... silence, students and teachers

At least 150 familiar faces chirrup and twitter, cheep and peep, every day, in this corridor. Yesterday, just before the observance of our Independence Day, I went upstairs, took a somnolent picture of the passageway and dived for a heartbeat to hear the cemented silence on the parapet.

The balcony-cum-corridor reflects a walkway into their future. To the left, three sections of two classes each are filled with plethora of angelic faces. In spite of inharmonious clashes inside the staff room, the dirty political actus reus, it is the only passage where I heave a sigh of relief, spread dried seeds of pangs on the floating dust and look voiceless deep into the speaking silence. My heart goes on reciting the lines that I have abducted here also from Derozio's Sonnet to the Pupils of Hindu College,

"Expanding like the petals of young flowers,

I watch the gentle opening of your mind,..."

I had to hurry downstairs...

... Then I moved back a little and pressed the button once more to get the front view of our school. Look at the students, hear their planning for translating the day's modus operandi into reality...

For students, celebration never stops. They are like a jocund band of flowers. To them, martyrdom and history of bloodshed and blood-throbbing British intimidation have less importance than the about-to-soar flag resembling their about-to-soar aspirations. It is due to their age when spell binds more than rationality. 

We should respect this spell also and learn from our mistakes we commit in the historical present. Even as teachers, what we do round the year no way send a message of true independence and democracy, and the simplest and strongest of all, brotherhood. The students are not freedom fighters, however, under the weight of uninteresting heaps of teaching harangues, they always fight for freedom.

A nation only knows the pain of climbing heaven and gazing on the doomed earth which rotates in the soul of every student and often makes them or some one of them turn back, look back in anger and reduce to weak despondency...

Still we say, we the rational Indians, Happy Independence Day!

Forgetting ourselves, let us unite, once more, like the gurus we read about in the wrinkled pages, to help them learn and create a world of learners.

[Camera courtesy: My elder brother]