My Students'Habitat

 

My Students’ Habitat

26 November 2022,

Saturday.

“Priya!” Tu ithe aa. Kal kyu nai ayi?!

Asked the elderly cleaning lady as I met her today to give her my mobile number. Sometimes,you genuinely don’t want to leave a connection you make and that’s when mobile can come in handy. Isn’t it all just an attempt to stay in contact, in touch? To not loose each other even when we are not in the same spaces. That’s what has happened to me in my three months tenure as an intern teacher in this school of a small village in Punjab. We all don’t want to loose each other. We are bonded by love, and now connected with technology.

As I rush towards the bus, Rohit calls me out to say: “Punjabi seekhne vale madamji”(which has now become his tagline for calling me) “aj hamare saath aajao”. I smile and say nothing because I acknowledge his acceptance of me in silence. I acknowledge them wanting to have me in their circle and my heart fills with gratitude.

I enter my bus with the kids calling out to me to sit with them.But they know I won’t sit because I like to stand.They accept me,as I accept them. No pressure,but always offer. A heart’s call: “Maam,sit with us. Maam, please eat this kurkure. Maam, look at my drawings. Maam, I won a medal today.” I soak it all, and bask in their sweet energy as I listen and they feel the reflection of my warmth oozing out encouraging them to share more. The sun’s warmth urges us to come out and that’s what my warmth does; it urges the true spirit of the kids to come out, to share who they really are openly and freely like summer clothes worn on a sunny Sunday.

I carry on to stand at the back of the bus as the rush recedes, and the bus starts emptying. The atmosphere is very chilled out today, both metaphorically and literally. The songs playing, the kids playing, the adults sitting and me standing.

All this time I had been facing the backside of the bus just to watch the trees and the road left behind and to have my own little world where only I and nature exist. Infront is my other world, where my kids and I co-exist. I am of both worlds,and love them both. I also experience both just by simply turning around back or front.

After having my fill of “me time” I turn around to sit at the back of the bus, facing forward. I sit right in the middle of the aisle and what I observe beholds me.

There they are, being in their element,their nature. I saw a yellow bird with black and white stripes just walking on the ground yesterday oblivious to how unique it looked to my eyes. The kids similarly have no idea how innocent they are in their existence. Just them being exudes the light of purity and peace all around. Rejuvenation of life perhaps. 

There sat one kid on the floor of the bus with no care of what’s the “norm”, a kid who had the best view of the scenery as he sat laying on his chin facing the big window pane near the driver’s seat, kids who laughed as the sunlight danced around their gleeful faces accentuating the lines of their smiles, and a kid who sat at the corner of my seat with a window to keep him company and peaceful nature to put him to sleep. I wish I could capture that girl who smiled as the sun gently touched her face, or when the wind softly caressed her hairs…making her look so divine and ethreal, an otherworldly scene only possible in movies or my wildest imagination.

But it’s best if they are watched undisturbed, just like I watched that rare yellow bird in her space the other day, just existing…. oblivious to the eyes that watch them with awe and wonder. I believe if you disturb, or get your camera out and grab their attention, they are no longer in their space, because you made yourself known; now you are a part of the most intimate part of their space, where they are being their real selves.

So I just observe and absorb, with an underlying sense of greatfulness that they took me in their natural habitat and now I am a part of their ecosystem.