THE PANGS OF PARTING

Our richest experiences are not always the easiest. I learned this when the time came for me to say good-bye to BCM College after a deep and long relationship. Physically I have been looking forward to my retirement. But mentally and emotionally I am still trying to overcome the trauma of a great ordeal.

For the last many years I had taken BCM for granted. It is only at this moment of parting that I realize the strength of that cord that connected me to her. I have been a part of BCM for the last thirty four years-add one more for my pre-university course here and that makes it thirty five. Of course, thirty five years is a long time in one’s life span.

I grew along with BCM. The skinny, slim girl of twenty one has grown physically into quite a rounded figure with receding hairline and exceeding waistline. Wrinkles and grey hair have started showing. I grew from a girl, to wife, mother and mother-in-law during this period.

Society might see me as wise[?] old matron. The truth is that my years in BCM have put into me a perennial romantic teenager. The music of youth still echoes in me. I show outside the grown-up part. But inside, very often, I become the laughing girl, the dry teenager and sometimes the dreaming youth. My girls have taught me to sing and dance with them-in my soul. A part of me will always remain young - thanks to BCM and my students.

When I joined BCM I was as young and green as my students. I learned with them and ripened as a teacher. I remember now the sleepless nights and nerve-wracking terror I used to experience as I stepped into a class of gazing girls with a new poem or essay or grammar lesson. Even hours and hours of preparation could not make me confident enough. But even without my awareness an inspiration grew. One girl in the classroom suddenly looks at you with understanding and enlightenment, another face suddenly becomes alert or yet another suddenly writes down what you have said-and your day is made. I go home and prepare for more such rewards the next day.

Sometimes a student takes me into confidence and leads me into uncharted areas of experiences that I hear from her. They make me smile, they make me cry, they make me think of thousands who suffer similarly. The teacher in me transforms into a friend, a guide, an elder sister and very often, a mother. I might retire officially from BCM. But the great consolation is the feeling that I may not retire from the minds of my students. Many of them keep in touch even after leaving the BCM nest. It makes me so proud to learn that wherever they are, whatever they are, they are now exerting their powerful influence on their family or community in some way or the other. When I hear of their successes, their usefulness and their honours my heart leaps within me to think they are my students. What a reward this is for a teacher!

Working with the management of BCM was a unique experience. How could I thank them enough for the encouragement, acknowledgement and appreciation I always had from them? I knew I was not worth it. But it worked always as an incentive to deserve it.

Then, there is the love and concern and support I enjoyed from my colleagues-both teaching and non-teaching. Their sincere smiles and endearing words wrapped me in a warmth of affection that always lifted my spirits. I could not find the right words to describe my indebtedness to them all. Too many words would only suffocate my real feelings. Friends, I want you to know that you were important to me.

I find it very hard to put a brake on my emotions as I think of my dear friends in the English department. The department was [is] my home away from home. Our love endures because we do not merely love one another, but we love many things together. It is a sense of lifelong belonging. The long years of love and friendship have formed for me a story-bag full of memories and incidents to be recollected repeatedly in my tranquility. Etty’s poetic outbursts, Lucy’s alliance with lime juice, Monamma’s fiery speeches, Leelu’s gentle humour, Indira’s delicious pickles falling like manna from high into our non-vegetarian lunch boxes! I am going to miss Valsa’s quiet intelligence and wisdom blurting out at the right moments to solve our problems, Mano’s and Matilda’s sweet delicacies, Josi’s hilarious jokes and Prema’s gentle ones, Renju’s right repartees and Dolly’s silent appreciation, Fincy’s sweet smile and my little Teena’s daughterly affection. I will forever be grateful for that wonderful day at the sailing club. As we sat by the lake with the birds twittering and the breeze writing poetry on the waters, so many times my mind went truant to feel your collective and condensed love falling all over me like a benediction. I could not get over it for a long time. That night I was restless in bed. I could not sleep and I found out I was crying when I felt the wetness on my pillow. I still don’t know whether it was happiness or sorrow. Maybe it was both.

Of one thing I am certain. BCM was God’s blessing to me. I shudder at the very thought of all that I would have missed if God had decided to put me elsewhere in life.