Perseverance
Going Beyond Fear
2018 marked the beginning and end of many chapters in my life. I was retiring, after 33 years of teaching. My husband developed a blood clot after a very innocuous fall, and required immediate and urgent brain surgery. I helped him combat that, as well as the horrific side effects of a medicine. My mother-in-law began moving with short, but painful steps into spiralling dementia.
In the year before my retirement, many scales fell from my eyes. Far from being liked by the colleagues in my department, I got to know that they apparently disliked my bid to create discipline in the English Department, of which I was the Head. I learnt later, from some true friends, that they had all been complaining bitterly about me, and had even begun calling me ‘Hitler’!!! They were angry that I insisted on punctuality about attending meetings, about reaching College, as well as attending lectures. They also didn’t like my push to get them to read more books, apparently considering that they had read enough, when they were doing their Masters.
It was a shock, and a reality check. But I am glad I didn’t let that unwoman me. I decided that I wouldn’t turn back from being me. I persevered. I believe that if teachers are not disciplined, they have no right to expect it from students, and they need to set an example by practising rather than preaching. These are not only old fashioned values, but in this day and age, they are probably politically incorrect, too.
Thank God I retired before political correctness became fashionable, and also, everyone’s necessary armour of choice!
To counteract the climate of apathy and antipathy in the staffroom, I sought, and found, other avenues of interest.
I made it a point to watch dramatic theatre performances, in small boutique theatres. I watched movies in large multiplexes, on my own. I treated myself to lunch, dinner and coffee. Often, students would meet me, and come along for company.
I travelled solo, to North India.
I went para gliding.
I travelled to the Wagah Border, the symbolic border between India and Pakistan, to watch the age-old ceremony between the two ‘enemies.’
I rode a camel, only for a few paces though, shrieking in fear and vertigo.
I hiked to Triund: six kilometers up a vertiginous mountain, in the Dhauladhar ranges, in freezing hail, through forests of pine, oak, cedar and rhododendron.
I visited the timeless Norbulingka Institute, in Dharamshala, the centre for Tibetan culture and heritage.
I also visited the exquisite Golden Temple in Amritsar.
When I returned to College, after my holiday, I felt I was walking on clouds. Packed into my heart, in layer upon layer of beauty and excitement were the memories of these beautiful places. When I wanted to, I could forget the ugliness of the staff common room, and sink gently back into the powerful feelings these places evoked.
They helped me persevere, and not give up. They reminded me that I need not stoop to the baseness I sometimes found around me. They helped bolster me, when I felt I would sink with disillusion. They reinforced my congenitally thin skin, and helped me pretend to be unaffected, even when I was deeply, deeply hurt, by the ‘slings and arrows’ of those I had, once, considered my friends.
It helped that I was stubborn and bull-headed, like my sun sign. Thin skinned, but bull-headed : a crazy combination. It helped that I had, at my finger tips, books stocked in one of the best libraries in Mumbai. It helped that I was born to a set of parents who implicitly believed in discipline and old fashioned value systems.
They helped me persevere, and carry on, even on the darkest day, when it seemed as if the Sun would never come out.
But when the next day dawned, there was the Sun, bright and shining, again!
ⓒ 2023 Suma Narayan. All Rights Reserved.
This piece is written in response to Ravyne Hawke ‘s Word of the Year, ‘Perseverance’, from this story:
