When I saw my class teacher or did I?

By Shevlin Sebastian

Photo: St. Xavier's School, Kolkata

The other day when I was riding down a road, on a two-wheeler, near my home in Kochi, in the distance, I saw a woman who had bobbed hair. I felt a sudden queasiness in my stomach. ‘Was that Miss Edmonds? (name changed)’ I thought.

Miss Edmonds had been my Class four teacher at St. Xavier’s School in Kolkata. She was a strict disciplinarian. When Miss Edmonds walked, she looked neither to the left nor the right. When she got angry her voice sounded like a clap of lightning. And one day I got to experience her rage first-hand.

It was an English class. Miss Edmonds looked at me and said, “Come here.” My heart started beating fast and my hands began to shake. I got up from the fourth row and began to walk, as if through quicksand, towards her table. I stopped and waited.

“You haven’t you done your homework, yet, you have submitted your exercise book,” she said. “Why?”

There was a pin-drop silence in the class.

“My mother has a high fever,” I said. “Yesterday, there were a lot of people in the house. I could not do my homework.”

“Then why did you submit your book?” said Miss Edmonds.

I did not know what to say. It was my fear of the class teacher that made me do so. Miss Edmonds pulled out the gold ring from the third finger of her right hand and placed it carefully on the table. Then she pushed back the chair, stood up and in the very next instant, she slapped my face.

My head rocked back. My eyes closed and I saw stars under my eyelids. There was a sting on my cheeks and, all of a sudden, tears began to roll down my face. Miss Edmonds flung my notebook towards the door.

“Go and stand outside till the end of classes today,” she shouted, as I numbly walked towards the door. I could feel the eyes of all the boys on my back.

Outside, I wiped my face with a handkerchief. It was such a shock. This was the first time in my life that I had been slapped. My mother had always scolded me but never touched me.

In fact, that was the only time Miss Edmonds slapped me. After that, I was always careful. I did my homework on time and did not make a noise in class. But I was always scared of her...

As I came abreast of the woman on that Kochi road I looked sideways and saw that it was somebody else. Of course, it would be, since Miss Edmonds died more than fifteen years ago. Sadly, some fears do not go away. They remain alive and kicking till you die. 

(Published as a middle in The New Indian Express, South Indian editions)