Tuition Teacher

              Maybe I should reconsider my decision of thinking about teaching career.  Deeply frozen in thoughts, I looked up to her assuming her smile to be vicious.

              “I do not get you sir. Can you please explain clearly?” I was getting uncomfortable and she was enjoying it. I was explaining the photoelectric effect to her and she looked unconvinced right from the beginning. I took my mobile phone out and turned its torch light on and pointed to an empty metal chair.

            "Do you see the light on the chair Jothi?" I asked her and got a positive nod in reply. "Now when this light falls on the metal, some very tiny materials come out and you call them the electrons". She was about to open her mouth when i said "Don’t ask me where they are? They are very tiny and you cannot see them with your naked eyes”

            I looked at her face and she looked disinterested. I thought about Hari. He was a sweetheart and never troubled me with intruding questions about the in-depth concepts of physics. He was obviously a meritorious student and his mother was sweet too until one day she told me that Hari had got low grades handing over the tuition fee. I assured her that he will get good grades in his forthcoming term exams and she gave a sweet look which said that she did not believed me.

          After the completion of the tuition course, I was referred by Hari's mother to Jothi’s mother and I had to agree for thousand bucks a month and I knew it was very little because of the fact that the city's tuition masters were earning a large sum on par with the IT guys. The thousand rupees were pretty less for a college going guy who was taking part time home tuitions for the judge quarters kids but that was very generous of them to appoint me as the physics teacher though they knew that I was in my final year bachelors degree but it was the time when it was difficult to find home tuition teachers.         

        Three weeks into the course, I was not getting well with Jothi. She would ask questions with much sincerity but wouldn’t care about the answers. She had a pretty sister of my age but her mother announced her as my sister on the first day by saying "Bring coffee for Anna (brother) ma" I was somehow losing interest in going to that home but I was saying to myself that I had to fight these odds if I’m serious about planning a teaching career plus those thousand bucks meant a lot to me.

      I have to find more kids for tuitions to save some money for my masters. Maybe I should ask Jothi's mother to refer her neighbors.  The fried chicken curry smell from the roadside food shop did invite me but I needed money for the weekend outing and ignored the smell. I saw Stalin, my school buddy walking down the road. After getting all those nostalgic feelings, he was saying that he dropped out of his engineering course and was quite happy with the call-centre job and earns a handful of money. "You must find job there too buddy. It’s cool. Good looking girls, weekend boozes and a lot of money. Come to office tomorrow and I’ll get you a job there and we don’t need your shitty degree by the way" Stalin said and left.   

      The Satan in denims, I thought, but he definitely made a point. Fifteen thousand rupees, I will earn this money only if I work for 6 years as a teacher when I can get this if I join a call centre now. I reached the judge quarters and there were cops all the way as usual. I walked to the elevator when one cop stopped me. I always feared the cops from my childhood; there was something scary about their khaki color uniforms. He was questioning me when Jothi came there and said," What’s wrong? He is my tuition master “. The cop (security, whatever) said "Sorry sir, I’m new here, you can go please" and opened the elevator door for me. For one moment I was proud on being respected for my profession and Jothi looked like a sweet little angel to me.     

        I smiled at Jothi and was about to start thermodynamics when she asked me about solid-state physics and she looked proud when I said I didn’t knew the answer but will find out for her. Her mother wanted to have a talk with me and I thought it was going to be about her low grades. I can only teach physics, I cannot whisper the answers in the exam hall getting invisible , I thought.

      “Sir, it’s like Jothi’s grade are not well in math “said Jothi’s mother. Oh its math! certainly not my problem.  She continued “So I was thinking if you could take mathematics also for her. You see, we cannot find a teacher for mathematics and I can give you additional thousand rupees for that”. She should be kidding; I’m not going to kiss that vampire again. Math was always an problem for me from my school days and now she is telling me to teach mathematics to Jothi. I said “Madam, I hardly have time for physics tuition and cannot go for additional hours and moreover mathematics will involve lot of time.” She had a readymade reply, “The problem is that we cannot waste time by having two tuitions at two different places. My husband told me that his friend’s son owns an institute where they teach all subjects including math and physics”.

      Smart blackmail Jury’s spouse eh? She wants a positive answer from me. “Ok, I’ll see if I can take some time out for math tuitions” I’m finished. You cannot tell stories in mathematics. It needs logical understanding.  I completed that day’s class and came out of the home. I knew I was in deep trouble and also cannot afford to lose the income but the truth was I liked being a teacher.  No way, I quit. I hate jothi, I hate her mother and precisely I hate mathematics.  I came to the elevator and it didn’t work so walked down the stairs. Oops I forgot Stalin, He told me to call him.  I tried his number and it was engaged. Enough of tuitions, there is no guarantee that I will find a place where they tell me not to teach their kids mathematics. They assume a physics teacher to be competent in math too.  I was in the third floor finding hard to go down the stairs as they were two women stepping down in front of me and one of them was having difficulty in getting her big round butt down the stairs. You should jog in light years to burn that extra fat, lady.  I was following them slowly, when one started a conversation. “I heard Sharmili got a new physics teacher for Jothi and she was telling me that Jothi’s grades improved after the tuition”. The fat lady replied,” Yes, even Jothi was telling me he is much better than her school teacher in explaining things. Youngsters are so talented these days na?”. They are praising me. But you cannot even buy a glass of beer with just appreciations. We were in the second floor when the fat lady continued, ”Sharmili was telling me that other kids from the quarters can also learn physics and math from the master  and I told her that we have some nine students in the quarters who need coaching ” .Sounds good, that comes to 20000 rupees.

    These women are confusing me, Should I call Stalin or not? I knew that if I have to stop worrying about mathematics, the best way is to stop coming to the court quarters and forget these kids completely. Call-centre, Stalin told me life was cool there but I knew I felt like a coward running away from my aspirations to be a teacher.Decision had to be made.

    “Salaam Aziz uncle, hmm do u have tenth standard mathematics book?” I asked Aziz, the book shop owner and he asked me in return,”Your sister is in her 12th standard right?” I gave him a dry reply. “Yes but this is for my tuition purposes” I paid the money and started walking back to home to get acquainted with mathematics.