Elocution Lessons

She was a mission in blue

Blue sari with little blue crosses

A fun nun under a blue umbrella

Pattering down the school corridors

Armed with a plastic blue handfan

To keep the summer heat away

Naughty curly hair,

Eyes that twinkled with mischief

She was the epitome of simple joy;

Poetry and appreciation of nature

Cloaked her in an aura of joy

Reminding me of a new age Mary Poppins

She introduced us to many a new idea:

Blu-tac that could pin you to a wall

Parables in colour to brighten up a dull catechism room

lessons with God were not boring any more

It was the building of a new friendship—with the Almighty

Hours rolled by reciting “Daddy fell into the Pond” by Alfred Noyes

--the same bloke who gave the world “The Highway man”

Who came riding, riding, riding for the inn keeper’s daughter—

His Beloved Bess.

Black and red stars dotted our poetry books

For being bad or good in class

Did you ever know the difference between pronunciation and enunciation?

We did—thanks to our teacher.

Voice modulations resounded in our ears

Thundering awake even the sleepy audience in the back rows.

“Cats slept anywhere, any table, any chair”

Poems found unique resting points in our notebooks—

Some between the ruled blue lines on the right;

Others squeezed in within the confines of the thick double ruled red margins on the left

Cats, bells, lilies, and little baby sketches hanging, somersaulting between the blue lines

Of our poetry books..

Tagore, Wordsworth, Whitman, Frost, Yeats, Brown and I

Found ourselves rubbing shoulders on every page

So what if some of them wrote in length about daffodils or crystal bangles or a sinking ship?

I too was a poetess in her class—a cat sat on a mat chewing a rat—

Was also a rhyme!

Dear Sr. Angela,

A lot of poets would have gone unapplauded

In my heart and in my imagination

Had you not invited them to

every elocution period of my schooldays I spent with you.