She comes to our class exactly at the same time every day. After seeing her, the whole class filled with so much noise suddenly becomes super silent. She enters the class with a lovely smile on her face.
I am talking about my english teacher from kerala who recently started taking classes to us. she is one of a kind. she carries super classic charisma with her. You know what comes to my mind when she enters the class, her sweet perfume. It smells like jasmine, and you know for a month, I searched all over vijayawada to find that perfume and gift that to one girl to whom I want to propose back then. but I failed in both finding that perfume and proposing to that girl. how and why I failed to propose to her is a big story in its own way. so I will write about that soon.
The way she arranges that wooden chair she is about to sit in, our other lecturers make a lot of noise, but she just handles it so well, I can imagine how perfectly she can arrange her house. when I accidentally turned my head from you to my other female classmates, it was like changing my view from a 72″ Plasma TV to a 14″ inch old TV. That much difference she made with her looks. Though I stared at a few girls in my classroom after our english miss started taking classes, I forgot even notice the most beautiful girl in my class. when I look back, I think she just ruined my romantic school life a little bit because my english teacher took a class for only one hour, but my female classmates stayed for the whole eight hours in the same class, but I couldn’t stare or see those people anymore with same eyes those seen her.
If I want to see her, I should go to the staffroom. One time while me and mahesh roaming around the staffroom to see her, Our dragon maths teacher caught us. I was somehow managed the situation and escaped by telling silly reasons.
suddenly mahesh started replying to the maths teacher, ” sir, we came here looking for you. we have few doubts in trigonometry.”
He angrily replied, “what are you people doing in the class while I am taking the class? I tore down my mouth to explain things. are you people sleeping in the class? now go both of you and bring your trigonometry notes”
(As you already know about my friend mahesh, his brain works at 99 times more intelligence whenever we are in situations like this, but every time his brain and intelligence just create more problems to both of us)
mahesh said, “yes, sir, we will get back to you with notes”
But inside my mind, “what notes” we both stop taking notes for so long, me drawing sports cars or anything I feel like on my notes and mahesh trying and matching, rematching flames with every other girl with their names while maths class is going on.
After this, mahesh turned to me and asked me silently what to do now.
I laughed at him. while returning to our classroom, I said to mahesh, “hello, Mr. newton of nalanda vidya nikethan. Can I ask you a small doubt right now?”
He said,” yes, why not.”
Me “why can’t you tell maths sir that we came here looking after science or social teacher, for that matter any other lecturer other than our dragon maths teacher?”
Mahesh ” super funny, I expected he would be happier instead of showing his dragon behavior outside the classroom, that’s okay imagine if your dad or grandma came to know about you are crushing on and roaming in school looking for a person who is 20 years older than you chinnu, do you forgot about that atkinson school girl episode?
I didn’t reply anything, but until then, I thought I was the only one who admired our english teacher that much, after seeing her portrait on our classroom blackboard, some one drawn that in the sports period when nobody is there in the classroom, I realized she had so many admirers, but that portrait of her on the board is super perfect, it represented her so well except it is only in only two colors black and white. But she is colorful, so I tried to draw the same portrait with colors while nobody was there in my room after coming back home. but my grandmother caught me drawing. It was a half-drawn painting, so she didn’t understand whose painting was.
Whenever she came in that light green color saree that day, I even forgot which class I was in. I just imagine so many things. Hello, don’t go further comrade. I was a super good boy back then, and all my imagination ended at the sound of the bell, implying the end of the class. The remaining classes go on like traveling in a general compartment in the old sarcar express train with a full crowd, but her class is like traveling in an aeroplane, just my english teacher and me.
Still, now I remember every example and the funny thing she tells us to understand the difficult lessons. She is simply beautiful with her brain and command over the subject. One more memory of her is the way she sees the clock before starting the class. Once she starts the class, it goes on and on. a few times she becomes angry. but most times, she smiles, but I always wonder about a few of my classmates who sleep in the english class. probably they can’t see what I am seeing .
But for me, that beautiful face, to match that face, her voice actually. fell for her voice than her face. The way your hand moves when you try to explain things in the class. Her pink lips, a super clear voice coming out of them. probably they can’t see all these things. even though it’s super difficult for me to listen to her class by observing all this, I should get good marks in her subject. after all, it’s my favorite madam subject.
Sometimes my friends wonder why Ravi is never absent from english madam’s class and why I don’t talk with them when your class is going on. Instead, I just bunk and do silent chit-chats in any other class.
I simply smile in return when they ask me this question. I have little fear of talking with her, and I can’t go to her with some fake doubts like how mahesh goes and talks with her to compensate that I try to decrease how many times I lash my eyes when she teaching us something.
but this time I really want to wish her on her birthday specially, unlike how I wish other people. her birthday is on august 7th, more than 20 days from now, so much time is available to plan something. I even learned how to say happy birthday and a few more words in malayam to tell her.
But all my plans collapsed when I came to know that she was not going to attend school on her birthday since her parents were coming from kerala to celebrate her first birthday away from home. she must go to the airport at class time to pick up her parents, so she is not attending the classes that day.
My english madam’s birthday is just a week away, so I asked the expert advice from one and only love expert (at least me and he feel that way about him).
I said, ” mahesh, gimme an Idea. I really want to wish her.”
mahesh ” how? shall we announce it on TV Channels like Mr.Ravi Yalavarthi wishing his lovely english teacher happy birthday”
I said, ” super funny. did I ever make any jokes if you told me your love stories?
Mahesh “Okay, call her and wish, its simple and easy.”
Me ” Ha, simple if you get her number, genius.”
Mahesh ” I have a plan, I will get it for you, for your friendship, for your …. “
Me ” can you stop here and do the needful to get mam’s number as soon as possible.”
You know what, within a day, he got the number, I wonder how he can do things like this, and do you think will I resist not calling her when I have her number in my hands? somehow I resisted not calling her until I reached home and waited for my grandma to come home from our jewelary… maybe that was very few times I wanted my grandma to come early since she wouldn’t allow me to play with snoopy she always asked me to do something useful than playing with dogs and reading novels. so I waited, she came very late. I secretly took her phone away without noticing me.
I brought that mobile to my room and wanted to call english teacher. I was a little tensed but managed to call her; she lifted the call after listening to her hello from another side. It was her, and I could recognize her voice with a single letter. I disconnected the call. that’s it. At Tenth Standard doing something like this is a super adventure for me.
August 6th came, I was in school in every class I was just mugging up those malayalam words to tell her over the phone at night when I called her at 12, she didn’t pick up, I tried calling her after some time, but I was afraid to call her more times. what if she called me back after handing over the mobile to my grandma and english teacher asked her who called her? my grandma would sing a death song for me, so I was sad, silent, and every other “s” words.
I didn’t get sleep and waited, hoping she would call me back only when I had a phone in my hands, but she didn’t… I was awake full night, laying on the bed, thinking how can I wish her.
yahoo, I got an idea. how about wishing her over a newspaper? I remember she always insisted on us reading the newspaper every day and said she always started her day with coffee and a newspaper without fail. I started drawing a picture of her and wrote everything I wanted to tell her on good white paper. I slept happily, keeping the alarm for 5’o clock.
I got up even before the alarm and waited for when it was going to be 5. I took my bicycle out and went straight to the newspaper vendor to buy an english newspaper. wrapped my letter in it (what you thought I am gonna publish in the newspaper?. I don’t have that much budget comrade)
I cycled to her street and threw the newspaper with my letter into her house. I was happy, and I mean super duper happy, and felt so proud of myself for doing what I wanted to do no matter how many obstacles came my way. nothing stopped me from wishing my favorite teacher on her birthday.
she left the school after every few days. maybe her parents didn’t like vijayawada or any other reasons I don’t know. But after all these years, I understood that it was not an attraction or infatuation. It’s admiration for a perfect persona. along with all those things mentioned above about her, I just love how you handled your personal and professional life. I wonder how can she maintain that smile every day irrespective of the many problems she faces as a working woman. I can sense a few of our lecturers are in a bad mood when they are taking the class. but she maintained the same happy face in every class sho took. she is super friendly with us and yet super strict.
she probably started teaching even before I was born, she may have seen so many admiring eyes even before and after me, but all I can assure you is that I will be in the top ten, not only in my school topper list and in my english miss admirers list too.
“You want to know do I still awake every August 7th Night?”
This is Ravi Yalavarthi and I will see you soon, Click here to read about other women who influenced me