Misfit
35 kids in a classroom
A teacher who comes in for every ‘period’
‘Learn to run with the rest’
There is no provision for those left behind
No room for those who can’t keep up
Add some smartness, my mother said,
Hoping that I would be able to learn
The talents she never had
Or unlearn those she had.
35 kids in a classroom
All ‘smart’ or trying to be
No room for another colour
No room for another shade
Learn to mingle, my mother said
Not knowing how to do so, herself
And praying that I would miraculously learn.
35 kids in a classroom
All trying to ‘learn’ , and be ‘educated’
A teacher coming in to teach
The three Rs the syllabus stipulated
Don’t be so quiet, my mother said,
She knew, who better,
How easy it was to drown in other’s voices
Silencing one’s own.
35 kids in a classroom,
And a teacher who appeared every half hour,
And not one soul to tell me
That I could emerge from the stone
I had burrowed beneath
That I could rekindle my lost light,
Or create my own source.
35 kids in a classroom
All reduced to bite-sized pieces
Garnished with ‘smartness’
Spiced with the three Rs
All trying to fit in:
Beautiful ducklings growing into swans
In strait laces…
And I, doomed to loneliness
Speaking, when I spoke,
A language no one understood
Or tried to.
Not a duckling.
Not a swan.
Quite unfit for consumption.
©️ 2021 Suma Narayan. All Rights Reserved.
Shoutout to this exquisite poem by A H Mehr, on being a non conformist:
