It was Teachers' Day today, at least in India. To mark the occasion, here are a couple of passages from the new Naseeruddin Shah memoir. This one about a much-feared class-teacher named Miss Winnie Perry:
In a similar vein, this bit about a Brother D F Burke, who was responsible for many memorable movie screenings in the school – something Naseer
remains grateful for – but who was also famous for doling out physical punishment:
And to round things off, this classic teacherly Naseer song, which will warm (or scald) the cockles of your heart:
If you were to ask any junior student of fifties Sem about Miss Perry, it’s an even bet she still figures in his nightmares […] She would gleefully play along with our whispered suspicions that she went home on a broomstick, and when in really severe mode she used the handle of a feather duster for chastisement.Even if you know Mister Shah isn’t the sort to bother with such trifling things as being polite, you might be blindsided by the chapter's ending:
Sometime in the mid-nineties, I learnt she was in a home for the aged in Lucknow. I wrote her a letter, I don’t know why, and she replied saying she remembered me, but I doubt if she did. I heard later that she’d suffered a brutal death at the hands of an intruder. I don’t suspect it was one of her students.There's something moving though about that letter-sending bit and the "I don't know why". I think it captures the push-pull relationship so many of us have with teachers we didn’t like – or even despised – in our school days, but whom we remember with a distant nostalgic fondness later in life when we can see them as frail, diminished and incapable of wielding hegemony over us, and perhaps understand some of the disappointments they must have suffered with students over the years.
In a similar vein, this bit about a Brother D F Burke, who was responsible for many memorable movie screenings in the school – something Naseer
remains grateful for – but who was also famous for doling out physical punishment: My prayer for him is that in the big projection room in the sky he has the most comfortable seat and an unending store of his favourite movies for all eternity. That, and I also hope he keeps getting rapped on the head with a hard knuckle every now and then when he least expects it.
And to round things off, this classic teacherly Naseer song, which will warm (or scald) the cockles of your heart:
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