People write so many things about their teachers, but very few teachers write about exciting moments they would have shared with their students. I don’t know why my students have left an indelible impression on my mind. Whenever I recall them in my hours of solitude (now that I’m retired), I just can’t help smiling to myself and murmuring to myself on how lucky I was to be a teacher to such wonderful students.
The year was 1978. I was a young teacher from Kerala at an Middle English school, with up to Class 8, in a remote place called ‘kapu’ in Tirap district (the erstwhile Tirap Frontier Tract) of Arunachal Pradesh. It was my first posting on the job.
Kapu was the term for “white hills” in the tribal dialect of the Noctes, spoken by the isolated, hardworking denizens of the sparsely populated region. Students came from the nearby interior lower primary schools at Longo, Tupi and Kapu villages.
It was a sunlit morning of November 14, Children’s Day. I asked our headmaster what our plan for the day was — games, cultural progammes, literary activities, or anything else useful.
But our headmaster, an Assamese man, laughed and said, “Well, really speaking the children only need a nice bath! You know, the doctors are arriving here from the headquarters at Khonsa, to give some free medical care as part of an immunity camp. It’s essential the children get a nice bath and remain neat and clean when they arrive.”
I laughed and said, “Okay, we’ll do it!” We were the only two junior teachers there. As soon as the headmaster informed the kids of our decision, we heard a loud outburst of joy and laughter. All the children of the village, of various sizes, poured out into the courtyard. We quickly took some towels we had, along with a few stitched pieces of cloth from old sarees, soaps cut in two and some bottles of coconut oil, and rushed towards the spring nearby.
The small yet pristine mountain spring was a heavenly place with smooth, huge stones piled all over. The spring gurgled over them in a cascade of shining water. What a place to have a bath, I thought. When we reached there, the children had already climbed on to the boulders. We gave them the soaps and asked them to bathe well. As they came out, we towelled and dried them as they giggled and laughed. I think I have never seen anyone, anywhere, anytime enjoying a bath like that!
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