are magic!
I remembered hated going to school as a kid. Every morning it was the same old story of me shedding profuse tears and trying all my means to convince my mother to keep me away from school. But all in vain! she was by then very well acquainted with all my tricks and intentions and everyday after a lot of hue and cry was forced into the premises by the cruel "darwans" who would not even allow my mommy to accompany me to my classroom, and maybe sit sometime with me at my desk...maybe till about the last period! Well my demands were simple, and I firmly believed it!
That one day it rained heavily. But we did not get a rainy day holiday. Instead I landed myself amidst the crowd at the entrance, lost sight of my mother, drenched and confused and almost in tears. The fear of getting lost in the crowd was indeed prodigious. And just about in time before tears could start rolling down, I promptly felt the touch of warm hands that led me in. I had little choice but to follow this lady who still was very much a stranger to me. As much as I could decipher from behind, her long black hair neatly tucked up in a pony and in her neatly clad pink salwar kameez she had all the looks of a teacher!
I tried to pull my hands away from this stranger, but she held them firm and led me in to my classroom. And I as an act of gratefulness punched a blow on her nose as she inched closer to only console me. She tried to kidnap me and forced me in, well that is what I assumed back then.
She then presented to me a rose, and then yet another until I finally stopped shedding profuse tears (for what I still do not know, that hint of being the drama queen was just taking shape I guess!!) and flashed my otherwise expensive smile!
Well being the only daughter and child, you have the whole and sole authority to be the master of all your mood swings and leave it untamed! (Well growing up I realised that wasn't quite the ideal thing to do!)
Thanks to those lovely roses and the rain, since that very day, I woke up early every morning eager to go to school. For I knew there was a special someone waiting for me with roses in her hand! just for me.
After school it almost turned a habit to keep my mother waiting and take enough time out to talk to my teacher. Conversations with your favourite one seems endless and are timeless!
The lovely lady that she was, school indeed turned a second home as was always said and I had previously disagreed. My mother had all the reasons to be jealous of her! I love my mom but I guess I love her " a little more " -my diary tells me so now! Loving someone was such an easy task then!
It began with her efforts of instilling in me that school was indeed a nice place to come to where we master the divine art of learning with teachers and friends! With time and age we shared a bond when from a teacher she turned a friend too.
Sometimes she left me really angry. Lynching me for making the slenderest mistakes, and in front of my fellow classmates. It made me feel that faint spirit of Hitler still existed somewhere deep within. With age realizations took wings and slowly and steadily reasons for every little deed and action started making sense.
She sailed along with me as I entered my "sweet sixteens", when I took so much of pride in growing up as I entered the very very vulnerable number - sixteen. Little did I know then, I stood at the brink from where I could either fall and fall hard or I could create a firm ground and prepare for a long odyssey ahead.
Such grave thoughts were a distant thought then, and that is exactly a time I needed that someone with whom I could share all my problems beyond the closed pages of my book. Things that seemed a little too arduous to be expressed to mom. Ma'am was like an open book to me and I divulged in all my thoughts bestowing my complete trust, and she very gracefully and silently paved my path for days ahead with her advices and talks. They were in one word Priceless!
With her I developed a strong liking for the language English, a profound curiosity to go into its deepest depths of knowing it more and more. I started falling in love with words and since then till now it has been the most steady love affair of my life.
We shared many a thing in common, for I believe it is commonality which bring two people together. Two of our favourite things were definitely the rain and red roses. Her persona was so incredibly arresting and her advices and talks kept resonating my mind! A lady who was my strength and my weakness just the same. I loved to fight with her cause she always made up for it, I often disagreed with her for I knew she was always right.
As with another fleeting year I inch a little more closer to completing a decade having left school behind, there are some memories and some people one can never obliterate from the mind's eye. Ma'am was one such figure in my journey so far. She walked in when I could be molded into just about anybody, seasoned me into the woman that I am today and elegantly walked off at a time when becoming independent became a priority.
She was my constellation of ideas, my human pillar, articulation of my thoughts, the architect of my smiles, a shoulder to my tears. A teacher who taught me the best lessons and left me to learn a colossal amount of lessons in my rendezvous with an even greater teacher called "life"!
My gaze turned back to the magazine and the page that was right in front of my eyes framed a picture of all my teachers, a very special and dear face amongst them seemed to light up a lot of memories. Memories that lit up my thoughts on an otherwise dull day. My first ever English teacher in school. Ma'am I addressed her.
She was our Moral Science teacher during her early days in school, and now finally to teach me my favorite subject! A subject that dealt with words and words for me are magic!
I remembered hated going to school as a kid. Every morning it was the same old story of me shedding profuse tears and trying all my means to convince my mother to keep me away from school. But all in vain! she was by then very well acquainted with all my tricks and intentions and everyday after a lot of hue and cry was forced into the premises by the cruel "darwans" who would not even allow my mommy to accompany me to my classroom, and maybe sit sometime with me at my desk...maybe till about the last period! Well my demands were simple, and I firmly believed it!
That one day it rained heavily. But we did not get a rainy day holiday. Instead I landed myself amidst the crowd at the entrance, lost sight of my mother, drenched and confused and almost in tears. The fear of getting lost in the crowd was indeed prodigious. And just about in time before tears could start rolling down, I promptly felt the touch of warm hands that led me in. I had little choice but to follow this lady who still was very much a stranger to me. As much as I could decipher from behind, her long black hair neatly tucked up in a pony and in her neatly clad pink salwar kameez she had all the looks of a teacher!
I tried to pull my hands away from this stranger, but she held them firm and led me in to my classroom. And I as an act of gratefulness punched a blow on her nose as she inched closer to only console me. She tried to kidnap me and forced me in, well that is what I assumed back then.
She then presented to me a rose, and then yet another until I finally stopped shedding profuse tears (for what I still do not know, that hint of being the drama queen was just taking shape I guess!!) and flashed my otherwise expensive smile!
Well being the only daughter and child, you have the whole and sole authority to be the master of all your mood swings and leave it untamed! (Well growing up I realised that wasn't quite the ideal thing to do!)
Thanks to those lovely roses and the rain, since that very day, I woke up early every morning eager to go to school. For I knew there was a special someone waiting for me with roses in her hand! just for me.
After school it almost turned a habit to keep my mother waiting and take enough time out to talk to my teacher. Conversations with your favourite one seems endless and are timeless!
The lovely lady that she was, school indeed turned a second home as was always said and I had previously disagreed. My mother had all the reasons to be jealous of her! I love my mom but I guess I love her " a little more " -my diary tells me so now! Loving someone was such an easy task then!
It began with her efforts of instilling in me that school was indeed a nice place to come to where we master the divine art of learning with teachers and friends! With time and age we shared a bond when from a teacher she turned a friend too.
Sometimes she left me really angry. Lynching me for making the slenderest mistakes, and in front of my fellow classmates. It made me feel that faint spirit of Hitler still existed somewhere deep within. With age realizations took wings and slowly and steadily reasons for every little deed and action started making sense.
She sailed along with me as I entered my "sweet sixteens", when I took so much of pride in growing up as I entered the very very vulnerable number - sixteen. Little did I know then, I stood at the brink from where I could either fall and fall hard or I could create a firm ground and prepare for a long odyssey ahead.
Such grave thoughts were a distant thought then, and that is exactly a time I needed that someone with whom I could share all my problems beyond the closed pages of my book. Things that seemed a little too arduous to be expressed to mom. Ma'am was like an open book to me and I divulged in all my thoughts bestowing my complete trust, and she very gracefully and silently paved my path for days ahead with her advices and talks. They were in one word Priceless!
With her I developed a strong liking for the language English, a profound curiosity to go into its deepest depths of knowing it more and more. I started falling in love with words and since then till now it has been the most steady love affair of my life.
We shared many a thing in common, for I believe it is commonality which bring two people together. Two of our favourite things were definitely the rain and red roses. Her persona was so incredibly arresting and her advices and talks kept resonating my mind! A lady who was my strength and my weakness just the same. I loved to fight with her cause she always made up for it, I often disagreed with her for I knew she was always right.
As with another fleeting year I inch a little more closer to completing a decade having left school behind, there are some memories and some people one can never obliterate from the mind's eye. Ma'am was one such figure in my journey so far. She walked in when I could be molded into just about anybody, seasoned me into the woman that I am today and elegantly walked off at a time when becoming independent became a priority.
She was my constellation of ideas, my human pillar, articulation of my thoughts, the architect of my smiles, a shoulder to my tears. A teacher who taught me the best lessons and left me to learn a colossal amount of lessons in my rendezvous with an even greater teacher called "life"!
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