Grateful for the Love, and the Magic
A Dear Student, And Deer
One of the great privileges of being a teacher is that students never forget you. Men, matters, masks, governments, and epidemics may come and go: but somewhere in the heart of every person I know is the memory of that one teacher who formed her character…or destroyed what she had of it.
One day, on my morning walk I met a student I had taught thirty-one years ago. She and her husband had both been my students. They had fallen in love with each other and got married after they graduated. V knows how much I love early morning walks, trees, and blades of grass. She said, “We are going to the National Park next week. Would you like to come along?” Her husband M, was not with her. Apparently, they had had a fight and they were both sulking in their own ways. Each period of sulking lasted precisely 24 hours. They couldn’t keep it up for longer.
“Of course,” I said. There was no need to think at all. V looked doubtfully at my husband. “Sir, too?” she asked hesitantly. My husband curled his lip and suddenly saw something on a tree that needed close attention. So he went there. “No,” I said, grinning.
The next day, M came home, to get my ID, drove all the way to the Park site, got my Pass made, looking affronted when I said I would pay. “If I can’t pay for my teacher, what am I good for?”, he asked, looking righteously indignant.
That Saturday, they picked me up at 4.30 am, and we drove to the Park over dark, silent roads. At 5 am we began to walk. The full moon shone down at us, from an angle, peeping at us from between the foliage that met overhead. There was hardly any light, except M’s small torch, and the distant twinkle in the house of an early riser, in one of the houses beyond the Park.
Sometimes I would be startled out of my wits by a whoosh and a hoot, as an owl flew out, and down, from her high perch on the trees, to swoop down on some unwary prey. Sometimes, an inquisitive creeper hanging from a branch would touch my face and I would jump. A troupe of monkeys would suddenly decide to have a loud chittering contest and my heart would jump into my throat, and go back again.
And sometimes, a herd of deer would look at us with their melting eyes, just visible in the light cast by the tiny torch we humans held, as they went about foraging.
Dawn breezes blew. The undergrowth stirred. Sometimes the road seemed to move, as a snake slid out from one side of the path, and slithered to the other. At times, there was a clearing, and we looked directly up at the sky, and the stars shone down at us, in pinpoints of eternal light, still there, still a source of wonder and magic, still unconquered and unravished by billionaires with more money than they can count.
We walked for almost four hours. By then, early morning visitors had descended on the Park in droves. They came with their conversation, their songs, their ‘jokes’ and loud, hooting laughter. They came with their mobiles blaring ‘religious’ music.
And, like Mathew Arnold’s Scholar Gipsy, we fled:
Before this strange disease of modern life,
With its sick hurry, its divided aims,
Its heads o’ertax’d, its palsied hearts, was rife —
Fly hence, our contact fear!
Mathew Arnold, ‘The Scholar Gipsy’
My legs and feet were sore the next day, and I could scarcely move. but I would go again, in a flash, if I could. For what I saw that magical morning was beyond anything that I have ever seen, heard, touched, smelled, or felt, before, or since.
In gratitude, love and respect for ALL my students, wherever they are, for teaching me more than I have ever taught them.
God bless you all, now, and forever.
