Gorblimey!

My first school was “Happy School”, a large majestic institution, where I did my kindergarten.

My second school was “General Raj’s”, a kind of local school which operated out of three separate houses, renting a few rooms in each, besides its HQ being in General Raj’s own personal residence.

These were both English medium schools, which loosely translated means that English was supposed to be their primary communication medium. However, despite having some very good teachers, there just wasn’t enough focus on the spoken English language, or literature, with the result that till 5^th standard, I was still reading mostly Hindi comics, and quite wary of using English in everyday life.

And then I joined DPS, RKP… at the time definitely the best school, purely from a studies perspective. I felt like a Panda bear has been thrust into a club populated by adult grizzlies… all around me, English was genuinely being used as a communication medium… and here I was, not even having read a Nancy Drew!

I was stoutly embarrassed… though I suffer from a bit of diffidence, the Lord God has compensated that by making me more stubborn than a Himalayan mule… I just don’t give up.

I so wanted to do well in English! My 6^th, 7^th and formative 8^th were pure torture from an English subject perspective… I was a charlatan, studying in an “English-medium’ school, though not really comfortable with the language. To top it, I had the luck to have Mrs. S, a tough bird from South India, as my English language teacher. This Mrs. S. loved “P”, who was also a South Indian, and whose natural English was beautiful, and besides, he could sing “Silent Night, Holy Night” at the drop of the proverbial hat, and often did!

Mrs. S. was disgusted with me… time and time again, she called upon me to read, making me stumble, and further reducing what little confidence a young child had… her favourite mode of punishment was to squeeze and pinch the child’s earlobe in her strong fingers… if you have not had that done to you, take it from me that it can be excruciatingly painful!

And so matters stood… till an angel in the guise of Mrs. GS took over English in my 9^th standard… today, I am a senior global technology leader and one of the topics I coach on, is Sales Excellence, which is all about precision. Mrs. GS taught English like she was taking a precision-oriented class in higher Cal, than English. She told a spell-bound class, a class sick and tired of chauvinistic and conservative teachers like Mrs. S, that in her (Mrs. GS’s) book, there was no such thing as someone not being good in English.

She distilled her classes to actions, directives and a simplicity that only she could bring. We adored her. Not only was she precise (I LOVE that word), she was also, (mostly) non-judgemental, and patient… even to someone like me. Under her tutelage, I finally started to embrace the language without reducing the interaction to armed combat with automatic weapons.

One of Mrs. GS’s tactics was to begin almost every class by having one of us read a few pages from the literary work we happen to be studying… it was during one of these sessions that I learned how “Nietzsche” is pronounced! And that made me want to speak every word I came across, in the correct way! And this from someone who thought that a “Gorge” was pronounced as “George”!

I suspect Mrs. GS was not really an English teacher at all… her forte was mathematical and maniacal focus on reducing (?) ambiguity and confusion… she made us read every para and every line, rehearsing with us what constituted simple and clear answers. She intuitively grasped that few of us at that time had the technical skill set to devise our own answers…so she just took that out of the equation. It mattered none at all, that all of us were answering the questions the same way… at least they were grammatically correct!

I started reading… actually reading… I got introduced to popular English fiction, comics and unknown to me, began a love affair with the written word that has sustained through the decades…

I started reading Durrell, RK Narayan and of course Asterix and Tintin… while I was still some years away from Wodehouse, Maugham and Herriott, I was getting into my stride…

It was Mrs. GS who sparked in me a very small kindling of wanting to write… One day she asked all of us to write a short story… on any topic, the only requirement being that it should be original…

It was my first, my very first short story… I wrote, probably 4 paragraphs, about accompanying my Mother to a shopping expedition… I described the boredom, the tedium, and what I observed in the shoppers and the world around me… a gentle stream of sardonic humour, which I still consider my ablest weapon, kind of flowed through the story…

Mrs. GS read it, and wrote… “Good, I like the supressed humour”… that’s it… 6 words… and they changed my life. Here was someone in authority who finally thought I was not the village idiot, and who, praise be, could write in ENGLISH!

After my XII Board final exams, Mrs. GS called me at home, asking how I felt I had done… I was flattered” she had never called me before, but she had so much invested in all of us that she apparently called many of us, simply to listen and quietly encourage.

After I got into an Engineering college, I went back to DPS to meet Mrs. GS, and thank her… but she was not in her room. I had bought a poster for her from Connaught Place, with Dennis the Menace saying “Thank you”… I signed it and tossed it into her room (the door was locked) through the roshandan… I have no idea if she got it, or even read it… I never heard from her again and some years ago, I came to know that she had passed away.

I never really got to telling her how much I owed her… maybe more than I can express. I write regularly, I blog, and feel I have a book inside me that is yearning to come out.

All this because of those 6 words…

People will tell you many things about children’s development, but I learnt a valuable lesson… genuine and honest feedback, is a game changer. In my school life, I can look back and point with love, affection and admiration at probably 5 teachers who were honest and encouraging, and they moulded my life.

Maybe this does not work with people who are super-confident, but for me, this group was the first set of adults who believed in me, albeit in a small way!

Today, whenever I have an opportunity to mentor, or simply talk to someone who needs help, knowledge or encouragement, my priority is always to empathize… I have been there, my friend… hang in there!