LIFE AND LIES #77 | The English Teacher

When we are young, the world is full of possibilities. We can do anything, and become anything. We antagonise anyone who even hints at thinking otherwise about us. It's probably why most of us have a story to tell where the villain was a school teacher. Even I do.

I don’t remember exactly how I ended up in the Headmaster’s cabin that day. All I remember is that back then I blamed my House Master for it. It wasn’t just me who had bunked the STD XII Pre-Board exams. There were many. But he made a scapegoat out of me. And the moment, I set foot inside the cabin, I received a big slap from the Headmaster. My ears rang. But that wasn’t the worst thing that happened that day. The Headmaster instructed him to call my father.

Tell him to come or his son would be rusticated.

I wasn’t a notorious student. I was good in my studies and had no disciplinary complaints against me. Had this incident not occurred, I would have completed my schooling in a few months with a clean record. My father didn’t deserve this. I studied in a military school, 120 kilometres away from home. Still, he managed to reach the school the next morning, not by bus as he usually did, but on a bike with a friend. Such was his urgency.

And there I was, once again, standing in the Headmaster’s cabin, trying very hard to be swallowed by the ground beneath me. But it didn’t work. I stood there while my father apologised for my fault. My father thought the world of me as a son, but then he had to listen to what the Headmaster had to say about me.

Your son will never achieve anything in life.

It was the most humiliating experience of my life. But I did not feel a hint of remorse. Instead, I was seething with anger, but not at the Headmaster. For him, it was business as usual. I was pissed at my House Master. He could have easily saved me from all this. At that moment, I resolved that one day, after achieving something great in life, I’d return to school and meet him. “Show him” was the phrase commonly used by my peers back then.

The school organised an Alumni Meet every year, but I never went. The moment never felt right, be it my Graduation or MBA years or even after I got a job. But last year, I returned to school after 12 years. I had just published my first book – a collection of poems and short stories in English. There could not have been a better moment to return to the same place where my dream of becoming a writer began. If I could meet my teenage self, he would have applauded me for my achievement, and told me that I was finally ready to “show him”.

However, just as most people never meet their heroes, some people never meet their villains. I found out that my House Master was no more. He had passed away sometime back because of COVID. It made me realise how inconsequential all of it was. A teenager thought that the world revolved around him. It didn’t. The man wasn’t just my House Master, but a husband and father too. Come to think of it, even during my school days, he was nothing short of a legend. An alumnus of the school, he had cleared NDA and even spent a year there. But he had left behind everything to marry the love of his life and returned to the same school he had passed out of to become a teacher. Before becoming my House Master, he was my English Teacher for five years.

I remember him delivering a speech on our Farewell night. Despite my anger at him, I liked some things he said: "In all my years spent in this school, I have seen a lot of old students visiting. But they are mostly Commanders and Colonels. But I’m saying this to you. It doesn't matter what you end up doing in your life. This school is yours. Do visit."

Then at the end of the ceremony, while he was handing over mementos to everyone, he addressed me directly. It wasn't exactly an apology. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, "I hope everything is alright between us."

Yes, Sir. It is.

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