FICTION

I must have been seven or about, and the new school into which I moved – wasn’t at all like my old one in the other city, wherefrom, we had come here on transfer. The complications and confusion in school level education engendered by frequent transfers of my father in government service was incalculable. Third language policy of yore, required me to compulsorily learn the state language – a positively needless drain of cerebral energy in young brains. The only mitigating factor I found in this new convent school, was my geography miss – boy, she was great.

A smart sari clad polished confident young lady, at most nineteen, who carried herself with poise and aplomb – presided over us, the kids, with considerable expertise and élan. Hailing from a middle class conservative family with the only woman, I had observed close to being just my mother, a simple homespun, housewife - exposure to this new modern world of street smart working woman who looked, acted and performed differently, had me gawking.

While my geography marks remained static and pathetic or went downhill, my crush for the geography teacher shot up erratically. I was not alone, for almost every boy in that class of forty of the coeducation school thought of her as God’s gift to our opposite gender.

Besotted, but sooner than later, I diverted the admiration to effectiveness, and even ended up scoring the highest in the subject once – after all, it was only I that remembered that, lichens were found in the Tundra. Though I had it in my memory, that she had repeatedly stressed that the word, lichens should be pronounced, ‘ly-kens’, I had blurted it out as ly-chens

She ruffled my hair, and wrote ‘excelsior’ in my report card. It took my father, himself a English literature postgraduate and a former don in the prestigious Madras Presidency College and latter of the civil service, look up the dictionary for the exact meaning of that word !!

Anyway all things pass, and like every happy interlude this too ended abruptly when, one day I found the teacher missing – she had resigned and moved on, that’s what the monitor whispered – I too, in a few weeks, relocated, this time to Amritsar, and yet another disruption caused by my father’s transfer.

Twenty six years later, settled in another city, I was working a medical college teacher, married and father to a pretty little kid, a daughter. When she turned four and a half, I went to admit her into 1^st standard. After the usual hectic lobbying and currying favors, and facing a harrowing interview for the applicant’s parents (me and my wife), and where the tot had to spell the word ‘elephant’ (she spelt it loud with an F instead of PH).- the big day arrived.

Admitted.

I drove to the school, where amidst a whole horde of jittery and edgy parents, all with tiny tots wailing or tugging at pants and saris, I wended through the throng to meet up with the a corpulent nun, who talked in  monosyllables, making no attempt to even raise her head as she spoke.

Hmmm, so her name is Eva? You are Catholic?

No, no, I just fancy that name, I replied.

She handed me a yellow card, which I carried to the classroom, a big, noisy hall already choc a bloc with screaming brats. Yelling in a shrill voice for attention and banging an outsized wooden ruler on her table for effect, was a slim nun with bifocals, who turned and smiled –

“Not another one” she muttered, “Mercy, mercy, Mother Mary, mercy”.

I stood, staring, shell shocked. The face and voice were strikingly and singularly familiar. Heavens!! This was my geography teacher of two and half score years ago. A flicker of recognition flitted across her eyes, but, it was obvious she couldn’t remember or place me – after all, much had to change over decades, besides age.

“So Eva”, she asks, bending down to the head level of my child,“What are your favorites?”

Too bewildered to answer, girl looked upwards, at my face to decipher what all this meant. I interrupted.

“She loves nature, butterflies, animal kingdom, flowers…. plant kingdom – in fact she loves hills, rivers, rain……and she also knows that Ly-chens are only found in the Tundras”.

The nun searched my face, and this time, it was no flicker across her eyes – they sparkled, as she tentatively enquired

“Kumar? Isn’t it A. Kumar?? It still is ‘ly-kens’ not ‘ly-chens’

A snigger of stifled giggles surrounded the table as we shook hands warmly……

Note:

This is a quasi-fictionalized account based on a real life event.

A sprightly smart lady I knew to be a junior lecturer in a city women’s college, years later, presides over the very college as Principal as a Carmelite order nun.