Teachers’ Gallery!

I felt a sudden urge to see my beloved high school teachers; though almost all of them, except one or two, are not alive. The one place where I can see them—their pictures—is our school’s prayer hall.

When I stood looking at them, I became a boy of twelve again. My glance first fell on Maruthavanan. The way he wrote on the blackboard, like a string of pearls, and the illustrations he drew with chalk pieces of different colors won us over completely on the very first day he entered our classroom as the science teacher.

He smiled at me from behind the frame-glass of his picture. His thin pencil moustache, his bony frame, and the flame in his eyes floated before me.

Next to him was my history teacher, Kasturi, with his big oval face. He used to take us fifty boys in his "time machine tourist bus" back to the good old eras of Alexander, Asoka, and Akbar. He turned history—a black-and-white subject—into a rainbow real story.

On his left was the picture of my own father, Raghavan. Even in our home, we don't have a picture of him this big. From my father's photo, my eyes wandered to that of our headmaster, Ranganathan. The boys gave him the nickname 'Python'. He always confined himself to his lair-like room, curling up tightly in his cushion chair. He used to slither in at ten in the morning and slither out at five in the evening.

After Ranganathan, it was the turn of Ramamurthy, who was my class teacher in seventh standard. As I looked at his face, with those thick glasses and sunken cheeks, I could not help recalling a funny incident. Ramamurthy, a chronic bachelor, used to pet a plump, rosy kid named Gopal.

One day he told the boy, inappropriately, "You are so beautiful; your mother must be beautiful too." The son conveyed his teacher’s compliments to his mother, who came to the school the very next day and gave Ramamurthy a resounding slap across his face.

There were many more pictures of my teachers which I saw that day. Staring at me from the gallery was Devarathnam, our drill master, in his NCC uniform; he looked prospectively like Gabbar Singh in Sholay. He seemed to shout at me, "Forgot me? You NCC dropout!"

Next to him was 'Panther' Padmanabhan, who looked like the spotted predator with that small head of his and the smallpox scars on his face. His picture looked more like a hunter’s trophy than a man’s photo. Then, I searched and found the picture of my Mathematics teacher, who knew by heart not only squares but also the cubes of many numbers.

When I turned to leave the prayer hall, there materialized before me an old man. He was none other than Pachai, the peon who used to ring the school bell. I was startled to see him; I did not expect him to be alive. His face, except for a few lines, had not changed much. At ninety-two, Pachai looked as if he still had many more years before he crossed the River Styx.