In Memory of Miss

 

The lamp posts beside the gate had bent and fallen over a little. Some of the broken pieces were covering the gateway. I walked carefully to avoid the sharp-edged pieces. The gate was a dilapidated one, too withered to be true to its purpose. The railings had outgrowths in them and were yellowing in the steady sun.

Once I got inside, a sudden familiar breeze lifted my hair fringes up. Slowly I made my way through the creepers welcoming my touch and brambles who tried to cling to my clothes as I walked past. The place was unkempt as if permitted to grow wild, probably because it held just one grave and its secrets. Wild berries had shed its fruits onto the ground. I trampled on some and they squished themselves to death under my feet. As I walked, the ground became bushier and thicker. The breeze that had invited me in like a friendly host when I entered the graveyard, never left me alone, though she flew onto sudden moods. I could see a little of the singular grave in the plot from where I stood. It was hardly visible because of the creepers, purple berries, and a mixture of lavender and white hues from the flowers that were hugging her, each probably attempting to tell its own story. I smiled to myself as I remembered how much she loved to listen to stories. Her mother would weave a narrative out of anything and everything like the neighbourhood cat and its family or the ants who went on an industrial visit to the sugar jar. These narratives her mother painted for her made her come alive in moments of boredom. She grew up listening to stories all her childhood. As she grew up further, she yearned for more of them.

***

It was her senior year in college. When her lecturer allotted the group assignments and presentations, each group huddled into a corner to devise their strategies. Literature graduation usually included summaries, notes on the author, themes and motifs in a presentation. Here, there was an extra fifth task designed by her teacher. The fifth and the last person who would present in the group would have to take a related poetry to the one already presented by the others and had to inspire the class to read it. Her constant fun in picking out particularly difficult tasks for herself made her choose the fifth task for herself. She drowned herself in poetries, searching for the unique note of inspiration that would make her audience come alive. She could find none in any of the poetry she read. As she waded through Larkin’s Church Going, she remembered her mother’s undeterred skill in creating narrative inspiration out of anything. She decided to use it in her presentation. The next day she stood in front of her classmates and teacher, and began narrating how her best friend steadily complained about showing up every Sunday for the church service. The girls laughed with her as she delved in and out of Larkin’s modernist techniques and observations of the church, through narratives. She ended her presentation with Larkin getting to sneak out of an empty church and her friend never succeeding in getting to do it. Her lecturer stood up immediately and said, “We want to listen to the poetry right now.” The class backed her up while she smiled widely at her student who created poetic inspiration out of nowhere. Before leaving the class, the lecturer asked her in a whisper away from the class din,

 

“Ever considered taking up teaching for a living?”

 

My feet got terribly scratched by a thorny bush as I tripped and fell forward. Finding a huge stone nearby, I got up and sat on it, wanting to rest more than anything. I started plucking out the thorns fiercely kissing my leg, one by one. All of them left a bead of blood on the spot where they’d met. I watched the blood beads stick onto my calves, rigid and thick without flowing down.

***

“It’s these new recruits. They think they’re better. She’s rigid, that’s what she thinks. She’ll learn how to hold on after a few blows.” The Head of the Department scoffed to his colleague. It was 2019. She had been working for the past six months in the College that appointed her immediately after she gave the interview. The Head of the Department was a sixty-year-old lean History professor whose forty years of academic experience crowed in fear under his towering ego. He looked back at her scathingly and said, “So? How was I supposed to know what exam they had today?’

“Sir, please, do not forget that you’re the Head of the Department. I reminded you yesterday. You called the authorities up in front of me. You expect me to just stand here and accept that you simply forgot the right details?” she asked, standing as rigid as he had mentioned to his colleague a few minutes back. “Don’t take it so personally, ma’am. They’re students. They’ll panic easily. Tell them it was a management failure. Cover it up, for your sake.”

“I am leaving now because it’s impossible for me to look at your face right now. On no account will I tell them that it’s their fault that they did not prepare for the exam. Good day to you, Sir.”

Students were waiting outside expectantly. She took a moment to compose herself before turning to face them. Taking a deep breath in, she said, “You’re going to write the exam you did not prepare for. But the fault is not yours. It is ours. Unfortunately, you need to bear the effects of the irresponsibility. I apologize for this mishap on behalf of everyone responsible and urge you to do the exam to the best of your capability. Ill make sure nothing befalls this way, in future. Thank you.”

They were disappointed, of course. Nevertheless, some of them came forward and held her hands, others said a word or two and thanked her for the honesty. Rest just gave her a nod and a smile as they departed to the exam hall. I am doubtful however, if they realised that as they walked away dejected, a little piece of her broke as she had to disappoint her students for the first time, that too for none of her fault.

I stared. The last rains had left patches of green algal outgrowths on the head of the tombstone. There was a perceivable crack in the middle. I wondered if four years could bring about this concrete degradation, though admittedly it was abandoned and unmaintained. I had no right to complain or even be concerned about the dishevelled nature of the place. I had not bothered to visit even her grave even once after her death. Maybe because I did not want to accept that she was gone. I took a stone and started scrubbing the algae patch. It made a scratchy noise that echoed all the way through the graveyard.

***

There was a construction site right next to her school. Hence all the secret exchanges in the corridors of the high school section needed to be held at a higher decibel for fear of being unheard. The screeching noises poured in all throughout the day and made an already upset fifteen-year-old her, more irritated. She closed her eyes tightly and tried to ignore the noises as she felt a tap on her shoulder. Turning around, she saw her teacher. She barely succeeded in giving her a wan smile. The teacher put her arms around her and said, “Let’s take a walk, shall we?”

They walked amidst the crowd chattering teens while some stared at them half-stunned and half-jealous. A girl walking unflinchingly beside her English teacher who is also the Vice Principal was not met with normal responses in a school corridor. Well, she was always like that. She felt home among her teachers. It felt like a familiar and safe space for her. Maybe that was why she was keen on creating a space akin to that for her students too. Once out of the class din, her teacher asked her, “Why do you think you’re an outcast? Why do you think people are shunting you in everything they do as a group? That’s the problem, isn’t it?” She nodded. The teacher waited for her reply.

“I don’t know. People always say I attract trouble, I talk too much, I talk too loudly, I ask a lot of questions, I don’t just let it go sometimes, like I feel a lot. They say I am different. I don’t gel. People feel uncomfortable around me. But I don’t do anything special for them to feel this way. I am myself with them, too.”

“That’s the issue. You’re yourself with them too.”

“But how can it be a problem?”

“That’s a problem because people when in a group, expect you to be like them or maybe like the majority in the group. You don’t do that. You stand out.”

“Outcast….”

“Precisely.”

“So what happens to people who stand out? Does any body ever come to be friends with them?”

“Yes. Some people seek you out. People who are outcasts, themselves. They will come to you because they need someone who can listen. Someone who can understand what it’s like to be, to be left out of things.”

The fifteen-year-old smiled at her as she asked, “So, you’re an outcast too?”

“Yes. I am. Let me ask this, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

“An outcast. And a teacher like you.”

***

Arjun was waiting for her outside the staffroom. She came out, hands laden with answer sheet bundles to be distributed to the class. They started walking towards the class. He was one of her very special students, among the endless list of special students. Arjun qualified himself to be an outcast in every manner. He came from a challenging and traumatic family background with strained parental relationships. He had to fend for himself at a very young age, even manage a household of three while he tried to complete his degree. Echoing her teacher’s words from around eleven years back, he sought her out to share his story after the initial months of acquaintance. He never accepted her offer of financial aid but he shared every bit of his struggle with her. He knew she could pick him out of his lowest lows to embrace a dewy morning. She had been a listener to many stories that way, during her short tenure of one year. Arjun informed her that he was finally invited home for Christmas by his father. They had been going through a rough ordeal for a few months. She was overjoyed in seeing his eyes light up as he said this. She asked him the details about his journey before leaving for class. She planned to meet him the next day before left. She packed him lunch and also got a surprise gift for him, a Christmas star. He was overwhelmed on seeing it and fell short of words. She just patted him on the back and said, “Thank you for sharing your story.”

“Thank you for being my teacher, Miss.”

***

I sat on her grave, tired from the scrubbing of the algal bloom. I placed my hands slowly on the centre of the grave. Arjun’s story was one among the thousands of stories she lent her ears to. She believed that stories were the pathways to getting to know people. If a person decides to tell you their story, it’s because they want you to recognize a particular element in it, that’s them. According to her, once you get hold of that element, you hold onto that significant part of the individual that’s left with you. It helps you get through to that person; helps you to help him grow. She listened. She spoke on it. She gave them her shoulders to sob. She gave them her hands to hold onto while they tried to stand up. Meanwhile she told them her stories too. She made them laugh and cry through them while she quoted Aristotle’s purgation above their runny noses. To any question she’d face, she told them humans needed healing. Healed humans have a better chance of saving the world. She believed in helping her humans (her students) heal. She lived the ideas she professed in College. The irony was that the story-lover in her never listened to the stories about her in the campus. She never heard the students’ stories after they left her side, hands full of books, brains full of perspectives and mostly, stomachs full of her lunch. I picked a flower from the grave and turned it over in my hands, wondering if she ever forgave her students. Her own students who sold her off for a few grades. Her students who came to her with wide smiles and planted the seeds of hatred underneath her table.

***

Githin’s story was one of the last she had heard before she left. Githin shared his story during her last days in campus, though she was unaware of the fact that her time was marked, herself. One of her good performing students of the final year, he started showing subtle signs of disturbance as they worked on his project together. Never missing a less-energetic nod from her kids, she picked out Githin and made him spill out his story. The world she had stepped into in 2019, as an Assistant Professor of English Literature, had changed by the. There was a scent of betrayal in the petals of the flower kept on her table. She moved amidst the sea of her students, not noticing their changed faces as she passed. Githin hailed from a dysfunctional family, undergoing severe trauma throughout his childhood. She could sense an invisible rope tied to his midriff pulling him hard as he made to run forwards. She wanted to simply untie the rope and let him breathe freely. She succeeded halfway in it too, though by then, she was nowhere to be seen.

I got up from the grave and went to the white bougainvillea tree nearby the grave growing wildly, just like her. Picking the nearest flower bunch from the tree, I laid it to rest near the foot of the grave. While watching the off-white flowers rest against her feet, I thought about the day it all came toppling down.

She had received an anonymous call while she worked on the dream catchers to be given out as souvenirs for the final years’ farewell. The call informed her that her job was in jeopardy and to contact the principal immediately. Though the news left her aghast, she was disbelieving at first. Something in her mind signalled an abrupt closure. She tried to argue with herself thinking that her students hadn’t even received her signature on their final year projects. ‘Surely they wouldn’t do this to her. They wouldn’t.’

But they did.

The principal informed her that she was terminated. Later that week, she met him and demanded a reason for her termination. He said there was just one reason for her dismissal from the College.

“Your students certified that you were of no good. I am sorry you had to hear that.”

As she walked down the huge winding staircase, a sense of chill made its way down her spine. Questions boomed in a harrowing and hollow voice inside the dark innards of her head, wondering many things at once. She remembered the principal’s friendly smile on a morning when he saw her making the entry an hour before college time. She remembered his admirable pats when he learned about the special coaching hours she provided for her students after official college time. She even caught sight of him more than twice as she ran to catch the bus. All these came gushing back to her. She tripped on the steps and almost fell as she couldn’t see due to tear-clouded eyesight. As she glided through the gardens of the College, her hands started shivering. She started getting flashes of the hours spent with her students, their projects, discussions and their dissertations that were crafted together. She wouldn’t get to sign them. She wouldn’t get to say goodbye to them. And moreover, did they ever want to say goodbye to her? Her eyes burned. It was like she was hit by a truck from behind without warning, thrown up in the air and fell down on the bare ground from a hundred feet above. She hit the floor as blood oozed out of her, staining the grey road, deep red.

Githin met her outside the College as she stepped out of the gates. There was no one in sight to apologize to her ‘on behalf of anyone’; no one ‘to take responsibility for’ what happened to her; to give her a shoulder to cry on or a hand to hold onto. The road was empty and the area was deserted except for Githin who was the one who saw her last.   

A trickle of a tear escaped from my left eye and made its way to my cheek.

“I wish you wouldn’t forgive them.” I whispered to her.

And I turned back from her grave and as I did, I heard my brain repeat the lines I’d heard four years before.

“It’s just a job.. you’ll get another one.”

“What? You’re upset over losing a job? Come on. People don’t have enough to eat. What are you complaining for?”

“Really? Couldn’t sign? I mean, is it bad?”

“Ammu, I told you teaching is a stupid job. See? Why do you want this so badly anyway?”

I walked past the thorny bushes, trampling many sharp thorns under my bare feet. As I neared the gate, I saw a four-year-old me in petticoat waiting for her mother to dress her up. She danced on toes with excitement as the mirror was too high for her. She was beside herself with happiness as she would get to wear her grandmother’s saree to pre-school. She couldn’t clearly understand why. She just knew she would be acting like a teacher today for the fancy dress competition. Half an hour later she stood in a faded blue saree and a hang-me-down blouse before the mirror while her mother rammed her grandfather’s thick-rimmed black spectacles into her tiny face. Her father lent her a huge stick with which she made her presence in school. A stick in her left hand and a chalk in the right hand, she made her way onto the stage as I made my way outside the graveyard. I turned back to the grave one last time as I closed the worn-out gates. I wish I’d given her more love before she passed. I wish she didn’t have to pass either. But some people, the sooner they’re gone, the better for them. They receive better justice in the grave than when alive.

The four-year-old smiled widely at her audience and chanted,

“Gooooooood Moooornnniiiinnnggg Children….”

And as the audience comprising of all the parents and teachers of the pre-kg section chanted back good morning to her, I wrote on the wall of the grave, “In memory of Miss…”