In response to the overwhelming public demand for some less banal than a recipe (although I think recipes are about as banal as the Dal Lake), here is your Chhotacut to becoming a writer:
Submit an article to the Reader's Digest.
They'll do the due diligence in terms of making it read like a Digest article. They will even research the background for you, especially to find out if everything you have written is true.
Here's the one I submitted (and they published).
And because I think my submitted article was better than the final edited one (Pride's definitely my favourite sin), here's the original:
Tinker Tailor Soldier Teacher
“You are children
that are coming to a special institution. You have the personal responsibility
to live upto ideals. Ideals like truth and honesty…”
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| Image Courtesy: Reader's Digest |
Barely suppressed
yawns and careful whispers. Looking around to see where that boy/girl you have
a crush on is sitting. Crossing and uncrossing your limbs to shake out the
pins-and-needles. And the collective, silent, sigh of relief as the lecture
meandered into a close with the school announcements.
Indu Ma’am was
everything a teacher should not be. You may think teenagers are a liberal lot,
since they like to break rules and experiment, but growing up in Delhi in the
nineties, we were anything but. So Indu Ma’am’s bead necklaces, which graduated
in size from the points in the ballpoint pens to TT balls (that was a lot of
balls for us hormonal lot); her gauzy chiffon sarees, her nearly see-through
blouses, her fuchsia lipstick – all came up for furious, almost medieval,
disapproval.
Not that she had to
care what a bunch of raw post-pubescents thought about her – she was the
Principal. She could deliver maudlin, 30 minute lectures on her favourite
spiritual topic. She could get away with conveying to us, over 15 embarrassing
minutes in front of your friends, how despicable people who did not wash their
canvas shoes daily were.
If she was any other
teacher, we would just have sniggered and left it at that. But with all that power,
we had to give her the full treatment – hatred.
To avoid public humiliation, we behaved
faultlessly whenever Ma’am was within sight or hearing range. Better still, we
avoided her as far as possible. For example, if you turned a corner and spotted
something fluorescent pink at the other end of a long school corridor, you took
a detour, even if it meant climbing up and down 3 floors to reach a ground
floor classroom.
When Indu Ma’am walked in as our 11th Grade
Political Science teacher, we were all prepared for thirty-five minutes of sullen
transience, forcing our bottoms to stick to our chairs. Passing time stealing
glances at the labored progress of the seconds hand around the clock face.
“How many of you have
read today’s paper?”
A few of us raised our hands.
“You can learn a lot from your textbook, but you’ll learn
more if you just start paying attention to the papers more,” she said. “When I
was in Czechoslovakia, we went on a visit to London. As a Political Science
student, I had to visit the British Parliament. Parliamentarians sat like
this.”
And with that, our stolid and strict Principal put her
dainty feet on her table. The class erupted in giggles. To our amazement, Indu
Ma’am laughed with us.
She told us to start watching TV news and read novels set in
Europe. “Have you read Anna Karenina?” She asked.
Over the next two years, Indu Ma’am opened our minds to what
the world was talking about. While completing a chapter on democracy, she
discussed notorious tyrants. In the section on communism, we were treated to a
rather interesting story about Rasputin’s relationship with the queen. We spoke
about Ceauşescu’s bathroom
fittings (gold) and Imelda Marcos’ shoes (2700 pairs). We debated on the merits
of the federal system of governance over a semi-federal one.
In another class, she told us she was wearing shorts to the
beach, when.... We did not let her complete. Some of us were laughing so hard
we were bent at the waist. “What? You people
think I was never thin?” We laughed even harder. That was exactly what was on
our minds – her weight.
Many years later, when I started taking classes for
entrance-exam-hardened IIT students, I realized how much confidence that had
taken – her self-deprecating humour in a group of nearly-adults at their bitchy
best. When she walked into class, she transformed into a teacher in the mentoring
sense of the term, leaving her role as chief administrator at the door. What
struck us was the ease with which she could switch modes. Her Principal
personality was rigid, unyielding, and preachy – everything a child could grow
to resent. In class, the same person changed into a co-learner, a storyteller,
funny, wise – inspiring.
The newsmakers of the nineties came alive in Political
Science class, their choices and their lives a matter of wonderment and debate.
Was Winnie Mandela right in separating from Nelson Mandela?
Our middle-class-eighties upbringing balked at the idea. Indu Ma’am asked us
why a public persona has to stick to the public’s opinions. She introduced the
idea in our heads that divorce may just be an expression of choice, with little
to do with morals, often none at all. “In France, most people choose to be in
relationships without marriage,” she said. The idea was nothing short of
revolutionary for the sheltered creatures from conservative families that we
were, but once we were nudged our of our comfort zones, a lot of our beliefs underwent
interrogation and lunchtime debates.
Twenty years have passed since I sat in Indu Ma’am’s
classes. I have forgotten nearly every part of the Syllabus that fetched me a respectable
percentage in the Class XII boards. But I can still tell you when the UN’s
Security Council deadline for withdrawal of troops ran out for Saddam Hussein,
and what followed.
When you are seventeen, you haven’t quite figured out who
you want to be and choose to play it safe with sticking to whatever the others in
Class are. The problem is, they too are looking upto confused morons like you
for some inspiration. In Political Science class, however, for a brief 35
minutes every 2 days, our beclouded age would recede. Taking part in
discussions, listening to other people’s opinions, sharing your own, imbibing
new information that went into shaping those opinions, we became, for half an
hour, seekers and learners, and not merely adults-in-the-making.
