Disclaimer: This is a personal reflection written on a difficult night. It names my experience, not individuals. I share it because silence helps no one.

Part 1 – The Ramble

This is one of those very tough days to be a teacher. Probably, with my weak memory, I think this is the toughest day for me as a teacher.

I need to talk about this. I guess. I’ve been wanting to talk about this for a while now. I wanted to talk about this with Sarojini, but it was very late by the time I got home, and I didn’t fine ant energy, really, to talk about this – I just wanted to go with the flow – as I always do, just piling up stuff in my head, you know, not seeking help, not letting anybody, like, cut through. I thought I would talk about this with Dushyanth, but nah, again, I just don’t have the energy to have another person around me. Also, I gave him some half-baked, stupid reply to one of his WhatsApp statuses, and nah – whatever it is, I don’t want to talk to anyone, I don’t want to linger around anyone, and I do not want to be with any kind of company. Right now, the time is 11:44, night, I am alone sitting beside a window, and there’s the sound of the highway coming through, and short intervals of silence, and then the clicks of the keyboard, and yes – this, this is a little comforting. But I know this is temporary. Let us see.

Let us be candid, okay? Just candid.

I’ve been talking about this, though, really. I have been. Today, out of all days, this morning, Usha K has put in a message in our group about how much he likes being a teacher, and how he treats it as a happy extension to his glorious student life. This day, out of all. I already was feeling pretty fucked up, and damn, I have been feeling this for a while now, and I spoke totally stupid shit after that. Radhesh asked me how I was and I told him that I was fucked up, and when he asked me what was bothering me, I told him I need time to process this, and then I met Vanisha this afternoon, at McD, and I told her, in explicit terms, and definitely with bouts of sorrow oozing through me that I just am not able to handle being a teacher, and that too since a while now, and I am not able to fall in love with any other class after 10D2, in that manner – come one, damn, I need to take a break! And today I posted something on X saying, no matter how much 31s pretend to understand 19s, they just can’t – Vaishnavi said something, that she believes in the contrary – I typed a long message, but yeah, she’s a sweet-zone, and I didn’t want to rant there.

Ha!

Deekshit actually reposted that post! Sick fucker! Take this, man: .!.. (Hugs)

Hm.

Writing heals me, damn! 460 words in, and I am already feeling better. A lot better. Hm. Let us get into it, then:

It has been eight years as a teacher, or more than that, and I have never felt what I felt this morning. What I felt this morning is an accumulation of what I have been enduring, feeling, and repressing for a while now. Just a few days ago, I was telling someone, “Just don’t be a teacher, damn, this is the worst time to be a teacher,” and I still stand by that, irrespective of the passion and respect I have for this field. The reason is this:

THE SYSTEM IS ENCOURAGING TEACHERS TO BE INDIFFERENT.

Part 2 – The Problem

No one in the system wants trouble. I work in a government institution, and believe me when I say it: all everyone wants is no trouble. That’s all. That is all. That’s it. Done. That is the job! No one wants trouble. And to not be in trouble, they are letting the students rot, the children rot. I do not know if they are the future of this planet or not. I do not care if they have a future or not; I do not care if the world as a whole has a future or not, but everyone is totally okay to let the students get spoiled. “Don’t get into trouble,” is the only advice that’s whispered all around the campus. Just do not do anything, that’s all. If you do something – anything, anything at all, anything at all, you are going to be in deep trouble – very, very deep. I will tell you how, because I have been in one very recently, and I will tell you what that is. If a student is getting addicted to alcohol, just do not do anything; if a student is caught smoking, do not do anything; if a student is caught in the middle of something sexual, do not do anything; if a student is slacking in student, just do not; if a student is irregular, just do not; if a student is being arrogant, or aggressive, or rude, or anti-social, JUST DO NOT DO ANYTHING! Not for the welfare or the mental health of the students’ sirs, and madams, no, definitely not! I will tell you what it is! But before that, let us go through and understand these three Evil Layers that are actually at work against you when you want to be a good teacher:

1. The system, after becoming a little softer, has started to get marred, INFECTED, chronically infected by bad teachers. Yes, very, really bad ones. Those who do not care about the subject, who do not know anything about it, and also who are not under any pressure to enhance their subject or teaching methods. They just seep into the system somehow – there are a thousand ways, and they further weaken the system, because they cannot, with their half-baked subject and commitment, handle a properly run administration. So, all the time, they just keep on hiding; they just find ways to bring doom over the heads of those who try to run the system properly. They call the proper and procedural teachers boring or strict. They influence a section of students to rile up against this particular teacher and label the teacher as being “unnecessarily strict,” or being “old-fashioned,” or being “wrathful” and “vengeful” towards the students. Then they come to us and sweet-talk with us. They try to convince us that there is nothing we can actually do for the students, so it is okay to “relax,” “chill,” and “go with the flow.” The wise teacher might look through the scheme. But the poor students cannot. They will be influenced, and they will love this justified mini-political game they started. Such teachers – they! They ARE the first enemies of the students – they are!
2. The safe-game, or ego-oriented, or zero-procedural-knowledge kind of authorities are a greater threat to students. Because they, too, will not let a genuine teacher work. They will not let a genuine teacher communicate with the students who really need help. They will not provide their support to protect the genuine teacher when they are under threat because of the same students the teacher is trying to help. They will just chant the mantra, “the student is always right. The student is always right.” No madams, no sirs. The student is not always right. If they were there, there wouldn’t be a need for our profession. Students could directly learn from factories, industries, hospitals, and offices; they could just read books after learning how to read; they could just live a free, incorrupt, saintly life if they are always correct. They are not, and that is why we are here. We know everyone knows this. There are strong people in the higher administration level who take the heat to save a good teacher who is just helping – he/she stands tall, helps the teacher, in return helping the student, actually. But we are unfortunate. We do not have many of them around.
3. Local politicians. They intervene really quickly. They always look for an incident they could cut into and correct it, even if it requires no correction. When someone goes to them, they are very quick to “have a word” over the phone with the other party; they do not actually care what the deal was, whose mistake the whole thing was, or what the repercussions are. The student who’s being spoilt walks out of this local politician’s house, flying his shirt’s collar, thinking he has taught a lesson to the teacher, but who needs lessons, brother? Literally, who is the one in need of lessons? Hm. In a decade or so, the same student will be caught in this or that, hustling through this or that, and he will not have enough cognitive ability to even understand where everything went wrong.

A good teacher will get messed up by his fellow bad teachers. If he messes up there, he’ll be fucked by the authorities themselves at some point. If he could escape that, he would be threatened by a local politician or someone of that kind. If he bears the brunt and is ready to carry the cross, he will be beaten down by the students themselves in the later stages. So, what is there to do? Can we fry our brains among all of this? Can we face immense scrutiny just because we are doing the job right? Can we be under pressure every moment? Can we stand by doing right when doing right is just labelled as a heinous crime?

Part 3 – The Story

Now, I will tell you why I am so fucked up, and sad, and angry, and depressed, and demotivated and all, yeah, I shall keep it short:

(At 1,621 words, I am feeling a lot better, ha!)

My institution’s current principal is a top guy. He is just fire! He understands his job, the larger moral compass of it, the requirements of it, and he understands sociology, pragmatics, caste, religion, capitalism, all of it. Basically, he understands our students and their behaviour better than A LOT of people. And he shows no mercy, no, sir. He is always on time, task-oriented, truth-oriented, result-oriented, and he takes all the necessary risks, doesn’t care about petty rules, and stupid, expired practices. He reads the situation and does what is right, and he comes out in colours almost all the time.

I came to this current institution, like seven months ago, along with this principal, and by the time we were here, it was in tatters, god! Like an unstoppable force, like a giant working with a hammer and an anvil, he set almost everything right about it. It took his sweat, blood, and money, and he didn’t care. And in the way, the three problems I have mentioned, he had faced them too. Many of the staff members did not like him because he is truth-oriented, strict, and he started to force them to learn subjects and deliver subjects in a proper manner. He saw potential in these neglected students, and he was hellbent to do something for them. And that did not go well.

Within six months, an anonymous letter, written by a group of our own staff, listing heinous allegations about him, reached the authorities. Heinous. I shall not describe what that was because it was about him. A team had arrived, checked the whole college, found that everything was right, and yet, just to be safe – or for whatever reasons, gods should know- gave a report that was absolutely false. Hm. The institution was in tatters. I personally was afraid that if something goes wrong, the institution will fall into the hands of wolves and students will be at great loss, and we will all be blackmailed too, all the time, that if we try anything right, some write-up will go against us! How would we survive that? By the mercy of the gods, and because of the unblemished reputation our principal had, the report did not work, and we fell out of danger.

But the damage it has done is ENORMOUS! The students who actually need our assistance to learn, study, pass, acquire conduct and behaviour, come out of bad habits and addictions, who need counselling, who need care, who are aggressive and dangerous right now, all of them started to see this as an opportunity. They started to have a confident and evil grin on their faces all the time. Even now. A silent rowdyism started to swell in the college. Some of them started to bring phones to college, of which they were previously afraid; they started to shout and frighten the lecturers, of whom they were previously afraid too; They started to come late, go out of the campus at their will, get drunk on the campus, all of which they were afraid to do before; extreme students who stopped coming to college after the advent of our principal started to return; all bathroom doors are broken within ten days; gutka is being spit on the walls once more; a student was playing Free Fire in the Pre-Final exam hall, and when he was asked to give the phone to the investigator, he erupted like a goon – no respect, no fear. Hm. There are things that are far worse than what I had described here.

You can ask, what are we doing, then?

There are only five or six of us lecturers who actually want the college to be disciplined, the classes to be regular, and the conduct to be official. Others do not want this. So:

Every single time we tried to control the students in various circumstances, there was a single reply from them, all of them, all the time: “Shall we put another complaint?” And we know we are just fucked, you know? Cause, who is going to help? If there really was another complaint this time, and when half of the staff lies to the officers, and when (however small) a sect of students lie to the officers, and when the authorities are just playing safe to save themselves, and do not really care about the welfare and wellbeing of the teachers that are working hard, and the politicians are only in the favour of students, even if that support burns the future of the student – who is going to save us?

Hm.

After coming to this institution, looking at the potential of the students, with the help of Dushyanth and many good friends, I set up a library, ran a poetry course, and a prose course. When there are only ix poems in their textbooks, I had students read 47 poems! I had all the lessons taught to students by the students themselves. Presentations, seminars, book-talks, so much! But will any of it save me?

In the institution, I am the most targeted lecturer after our principal. It doesn’t take much to be on the list. If we just say “wrong” when it actually is wrong, and that is it, we make the list. A group of students openly threatened me, and wrote a letter where it states that I show SC/ST bias, and that I do “rowdyism” on the campus, and, hm, a lot more.

One of them was like, “Because it was girls, they did not tell the authorities. This time we will. Then what will you do?” I smiled. A sad smile. A rueful smile. I go to class every week and rile up against inequality, I rile up against discrimination, I rile up against cultural hegemony, and I rile up against illiteracy, unemployment, and addiction. I have long ago given up on my Brahmanism in favour of the socially and financially backward people – my own, silent rebellion against oppression. I gave speeches supporting reservation, thumping the progressive ideologies of intellectuals like Baghat Singh, Periyar, Tagore, Ambedkar, and Bretch. An SC/ST complaint on me? Of course, who and what will save me? They will simply say, “he is a brahmin, and we know how they are,” and that is all. And rowdyism? Hm. Who comes to college ununiformed? Who comes to college drunk? Who spits gutka on the walls, and who breaks the urinals and doors of the washrooms? Who hurls foul language when asked to sit straight, and who threatens not let lecturers’ home if they feel insulted? Not definitely me. Yet, who will save me? The surrounding bad lecturers, or lazy, biased authorities, or vote-mongering politicians? Can we trust the courts? Hm. I honestly do not know.

My activity has declined very, very sharply. I can’t conduct educational activities on a campus where these kinds of disturbances have become commonplace. It is suffocating me. Though I have dozens of students who love me, who know me, and who learn a lot from my teachings, it is still disturbing.

When it happened first, like a month ago, I was strong, and I didn’t bother. Even now, when my mood is stable, I do not give two fucks about this, but it is slowly getting into me.

These students are being destroyed systematically. They don’t even know that their character, health, and education are being destroyed because of a few people. They just think they are winning this ego battle. They are so happy and excited about all of this. Hm. They think this is the way they need to live, and that they are heroes shown in these commercial films.

They ruin their lives.

Who is to be blamed?

If we try something, even now, our well-wishers say, “Just do not do anything.”

Even me, until I wrote all of this, out of my depression, and disgust, for all of this, and for both the system and the students, wanted to give up on them both, or do things much worse. Hm.

But. . .

After writing this, at 2,984 words, hm. . . I think of this:

I only thought, “Who will save us?” There might or might not be anyone. But. . . Hm. Who will save them?

Hm.

Only us.