tales of Suchita

You came into our life on a bright afternoon when we were 13 because we were being hooligans and they couldn’t find another substitute teacher. You didn’t scold us though. Just set up an assignment for us to do and for the rest of the thirty minutes, we were quiet, in awe of you.

We met again a year later when you officially became our Chemistry teacher. You were to teach us valency and to make it fun, you asked us to bring coloured pens. Obviously, we were sceptical. Who was this teacher who was not only making learning fun for us but didn’t scold us for using our pink and green and orange and purple glitter pens?

I still remember how you taught us to use the pens to denote electrons or protons. You made the world of chemicals, salts and balancing of equations an easy one. If we had been in awe of you before, we were now sunflowers, following you around as if you were our personal sun.

Briefly you became our class teacher but then had to give that up because you said it wasn’t something you could keep doing – it was taking a toll on you. It was the first time I had heard of someone saying no and you cannot imagine what a role model you became for all of us.

I have to talk about the time in 9^th and 10^th where everyone was rushing through their syllabus. You, instead, would spend 15 minutes just drawing a complicated ore extraction experiment on the board. You were the only teacher who had her set of coloured chalks and you would use them to draw the experiment, from memory, onto the board. Bringing something from our textbook alive in front of us.

Did you know those were my favourite 15 minutes? The class would be quiet, just watching you transform that board using your coloured chalks into a piece of art. We never did forget details once we had understood them like that.

I remember all the experiments we did in the lab, you allowing us to break beakers, take extra salt but still encouraging us to get the brown ring test right.

You were such a badass, defying convention, allowing us free time even though we were in the 10^th. You were the only one who wouldn’t ask for extra classes that confident you were in your abilities to teach us what we needed.

I had tried to ape you as I stepped into a classroom to teach a bunch of students who weren’t interested in listening to what I had to teach. But I tried to enact the confidence, the calm and the knowledge that my students were just kids at the end of the day.

I knew you wouldn’t teach me in 11^th and 12^th and it was an easy decision to drop Chemistry after 10^th. Had you been my teacher, I probably would have done a PhD in the subject!

You gave us the confidence to not be nervous of our board exam and you, my Chemistry teacher, are still someone who I remember and talk about, 20 years later.

Thank you for your energy, enthusiasm and patience.

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This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon 2023 

Photo by Pawan Parihar on Unsplash