By the time I had stepped into my adolescence, I assumed myself to be a know-all, seen-it-all grown-up. It was the effect of being an Army brat who had travelled to the remotest corners of India and studied in five different schools already. Kendriya Vidyalaya, Missamari, in Sonitpur district of Assam was my sixth school and my first KV.
Missamari was a small, sparsely populated village. The name, agreed all the local kids, was derived from pronouncing “Miss Mary” in the local sing-song dialect. The story of this obscure, mythical “Miss Mary” was something no one agreed on, though. It was gruesome, romantic, tragic, twisted or funny depending on who narrated it.
I had thought KV, Missamari, which I joined in Class 7 in 1986, would be just another school — another set of teachers, another bunch of classmates, just some more people who were ships that passed in the night, people who would never remember each other again. In all honesty, I still don’t remember many of my classmates or teachers.
However, each day in the KV turned out to be an interesting experience. The students were a bizarre blend of the local and the Army kids from all over India. Sports was the most revered and popular subject; you were nobody if you didn’t excel at some sport. The teachers were particularly quirky. There was the Science teacher who would give us the silent treatment if we didn’t answer a quick question and the Math teacher who would holler Nalayak! Tumhe itna bhi nahi aata? Jaake Gabru nadi mein apna sar dibo ke aa, if someone went wrong with a sum. I sniggered or slept through most of the classes, till it came to Hindi. That subject was the one I abhorred, because that was one class in which I had been consistently jeered at for my South Indian accent. The first few Hindi classes at KV went without incident. Then the day came when the Hindi teacher asked me to stand up and read aloud a poem.
This teacher was, to my eyes, the typical North Indian from the Hindi belt. He wore a dhoti and kurta with a shawl, had beads on his wrist and a long red tikka on his forehead. He was the exact kind of person who would walk up to an innocent little South Indian kid playing around the corner and shout Abey hat, Madrasi ke bachche … like some of the “uncles” and “aunties” I’d known did sometimes. In short, he was the type to be avoided at all costs.
I stood up with the unopened Hindi text book in hand, fumbled to the page number that he repeated, and began in an unusually low and quivering voice. Jor se (louder)..,” said the teacher, firmly, and so I started off again. “Fool, kaantien….,” I recited, and instantly the class burst into twitters and hoots, just as I had expected. I closed my eyes and waited for the rebuke.
There was ominous silence from that side, a silence that made my classmates quiet down too. “Pha,” said the Hindi teacher, “you must bite down on your lower lip and say pha not fa. See how the letter pha is written, it is half pa. Repeat after me, bachcha, say phool. After a shocked second, I found my tongue. phool, I said almost perfectly. “Good,” he said. “Look at the letters and understand them before you read them. All right? So, where in South India are you from?” I smiled at him tentatively and blurted out, “From Kerala, sir.”
He turned to the rest of the class, “This child comes from a State whose language is also derived from Sanskrit but is much tougher than Hindi. She will easily learn Hindi, but can any of you try to learn her language? Jab tumse hogaa, tab iss pe hasna (When you do learn her language, you can laugh at her)” The class turned to me in wonder, but my eyes were unblinkingly focussed on the Hindi teacher. “Sit down,” he said, “study the poem at home and read it again in class tomorrow.”
I don’t know if any of my classmates remember this, but I was not mocked the next day when I read the complete poem in class. I was never again ridiculed for my Hindi because I worked to gain a decent command over the language I had thought was my enemy.
I have forgotten that Hindi teacher’s name but the lessons I learned from him remain with me: I understood I still had a lot to learn, that I was the prejudiced, blind person, that every person is different, and that difference is to be celebrated and respected and that no subject is beyond an enthusiastic student’s grasp. Above all, I learned about kindness — the best quality in a human being.
I still try to be kind to strangers… And I still search for that kindness in strangers…
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