Still looking for you, Sr Remegia !

A Merut University Teacher is making News these days. She was involved in a murky game of sex, sleaze and money, or so it seems. Her profession as a Teacher seems to everyone my generation a bit incongruous to her end and how it came. I really wish Teachers came with a lifelong guarantee of remaining in that castle full of glory where kids keep them. Yesterday was Christmas and when Ruhi woke up in the morning she laid claim to the gift under her baby brother’s pillow along with her own since the damn gift was kept in the other foot of her own pair of socks. I told Ruhi that Santa couldn’t make out her socks from Rayyan’s since it was so dark in the room. She believed me. She also believes all that Neena Ma’m her Kindergarten teacher tells her. Sometimes she believes Neena ma’m more than she believes me. I wish that would never never change.

I was a child that you could easily not notice in class. And those days when dull and quiet kids went to hell I really didn’t make it to the approval of any of my teachers in school. Except maybe just a few who remained in the fairy tale that I weaved of my own.

As far back as memory takes me I recall my first teacher was Sister Jane. She was short and very thin. Someone who I now would say had ‘malyalee’ looks. She was soft spoken and very kind to me. Though I remember no act of kindness but I do recall my obsession with her and her great importance in my rather unhappy life as a child. She was transferred to another school and it broke my heart more than others. For several years I wrote letter to her which were sometimes replied to in a letter that would be addressed to all of us mentioning every name…I also recall that every morning all 35 of us were inspected for clean nails, polished shoes, neat hair and ironed uniform. The clumsiest 2 kids were made to stand inside the two tin dustbin boxes on either sides of the blackboard in front of the class. I was a regular in that dust bin along with a motherless boy called Andre Simon. He had pointed yellow teeth and hair that looked like hay. He was so dirty always. I think I stood in the other bin since my shoes were never polished and my socks were soiled. Why did mom had to be so ill always.

The other teacher that I remember was the South Indian Maths teacher in Class 4. Her husband was Dad’s boss in his office and I was particularly bad at Maths. I recall accompanying dad to her house and her making filter coffee for us in a dark and bare room. She had told Dad that I was a “Dream Girl’ and that I would be lost in thought through her class always staring out of the window and completely oblivious to what was being taught….her comment stayed with me. I took it as a compliment…being a dreamer was important in my sad, gray world. And there was so much to see out of that huge window overlooking the school playground and the endless fields beyond…

A really big Sri Lankan woman taught us music. And we would stand in a file like prisoners waiting for the gallows and one by one she would summon us to the Piano and off she went ‘ Do Re Me Fa So La Te Do…..” with each and every child. Her house was so bright and full of sunshine. Wonder why I went to her house though…

When I reached the 9th standard, my class teacher was Sr Remegia. She also taught Biology. Tall and graceful with strong features and black rimmed glasses. I think she was taller than all the men. She was the antithesis of all the other nuns who seemed frail and vulnerable even if they were fat and big. Sr Remegia was strong like a man, opinionated, she could hurt with her tongue and she laughed without a care. Not quite a nun’s behavior. Our favorite gossip those days used to be that maybe she had a short bob of a hair cut under her veil. It seemed most nuns tied theirs in a bun. It was said that she joined the order since she had a broken heart and that the man she loved got married to someone else. She fascinated me. I was madly in love with her and pined for her for many months when she left for Nainital. She came back next year as our Principal. What joy it was. We would sit with her and discuss grown up stuff like relationships and skin problems! A lot us had just about started getting pimply then and I remember she used to say: scrub your face with soap and water and do nothing else! She was never a prude like all the other nuns, we could be ourselves with her.

A few months after we passed out of school and I had come to Delhi since Dad took a transfer, I was told that she eloped with her childhood sweetheart and that the school forbids any enquiries about her. We never again heard of her. Every now and then I google for her. She is never quite off my mind yet…