Memories in chalk

Decades later, my daughters walked the same corridors.

Apart from the technical bottlenecks associated with virtual teaching, it is indeed a challenge to hold the attention of the students without the usual walking around the classroom or throwing a chalk piece at the sleepy student! The chalk piece takes me down memory lane. 

Nearly four decades after leaving the hallowed precincts of the school run by the Good Shepherd Convent, I find it surprising that vivid memories of the tender years spent there come back rushing as my mind wanders there nostalgically.

It was a jolly potpourri of boys and girls up to the seventh, and after that it was strictly a “girls only” school till the tenth. The boys were packed off to another school run by the convent. The quality of teaching was excellent, with individual attention being liberally paid, more than necessary at times for us naughty teenagers.

The school had spacious halls and high-roofed ceilings that created an aura of space all around. The dignity exuded by the teachers and nuns was impeccable. Each one was diligent and hard-working. It was a great moment when a teacher singled out any of us to run an errand, like fetching books from the teachers’ common room. 

I remember dear Miss Shyamala, who was our Hindi teacher. Her health constraints notwithstanding, she taught excellent language. She always wore a white cotton sari with a thin coloured border. She was frail-looking, but her strength lay in directing a chalk piece at a naughty student. We would share a light moment with her when she would look at her watch and say, “Go child, go ring the bell! Francis (the attendant) must have dozed off!”

One of her earlier students had gone on to become our social studies teacher – Miss Meera. She was benign, a bit lazy too, but we loved her because of her leniency. Her way of punishing an errant student would be to get her locker cleaned in the teachers’ common room during lunch break. Moody that she was, one day she would actively take us on a vibrant virtual tour of the continents, whereas on some other days the geography class would turn into a plain reading class. Our young minds took all her nuances in their strides as we adored her for her signature smile and nightingale voice with which she sang for us on special occasions. 

When I enrolled my two daughters in the very same school decades later, I was thrilled that Miss Meera was to teach them too. I remember she treated me like a friend then and bared open her personal life experiences. Over the years I got to learn that both the aforementioned beloved teachers were no more, and my heart wept, but their memories have never faded.