To my first Teacher

This teacher’s day I’m so tempted to share the story, struggles, trials and tribulations of a teacher, who had first taught me letters and read to me every day, so much that without knowing the letters I knew the words beneath each illustration of so many books!

I’m talking about a man with a penchant for learning, with a zeal to excel…no he wasn’t a teacher per se but he gave ample tuition as early as he was ten! Family circumstances, the hearing impairment of my grandfather, and my father worked since he was a child. He gave tuition, gave a hand to grandma making paper bags and stuff I have difficulty imagining, because we…my brother and me have never seen anything near poverty sort, though never excessive affluent we were always happy and contented!

Baba used to study, give tuitions, walk miles to school, worked in a candle factory for some time and played cricket, football, volleyball, and later table tennis all games he could! He was/is very well-read, watched classic movies and for the family he was brilliant. He was/is ‘Mejda’ ( Middle Dada) for all. All the siblings burst into laughter at the jokes he cracked…

Naturally, Baba was my teacher as I began to grow. It was booked…books with pictures initially he read for me with punctuations, expressions, modulations..the characters sprang to life. Later sometimes he’d cut up some tune and put some words from the story to make it sound like a song! I was taught English, Bengali Alphabet and numerals too.

We stayed at Jorhat then, he urged me to write the letters in English or Bengali or numerals and send them in inland letters or postcards! My letters were brimming with letters. I grew up listening to him, his childhood, his students, and his friends so much that I knew all the stories by heart! Of brilliant students, he had come across, how they could derive the formula like Newton had!! Gradually I got to know he could not study more because of financial constraints but that was an emotion I felt only because of his penchant for learning, it was hardly ever a regret! He loved his job as much if not more. Till the day of his retirement, he went and left on dot.

He made me fall in love with numbers – maths, maths and more maths! At the same time, he’d remember and hum the punchlines of my Assamese lesson. Learning with him was fun and most of the time I did not get to know when the toughest part was over! He was never pressurized but the look on his face when I wasn’t able to score full in Maths, I know these days people call it pressure and unwanted but he wasn’t demanding, from the look on his face I felt a pang, perhaps if I could score better! I know this might be called expectation but was such that I felt like obliging, there was remorse if I couldn’t. I remember family weddings, where all would participate, he might just utter, ‘Think it over…I think it is better if you stay and study.

And I stayed. Sometimes mere half-yearly exams or tests but I didn’t mind. He never asked me to excel but somehow, I felt I should and his job was done! Now, I know I missed so many functions, fun, and socializing which I wouldn’t want my daughter to! But Baba always felt right, thought it might be a shade of emotional blackmail, come to think of it. I think it was in my postgraduate internals I put my strong foot forward and told him this time I was accompanying my neighbour’s aunt after her wedding to her in-law’s place! I’m not going to miss this one!! Well as I said he had never imposed anything!

From introducing me to books, tennis on Doordarshan, Olympics, Satyajit Ray…it was Baba all the way…my thoughts, my perception all thoroughly shaped looking and learning from him. His smile at me scoring well and his dejected face looking at me returning after the twelfth math exam…he always said he knew from my look that my maths paper was a disaster. Indeed, it was! From bearing with my frustrations, and the struggle for a job, assuring me always something will be there for me, encouraging me in all sorts of jobs I did, and strange institutions I taught! I had rebelled as well, ‘Send me to Delhi’ types and argued! ‘ Only if you find a good institution!’

Actually, he was right.

Finally, when I joined this public sector and my Maa blamed him for sending his daughter to air traffic control, he was lost but tickets were reserved in North East Express from Guwahati to Allahabad where he dropped me off for training! He wouldn’t fail to ask after every exam how I fared even the ones we considered insignificant!

Baba has built my vision, identified letters and alphabets for me, read to me and by the life he lives…honest, straightforward, sincere, reading extensively….he has somehow made me realize at all steps of my life…he is my best teacher still!

Soma Bhattacharjee