Do you remember her ?

Years ago……
Its my turn today. What proverb shall I quote? Hmmm last time when I went through the WISDOM magazine, I found a proverb - “God is the supreme Alchemist”. Let me quote this one in the class today. It is a practice introduced by our new Chemistry miss and every student takes his/her turn to quote a proverb a day and provide the interpretation for the same. Neatly clad in a blue cotton saree, her hair carefully rolled into a bun, with her favourite purse in one hand and the chemistry text book on the other, her entry into the class room with a smile on her face, reciprocating our “Good morning” would be a worthy moment to catch ! . Lucky we! this is how the classes usually begin for us - the 30 and odd students of a private school in the suburbs of chennai, before our chemistry miss starts her lessons on elements, compounds, equations and valencies. She is all other students’ envy and Class VII ’s pride.
My joy knew no bounds last week when she had sent a message through a X std girl - “I have corrected your answer sheets. You can enter the marks in the register.Come and collect the same from the class X laboratory”.The LAB!- the word always put me into a graceful, imaginary mode. How I always dreamt of becoming a scientist one day, just for the very image of - a person with the white coat and spectacles on, moving amidst solutions of different colors filled in vast range of shaped bottles, with some precipitates waiting to be crystallised! I considered myself very lucky as none from my class had the chance to enter the class X laboratory. I entered the lab with a lot of excitement. Dreams again …. She showed me two bottles. The bottles were unnamed. Reading the curiosity on my face, she smiled and said, “Open bottle 1 and smell it”. I follwed her words in no time, “Yuckkkkkkk”… “Can you guess what it is?” “No miss”. “Ammonium chloride”. “Hmm I knew Ammonia was pungent smelling. But I never had any idea of how pungent it can be horrrribleeee it is!”. “Okie, please take your answer sheets, bottle 1 and 2 to your class, I need them for a demo”. Bottle 2 was very small, but my God! how heavy it weighed!. Anybody would be surprised to pick that one! She told me it contained mercuy - quick silver. She poured a little of it into my palms and showed me the great degree of cohesiveness that it contained. It was all like magic for me.
She is always the last one to distribute the answer papers, when compared to the other teachers. You can be sure that she will not let a single word written by you in the answer sheet go unnoticed. You can see a lot of comments in red - pointing to right and wrong answers with explanations. You know what, this time, it was quite surprising to note that Bala has scored well above average. We all knew that Bala was one of the very slow learners in the class. He was termed as dull headed and was put into fit-for-nothing category by other staff. She invited Bala to come to the front of the class and appreciated him to the core. First time, we could see Bala smiling. We had groups within the class - you are wrong if you imagined it to be friends’ group. This is a differnt kinda group, again introduced by her. She said the purpose of it is to learn and share. Each “Study group” as she called them, had five to six students from differnt grades and were named. I was happy too as Bala belonged to our group. Siva scored the highest and I missed the centum this time too .
The next week is a celebration week for us. “Teacher’s day”. There will be a fight among the students for playing her role. I need to book that role for myself
Years later………“Dear Students, Im glad to introduce Ms. Nalini Jagannathan, the new Chemsitry teacher for standard VII and above”. - This is how she was introduced to us by our Head Master years ago. At that point, I never thought she would leave a lasting impression in my life.
She was the first teacher in many aspects …

• Chemistry miss (as we would address her), introduced us to the world of proverbs, help us in organising our schedules(probably thats y im a bit better off than others in planning now ) and never failed to appreciate any tiny/little progress made by the learners (which I try to do for my team now!).
• As a student from the suburbs, there was a myth “Teacher = authority personified”, which changed after her arrival.
• She knew each and every student very well and employed her own ways to bring out the best in them and most of the times she was successful which was more of success to that student than to her.
• She was always successful in transforming the words in the books into concepts and registering them into our tiny brains.
• She had all the patience in the world to answer all of our questions convincingly irrespective of whether it was illogical, intelligent, insane or unworthy! (though those questions sound utter stupidity to me now).
• She was also the first one to be approached by the students whenever there was a conflict. (Ranging from missing sketch pens to punctured cycle tyres)
• She was successful in persuading us to have a shift in the thinking process and our views and thoughts about the examinations.
• She made us realise what was really expected out of us - not a bookish knowledge and a great skill to produce exactly what has been written in the prescribed text books, but understanding nature and the science behind it and trying to apply it to life. (In simple terms, applying thought! .
• She taught us to see the beauty in different things and helped us overcome tough situations. She was more confident in us than ourselves and would always encourage us to chase our dreams.

I would swear that I would have hated chemistry if she was not there to explain the beauty and bonds in it. It was a passion for most of us. Not being in touch with the subject for many years, I can still write the formula of any complex organic compound and can tell you what happens when an acid reacts with a base !
I owe it all, and many intangible things that I have learnt from her, to her. She is the best teacher I have ever met and has a strong lasting impression in our hearts. Yes - I now strongly believe that A good teacher is worth a thousand books. I have been a lot fortunate to have her guiding us in our school days, without her, I doubt if I will be blogging here.Im gonna meet her in the same school this friday - September 5th - to tell her the difference she has made and what she meant to many others in our class.
“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. -Henry B. Adams”

p.s. I took a print of this blog and gifted it to my teacher on 5th September (2008), which was received with overwhelming sentiments and emotions that could never be described in words.