He was in love with Shakespeare…and blessed with a deep resounding voice, had the capacity to transform the leaking little room at home into a theater stage where every man played a part…each student read out lines imagining he was the character… I always noticed boys were better at it than girls—for some reason, the girls were a little shy, not wanting to bring out the real feeling of the actresses within them—while the boys easily let go—enunciating and expressing themselves as if on stage and before a listening audience…
Some shuffled, some giggled, some remained distracted—but the unifying factor was that the boys went back from that little blue room with memories of a Shakespeare like never before…
Poetry came alive as the Highwayman galloped through our rooms, the hooves of his stallion thundering down the kitchen, the bedroom, the blue tuition room and round the guava tree in the courtyard…as Bess hid in the shadows of the storeroom, the dark night came alive and every heart within that room pulsated with terror and fearful anticipation.
Lord Ullin’s daughter may never have known she had so many sympathetic ears for her as her lover cried out to the ferry man in great anguish “Boatman do not tarry!” --- every single boy in that room suddenly transformed into a gallant knight in shining armour, ready to stand guard and fight to death those enemies of Cupid’s love, storming and raging through that long, dark, tempestuous night in Middle aged England.
Walt Whitman and the boy on the burning deck shared the same space on our dining table, Wordsworth brought back daffodils for my mom each evening; E.V.Lucas stared back at us from the Face on the Wall-the patches of monsoon staining our walls brought English lessons live to us—our hearts went out to Bob as he struggled with his own self to keep an appointment after 20 years only to handcuff Jimmy Wells.
The last leaf may very well have been the one on the guava tree peeping from above the half curtain that adorned the wooden window of our home-classroom; Della and Jim left us with a lesson that would outlive our youthful fantasies of real love—Gulmohar was not just a tree—it was a treasure house of school room tales..Flights Of Fantasy gave us wings to dream…we shared space with Shylock and felt for his indignation-laughed with Gratiano the motley fool, wept with Brutus and lent our ears to Marc Antony..all in the little blue room that was home to me and a learning ground for many.
Ullysses paid us regular visits and P.B.Shelley stumbled in, breathless, as lightning chased its beloved cloud above our Jamun tree…children were made to shake hands (and minds) with the powerful lessons of E.R.Braithwaite in the boxing ring, John Gilpin was the most unwelcome amidst the young minds as he dragged on intolerably through the afternoon and into the evening.
Comprehensions/Essays/Letter writing were never welcome as they robbed the room of the thunderous applause that each afternoon gifted it with. It spread a soft blanket of grammar peppered with the wise words of Wren and Martin; forcing sleepy minds to think and reason, argue and contemplate.
Like most wise things in life, these, perhaps were the real lessons that transformed those restless boys into men of character—who went on to conquer boardrooms and school rooms, conferences and orations with right diction, correct parts of speech and immaculate expressions. Literary juices flowed all over the floor and had to be swept and wiped away at the end of each class when Ma came back home from work and found her beloved nest possessed and in the grip of a literary storm.
As the boys left the room , there always, always, remained some traces of the football ground, or boys’ shoes or resounding laughter…the sounds that were always music to my teacher’s ears.
Knights are usually conferred with the title ‘Sir’.
My father was, and still is, a knight---He will always be Sir John to countless boys and girls across the world today--The same boys and girls who fought many a war on the battle ground of #2, Rani Kothi Compound: a learning ground between LCR and SXD.
-Dedicated to all those boys and girls of St.Xavier’s Doranda and Loreto Convent Ranchi who visited a little blue room in #2, Rani Kothi Compound through their school days for English lessons
your writing evokes passion even in one who never was Sir John's student...
ReplyDeletebut i have a brother who was...and i remember the prose and poetry you mention above from his saying it aloud at home often with the same passion that you talk of here...with your permission I shall send this link to him...
@Siri--Of course you may...for years, I kept telling myself I was the luckiest girl on the planet to have my Pa and his morning batch boys waking me up to Shakespeare and Macavity the mystery cat prowling in that monsoon-stained little home that will always be a mansion for me...Thank god for ICSE--we had some good days with the bards!
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