When Assam’s former director general of police, Mukesh Sahay, visited a government school in 2016, he may not have known he’d find himself there again just two years later.
Nearing the end of his 34-year stint, Sahay was particularly bothered by the absence of a permanent mathematics teacher at Guwahati’s Sonaram Higher Secondary School. So bothered, that he was moved to do something about it.
Luckily for the 124-year-old school, Sahay now takes two maths classes a day for 11th and 12th grade students. But not all students are so lucky. At least, I and my peers at a school in West Bengal weren’t.
Born and raised in the dusty town of Ranaghat, located around 80 kilometres from Kolkata, my parents had only one option when it came to schooling. I vividly remember my first day at school. No no, I didn’t cry!
In fact, I was happy that day, simply because my school gave me two colourful bags. One painted light blue and the other grey, I think. My school’s name was written prominently on the bag, followed by ‘English Medium’ – words that gradually became an instant source of pride and status.
“O English Medium E Pore, English E kotha bole (He goes to an English-medium school and even converses in the same language),” my grandmother would boast to guests and distant relatives.
The Many Maths Teachers in My Life
Even though mine was the only English-medium school within a radius of 30 kilometres, my mother would be constantly scouting for private English tuition teachers. Sometimes at my own home, sometimes in the living-room-cum-tution-room of ‘tuition teacher aunty’.
The other subject I had ugly dreams about, was Maths. I loathed and feared it. And not just me, most of my classmates too. I look back today and realise, at the root of our collective nightmare was this – we never had a permanent Maths teacher.
In class six, Maths was taught by the Chemistry teacher Ms Abraham, who would change two trains and travel for over an hour to reach the school from Bandel, a town 50 kilometres away. Although there was a Maths teacher, Mr Ghosh, he was there for the senior classes. We were ‘beneath’ him, perhaps.
I don’t remember much about the seventh grade, but what transpired in the eighth grade was a bit like musical chairs !
First we were taught Maths by Mr Kumar, who was also originally a Chemistry teacher. And he too, came all the way from Bandel. But soon, Mr Kumar left and Mr Biswas joined. But Mr Biswas couldn’t teach for long, as he simply could not express himself. Why this disability wasn’t spotted when he gave his job interview, I will never know. Then came another teacher, who was with us so briefly that I don’t even remember her name!
Finally, sensing a crisis, the school managed to get hold of Mr Ghosh, who had left a year earlier. Mr Ghosh ran through the syllabus like the Howrah Express, many of us grasped little or nothing, and ran for cover in after-school hours to our various ‘tuition-teacher aunties’!
Which did not help much, as a result of which, I failed in Maths in eighth grade. Some consolation, two of my friends, Rohit and Rahul, better than me at Maths, failed too. Ha!!
Finally, No Maths, Stable Teachers & Happy Memories
All three of us failures, finally gave up on Maths in ninth grade and opted for commerce instead.
Commerce turned out better for me. We were taught by Mr Donald, who had left an international bank in Kolkata and returned to his roots in Ranaghat. Suddenly we had a teacher who could explain core concepts coolly, and Maths became a receding nightmare.
And get this, with Mr Donald, came his dad, Mr Dennis, who had also recently retired from a reputed Kolkata school, and so, English Literature too, fell in place. We even put up Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’ for our school’s Annual Day, and hey, lend me your ears, I got to play... Mark Anthony! Namesake!
English Grammar: A Granny I Never Had
But Mr Dennis could not solve my grammar problems. Our English Language teachers were chronically pretty English-challenged themselves. So were the ‘Tuition teacher aunties’. Only, I didn’t know that. And found out the hard, embarrassing way.
I was in Class 11 now. On a hot day by the pool at my cousin’s Kolkata residence, I was ‘outed’, mocked endlessly for mis-pronouncing the word ‘ancestors’ as ‘an-chest-ors.’ It hurt.
I had relocated to Kolkata for Class 11 because my school in Ranaghat only went uptil tenth grade. When I made a mistake as basic as repeatedly writing ‘i’ instead of ‘I’, my teacher asked if I knew I was making a mistake. I said honestly, that I didn’t. She just smirked and asked me to sit down. That hurt too.
And then, my cousin pointed out that its not ‘say me’ but ‘tell me.’ She was in seventh grade! Hurt, hurt hurt.
I used all the ‘hurt’ to motivate me, and got 89% in English in my 12th boards, but frankly, even as I write this blog today, somewhere in my heart, I’m still afraid that my grammar could embarrass me. And of course, I’m glad I continue to stay far far away from that ogre called Maths!
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