“Hey, is that you David?”
I had barely walked inside the gate and turned to latch it close when Mr. Varghese stepped out of his grill protected the wooden door. He could always recognize you, no matter how many kilograms you had gained, however different you try to shape your beard, or how much more (or less) your hair had grown.
“Hello Sir, How have you been?” I asked nervously, a sheepish smile on my face, instantly switching back to the pimple-faced teenager of eight years before. It is surprising how you can never completely grow out of the child inside you. It is a cliche, but perhaps for the right reasons. There are these subtle moments, air trapped inside specific contexts, when you feel that rush of the past, like a ringing bell inside your head. Everything seems eerily familiar – that feeling in your gut, be it elation or panic, and it would have been the same since you were six, ever since you could remember what feelings were.
Mr. Varghese Chacko, lovingly referred to as VC by his students, was a teacher of incredible talent and commitment. He taught High School Mathematics and he gave it his everything. In this time and age, when anything with the “knowledge” stamp on it is twisted and bent to squeeze out the last lazy penny, he was a Hero – unfazed, unperturbed and unwavering. The subject was hard as a dry nut, to begin with, and he chose the most difficult of human beings to preach it to – hormone-driven teenagers. Yet, he successfully dealt with it all, and for decades.
All was not rosy, for everyone at least, for a long time. VC was a strict disciplinarian, and meticulous in his methods of encouragement. Hushed whispers ran among his older pupils of yesteryear, about the times when he unleashed his fury on them for not being up to mark (or for trying their best to waste away their fortuitous intelligence and circumstances) His left hand was feared for its thunderbolts with the cane. Legends ran that when he was younger, he used to unleash his dog inside his gates, after about 0515 in the morning, for tuition scheduled at five, to discourage the late Lateefs, and castigated them the next day, for missing a lecture.
I proceeded to tell him how I was doing, what I have been planning to do in the future, and how work had been. Strictly academic and career-related topics. He wasn’t interested in many other things, and I have known him long enough to realize that he was a man who didn’t even comprehend faking interest in anything that didn’t capture one’s attention. I did digress, I could see his interest waning, and a couple of minutes into my discourse, he cut me off with totally unrelated news about one of his former students doing phenomenally well at Morgan Stanley. I dutifully smiled and listened, not to the Morgan Stanley genius, but at how passionate VC himself was, and how proud he was of his children.
Time had taken his toll on my master mathematician though. At a not-so-bad-age of sixty, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and a neural disease of that potency could bring down any man. Not VC though. He decided to spend fewer hours on trivial duties – he never mentioned what these were, I just assumed it was going to the church or something – and focused even more on his teaching. He would painstakingly write down all the assignments for his students, in his “tiny ant” writing – we would complain – but not after we saw him write on a piece of paper – holding the pen in itself was an act of penance. When schools and coaching centers had moved on to smart classrooms, he’d teach us in a small room with a blackboard and chalks – those were easier to hold in his shivering hands. Fate may have rolled its die, but the left part of his body had become afflicted; the same arm he used to thrash his students with, gave him the most pain.
In between all the tirade about how the Higher Education System in India is going to the dogs, he mentioned about his stint of teaching in … Africa. I stopped him mid-sentence, “Did you say Africa?”
“Oh yes, of course. Africa. Nigeria, to be precise! I hadn’t you told you this? Very good students, so hardworking…”
Apparently, when he was in his early twenties, teachers – especially school teachers, as is often the case in India, were dismally underpaid. He tried Mumbai, Delhi, and Calcutta, and still wasn’t satisfied with the living conditions that his education could get him. So when an opportunity to teach for a private school came up in Nigeria, he took it up. He admits, money triggered the move, but the champion that he was, he put all his heart into it. He recalls fondly how, he walked into a class of Nigerians, literally twice his height and width.
“Abdominals like a corrugated sheet!”, he says, eyes wide and palm rolled into a fist, as impressed as he was when a smart student returned an answer to a question in Algebra. “They were very strong, all of them. In the brain, and in brawn. After my first class, I was so scared. They asked so many questions. I didn’t know anything back then. I went to my colleagues. There were a couple of Indians, a few Pakistanis. They had been there for a while, they gave me their books, and I sat and learned all night. All of my college subjects, everything!” He guffawed like a child, amused at his own perceived idiocracy. He soon grew to become their favorite teacher too, he said, and I am sure he wasn’t lying or self-aggrandizing. To him, it was mere feedback – do my kids love me for the right reasons? He was not one for lavish praise or good words of encouragement. He would scold you, a sharp tap with a strong set of words – for being lazy. It was something he could not stand. Even when he was weak, and had problems with his health, he made it a point to come to class at 0430 and wait patiently for his first student. He’d encourage anyone who could stay back and clear any doubts, even the silliest. He put so much effort into each query, each concept, each person. When students were expected to be at the top of our game, he was working twice as hard as the toughest of us.
The above approach didn’t always win him fans though. In a low somber voice, he retold the story of how he was almost murdered by a bunch of Nigerians. “They were over 30 years old, some of the senior ones. They weren’t like our folks, David. They were here to learn something so that they could get a job. Very good students, but they came up from tough neighborhoods. Imagine. Imagine, a class of fifty pupils ….,” I chuckled internally, for this was his catchphrase – ‘Imagine’. Anything new that he wanted to teach us, he’d start with ‘Imagine’. “Imagine a quadrilateral… Imagine a set of numbers… Imagine a parabola…” Even when he was talking about generic things, “Imagine if you were settled into a satisfying job..”
“… a class of fifty people. Half of which are people about ten years older than you. I was in charge of the hostels too. It was a huge residential school. The nights were horrible. The bigger lads would beat up the younger ones. The young ones were from affluent families, you know? They had these intense senior-junior roles and rules. They would beat up the ones who’d resist. Once they brought in a young kid – bawling like anything. He was roughed up. Punched on the face, nose broken. Ears bleeding. I got so angry! Summoned them all. All the big boys. Got my belt out, then I thrashed them, left and right. They still wouldn’t stop. I had to do it for three days straight. I didn’t show any mercy. Anytime they hurt a smaller kid, all of them would get punished. Finally, they got the point. They wouldn’t talk to me in class, for a while. But I had to do something. They were all my kids. What could I do?” He looked away, eyes dreamy.
“But yeah. I think I was too young to understand the consequences. I pushed them too much. I began trying to make them all model students. I wouldn’t let them break any rules. They were middle-aged men, some with children. They would sneak out to get drunk. Some of the teachers would rat them out – it wasn’t a big place, you see. I would get them all in the next day. Kneel! I’d say. Did you drink, yesterday? None of them would say a word, and I would thrash them. Anyway, after a while, some of them took it to heart. Once they came in with hockey sticks and rods, to beat me in up, at my house. I was living right next to the hostel – I was the warden. Thankfully that day I had gone away for some reason. They were so mad, that they burnt the car that was parked outside my house. Just that it wasn’t mine!” He slapped his own face in mock fury, guffawed like a child, and continued. “But it was too dangerous. I didn’t know this directly, but they had come again a few more times. Somehow, something or the other happened and nothing untoward occurred. Some things, you wouldn’t even believe!”, he said with eyebrows raised, as if asking me to prompt him again.
I complied, for it was so endearing to see him, full of life. He grew in strength in the last one hour or so. Parkinson’s had taken its hold on him. He was moving his arms too much, involuntarily. His kneed seemed weak, his voice strained. Yet, there was this sparkle in his eyes. He looked at me, and probably saw, rightly, a life he had influenced immensely. I am thankful for that. For all that devotion and unsolicited love. “Like what, Sir?”
“So once – this was told to me later, alright? Many months later, by another Nigerian teacher. So some of these lads, they had reached their limits and decided to just thrash me properly. Properly! So they had come, wielding all their weapons and were quietly creeping up to my back door. Just before they could break open the door, they heard a hiss. Waiting just near my door, with its hood raised was a black-necked cobra. You know? Those cobras are called spitting cobras. They eject venom. Shoo!” He made a hood with his right hand and play-acted the deadly reptile. For a moment he looked like Jackie Chan from Karate Kid. It feels true when they say an old person acts so much like a child. A strange circle. You grow up giving no hoots about what others think of you, and you are so unperturbed by whatever is going on around you. Then you reach an age, where you are too conscious, and think at every step, and then eventually you grow older still and you end up realizing that no one really gave a hoot about anybody in the first place – your inner child is the most honest form of yourself. A screenshot of the moment would show a half-naked old man, telling a story to a young gentleman who was smiling sheepishly. The story had dangerous animals, it had emotion, the teller and the listener cared so much for each other. Even if he was eight, instead of eighty- the image would be perfect.
“They were all so perplexed. They ran for their lives. These lads were a superstitious lot, they began telling the rest of the school that I was a wizard or a black magician or some other nonsense. Anyway, they stopped beating up the kids and burning cars. I still left a few months later though, I wanted to come home!” He sighed and looked away, like a man re-running the best parts of his favorite movie.
Somehow I wanted to hug this man close, and tell him that he had shaped my life in so many ways. I wanted a picture with him – a selfie, the product of our times. It’s been a year almost since I saw him last, and in between, whenever I realized that it’s been a while since I have gone to see him, I decide to buy him a gift. No, I should take him out for a meal. Then I stalled – no, I’ll buy a book that I love, and get it signed by him and keep it for myself. I somehow could not bring myself to do any of this. I am neither lazy nor stingy. Maybe, deep inside I feel if I do something of that sort, it’ll bring about some finality to it. What if something happens to him, and I’d look back at that selfie and realize that it was the last time I was with him? I leave it trailing, like an unchecked box in a never-ending to-do list.
After I exchanged a few more words, and bid him goodbye, I stood outside the gate to look at him again. He was standing at the door, smiling blissfully and waving. As I wheeled around to face the world again, there was a spring in my step – I felt stronger. My teacher stood majestic behind me and I realized he was what I always wanted to be – a man smiling at the future he had created by his sheer will and determination, with pride.
-Sr Ja
Besharam bevakoof badtameeZ 