Life’s lessons

A while ago I was thinking about my old principal. I haven’t seen her for a long, long time — don’t even remember how many years it has been. Though, I remember when I sat with her for a long time, for the last time.

She’s one among few persons I’ve learnt lessons from. I’m not talking about “study” lessons, but lessons that teach you how one should lead life. We rarely agreed because of our religious differences but still, even till today she remains one of my favorite teachers.

About the last time we sat together…

Twenty days prior to this meeting I had been “expelled” from the school for cheating twice in my class tests; I was in 10th standard. I can write a long psychoanalysis of why I did that, but out of those two incidents of cheating, the first one was untrue and the second one was true. I cheated the “second” time because I hadn’t cheated the first time…it’s a long story. The first time when I hadn’t cheated (but the substitute teacher thought I had) I was “pardoned” by the teachers and was made to say sorry to the substitute teacher by my class-teacher, which was quite humiliating. The second time when I actually cheated, I was sent to the principal’s office, where a panel of 3-4 teachers including my class-teacher (whom I trusted and loved deeply) and my principal was waiting for me. I can justify the events that lead to this predicament, but, I’m ashamed to say that, I cannot justify the events that followed, no matter how solid the litany of excuses I can put forth.

I kept lying till the end of the meeting. I told them there was great difficulty at home so I couldn’t study. I told them that one of my sisters was sick so I couldn’t concentrate…and all sorts of other bullshit. All of them had known me since my childhood so they knew I was lying (ironically, even though my class teacher had known me since my childhood, she believed the substitute teacher and made me apologize to her when I was “caught cheating” for the first time). I can lie to a lie-detector now, but at that time I must’ve been pathetic at lying. I was expelled.

There was no other school I could go to at such a short notice. Ever since I had started studying in the real sense I had studied in that school. My teachers, my mother and my friends had great expectations from me because I was the first and the only student of the school (I studied in a special school) sitting for the board exams. There had been a Herculean effort put by me and my teachers to bring me to a stage where I could give the exams (in one year I jumped 4 classes…another long story). What would my mother say? How would she get me admitted to a “normal” school? It was already October and the exams were to be in March. Would I miss the entire year? Would all the effort of jumping the four classes in order to save the lost years go down the drain? A whirlpool of confusion roared inside my brain and before I could know it, I was feigning my own fainting and hence hit the nadir of my self-respect.

All the children were sent home and I was taken to a separate room. They had an idea that I was just feigning it. A male teacher almost gorged my eyes out in order to cause me enough pain (in order to make me open my eyes — I didn’t) by pressing his both thumbs against my eyebrows and was stopped by my class-teacher just in the nick of time. To cut the long story short, I was “revived” after an effort of half-an-hour. A taxi was called for me (“Let his mother pay for it,” I still remember someone saying). I was too jittery to walk, so I was put on a wheelchair, and my principal started pushing it from behind. This is the time she gave me a very crucial lesson:

Pali, whenever you do something, always be ready to face the music.

All my old friends and teachers address me by my pet name.

Maybe at that time I didn’t understand the complete context because I was too disturbed, but this was one of the most valuable lessons I have been delivered by anyone.

The lesson has seen me through thick and thin. It made my accountable for my own conduct and hence instilled great strength into me. It’s not that after that day I never indulged in “adventures”, but from then onwards, whenever I did something, I took the full responsibility and never put the onus on other people. Feeling responsible is a great feeling. It makes you weigh the pros and cons, and helps you evaluate the consequences more subjectively because you know somewhere you went wrong and you don’t want that happening again. It might sound a bit strange, but I’m glad that that incident happened.

Coming back to that last meeting…

The expulsion was just to give me a jolt. My mother had started preparing me for the open school exams when we received a letter from the school that I could join back. I didn’t want to, but my mother insisted that I should, and I think she was right.

I felt like a pariah when I reached the school. The children had been told not to talk to me, and the teachers and the attendants too only approached me when it was extremely necessary. Desperate to go back home, I was aimlessly going through my course book when my principal knocked at my door (I was the only student in the 10th class and hence had been assigned a separate room) and asked me if she could come in. She put a burning candle on my desk and sat on the opposite chair.

“I know you don’t like praying,” she said, “but I’ve been praying for you all these days. I know it is not totally your fault that we are witnessing this complete moral collapse inside you. You never get to sit in the right company. I know how stressful life has been of late. Still, how could you do that knowing well you had to set an example for the other children? They were all, we were all looking up to you…”

Her long talk made me sad, extremely sad, because I was certainly not what she thought I was turning out to be. There was no moral collapse inside me and all my values were intact. There had been this strange phase, but it was over. I was back to be the Amrit people admired. I wondered how she had forgotten all my hard work. She was judging me on the basis of merely a few days that could have easily been termed as an aberration, an aberration triggered by an unfair implication by a substitute teacher, an aberration caused by the lack of trust my class-teacher had shown in me.

Well, I was touched by her concern, and I believe, no matter what were her notions, she was really concerned for me and wanted me to come back to the righteous path. That was the last time we sat together and talked. And I think it was the last time I properly talked to anybody in the school. I never felt close to my friends who had turned total strangers when they were told not to talk to me. I could never be my natural self with the teachers. There was always this invisible wall between us. Something had broken permanently, and I felt nobody wanted to mend it. I tried, but got no positive response.

There was another lesson that I leant at that time: no matter what you do, normally, your family and very close friends mostly stand by you, and therefore, they are invaluable. After the initial shock, my mother (she was a teacher in a government school) immediately contacted some of her colleagues and they all decided I should appear for the exams independently. On the other hand, all those teachers who had worked so hard with me all those years took no time becoming total strangers. My school friends never tried to contact me secretly just to communicate any sort of feeling. They just told me that had been told not to talk to me. Although sometimes we meet and talk, I have never been able to wash off the stains of those few months.

To use the clichéd phrase, so much water has flown from under the bridge: it’s been 20 years. Small things sometimes can damage years of relations. I studied in that school for 7 years, and in just 20 days, all bonhomie and goodwill vanished as if it had never been there. All those teachers have grown old, but a mere sight of them opens the floodgates of the memories of those last months I spent under their frosty tutelage.