The Wonder Years

My heart goes out to my young cousins and their generation of children who were born and brought up in big, noisy cities. They are frighteningly precocious, growing up at a pace and picking up stuff that is hard to monitor. Their talents and skills are superior to us; they can multitask and are far more articulate and self-assured than we ever were. But their childhood had been deprived of certain joys and cramped with unhealthy stress for no fault of theirs. Space is precious; apartments are cropping up everywhere and playgrounds are disappearing. Pollution and deforestation paints their world a dull grey. There is neither the space nor the time to devote to pets even if they wanted to. Families are nuclear.  Parents have to work long hours, and children are raised by a host of servants. Or after school they come home to empty apartments, heat up meals on the microwave, and gobble them while surfing the countless channels on TV. They spend their afternoons playing video games or surfing the internet, constantly distracted by a beeping mobile phone, ordering take-outs, and looking haggard after a long day of school, dance recitals, swimming, guitar classes, football, study tutorials etc. There is always some upcoming competition or exam looming in the horizon. Their playground is the empty concrete car parking in their building.

There are barely any trees, ponds, large green grounds or pure, unadulterated fun in their lives. Their minds are too cramped with exam questions to have a healthy curiosity for anything else, and are too tired to develop a reading habit. Holidays are hurried and spent in hotels and touristy sites. They cook pastas and fancy omelettes by watching You Tube videos and turn up their noses at the simple, home-made fare. Derogatory slang words pepper their vocabulary. The lack of respect for teachers and the aversion for school is alarming. They are always unsatisfied, and demand new gadgets and expensive objects ever so often. Neither the parents nor the children could do much about adapting these lifestyle changes. Urbanization demands that you keep pace with it, it can’t be helped. Things are changing, and rapidly. Even my hometown barely has any traces of the old world charm that it held. I don’t hate the busy life in a city; I like its chaos and dizzying pulse. But it leads to a somewhat deprived, stressful and precocious childhood. I am lucky to have been one of the last few generations to have experienced the joy of a childhood in a relatively unsullied and small town of Assam.

My childhood was wondrously laid-back and my parents were blissfully unaware of the need to enroll their children in extra classes that taught any new skills or sports. I had free rein over my leisure hours. I learnt swimming, or rather how not to drown, in the huge pond in our backyard. There were all sorts of fishes and creepy crawlies lurking beneath the murky surface, including a huge tortoise and once my foot had accidentally grazed its rough, scaly back. My father had brought home that tortoise when I was three and it had slid out of his palm onto the dinner table, slowly crawled across the whole expanse, and would have fallen off the other end if I hadn’t held it back. Not much brains to speak of. My cousins and I never contracted any illness even after months of splashing around in the pond that had never been chlorinated. I also learnt how to fish sans any expensive equipment. All it took was a long and thin bamboo pole, a thick string and a fishing hook. I got flour balls from the kitchen, dragged a small moorha to the edge of the pond, and sat down to fling the bait into the water. My youngest uncle accompanied us and solemnly whispered fishing tricks to all the wide-eyed children surrounding him, basking in the attention that we showered him with.

Winters were for badminton, and summers were for cricket. Children and adults teamed up together to play these sports; it was one of the major advantages of growing up in a large, joint family. What we lacked in talent, we made up for in enthusiasm and energy, and played for long hours. My cousins and I interspersed these real sports with self-invented games and the ones we learnt at school. They were weird and highly entertaining, like ‘ghariyal pani’, ‘gold spot’ and the meat and potatoes of children games, ‘hide-and-seek’, whose difficulty level was greatly enhanced by the sheer vastness of our home and the adjoining grounds.  Our flexible limbs and reed thin bodies enabled us to hide in the tiniest of nooks and not be found for a good hour. There were treasure hunts and the whole neighbourhood, including an abandoned house, was our territory; people didn’t mind if a group of kids barged into their homes to hide a treasure hunt clue. The ambience was such that children could walk unannounced into nearly any house in our neighbourhood to demand a piece of cake, orange-cream biscuits, or even a yummy plate of ‘lushi-aloo bhaji’. Now I know nothing but the surnames of our next-door neighbours in the apartment complex I had been living in for a decade.

There was also no dearth of imagination, we wrote and enacted entire plays. The dressing up for the parts was half the fun, and improvisation was the keyword. Large cardboard boxes had the potential of turning into anything from a class room to a castle. An empty barrel was the perfect underground tunnel during the fierce battle scenes. Come Sunday mornings and all the children took their positions in front of the TV to watch Rangoli on Doordarshan; and tried to copy the dance steps in the songs that were aired. There was a lot of jostling around, faces got accidentally slapped, feet were stepped on, borrowed dupattas that we tied on our heads to substitute for long hair swished around. That was all the dance training we got, and often we would end up on the floor, doubling up with laughter. Indoor games ruled too; carom, ludo, chess, and even table tennis in a long, narrow corridor of our home. It didn’t bother us that we didn’t have a proper table, the tiny orange ball bounced back well enough off the floor. We flouted all rules, and made up new ones, but it was such fun.

Some of us constructed a swing too, that hung from the branch of an old tree in the backyard. It was so much fun to let our hair sweep the ground and the very next moment get pushed towards the skies. I played ‘doctor-doctor’ a lot, lugging around a tin box filled with tiny bottles with dubious concoctions from the kitchen and plastic stethoscope, and caught any unsuspecting victim as my patient. I didn’t even spare first-time guests to our home, plying them with orders and questions like “Stick out your tongue”, “Do you have worms?” much to the embarrassment of my family. But the people were generally very pleasant and playful, because they always complied with the orders of the six year old doctor and allowed me to check their temperature with a plastic thermometer and displayed appropriate concern on their faces when informed that they had a fever of 1000 degrees Celsius, and once I had even diagnosed an uncle with a fat belly as pregnant.

Among all the cousins and neighbourhood kids, I was the only one who was mesmerized by the world of books. I practically devoured them. The school librarian had to issue me multiple library cards, because they got filled up so soon. I splurged during book fairs; clothes and toys had never interested me much. One summer I brought home a book about dollhouses, and spent weeks making one that was four feet tall out of empty shoeboxes, match boxes, scraps of clothes, and fitted it with a tiny kitchenette and bathroom set. That was a glorious summer. We helped in gardening too, planting marigolds, roses and dahlias; and helped my grandmother in digging for sweet potatoes and carrots. I measured my height against the tall pine tree in our garden. It overshot and dwarfed me within a couple of years. We climbed and hung upside down from the  trees; picked the tiny, white Sewali flowers during spring and made fragrant garlands; ran through fields of ripe golden crops on the visits to our native village; slept on warm and somewhat itchy haystacks and played in tree-houses. Evenings were meant for long walks and buying a toffee at a small stall at the end of the road. The road seemed so long that sometimes all the cousins hitched a ride in the mini van of a neighbor. When I visited home after a few years, the same road seemed so short; the road hadn’t shrunk, but then what had changed? It baffled me.

My parents struggled to curb my restlessness and get me to sit at the study desk for more than an hour. I hated these forced study hours that cut into my play time, but the effort paid off by putting me among the top three students in class, and subsequently mollified my parents. Then I had to face a nightmarish demon: Hindi. With no disrespect to it, I prayed every night that by some miracle Assamese or English was declared the national language of India. It wasn’t long before my total percentage suffered due to my Hindi marks. I tried to divert my parents’ attention to my excellent grades in the rest of the subjects, but to no avail. And to my horror a tutor was arranged. I vehemently rebelled but soon my new tutor became one of my best friends. Unknown to my ignorant parents, we barely studied for ten minutes of the assigned hour. The rest of the time was spent playing Scrabble, telling each other stories, reading Archie comics, and going through photo albums where I painstakingly explained to him the story behind every photograph. We even listened to new songs that on my cute yellow Sony Walkman, with the earphones on obviously. He didn’t treat me as a kid, and I loved that. He had an amazing sense of humour and we often convulsed with laughter, trying to drown it behind palms. Surprisingly my Hindi grades improved out of proportion to the amount of effort we put in; maybe the laughter and fun made me more receptive to the little I studied. I still struggle with Hindi, my vocabulary and grammar is laconic and I speak it worse than the driver James in that old movie ‘Chupke Chupke’; yet thereafter I managed to get through school without unfortunate Hindi grades.

After the ordeal of homework was over, the television beckoned. In the evenings we were allowed to watch it for an hour to catch old American sitcoms like I dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, Silver Spoons, Who’s The Boss? etc. On Sundays we were allowed an extra hour of cartoons or the Famous Five series, and once a month we indulged in a movie, never in the theatre though, but on the now defunct VCR. We didn’t demand any extra hours of television; there were abundant sources of entertainment: funfairs, book fairs, parks, libraries, theatrical plays, Bhaonas, the circus (seriously, where had they disappeared?), picnics, and umpteen birthday parties given the number of kids in our neighbourhood. Then there were all the festivals. Pandal-hopping during Durga Puja, the rowdy Holi, the even rowdier Diwali night when we lighted the bagfuls of firecrackers my father and uncles bought home at a time when noise pollution and child labour were alien concepts to us, Magh Bihu and Meji mornings, Bohag Bihu and the husori groups that performed at our home; and much to the alarm and despair of my grandmother, who was convinced that her grandkids had been converted at their convent school, we even celebrated Christmas with a puny plastic tree and gifts for everyone.

I loved my school. It had large grounds, quaint church, tiny ponds, a basketball court, and even an orphanage where we had fun playing with the babies and toddlers during the lunch hour break. The teachers were more of friends to us. My best friend and I didn’t even hesitate to putter around the Principal’s (Fr. Philip) office; our restless hands fiddling through the contents of the drawers and cupboards, opening fat encyclopedias in his bookshelf, and asking him innumerable questions. He smilingly indulged our curiosity and never complained. When we were in the fifth standard, we had a teacher (Angelus Sir) who didn’t hesitate to grab and throw any object within reach, including the chalkboard duster, at disobedient kids. We were petrified by his mere sight. Once during the lunch break, my friend and I strayed into the empty fourth floor of our school, exploring the cobwebbed rooms that echoed our voices, and came upon a closed door at the end of the corridor. We pushed it open to the see Angelus Sir sitting cross-legged on a small bed, slurping down noodles and watching an Amitabh Bachchan (I guess the angry young man act was adapted from it) movie. We froze in horror, but he just flashed a bright smile and invited us in. Turned out he lived there, and soon we were served steaming bowls of noodles too. Few minutes of conversation dispelled all fear from our hearts. He told us interesting trivia about any country we pointed to on the large world map pinned on his wall. He played a tune on his guitar. We spread the word about the newfound knowledge of his gentleness, and soon his room was filled with dozens of kids, eager to hear his stories and listen to his lovely songs. I don’t know if students share such a rapport with teachers anymore. They nurtured in us a healthy curiosity to know things beyond the constricted and rigid curriculum of school.

Vacations were spent in whichever town my father was posted in. My parents took us to the hills, picnicked at the riverside and explored every nook and corner of these towns. My sister and I made new friends and played long hours in the sun. She learnt to cook at a very young age, but wild horses couldn’t drag me into the kitchen. It was a period of my life when I could just eat and eat and not a single ounce of fat accumulated due to my excellent metabolism and the tireless running around during the day. Pizzas and burgers weren’t available, and lemonade was preferred over colas. Eating out was reserved for special occasions, but we never got bored of the simple but tasty home-made food. My father occasionally took us to a restaurant that served authentic South-Indian fare; because my mother never managed to cook a dosa that didn’t resemble an amoeba. Later, the kilos quickly piled up with the advent of fast food and a sedentary life.

One summer I had enrolled in the art school. Even there I displayed more enthusiasm than talent, but the art teacher never curbed my imagination and let me paint people with disproportionately long limbs, living in the hollows of gigantic trees and flying in chariots drawn by colossal eagles. My drawing pad was a riot of colours and I even learnt to sculpt clay figurines. Most of all, I loved sketching unusual trees; they seemed to me the most beautiful things on earth.

My grandmother crowded our household with all sorts of birds and animals. There were separate coops for ducks and chicken; the pond was filled with a variety of fishes and that tortoise; there was a lazy, cud-chewing cow and its calf, the birthing spectacle of which gave me nightmares for a long time; a fierce but extremely loyal dog that stayed with us for sixteen years; few docile goats; a cat that came and went according to its will; a parrot; and a pet squirrel too. There weren’t any leashes and the gates were always open; there were no visits to the vet and no fancy pet food; but these birds and animals flourished in this freedom and provided delightful hours of companionship.

There are many reasons I had so much fun growing up. It was a small and unpretentious town, without many distractions. The parents were happy to let children enjoy different experiences and didn’t impose any undue pressure or restrictions. There was also the joy of a common childhood shared with my sister and a dozen cousins, learning the value of sharing in a joint family. There was always someone we can go to in times of need, always someone to listen to us. Neighbours were akin to extended families. Most importantly, the general instinct was of an unquestioned trust and goodwill that is rapidly vanishing. The grounds were green and large, the imagination was sharp; and trees, flowers, dogs, and fishes grew alongside with us, were nurtured by us. School was a second home and teachers were extra-ordinarily encouraging and friendly.

But these wonder years were limited, and on my thirteenth year I was pushed into a world of traffic jams, a school with a dusty ground and no trees, teachers that were ridiculed by students, few classmates whose life consisted of ugly sneers, curse words and unhealthy obsession with all things adult, a tiny apartment in an apartment complex that housed two hundred other families and had a playground where kids jostled for elbow space, honking cars at all hours of the day, ready-to-eat meals replacing dal-chawal, chlorinated swimming pools where strangers kicked each other during laps, goldfishes as pets, dull hours in front of the television, a competition so fierce that tuitions classes and exam guides ate up all leisure hours, dusty roads, smog filled sky that blocked stars, and neighbours that were too busy or too nosy.

Nowadays the children lead a life that is in stark contrast to the one we led; and the only things that had survived from my childhood are my books, and a brat of a little sister to share the memories of those wonder years.

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Candles, Mass Murders and Small Towns.

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When I was a child I sat at the study desk every evening for a few hours, opening slim volumes of brown notebooks with a serenely smiling Don Bosco on the front cover, to draw maps, solve quadratic equations, summarize a poem or memorize the years of famous battles. I grew up in a modest locality of a small town in Assam, where the residents were thankful for a few hours of electricity every night. And till the time my father brought home a noisy power generator, a candle and a match box were as essential on my study table as a pen. Every time there was a power cut, it was the perfect excuse to plead to my mother that my eyes hurt reading the tiny print in the faint light of the candle. She knew me well, and after confirming with an ophthalmologist that I had excellent vision, she started bringing home newer sets of large candles with thicker wicks.

When I realized that there was no escape from the study desk, I decided to improvise new forms of amusement or escape routes. Once I dipped all the candle wicks in water, but got a much deserved scolding from my mother when she found out. Then there was the dissection of any unfortunate mosquito that got drawn by the flame and landed on the desk. I took out my pent up frustration of being confined to study on the poor mosquito; I trapped it, dissected its tiny wings with a compass from the geometry box, and then burnt their miniscule torsos in the very flame they had flocked to, rounding off the whole exercise with unblinking eyes and a sinister laugh to scare my little sister who watched it with horror from the adjacent table. I was cruel little pyromaniac burning up dozens of minute winged creatures every evening. My cousin had taught me the neat little trick that if one was fast enough, they can move a finger across the flame and not feel a thing. I did that too, till the fun wore off, and a painful blister erupted on my finger.

And when the electricity decided to favour us by returning after long hours of darkness, there was this race between my sister and me to blow out the candle, accompanied by a wish; a silly hangover from birthdays. Sometimes the loser initiated a quarrel, which my mother resolved by lighting up the candle and giving the chance to blow it out again with a wish. When I was in the seventh standard, I was infatuated by my history teacher and had made it my sole ambition to excel in his subject, and much to the amazement of my family,  even a power cut couldn’t budge me from the study desk. Once I had studied the various invasions of India with such fervour and attention that my sister gleefully watched smoke rise out of my hair for quite some time before informing that my curly hair had caught fire from the candle flame. It took a clever hairdresser to minimize the damages, but it was never the same.

Many years later, the candle returned to my life, albeit in a setting when lovers have the crazy idea to grope for their food in the dark, all in the name of romance. I suppressed a smile when I recalled our old hostility, and the mass murder of so many mosquitoes. But I couldn’t reveal it to the one who sat in front of me, without him questioning the unusual sources of amusement in my childhood. So I kept shut, lest he also found out about the evenings of dipping a flour-laced winnow board in the pond and taking it out after a few minutes, filled with tiny prawns. Or about constructing a swing in the backyard, playing table tennis without a table in a long and narrow corridor where the ball bounced off the floor, the long nights of badminton, striking a shot on the carom board I could barely reach as it was set on a tall barrel, catching dragon flies and glow worms and putting them in glass jars, digging for sweet potatoes in the garden, looking for a lost treasure at an abandoned house, climbing trees and hanging upside down from a branch; what can I say about the delights of growing up in sleepy, small towns of India. I merely smile at the memories.

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The Grandfather in My Father’s Stories

I had a spare grandparent. I was three, when I realized that despite losing my maternal Koka (grandfather) a couple of decades before my birth, I still had four grandparents. I did some quick calculations intelligible only to me, that if I were to lose a grandparent every decade, at least one will be around to see when I am as grown up as my parents were then. This unique family structure felt like quite an advantage that no one else I knew shared; and I delighted in the fact that my grandparents will be around for a long time since there were so many of them. All but my spare grandmother died within the first decade itself.

In January 1989, my paternal Koka died. He was ‘Pitai deu Koka’ to me; since I heard my father and uncles call him ‘Pitai deu’ (father). I thought it was his name; it befitted his gaunt face with soft, white hair curling around his ears, tall and muscular body; his crisp white dhoti and kurta, a blue sweater and a khadi jacket; and very large feet in old, worn-out khoroms. He died when I was three and my memories of him have faded over the years and only a few images remain. He taught me to fly kites; fastidiously trimming bamboo, cutting old newspapers and gluing them together; reveling in the delight that arose in my eyes as he handed me the kite string. He consoled me if I fell down and scraped my knee, on the newly cemented driveway. He brought me animal-shaped biscuits in a brown bag from an old bakery in Jorhat, each time he came home from our native village in Teok. He affectionately called me ‘Majoni’ and ‘Mamu’, which are quite common pet names for girls in Assam. I was quite a treasured grandchild of his, owing to my birth seven years after my parents’ marriage. My mother says he had barged into the operation theatre when my mother was undergoing a Caesarean section for my birth, such was his restlessness to ensure my mother’s and his grandchild’s well-being.

He died within a month of being diagnosed with terminal stage gall bladder cancer. I knew he was ill, but didn’t know that I’d be losing him forever, and preferred to spend my time in my room with my crayons and coloring book. I was tired of the fact that he was always in bed, surrounded by people; and eating Cerelac out of a bowl, a habit I had long outgrown.  The family was troubled by the idea of losing him, and a multitude of relatives frequented our home. Two of my younger uncles got married (one arranged, one arranged-cum-love) on the same day, within two weeks of diagnosis of my Koka’s illness. Life happened at a rapid pace to accommodate as much happiness and joy into that one month for my Koka. He wasn’t aware it was cancer, and was angry at his sons for not taking him to Guwahati for a surgery, that he believed would have cured him. The evenings brought out the fragrant odor of incense, while my aunts sang hymns from the Bhagvad Gita at his bedside. One day he asked my father for his sandals, as he would be going on a long journey soon and pointed to the bright, blue sky (the same color as his sweater) outside his window. My father scolded him for saying such absurd things, in an ironic role-reversal, parenting the parent; and went off to office. My Koka died a few hours later that day, while I sat cross-legged over a pile of pillows and colored with my crayons.

There was great hue and cry, my mother and aunt fainted, and I saw my father smoke a cigarette pensively in our garage. A huge tent was erected on our lawn, and they took my grandfather wrapped in a white shroud. My father and uncles shaved off their heads, all of them looked similar; huge, brown bodies wrapped in white dhotis as the five sons slept in a row on the floor.  A few days later a lot of people came for a ceremony where the frightening ‘taal’ was played. I ran scared to my neighbor and stayed there the whole day eating ‘lushi and aloo bhaji’, while they were praying for my grandfather’s soul. It took me some time to realize the significance of death, of never seeing my grandfather again; apart from the photograph in our home, in front of which my mother placed fresh marigold garlands. That’s when I felt sad, as I saw the mourning household. But the feeling lasted only a few days and was replaced with horror, as I realized they have cut off my grandfather’s thumb and preserved it along with his ashes, to be immersed in a holy river later. I had nightmares about the thumb, and I was glad when my father got transferred to Guwahati a few months later.

I knew my grandfather years after his death through my father’s stories. As my sister and I lay our heads on my father’s cushiony tummy after lunch on Sundays, it was a cue for him to begin his stories; his childhood anecdotes far surpassed a fairy tale. I visualized everything-the village he was born in, the river he swam in, the cows he brought back home every evening, the pranks he pulled on his friends and his teachers, and the frightening consequences of such actions at home; my father’s stories weaved for me a personalized Axomiya version of “Malgudi Days”. And the stern father, the imposing figure of my grandfather always featured in his stories as the one to keep a check on my father’s natural aptitude for mischief.

That’s how I learnt about my Koka, through my father’s stories. My Koka was the headmaster of the village school where my father and uncles studied. He was extra hard on them so as not to run the risk of being labeled as favoring his sons. He was a strict parent, authoritarian in fact, and this had extreme effects on his sons; my eldest uncle became the studious, obedient one and my father played the truant schoolboy. But never did his sons disrespect him.

The image of my Koka as a stern schoolmaster was so set in my mind, that I was shocked when I learnt much later that he used to work in the police force earlier and was equally feared by his colleagues in that field too. His profession didn’t shock me as much as the thought of him wearing trousers instead of a dhoti!

He led a life of struggle trying to raise a large family, five sons and two daughters, with his meager monthly salary of fifty-two rupees.  He married young, as was the norm in those days, and was childless for twenty long years. It was a social stigma then to remain without an heir to carry on the family name and he was married off to my grandmother, who was still in her early teens then. It’s horrifying to think of it now, to think of the huge age difference between my grandparents, but that’s the way it happened more than sixty-five years ago in rural India. A large family soon followed, and I am still astonished how he managed to keep two wives in the same home for so many decades without much turbulence! And to my young mind hearing these stories for the first time, it created much awe. 

During the floods of the Brahmaputra in 1965, my grandfather lost all his land and life savings, and suffered a breakdown at the prospect of bringing up his family without a job at hand.  He gave up, but his children took over the responsibility of looking after each other despite their young age. I wonder what went though my Koka’s mind, seeing his children struggle to make ends meet and earn an education at the same time while he was a mere spectator, defeated and helpless. I ask my father sometimes whether it made him love his father less; and the answer is always a vehement ‘No’. They idolized him, despite his failures late in life. This reverence for parents, despite all short-comings made me think about the low tolerance level we have for our parents’ deficiencies nowadays; it humiliated me.

My Koka died in January, and my sister was born in October of that same year; and this nine-month gap led me to torture my sister for a long time by stating that she was Koka’s re-incarnation and she had even inherited his dark feet. This thought confused her for a long time, as she actually began to wonder if she was her father’s father! My aunt once told me that my Koka had stored a few currency notes, his treasured savings, underneath the hay in the ‘bharal ghar’ in our native village; and later broke down when he saw the currency notes chewed to bits by the mice. I found this tale very tragic.

I had never until my Koka’s death, seen a ‘Shradhha’ being held; and I so strongly believed  in the stories that the dead come to visit their loved ones around this time, that even now I have dreams of my Koka in and around the end of January, near his ‘Shradhha‘. My youngest uncle was quite reckless in his youth, and used to return home in the wee hours of morning after a night of partying at the local youth club. I remember being mortified when he once told me he saw Kokastanding near the pond in our old home at 3am, a few days before his ‘Shradhha‘; and I didn’t question if it was the alcohol. I stopped looking out of the window after dark for a long time afterwards. I enquired his reaction on seeing his father’s ghost, and he shocked me even more when he said that he spoke to the apparition! A ghost, I reminded him, it was a ghost! But even my father said he wished every moment of his life to speak to his father once again. The idea of wishing to talk to dead people scared me when I first heard it as a child, but only now I understand the significance of that wish. 

To lose a parent is the biggest void in life, and the desire to re-connect the dearest wish. I wish I had the opportunity to know my Koka a few more years, but he is and will always be very much alive in my heart , a heart that has my father’s stories.

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I wish I was in your class again.

“The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called ‘truth’.”

You might remember me only as a face in your classroom. But I will always be grateful for your support, belief in me and guidance at crucial points of my life. I feel blessed to be your student.

This is for you:~

Ma’am Deepti Singh: For that encouraging smile, a pat on the back, and developing a healthy competitive streak in me. And it touches me that you remember me even though it has been fifteen years since I last sat in your classroom. You were, are and will always be my favorite teacher in the whole wide world.

Sir Bijoy Handique: You were a lot of firsts for me. You were the first person to notice the ‘biggest introvert’ (me) in the classroom, the first to appreciate my work, the first to believe that I could achieve something big, the first to create a genuine interest to learn something instead of mugging up for exams and what do you know, you were even my first crush! I will always like history 🙂 And the fact that you still remember me as the little girl in a grey skirt, wearing tiny, hoop earrings and traveling to school in the old fiat…delights me no end.

Ma’am Manjula: Your smile comforted me on the first day of kindergarten. You taught me the alphabet. You didn’t laugh when I said that I sent my sports shoes to the ‘barber’ for cleaning!

Ma’am Ruprekha: I still remember the first thought that crossed my mind when I first saw you, “If my grandmother dressed up in chiffon sarees and wore lipstick, she too would look as beautiful as Ruprekha Ma’am”. I think your maternal aura made it impossible for anyone not to like you. How you patiently listened to my fanciful imaginations about ETs, doppelgangers and the ghosts in the school church!

 Ma’am Anita: You were the woman of 2011 in 1994! You made learning such fun. You brought beautifully crafted jewellery boxes to class when teaching about indigenous craftsmanship of Jammu and Kashmir, you taught us to appreciate the beauty of a song’s lyrics (the example was ‘ek ladki ko dekha toh aisa laga‘), you striked the perfect balance between being amiable yet someone we didn’t dare anger!

Sir Joseph: You introduced me to the world of books…novels, poems, short stories, essays, and even limericks. You let me borrow 4 library books every month when the rule was a limit of maximum 2 books. You played chess with me and didn’t make a big fuss when I bunked PT class. You also bought me pastries in the school canteen, when the queue was long. You are awesome 🙂

Ma’am Srivastav: You always saw through my trick of feigning stomach ache when it was my turn to read a passage from the Hindi textbook, but you didn’t scold and embarrass me in front of the class. You gradually let the love for the language grow on me, even though it never reached substantial heights. But you managed to hold my hand and walk with me through my living hell of writing Hindi essays!

Fr. Philip: I am yet to see a person as dashing and as charismatic as you. I doubt whether I’ll ever see one. The way you spoke, the way you walked, the way you taught us the values of life was awe inspiring. But during tiffin break you patiently answered the questions of two enthusiastic little girls, my best friend and me, ranging from the contents of your lunch box to ‘why bad things happen to good people’. You let us rummage through your personal library every day. And when I left my hometown and joined a new school, you uncomplainingly passed on my long letters, addressed to the school principal, to my eagerly waiting friends in that old classroom. Yes, I will never meet anyone like you again.

Sir Angelus: You were aggressive, and you never missed the target when you threw a chalk piece at an errant student. You scared me when you threatened to clip my long nails in front of the whole class. Yet, when I came to know you better, I thought you were the most gentle person I had ever met! Your razor sharp wit, your quirky assignments, your exciting tales, and the fact that you were the lone inhabitant of the school at night (as your living quarters were on the spooky top floor of the school) made you quite the interesting character. You disciplined us when we needed it the most.

Rafida Ma’am: You taught the most boring subject on earth. Social Studies. Yet, I never dozed off in your class. You helped me adjust to a new school. You handed me important responsibilities, so that I felt more involved in the alien environment. You advised in hushed tones to each of the girls individually when it was their time to start wearing a bra. I anticipated the dreaded moment and it lived up to the most awkward conversation (or was it just nodding my head) of my life. You left us all bereaved early this year, but I would always remember you fondly. RIP, Rafida Ma’am.

Sir Ratul Rajkhowa: You instilled in me a love for life sciences and consequently medicine. Your tuition classes were so much fun. You showed us the bottled gall bladder stones of your wife while solving genetics problems, you showed us your Bihu music cassette while classifying bacteria, and told us about your stint with the Indian Navy when we discussed ecological hazards! I so enjoyed those two hours of biology tuitions every morning.

Sir Balwant: I excelled in mathematics in school because of you. I was a dunce when it came to numbers, but your teaching showed me how mathematics could be fun. Your black diary with the toughest mathematical problems, invoked in me such a competitive streak to solve all of them before anyone else, that it scared me. You are such a down-to-earth and humble person. I will always appreciate your confidence in my abilities.

Sujata Ma’am: English seemed more than substance writing and grammar. Poetry awakened dreams instead of being monotonously mugged up for exams. I loved that you understood and took care of the individual needs of each of your students. You are such a witty, and for a lack of a better word ‘spunky’ woman. I liked your ideas, and everything you had done in life. You will always remain my idol.

Sir Jnanendra Sharma: I can’t picture Gauhati Medical College without you. You are a great teacher and one of the most tirelessly hard working person I’ve ever met. During undergraduate days, you always encouraged this “Jorhat’or suwali” to work hard, and I really did during Pediatrics, which still is my favorite subject. Even when I was going through a bad phase of severe anxiety and cut myself off from the whole world, you were the only teacher who was supportive and gave me hope. You are a busy man and you didn’t have to care if your past pupil was having a problem, but you did. And I will always be thankful for it. You didn’t even make me feel awkward by questioning about my past problems, when I resumed my normal life. You made it very comfortable for me. I hope someday this “jorhat’or suwali” will be able to make you proud in her own small way.

Sir Sahid Ali: You are knowledge personified. And you are genuinely interested in sharing your knowledge with all your students. You care. A lot. And that’s why I respect you so much.

Ma’am Gayatri: You are an epitome of intelligence, hard work and positive attitude. I always wanted to work hard in your classes. Especially pediatric ward classes. You are one of the finest women I have ever met.

Sir Suresh Chakraborty: I always looked forward to your questions about Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Satyajit Ray at the end of the psychiatry class. You made psychiatry come alive. I loved when you encouraged us to make diagnosis, validate it with strong arguments, and supported it with that happy smile of yours. You had always encouraged me to write during my undergraduate days in GMC, and I’d always be thankful for that.

Probodh Da: I hated it when you cut short the evenings, meant for having fun with my cousins, with boring homework assignments. But you never missed a class for 8 years, and made sure I stick to the books. I enjoyed the chat sessions at the end of the class, and playing scrabble with you.<

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