Of void and balance

Jayanta (JD)
Nov 3 · 5 min read
The school I taught in

NOTE: The names in this post have been changed.

It is three in the morning and I’m lying awake on my bed. Insomnia struck!

With only my shorts and sleeveless on, I feel restless; some kind of anxiety behests me. I hear the rustle of the leaves outside the window. The moon is bright and casts its warm light on the road beside my room. I play with the lamp next to my hand. Tic — tok — tic –tic — tok — tic — tok –tik.
I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling unambitiously. The fan above head spins. It slows down and finally stops. I realize that the power has gone. Thereby emanates an ominous silence. I keep staring at the standstill blades of the fan. They rest. They rest in peace.

I cannot help but wonder how these blades when in motion can bring dry air to life? How the void between the mass of these steel blades can be transformed into something so effective?

ATOMS! You know the fundamental building blocks of the universe? They barely have anything inside them. If an atom were to be bloated to the size of a football stadium, the nucleus would be of the size of a football. That’s all there is in an atom apart from the teeny tiny electrons. Imagine! Imagine the void inside an atom. Imagine the number of atoms in our planet and the number of planets in our universe. The cosmos is all full of emptiness.

It was my last day at school and I couldn’t help but think of the kids as I kept staring at the lifeless fan. The three blades provided a beautiful symmetry through which the fan balanced itself and operated with maximum efficiency. Three! I started thinking of the three students who had actually balanced my life over the last two years.

…………………………………………………..
I almost grinned as I closed my eyes to see Ramesh Kamble’s thin pale body. He must be some thirty odd kilos. His cheeks shrunken; his collar bones almost visible to the naked eye. Something about his physique intrigued me. His eyes? No, not his eyes; not the way he walked. Wait, it was his smile. I had never seen this kid cry. And every time he smiled, his canines could be seen. How could someone not ever cry? His energy! It was impossible to stop him once he had decided to do something. Nothing worked with him on bad days. No sweet talks, neither fuming anger nor persuasion for that matter. All one could do was wait. He’d taught me patience. I had, on several occasions shouted at him, sometimes ordered him to leave the class. What I did not understand then, was that this child had a deep emotional void inside him that came from neglect at home and constant peer pressure. And the only way he knew to deal with his emotions was to vent it out through anger.

…………………………………………………..

Smart, athletic and hair cropped like that of a retinue. He had a perfect jaw line. But, what truly amazed me was his photographic memory — an eight year old third grader who remembered Richard Feynman’s entire biography with every detail. An amazing gymnast that he was, his entry into the classroom would be with a side and flip over somersault. Sounds like the perfect one, right? Well, not really.

A family of three, and his mother the sole breadwinner. I would frequently visit his house, but this day was different. As I approached his house, I was shocked to see his father lying unconscious on the street: drunk. I could see the streetlight in the narrow lane give way to the lean stick like figure of his mother. She sat at the door waiting for her husband to gain conscience. Almost ignorant of the happenings, Kunal came and greeted me with a lot of enthusiasm. The evening stands in front of me as I close my eyes: his mother crying on my shoulder incessantly as if she cared about nothing in the world. Kunal’s was certainly not a perfect world. He taught me…. I don’t know what he taught me. I just found an amazing friend in him. One I could talk to without filtering my thoughts, one who did not judge and understood me. In his mother, I saw traces of my mother.

…………………………………………………..

Towards the end of the first year of teaching, I screamed at her. She was one of the finest kids in the class. How could she not listen to me? She was so scared that she started wailing like a baby. I did not pay heed. I thought it would be over in a bit. It did not. I had broken her dreams. I spoke to her the next day. She still seemed perplexed. I looked into her eyes and told her “Shalini, you can become whoever you aspire to be when you grow up! ” I could see the sparkle in her eyes. She believed me. This experience taught me that I trust and believe in people to transform and become their best selves. This belief translates into the confidence and conviction with which I speak.

What a relief! The fan came back to life. The whizzing of the motor finally broke the silence. The void was lost, or was it? In all the kids I dealt with over the last couple of years, there existed a void that I was trying to fill and leave behind a part of me in their lives. But to what extent I was successful, only time will tell! These kids balanced my life by helping me learn so much about myself. I vividly remember talking to my college professor as I was doing a miserably in a project. She said “Gentleman, your friends love you, your parents do too. Your studies and teachers are equally important. There is a lot at stake and hence it is essential to balance your act.” A fine balance really!

The emptiness took over me again. In Richard Feynman’s words,

“I…. a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe.”

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