"But I know where I am!"

The other day we, Laila, Ashraf and the scribe went for an evening walk along the picturesque by-pass road sprinkled with tea estates and trees practicing their own diet schedules. We told Ashraf, a non Malayalee student from Bangalore, jokingly, so as to lift the kid`s spirit up:

“We have kidnapped you! Nobody, not even your family knows where you are now….”
“But I know where I am!”
He replied with his angelic smile.

Photographed by Pooja Sheth

   

As I continued walking with my colleague and student I brooded on the sentence.

How many of us can confidently say ‘We know where we are”

How many of us are aware of the possibilities life has strewn all around?!

How many of us stop and stoop to pick a book from the dusty table, touch the soft petal of a dew kissed flower, marvel at the colored clouds of the evening sky?

And how many of us are happy and feel blessed to be alive on this blue pearl of a planet spinning majestically in the universe?

There are a lot of questions and it is sad there are less answers.

Can you see?

My math teacher, who solemnly held me for a true example of being the worst student in the class of 10^th, would meet the shock of his life if he was unfortunate to witness any one of my training sessions.

Only with trembling heart beats could I attend this teacher`s lessons.

“He is a bad example for all of you!”

He added fervently to my bench mate and a bright student in his standard:” if you continue to sit with him, you are going to spoil your life. Better escape!”

Self-esteem is the best asset any student can and should possess, I feel. I lost 50% of it in my math periods, but somehow balanced it with language and history classes.

I was a very introverted boy. Books were the best friends and continuous reading caused my vision to blur. Reading the chalk entries on black boards became an impossible task. Still I didn’t tell my family or friends about my problem. I couldn`t read the math equations and steps my teacher wrote on the board and naturally math lessons became living nightmares. All I could do was to copy my friend’s notebook. Whatever mistakes he made was mine too.

 My math teacher took a sadistic pleasure in tormenting me, especially in front of girls. He couldn’t identify the problem with my vision. He didn’t try to know why I was week in math; he didn’t give me a willing ear to listen to my problems in his subject.

This is the 15^th year of my life as a teacher. Almost all my classes I ask this question to my students:

“Can you see what I wrote on the board properly?”

"I looked, looked deep within...and I saw!!"

"You made me comfortable!"

And the two day intensive workshop for a group of teachers we organised in a public school in the neighboring district of Malappuram concluded with a touch of high optimism and many an eye sparkled with happiness. The climax was yet to come.

Session evaluation and experience sharing.

Expected, typical words of thanksgiving and joy. Then, it was the turn of Zeenath, the exuberant teacher, who missed day one of our session. She rose, shook hands with Laila and I firmly with the kind of a charming smile  possessed by the innocent only, looked deep, deep into our eyes and uttered these words: “You made me comfortable!” and then her eyes welled up and she cried. The cry of gratitude, tears of the marginalized and of the uncared one.

We were stirred beyond words, and wondered what did we gift this girl in such limited hours which should elevate her to such a state of intellect that she should open up and reward us with those wonderful words – You made me comfortable!

Yes, we made somebody comfortable! We gifted somebody self-esteem and courage to go ahead. We lent our hands to a pair of feeble hands so as to gather enough strength to embrace life. 

All the past 15 years of my life of chasing wild dreams came to a standstill as I received the greatest of the great medal that moment, when time froze and the key board of the piano got stuck, and the music rang in the air.
Zeenath made our day. She is an inspiration, a ray of light fallen unexpectedly from the cluster of dark clouds conspiring for a downpour

India Circle Education-Our Vision

Indian students are good in academics
But generally fail when life skills demand performance...
AFRC INDIA seeks remedies for Indian education maladies 
We Introduce India based training methodologies

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LCL - Language, an introduction

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For a multifaceted country like India, the link language English plays a vital role for nation building. However, except in metropolitan cities, the language is not widely used in a progressive manner. Majority of the students across the length and breadth of the nation do not learn the language in a systematic and scientific manner which may value add to their lives.

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