Fiction & Nonfiction

When a door closes…

As an eighteen-year-old girl, getting admission into a college for me was a dream coming true. I was on cloud nine, when my dad took me to the college to see to admission formalities.

I fell in love with the beautiful campus dotted with greenery and fresh flowerbeds. The thought that I would be a part and parcel of this aesthetic milieu was quite thrilling to say the least. I caught sight of the bustle and hustle of students going to classes, meeting old friends and making new ones, with a cheery greeting here and a jovial pat there on the shoulder.

Next day, I met the professor prior to my special English class, who advised me to be brave and friendly among other things. My nervousness decreased somewhat.

The class was in session and there I was standing at the door, a hesitant teen looking lost till the teacher said, “Come in.”
Thirty pairs of eyes scrutinized me as I rushed in and sat in the first row much to the discomfiture of the girl sitting there.  You see, we had those long benches and desks in classes unlike the modern arrangement, where each student has a separate desk and chair.

The lecture continued. Others classes followed one after the other till four in the afternoon with an hour’s lunch break.

Within a couple of weeks, I got well used to the timetable and made friends with a number of boys and girls of my class.

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There were classes I couldn’t wait to attend and there were a few that dragged.

That apart, there was an incident I could single out, a bit unexpected and upsetting.

Most of us loved the poets of The Romantic Age such as Coleridge, Keats, Byron and Shelley. To my dreamy eyes, even the teacher looked like Christabel, the central character in Coleridge’s lovely, romantic poem of the same title.

My problem was to communicate my thoughts on a particular topic during discussion. Mrs. Jaffry, our special English lecturer formed a rather unflattering opinion like judging a book by its cover, about my level of learning. She tried to persuade me to change over to some other easier group like History. She had no idea of the passion and love I had for English. I felt quite disappointed. But my commitment to the chosen group, survived. Years later, when I reflected on the incident, I felt that instead of dampening my enthusiasm, she could have given me some guidelines regarding how to improve my language skills.

In later years, when I worked in a college, this particular experience helped me in understanding similar problems faced by students in the Language class. Let me mention the fact that English is a foreign language in India, where I come from. So we needed to go that extra mile to do well in it. It could be easy with a few tips or guidelines such as suggesting suitable books on the topic, giving some exercises to help develop the right awareness, making recommendations to brush up grammar if needed etc.

I was glad that I was able to change her opinion in later sessions, once I got the hang of how to think and talk about a poet or his work.

Let me tell you about some really serious problems we faced during that year.

One of the toughest professors was a middle aged man named Mr. Dutta. His lectures made no sense to most of us. They were above our heads. The frequent change of pitch made his pronunciation go astray. In addition, he would stamp loud on the wooden dais and his voice often used to get lost in the ensuing noise. He also had an irritating habit of going round the class and in between the isles, breathing down our necks or peeking into our notes. All of a sudden he would point a finger at one of us and ask a point blank question, “Can you explain this line?”

He taught us Linguistics. Grim’s Law was really grim and Otto Jespersen’s Great Vowel Shift was a tough one to digest. And he was unapproachable. He looked down on us like we were mere mortals, while he was a demigod born to rescue us from whatever hell we were burning in. Yes, he treated us scathingly, let alone respecting.

He was as unpredictable as he was incomprehensible. We were too scared to talk to him outside the classroom. We couldn’t clear our doubts if we had any.

There was another senior professor, who taught us Modern English, Paper one, which dealt with Shakespeare and his contemporaries like Christopher Marlowe, Bacon and others.

The problem with this suited and booted proper English-looking professor was his excessive scholarship. I cannot forget his classes on Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” because we hardly got a clear understanding of the characters with their own inner struggles. They were psychological studies. We couldn’t fathom their internal problems. The professor’s voice boomeranged in the hall. He had put too much emphasis on certain lines such as “a man whose blood/ is very snow broth.” Help us God, we prayed.

No study groups were in existence to self train at that time. None of us was brilliant enough to explain Old English texts such as Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” or understand the intricacies in T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land.

We needed someone sympathetic, someone who would throw light on developing insight into the classical texts of English Literature.

Exams started creeping on like the proverbial tortoise that moved at a steady pace. At this rate, we thought we would surely fail the exam. So how did we keep afloat in these dire straits?

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Here’s how it was.

We spoke to our parents and uncles on both sides. I understood they faced problems of their own. When things got tough they relied on the library or borrowed notes from their seniors. The other option was learning by rote, of all the things! How could anyone memorize text books and long notes?  How long would a person last outside the college independently without understanding the deeper meanings and allusions of a given text? Would memorizing be really helpful, I mean in a deep and fundamental way? Not really.

Then, there was a windfall. It came in the guise of dad’s friend Mr. Mahadevan. It was his daughter that came to our rescue. She was a senior lecturer in another college. Ten of us went to meet her at her residence. We introduced ourselves to her. She listened to our grievances attentively. Without much fuss she gave us a head start.

She chalked out a timetable. We were to meet her after our college hours at five in the evening for two or three hours depending on the paper she talked on or made us work on.

Till today, that was the best study session we ever experienced in our entire college life. The color and quality of our lives changed ever since she, I mean Mrs. Lakshmi Shivaraman started coaching us.

Our routine was rigorous. Each week, she dealt with a different paper. She gave us handouts, which she wrote and printed at her home a day earlier so we could prepare for the ensuing lecture. She gave us homework and made us prepare charts of different kinds for all the topics. We had fun preparing the “tree of English Literature”.

She recommended a list of books for us to peruse. Often, she accompanied us to the library to help us search for books we needed and showed how to read at different levels. Reference work, she said, was the backbone of in-depth studies.

Each Sunday, she gave us tests both written and viva voce. She made it a rule to speak in the class so we could shed stage fear and develop ability to communicate effectively. It was a fun-filled period of serious studies. We were eternally grateful to Lakshmi Shivaraman. We can never pay back for what she gave us. Can teachers be ever paid back, particularly by the students?

True, it sounds like a movie. The saying that truth is stranger than fiction was one hundred percent true in our context.

At the end of three months, class room lectures at the college were sheer joy. We were able to ask our lecturers sensible questions, sometimes to their chagrin. We got them answering and what is encouraging was that they started taking more interest in our questions and were ready to tackle them much to our delight. We won their respect I dare say, of course by the hard way, the only way.

Getting a great rank was no longer an issue with us. What we wanted was to be thorough with the subject. Isn’t that what true learning means?

In retrospect, I realized that a good teacher is as important as a curious student. Teachers are that rare group of individuals who open the windows of knowledge for the students. In other words, they shape their characters. A positive atmosphere dwells in an environment where sympathetic and learned teachers and students, who pay attention to learning process, interact.


Word Count: 1527

Written for Not Just Another Brick In The Wall, a contest hosted by K5Rakitan

Placed First Runner Up(15000 gps) in the contest, January 19, 2023

Thank you K5Rakitan !