The rain whistled through the gaps in the windows, dotting the clean white bedspread that lay over the tiny cot. Adrian watched with a tiny smile on his lips, as the drops appeared with increasing frequency on the sheet he had laboured so hard to clean. Putting a hand out, he let it get wet. The sensation of the cold water trickling down his callused fingers calmed him.

He sighed and drew his hand back, wiping it briefly on his shirt before turning back to the scarred wood desk with its scattering of papers. Lowering himself onto the rickety chair, he pulled the nearest sheet towards himself and scanned it tiredly. A few small errors came to his notice; he corrected them with casual indifference. After all, this was only his hobby. It wasn’t like his life depended on it.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor in a corner of the room, the Muse smiled.

Adrian’s tired eyes stopped in their unenthusiastic perusal of the paper. What was this? Suddenly he felt re-energised, re-vitalised, refreshed. Creative energy, such as he had never felt before was coursing through his veins. He knew this was the inspiration he had been waiting for. He knew this was the right, no, the perfect moment to begin his masterpiece prize-winning novel.

Casting aside the half covered paper, Adrian hastily grasped a fresh sheet. He raised his pen over it and paused. Words, phrases, ideas, were all pounding away inside his head. Which one should he unleash first?

Over in her corner, the Muse played a game of dice with herself. She waited as the cubes spun, her green eyes never leaving their whirling surfaces. Finally, they stopped. Her eyebrows rose slightly in surprise. Double sixes stared back at her.

His pen darted across the paper. Sweat beaded on his brow as he strove to get the words out as fast as he thought them. His hand muscles tensed and flexed, visibly knotting under his skin; he paid them no attention. All he was conscious of was the motion of the pen in his hand and the ideas and images rushing through his mind.

The rain continued to lash the window.

The Muse had closed her eyes. She appeared to be meditating. Her wrists rested on her knees, her hands hung loosely, palms facing downward. The black waves of her hair rippled slightly in the occasional breeze that gusted through the gaps in the window.

Adrian scribbled away, wholly absorbed in his work. In the course of three minutes, his untidy scrawl had filled a whole page. Once he looked up from his labours, only to glance at the clock ticking on the wall before him. After that time check, his eyes had not strayed from the manuscript again.

Lightning flashed outside.

The Muse opened her eyes. She gazed straight ahead at Adrian. Lifting one hand, she smoothed away a few stray strands of hair that had blown into her face.

The spell was broken, for the time being. He leant back in his chair, panting slightly, as though he had just walked a great distance with no water to hand. Which he had, in a way.

His brain felt as though it had run a ten-mile race, and his hand was numb. With some difficulty, he pried his curling fingers from around the sweaty pen. He closed his eyes, gathering his thoughts for the next onslaught on the paper.

The Muse sat calmly, watching him, judging him. Was he ready? Ready to bear the burden of inspiration? Ready to sacrifice his time, his patience, his social life, and shut himself into the fulfillment of that inspiration? The test was yet to come.

Adrian opened his eyes. His gaze fell on the paper that lay before him, only half filled. The empty space seemed to beckon him; it longed to be covered, it longed to be clothed in his script.

He sat there for a while, doing nothing but staring at the sheet. Then his hand reached, trembling, for the pen. To begin his second attack.

The green eyes of the Muse darted to the room door. Yes. It was time.

A knock sounded on the door, startling Adrian and making him drop the pen. He blinked in consternation for a few moments, then rose from his seat and crossed the space of empty flooring to the door. Reaching for the doorknob, he pulled it open.

His eyes widened when he saw who it was.

A young woman stood there, one hand still raised as if to knock. She was swathed neck downwards in a long brown coat; black leather gloves covered her hands. Her black hair was loose; it fell about her shoulders in a tousled way. Thick lashes shaded brown eyes, and two shapely eyebrows arched above them. Her lips curled upwards in a smile when she saw him.

“Adrian! Finally!” she threw her arms around him, almost knocking him off balance.

“M-Maria?” What was she doing there? It been two whole years – no, wait! – three whole years since they had parted in hatred, each vowing never to speak to the other again. He had often thought about her, missed her even, and regretted nearly every day the many harsh words they had exchanged. But for the past few days he had been fairly successful in pushing away those painful memories. Why had she suddenly decided to come again?

The Muse folded her arms. She was prepared to wait for the results, no matter how long they took in the coming.

Maria stepped back from him and peered intently into his eyes. But she said nothing.

He decided it was up to him to speak. “What brings you here?”

She smiled, a trifle sadly. “I came because… because…” she stopped, and seemed unable to continue.

“Because?”

Drawing a deep breath, she closed her eyes and continued. “Because I realised I still have feelings for you. I decided Iwanted to work things out. Truth is, I’ve missed you Adrian.” She opened her eyes now, and looked straight into his. “Please, if it’s possible, let’s work things out?”

She hadn’t said it, but he understood that she meant the time was now or never, that unless he seized this chance, they could never again contemplate the idea of restarting their relationship.

Lifting a hand, the Muse pointed a slender finger at Adrian.

Ideas burst in his head like fireworks, the desire to write them down, to record them on paper, to further his begun novel bubbled like molten lava through his veins. It was a stroke of inspiration more cruel than the first one. His eyes were torn from Maria to the abandoned pen and paper lying on his untidy desk. Almost before he knew it, he was halfway to it, his hand outstretched for the pen.

“Adrian?”

Maria’s voice halted him. His hand fell to his side; his raised foot was lowered. He stood between them – desk and door, pen and woman, Fame and a Second Chance. Which should he choose? He knew intuitively that if he chose one he would lose the other forever. Maria, or the novel?

He knew that unless he utilised the inspiration racing through him immediately, he would never produce his dream novel. He knew that unless he walked away from that desk with her, he would lose all chances of working things out. Which should he choose?

The Muse rattled the dice in her cupped hands. Closing her eyes, she cast them onto the floor. They spun, whirled, the numbers flashed before her green eyes. Thunder rumbled outside. Finally, they settled. Two ones stared silently up at her.

Adrian decided.

Seven years later…

The Muse stood on the wide windowsill, looking down at the middle-aged man who sat at the desk before her. He had changed little with the years, perhaps his hair showed a fewgray strands and his forehead a few faint lines, but that was all. He was bent over a sheaf of papers, reading them with a curious expression of loss on his face.

The door opened, and a smiling woman entered. She too, had barely changed; maybe she was a little plumper. She stole across to the man and tapped his back. He turned, and seeing whom it was, smiled.

“So you’re finally back. How was school?”

The woman laughed. “According to your daughter, wonderful. Apparently the class was treated to cookies today.”

“Oh?” the man laughed too, and stood up from his desk. “And where is my little cookie monster?”

“Here Daddy!” a small, lithe figure dressed in a pinafore came bounding into the room, her small bag still dangling from her shoulders. With a huge smile, she jumped into her father’s waiting arms.

“I thought you were supposed to remove the bag when you come home?” the woman asked with a slight frown.

“Now, now Maria. Let’s forget it for now, shall we? It’s not harming her, is it?”

Maria shrugged, and then smiled abruptly. “Oh well, you’re right. But I just hope she remembers next time, we have to have some more discipline in this house.” The man just rolled his eyes. Maria laughed at his expression. “All right, all right, no lectures for now.” She walked to the door, and then turned back to him. “Come down. There’s cookies and milk for everyone!”

“More cookies!” the little girl squeaked. “Let’s go Daddy!”

Laughing, Maria walked out.

The man took slow steps, and once he reached the doorway, turned around to face his desk once more. There sat his stack of papers, the fine beginning of his novel.

For a moment, the old desire to write, to win fame, came over him again. He almost forgot the little girl in his arms. He thought he could see a slender figure silhouetted against the light curtains, watching him.

“Come on Daddy, let’s go!”

He blinked. Then smiled. He had almost lost himself in a dream! Chuckling, he turned away from the desk and carefully shut the door.

The Muse turned from the empty room. With a little sigh she sprang from the sill, into the open air. As she drifted from the house, letting the wind take her to her next visit, only one thought ran through her head.

Adrian had chosen well.

It was too hot and sunny a day for him to be doing business. He dragged his rickshaw-cart with the hope of turning all that pedalling into a decent livelihood. There was hope for people who worked hard and never gave up, and Girdhar always strived to be among those few who liked to believe that some day, by an invisible trick of magic, all the hard work would materialise as freshly minted coins.

He took his daughter along with him to work on Sundays. She would sit in the cart of the rickshaw and bump along the roads. Today, she was visiting a new area of Hyderabad. It was in the outskirts, a certain Shivam Nagar where the surroundings were lush green and there was a disturbing quiet that unnerved her.

As her father pedalled along the bad roads of the locality, little Nandini – all of eight – watched keenly at the absence of people outside. She wondered about the inner rooms of their homes as all the transactions were carried out in the verandah on the outside. All she ever had was a cursory glimpse. She noticed a corridor of cool darkness in most houses. That’s all she had by way of record of her numerous visits to houses her father had taken her to.

Girdhar bought scrap from households and sold it at a twenty per cent margin to scrap dealers. He had managed a living with enough to provide for a family of three. Today, he hoped to do good business so that he could take them to the local fair in the evening.

“Nandini, get down and let’s go knock on that door,” he said to his petite daughter who was dressed in a murky pink frock with laces around it. She jumped off the cart and together they opened the bulky iron gate and entered the premises of a house. The gate made a churning noise as it was opened and shut. They pawed along the path leading to the door.

On ringing the bell, the door opened after what seemed like a few minutes. A lady dressed in a light green cotton sari appeared from behind the partially-opened door.

“Madam, I… scrap… raddi wallah…” Girdhar fumbled for words but before he could finish, Nandini spoke up, “Do you have old newspapers, magazines and bottles to sell?” She had just joined the local school that had been organised by a social worker in their area.

At this, the lady frowned and then smiled and motioned them to stay before going inside. She came out in a couple of minutes and asked them to sit. They sat down on the floor in the cool shade of the verandah surrounded by plants and flower pots.

They looked around and saw how clean the house was from outside. A wind-chime hung from the door and made a pleasant sound as the breeze blew. A little girl walked out of the door after several minutes. She was carrying a bundle of newspapers and magazines followed by the lady who had a basket of old bottles in one hand while the other had notebooks and textbooks.

Nandini looked at her with wide eyes. The little girl was about her age and wore a lime green frock with small white flowers on the border and looked like a doll going about her work. The girl carefully put the stack on the floor. She clapped her hands clean and ran inside. Her mother settled the bottles and the books on the other side and sat down on the floor herself.

“Tell me, what’s your rate?” she asked in a business-like tone that Girdhar felt slightly awkward about. He hesitated but again Nandini came to his rescue. “Newspapers for eight rupees a kilo, magazines and other books for nine and bottles – one rupee for a piece.” She had mastered this rate list on the various occasions when she had accompanied her father on business.

The lady smiled at the little girl’s confidence and suddenly called out to her daughter inside. “Pooja… Pooja!” At this, the doll-like girl came running out and stood next to her mother. She asked Pooja to sit down. As she sat down, the two little girls exchanged glances. Nandini looked at her shylywhile Pooja sized her up from head to toe. Nandini looked away at this and the business was resumed.

“Now Pooja, tell me, if you want any of these books?” Pooja’s mother directed her to the stack of notebooks and textbooks. Pooja started opening each notebook and flipping pages. Her mother busied herself with the bottles and the newspapers.

While Girdhar and the lady negotiated, Pooja started setting aside some notebooks. She suddenly interrupted her mother, “Ma, look! I got full marks on this test and the teacher gave me a ‘very good’.”

The lady, briefly diverted to her daughter’s past laurel, smiled and said, “Okay then, keep that one if it’s so dear to you. And keep all the books that you think you can pass on to others. We needn’t really sell them.”At this Girdhar’s face fell a bit as he was hoping to buy it all.

Nandini quietly walked over to Pooja’s side but stood at a distance trying to catch a glimpse of her books. She had already looked towards the inside of the house and noticed the same familiar corridor of darkness. She often imagined walking through it and reaching the other part. The thought always thrilled her but she knew it was never going to be possible.

Pooja turned around as she felt a presence behind her. She looked at Nandini closely this time. She noticed her callused brown skin and her neatly tied hair. Her large eyes seemed to send out a signal of despair. Pooja looked at her for a few seconds and signalled her to come closer. Nandini took baby steps at this and sat down next to Pooja. Their respective parents kept haggling politely while the girls busied themselves with books.

Pooja casually asked Nandini, “Which school do you go to?” At this Nandini drew a blank and Pooja asked again. Her mother intervened and presumed, “I don’t think she goes to school, Pooja, now don’t bother her so much.” She nodded her head but after her mother got busy again, whispered something into Nandini’s ear. At this both of them giggled.

Then Pooja found something again and pulled her mother’s sari-pallu. “Ma, look, my favourite poem! I won a prize for this one.” But her mother paid no attention. She was too engrossed in calculating the money she was about to make for the junk.

Pooja grabbed Nandini’s arm and dragged her inside the house. Nandini hesitated and froze but Pooja was way too strong for her. Unwillingly, Nandini let herself be taken into the house. She felt slightly dizzy passing through that corridor of darkness. At the end she saw a spacious room with beautiful furniture and paintings. Nandini was rapt. Pooja broke her spell by showing her the trophy she had won for the poem. They started talking.

“What’s your name?”, Pooja asked her affectionately like someone had asked her on the first day of school.

“Nandini,” she replied quickly and kept quiet.

“I am Pooja. Nice to meet you, Nandini”. So saying she took her hand to shake it, and at this, Nandini became very stiff.

“So you don’t go to school? What do you do at home?” Pooja’s list of questions was endless.

Nandini’s voice rose slightly from a whisper, “I go to evening school near my house. For two hours everyday.”

Pooja asked again, “So what do you do rest of the time? Play?”

Nandini maintained her voice at the same pitch, “I help my mother with the housework. Cleaning, cooking, washing…” Nandini’s voice was choking.

She felt strange and lost in this big house. It was beautiful and scary. She wanted to go back to the familiarity of the transaction outside. A few tears rolled down her eyes.

Pooja was taken aback. “Why are you crying? Does your mother beat you? I will help you. Don’t cry.” Pooja went closer as if to wipe her tears but suddenly stopped. She withdrew her hand.

Suddenly her mother’s angry voice came from the outside, “Pooja, where have you taken that little girl? Haven’t I told you not to take strangers inside?” The girls looked at each other and then ran outside.
“Now tell me, which of these books you want?”, the lady asked her daughter sternly.

Pooja looked up at her and then at Nandini’s face. And then slowly pointed to a separated stack of books. The business was done and Girdhar started wrapping up. He shook Nandini by the shoulder and asked her to hand him the newspapers, bottles and the magazines. She obeyed as if in a stupor, still overcome. She looked at Pooja who stood by her stack of books. Pooja’s mother had gone inside. Once everything was wrapped up, Girdhar asked Nandini to follow him. Nandini felt the same unwillingness to move as she had felt while entering the house. She dragged her feet but the clean floor carried no footprints.

As they reached the gate, Pooja walked out of the verandah to see them. They loaded the scrap on the cart and Nandini stepped on.

Suddenly Pooja rushed inside and picked up her stack of books and went outside. She picked up all the books and notebooks she had set aside and ran out. The rickshaw had started moving. She yelled, “Stop, stop”. Girdhar brought his rickshaw to a halt. Pooja walked up to the halted cart and put the stack on it.

“This is for you. These are my books. They will help you at school. Please use them.” Pooja looked at Girdhar who was perplexed. He opened his mouth to say something but no words came out. Pooja shook Nandini’s hand again and walked back inside. Nandini looked at the stack and touched it and smiled as Girdhar pedalled away.

Radha saw Mrs. Sharma through the open door, walking briskly down the corridor, heading towards the Staff Room. Deciding that she couldn’t avoid her, Radha quickly pulled out the unit test papers she’d planned to correct in the quiet of her home, and began to read through them as carefully as she could, for she knew there was soon going to be unrest in the room.

Mrs. Sharma breezed in, a cloud of her trademark perfume filling the air and making Radha sneeze. She looked around her, asking rather imperiously, “Where’s Srinu?” When no one answered, she carried on, “Well, if he’s not here at the time I gave him, I’ll just have to go ahead without him. Suman and Radha, I need your reports on the Science Exhibition preparations.”

Radha exchanged a wry glance with Suman Nath, the junior school science teacher. Neither of them spoke.

They had decided only this morning with Mr. Srinivas, the Physics teacher, that there were four of them on the science committee and no one had appointed Mrs. Sharma, the Chemistry teacher, as the spokesperson or coordinator or leader, so she would just have to sit down with them and decide jointly how to go about the preparations, or manage the projects she’d set for her classes on her own and not worry if anything overlapped and caused confusion.

Radha continued to study her papers as if she hadn’t heard. Suman, who was bolder, stood up, picked up her books, and walked to the door. “Mr. Srinivas has extra classes all week,” she said. “He’s only free on Saturday morning, when the three of us will be meeting. You’re welcome to join us.” And out she went.

Radha almost burst out laughing at the look on Mrs. Sharma’s face. None of the staff members had ever talked back to her – she’d been with the school from the time it was started 13 years ago, and she constantly reminded everyone that she’s seen four Principals come and go. The English teachers had nicknamed her ‘The Brook’ and in her absence proclaimed, ‘For Principals may come and Principals may go, but she goes on for ever.”

Saturday morning came and Srinu, Radha and Suman sat over their mid-morning tea and chalked out what they would ask the students to do in each subject – not too much, not too little. Just enough to make sure thechildren enjoyed their projects and the exhibition had some originality. “We’ll let them concentrate on certain chapters only,” Srinu suggested. “Usually, they just take old projects from seniors and re-do them. They don’t want to think for themselves.”

“But we won’t know if the projects have already been done, will we?” said Radha. “The three of us haven’t been here long enough, remember?”

Suman looked behind her. “Well, Mrs. Sharma could have helped with that, but she hasn’t come in – and I saw her in the lab a little while ago, without a class.”

Srinu, the newest of the three of them, added, “I mentioned to her that I was on my way to the meeting, but she said she was busy.”

“She’s deliberately staying away because she didn’t like the idea of anyone else deciding the time and place,” said Suman uncharitably.

Srinu looked worried, and Radha wondered aloud if they could manage without her, but Suman was confident.

“Look, the last time I worked with her on this, I was the general dogsbody. I’m not goingthrough that again. The three of us can co-ordinate well enough without any ego clashes, so let’s just set the tasks in our subjects, get enough to make the exhibition worthwhile, and leave the chemistry projects to her,” she said.

A week later, Radha entered the Staff Room absent-mindedly and found Mrs. Sharma there, a diagram in front of her, a thunderous look on her face. Radha couldn’t move. She didn’t know whether to stay now that she was already inside or leave and hope Mrs. Sharma wouldn’t notice. The decision was taken out of her hands.

Mrs. Sharma looked up and declared. “There you are! Just come here and take a look at this chart. Now, you know I need at least six more students from each class and all of them say that they are already involved in some science project or the other. How did that happen?”

“Uh, well, I think… maybe… we decided…”

“Who decided? Nobody asked me about any decisions!”

“Actually… the three of us…”

“The three of who? I’ve handled this exhibition from the time the school came into existence and I know exactly what’s what. Clear everything with me before doing it and before telling the students… got it?”

Radha was too stunned to say anything. She stood there fish-mouthed while Mrs. Sharma picked up her papers and left the Staff Room.

She then sat down and went over the conversation in her mind, coming up with biting repartees, but knowing that she’d never have the courage to stand up to the sheer force of Mrs. Sharma’s personality.

“What if we make a mess of it?” she asked Srinu later in the corridor on her way to a class. “Maybe we should just go to her and ask her to meet us.”

Srinu, already with a couple of projects ready, had acquired more courage than Radha had expected. “No need,” he said breezily. “The kids are enthusiastic and are doing a good job, that’s all that matters. If we chop and change now, we will only create more confusion.”

Suman had another solution. “Okay, we’ll give her a chance,” she said. “You never know what tales she’ll carry to the Principal about us.”

Quickly, she took a marker and wrote a one-page notice and pinned it on the Staff Room reminder board. “Science Exhibition coordination meetings on Wednesday and Saturday, 10.00-10.30 a.m.”

“There, now she knows – we have our proof that it was all official. If she doesn’t come, she’s the one who’s in the wrong.”

“But… but…” Radha began.

Suman laughed. “You should be the least worried. Biology always has the best projects on display. There’s so much the students can do with it. Whereas my juniors have to be helped every step of the way, or else they just bring in something their parents have done, and they parrot everything when questioned about it!”

The day of the exhibition loomed near. While Radha, Suman and Srinu looked anxious and fluttered here and there arranging for tables and tablecloths and other trifles, Mrs. Sharma could be heard from one end of the corridor to the other, directing the prefects and a few of her favourite students, making sure she got all that she wanted done.

Instead of having the exhibition class-wise as they usually did, the lack of cooperation between the four of them had resulted in their doing it subject-wise for the senior school and all-in-one for the juniors this time. And as they went along they found new things to worry about and many undone jobs they hadn’t even thought of, whereas, from a distance, it seemed to the threesome that Mrs. Sharma had everything under control.

“How does she do it?” muttered Radha, wishing she could take a leaf out of Mrs. Sharma’s book.

“She has the students on their toes,” mused Suman. “We’re trying to do too much ourselves. Even the last time, when I was running around madly, I didn’t make it all the responsibility of the students. They’re kids, not post-grad students!”

“But they could get some more duties,” suggested Srinu, getting out a piece of paper. “Let’s see….” In his methodical way, he began to write and soon they had made a list of things for the students to undertake. “Reception, boards, guides….”

The students were thrilled with the additional roles offered to them. Now even those who hadn’t done anything for the exhibition were clued up about the different projects, practising aloud what they would say or pretending they were greeting parents or leading them out for tea.

When at last it was all over, with no major hitches, and no embarrassing moments for the students or teachers, the three teachers heaved a collective sigh of relief.

“I think ours was a good blend of doing and getting done,” said Suman, thinking of the frazzled looks she’d seen on so many young faces in the Chemistry ‘gallery.’ “Just goes to show that three heads are better than one!”

Srinu laughed. “Four heads,” he said. “You’ve forgotten that we had an absent teacher and we were learning – at a distance, no doubt, and both ‘how to’ and ‘how not to’ – from the master!”

There’s a narrow oblong view to the outside world; a grey gravel street on which I can see the heavy wheels of trucks, the flighty, light tyres of mopeds and scooters, the earnest efficient bumpers and treads of a hundred different cars. All noisily on their way to a busy somewhere – errands to run, people to meet, deals to make, things to buy and talk about. In general, life.

The white-soled nurse props up the blood-pressure gauge on my bed and wraps the worn canvas strip around my flaccid arm. I can see a flicker of sympathy in her eyes, leftovers from some distant past when she wanted to make a difference. Now it’s just a job. Too many patients with incurable conditions, one of them being old age. Too many who want to live but cannot; too many who want to die but are not allowed to.

The young doctor talks to her colleagues happily about her upcoming presentation at the National Nephrology Conference. She’s excited, it’s her first major presentation. I know from her conversation that the highlight of her paper is a series of cases where kidney failure was accompanied by a rare blood disorder. Diagnosis is the first step to cure, she says, and establishing such linkages may lead to early diagnosis.

The patient next door to me is a young mother whose 10-year-old son has made one brief appearance at her bedside in the past two days. You can tell, from the hushed tones and averted glances, that medical science has decreed her terminal. In the ICU, loved ones are interruptions to the sanitized routine. Her mother was asked to leave the ward because she wore her grief on her arm. The son is not allowed more than a glimpse because he is to be protected from his mother’s mortality.

The monitor beeps loudly behind me. I have moved too fast for its sensitive electrodes and the nurse comes rushing in, summoned by its electronic call. This has happened before, many times, and now she tut-tuts impatiently and simply disconnects the alarm. No room or time for another ‘wolf’ call now.

I turn my eye to the oh-so-slow drip lines, one dark red, compacted blood from some generous donor’s veins. The other is clear energy-giving fluid, glucose, they say, but I suspect there’s some other stuff in it as well.

They are wheeling the dialysis machine out of my neighbour’s cabin. Soon she will be moved to a room where her son can come and hold her hand and hug her, where her mother can laugh and cry with her while she waits to die, slowly, wanting ever so much to live to see her son turn into a moody teenager and bring home a girl, maybe.

The doors swish open and a stretcher is dragged in. The six cubicles are always occupied, people fighting to live, fighting to die. Yama has a strange way of choosing his new entrants. The old woman across the hall from calls out to Arunachala, Shiva embodied as flame-turned-mountain, to take her unto him. But life has reclaimed her, it appears. Before long she is taken out on the stretcher to a special room upstairs for a few days before going home, to being again the maintenance of a daily routine.

As for me, I know, and they know, the nurses and ayahs, that this attack too shall pass. The 72-hour critical period is over and I am on the way to recovery. Soon I too shall travel through those double doors and then, later, down the lift to the parking lot. And someone else, pondering on questions of life and death, will watch the brand new tyres of my son’s luxury car hurry down the road to a seemingly busy routine.

The first book I remember reading where a teacher was a prominent character was ‘To Sir, With Love’ by E R Braithwaite. The film, as many of us know, was also made into a successful motion picture and warmed the hearts of many teachers who had similarly faced the slings and arrows of outrageous students. The popularity of the film brought into focus, for a short while, the teacher as a literary character, leading to increased sales of books like ‘Goodbye, Mr Chips’ by James Hilton (also a film) and, Muriel Sparks’ ‘The Prime of Miss Jane Brody’ and more recently, ‘Dead Poets’ Society’ (N H Kleinbaum) and ‘Music from the Heart’ (Bob Kennedy).

The teacher has also been an important – if occasionally misrepresented – figure in cinema as well, particularly in the Hindi films and other Indian regional cinema. From the impoverished but principled school master (many a time played by Balraj Sahni or Uttam Kumar) in the Hindi cinema of the Fifties to the comic character in more recent Mumbai multi-starrers, there has been no dearth of filmi teachers to cry with, laugh at, ridicule and feel just a little sorry for. But movies are movies, and melodrama is an essential ingredient there; books, on the other hand, are things one can live with and experience on one’s own terms.

Most of us like to read about professions and lifestyles different from our own; we want to be introduced to the strange and exotic, stories not of our own everyday adventures but of things that are unlikely to happen to us. But there is also a part of us that likes to read about the familiar, that finds comfort in identifying with the small battles and compromises of those like us, and when we come across stories where the protagonist “could have been” one of us, there is a definite sense of gratification. They often point us to solutions to problems similar to those we are facing. There’s something else going on here too. When schools and teaching are the subject of a novel, of a piece of work that people everywhere will read and perhaps empathise with, we hope they understand us and our context a little better, that they see something of the pathos – and the joys – of our daily grind. This is perhaps why children enjoy school stories so much. Remember how much we enjoyed Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers and St Clare’s series, or the Chalet School books? Of course, in these books, meant for children, teachers were painted to cater to students’ perceptions – they were either benevolent, kindly matrons or stern, sharp spinsters with few shades in between! Books for older readers, on the other hand, have a whole range of portrayals that offer a richer, more nuanced understanding of a teacher’s life.

So why not arm ourselves with a selection of books that feature our ilk and sit back and enjoy our down-time with them? Better still, why not create a short book list that you and your colleagues can all read and then share ideas on? You could begin with old favourites that are easily available (perhaps your school library would have a copy or one of the teachers in your group) such as R K Narayan’s ‘The English Teacher’ or O V Vijayan’s classic ‘Legends of Khasak’ (the original Malayalam ‘Khaskinte Ithihasan’). In some of these stories, the fact of being a teacher is woven tightly into the character’s identity, making him what he is and influencing what happens to him. In others, teaching is something the central character just happens to do.

The most recent book I read that talked about a teacher’s life from the inside out, and all the everyday politics and practicalities of teaching, much of which have little to do with learning in the conventional sense, was ‘Teacher Man’ by Frank McCourt. An Irish immigrant from a working class family, McCourt did time unloading bundles in the New York dockyards before being certified as a teacher. McCourt talks about the fears and insecurities that follow him into the classroom and the ways in which he deals with them as he builds an equation with his students, as individuals and as a group. He finds that what the students remember and what they take real lessons from are not the lectures on grammar or poetry but the stories from his life, his own admissions of success and failure, his doubts and fears. He becomes more of a real person to them as he shares his life with them, and from being “Mr McCourt” he becomes “Teacher Man”, a real person with a real life. McCourt also talks about how he deals with popular perceptions of the school teacher, facing as he does the derision and lack of understanding of university professors, lawyers and businessmen.

Another book that has been discussed in recent times is ‘The Abstinence Teacher’ by Tom Perrotta, which tells the story of Ruth Ramsay, a high school health teacher who juggles issues of religion, faith and politics while she tries to introduce her students to the idea of safe sex and the ramifications of risky behaviour. Indeed, the teacher has always been looked to as the keeper of culture, as the one who transmits societal values from generation to generation, and whose own moral degradation or compromise often symbolises that of the entire culture. Take Chinua Achebe’s ‘A Man of the People’. Here, the central character is a parochial politician, but his story is told through the voice of a teacher, Oditi, who is witness to the gradual decline of principles in politics and in life. Also set in Africais Nadine Gordimer’s ‘A Son’s Story’, which talks of a teacher’s son and his awakening to the politics of apartheid and the attendant radicalism.

Often the stories are tales of transformation, of teachers who have been able to create critical change in students, teachers who have been able to open doors for children who were trapped within walls built by poverty and prejudice of different kinds. Some of the books mentioned earlier belong to this genre (Music from the Heart, Dead Poets’ Society). These are always uplifting and good for those days when you feel defeated by the system!

So look over the shelves of the school library and any other collections you can access and find some of these books or others you may have heard of, and start reading! As a follow up, you could rent a video of a book-turned-film and watch it with your colleagues at the next opportunity. Some of the stories will make you laugh; others may bring a tear to your eye, and yet others will make you sigh and perhaps rue the unfairness of life… of a teacher’s life. But they will all give you the sense of sharing something with many others, all over the world, and in a way that is the best part of reading – it allows you to travel through other minds and lives and feel connected with ideas and events that in some way become a part of you.

Write to us and tell us about the books you have enjoyed, in this genre of what we might call ‘teacher-centric fiction’!

At the end of a long day when you find it difficult to keep your eyes open, you tell your family members that you are going to bed, and bid them ‘good night’. Those of us who are more colloquially inclined, might say, ‘I’m going to hit the sack’. Ever wonder why the bed is called the sack, and why the poor thing has to be hit? When you think about it, how many of us actually give the bed a good thump before we deposit ourselves on it? We may do this to the pillow, but to the bed, hardly ever. This is because the beds that we have nowadays are quite firm; they are made of material which prevent the bed from getting lumpy. The early beds that the Europeans used, especially the not so well-to-do ones, did become lumpy if they weren’t looked after. In fact, these beds weren’t beds at all; they were merely sacks stuffed with hay! When an individual wanted to go to sleep, he used to literally hit the sack in order to ensure that the hay inside was evenly spread. If he didn’t perform this act on a daily basis, he ended up sleeping on a very uneven bed. It is from this act of actually hitting the bed that we get the two expressions ‘hit the sack’ and ‘hit the hay’.

Of the two expressions, ‘hit the hay’ is the older. It was used on a regular basis several centuries ago; it is, however, seldom heard nowadays. The expression ‘hit the sack’ was popularised by American soldiers during World War II. They referred to the sleeping bag which they carried as the ‘sack’. With the passage of time, anything that was used to sleep on began to be called a ‘sack’ – including the bed. By the way, the original bedroom didn’t refer to the room where the bed was located. A bedroom was merely a big bed; in other words, it was a bed with a lot of room.

When Americans want to hit the sack, they sometimes say that they would like to ‘catch some zzzs’ (zees). Any idea where this expression came from? Well, believe it or not, it has come to us from the world of comic books. Those of you who are avid readers of comics like Beetle Bailey, Archie, Garfield, Asterix, etc. would have noticed that whenever a character is asleep, the cartoonist has the letter ‘z’ (pronounced ‘zee’ in American English) hovering over the character’s head. It is from this that we get the expression ‘catch some zzzs’. Another expression related to sleep that comic books have given us is ‘saw wood’. When you say that someone is ‘sawing wood’, what you mean is that the person is snoring. In the 20th century, cartoonists often used the technique of representing snoring with a drawing of a saw cutting through wood!

That’s enough about sleep for one day, don’t you think? I sure do, and as far as I’m concerned, the time has come for me to hit the sack. Good night then. What did you say? Sleep tight? How do I do that? Am I supposed to hold on to my significant other tightly? And if I’m single, what happens then? Am I supposed to grab the pillow and hold on to it tightly? Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? The ‘tight’ in the expression ‘sleep tight’ refers to the bed that you are sleeping on. Remember that over a hundred years ago, the bed was very different from the types of bed that we use now. They mainly consisted of a wooden frame across which a rope was stretched in a criss-cross pattern. Such types of beds are still quite common in villages in our country. When the rope was stretched across tightly, it gave good support to the mattress and the person sleeping on it. The individual was therefore able to sleep well. When the rope became loose, the bed began to sag and as a result the person sleeping on it felt distinctly uncomfortable and did not get any sleep at all. Therefore, in order to get a good night’s sleep, the person had to make sure that the rope was tight! He had to sleep tight!

What about the second part of the expression – don’t let the bed bugs bite? What bugs does it refer to? Well, I leave that to your imagination!

S Upendran teaches at the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad. He can be reached at supendran@gmail.com.

By nature education is equitable, and hence when we say education, we are actually referring to equitable education and also quality education. When we talk about expanding the reach of education (increasing quantity), we simultaneously imply education of a kind which is equitable as well as education which has quality. Eminent educationist late J P Naik explained the quantity, quality and equity relationships in education in the form of ‘the elusive triangle of Indian education’. All three are very important and closely related and, in our system, all three are also severely starved of financial resources.

Public financing of education assumes special significance for a variety of reasons. Why should the State finance education? The state is a major provider and funder of education everywhere. Education is recognised as a public good as well as a merit good. These two very basic characteristics suggest that the state has the responsibility to provide it to all, freely and compulsorily. All acts and legislations on free and compulsory education are drawn from this aspect that education is a public as well as merit good, which produces a huge set of externalities from several aspects – equity being one of them – produced automatically by a good education system and that markets do not work satisfactorily in case of education.

Education is recognised as a basic need and we have recognised it as a ‘minimum need’ in India. This implies that it should be made available to all. More than being a basic need, education is a human right as stated by the United Nations in 1948, and more importantly, a fundamental right.

Education and development relationships are well known in terms of education’s contribution to social, economic, cultural, political and other aspects of life. Moreover, according to the human development theories, education is recognised not only as a means, but also as an end in itself. Amartya Sen, noted economist, has gone into it in great detail by framing education in terms of human capability. He has extended the role of education as one constituting development as well as one contributing to development.

Further, traditional debates in economics refer to the equity-efficiency quandary; some goods and services are efficient but not equitable and others are equitable, but not efficient. Few are both efficient and equitable. Education is recognised as one of those few, which is equitable and efficient at the same time; it improves equity but also at the same time is efficient in the terms of improving the levels of living of people. For Sen, the concept of efficiency or quality of education should necessarily include equity. If a school is described as excellent in terms of quality but its doors are closed to poor people, for instance, then there is something wrong with the concept of excellence or quality.

Finally, social pressures must be built so that government feels that there is no choice but to spend and provide good quality education for all. Once the imperativeness is realised, the government will then find the resources to do it. Finally, I would like to end by quoting Amartya Sen in this context: “To say that India does not have the money for education (and health care) is absolute, utter, unmitigated nonsense.”

Extracted from an address delivered at the National Learning Conference organised by the Azim Premji Foundation in collaboration with the Ministry of Human Resource Development in Bangalore in May 2007.
The writer is Professor, Educational Finance and Educational Policy, National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA). He can be reached at jtilak@nuepa.org.

The article ‘Come into my parlour’ was simply superb and informative.

Do keep up the good work.

Tapan Das & Nagarajan, Hyderabad

Appeal to parents

I have been a regular reader and promoter of your wonderful magazine for the past many years.

I would like to share with your worthy readers a poem, which is meant for those parents, who insist their kids study what they do not want to and because of the pressure, the children end up being frustrated and depressed. It is a plea to parents to allow their children to be free and let them run their own show. The only thing parents can do is to monitor their children, counsel them and motivate them and see the positive results.

Dad! For God’s sake
Don’t ask for Math.
The more I practice
The more I slip
in my calculations
And counting.

My teacher comes
Sounding like Copernicus
To our class.
Takes his board
And starts teaching
like Pythagoras
To such disciples
Who do know the names
Of superstars of Maths –
Arya Bhatt, Ramanujam,
Pythagoras and Copernicus.

Oh Dad, you say
For making a career
Physics is important
And Maths is a must
But for both
My heart says No! No!
Dad let me try my hand
At painting ‘Monalisa’ and
Monarchs, the butterflies
And also let me
Try to paint such landscapes,
which have never been painted by any artists
Of the past or present.
Please, Dad, cooperate
Let my wish
Be fulfilled.
Oh no, dear child, you say
Do what you wish
But give my aspirations
And expectations some heed

My dear child,
Your days
Are crucial ones –
Calculated and stipulated.
Make every move
With prudence.
Besides, follow the motto
‘Honesty is the best policy’.
Dear child! never submit
Till you win your war.

S. I. M. Jafri, Librarian, The Aditya Birla Public School (Formerly DPS)
Adityapuram, Chittorgarh, Rajasthan

Many students find word problem solving difficult right through high school. One approach to helping them is to analyse what strategies successful problem solvers use. Although they may have spontaneously developed these, we can teach other students these strategies in a more explicit way.

Research has shown that those children who are generally good at word problem solving have the ability to represent the problem in a mental model. This mental model contains all the relevant information in the problem, with the inter-relationships and connections between elements properly represented. On the other hand, poor problem solvers base their solution on numbers and keywords in the problem, which they directly translate into some arithmetical operation.

Kamala Mukunda works with the Centre for Learning, Bangalore, and she can be reached at <kamala.mukunda@gmail.com>.

This is an article for subscribers only. You may request the complete article by writing to us at editorial@teacherplus.org.

But unfortunately, in many schools there is no place for craftwork; little or no time is devoted to learning by doing!

So why is there no place for handicrafts? Here are the reasons usually given:

• The materials cost too much.
• The school cannot afford a craft teacher.
• A craft teacher and craft work have no respect in society.
• Craft work cannot be assessed.

This is an article for subscribers only. You may request the complete article by writing to us at editorial@teacherplus.org.