Don’t feel shy, feel at home, and have a…!!!

When I was a student of Higher Secondary which is now Ten +1 in 1966, I still remember the versatile teacher, I mean, he could teach any subject despite basically being a Drawing Teacher. He is still alive and often blessed when I touch his feet when meeting face to face or happen to visit in his office in the school; his son is running under his supervision.

He had several qualities and any old student like me can pen down several pages. He is still witty as he was during school time. He used to support us, I mean, a group of few students of his liking, whenever bunked the particular period on our excuse of having sent us by him for some particular work.

He used to take tuition at his home in those days, not that we were weak in subjects but just to enjoy his company besides becoming more intelligent about the main subjects – English and Maths.

Today, after a month, I had gone upstairs to enjoy the cool weather, during the lockdown period, I felt as if I was in a lockup or a part of the Big Boss house for 90 days. I just dragged the two chairs, one to sit on it and the other to keep my legs stretched to relax. Later on, I thought of putting the mobile on timer mode on the other chair to click me, to keep today’s pic of lockup as a memory in one of my folders on my laptop.

What I did on the roof for half an hour was – exercise for 15- minutes, mobile scrolling of screen for about 10 minutes with just one tweet to a senior officer from whom sometimes I get a response and just 5 minutes sitting with closed eyes to have a look at the flashback memories. Another thing I did was to put water in the empty pot kept for the flying birds, which had not been filled, say from the day of lockdown. I felt as if the empty pot was cursing at me for not coming to the office for a full month, never thinking that the birds must be feeling thirsty and decided to do this practice at least daily.

Frankly speaking, with this in mind that every adversity has some blessings, had I not gone upstairs today, this thought would not have come to my mind. How far I continue this practice of pouring the water in the pot, when the practice was discontinued, only time will tell. The real thought that came to my mind about my teacher was – his style of teaching the English translation from Hindi. He used to say first in Hindi – sharmaeay matt – don’t feel shy, apna hi ghar samajhiya – feel at home, aur chai ka pyala pijaye – and have a cup of tea, which he used to pick and sip in the last while saying this. Dedicating this blog to my teacher, I feel pleased to be a student of – SPC Ji – May He live long!