Dear Teacher Who Hit Me, Called Me Greedy & Made Me Feel Worthless

(This article has been republished from The Quint’s archives to mark Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s birth anniversary. It was first published on 5 September 2018.)

“If any part of your body is not working, tell your parents it is because of me.”

Ma’am, that's what you had said to me, as you yanked my hair and dragged me across the classroom. Then, in front of all my classmates, you caned me with that long ruler you would otherwise use to draw straight lines on the blackboard - but you could not straighten me out.

I was a very untidy girl: my cursive handwriting was illegible and my hair unkempt - still is. My mother would try dreadfully hard to clip my swiftly growing tuft of thick hair in a way that it did not fall all over over my ruddy, chubby face but half an hour into school, the clips would start slipping off.

One afternoon, my mother and I had run into you, at the famous Shilp Mela in Allahabad (where everybody ran into everybody anyway) and you had told her:

I don’t like the look on your daughter’s face. Hence, I tend to pick on her.

It was 2006, I was a student of standard five and my mother had just gone up to you to say a polite hello because you were her daughter’s class teacher.

It was an all-girls convent and you used to hit a number of girls in our class. I do not know if other girls complained about you to the administration, but I was too timid to. I feared all my other  teachers would gang up against me and punish me for ratting you out - not an entirely unfounded fear.

Ma’am, I was your least favourite. I remember you used to make me write speeches for other students to narrate at school functions and when I expressed a desire to narrate my own speech, you gave me a paragraph and told me to stop being "greedy" and asking for more.

But you know what? I still always scrounged for your approval. I wanted to make you happy. I wanted you to appreciate me. And if you ever so much as smiled at me - even if it was a smug or an accidental teeth-flash, I was elated. I don’t know if it was childish naivete, a variation of Stockholm syndrome, a desperate need for affection or just a misplaced sense of worthlessness, but I really wanted you to stop hating me.

My feelings towards you were a toxic consortium of absolute terror, frustration and a desire to please, tempered quite often with a heartbreaking sense of worthlessness. And while the physical pain of your yanking, tugging, thrashing is a very distant memory, the impact of your hurtful attitude and words has still not ebbed entirely.

Although I fail to recall the exact jibe, you had once told me something to the tune of how a girl like me cannot survive anywhere and regardless of where she goes, she is going to come crying back to her parents.

And there are days, when I am feeling worthless and I wonder if you were right after all. But then I start thinking why would someone say such a thing to a 10-year-old anyway? What can an adult even observe in a 10-year-old to tell them that?

Regardless, I detest you, ma’am, for your hostility, your violence and the insensitivity with which you dealt with unscarred, unfettered souls. Maybe, you had been teaching for way too many years and you saw us in a different light - but that’s hardly an excuse for doing what you did. Hell, we may have been little monsters, but we were still little, after all.

Sometimes, I have to check twice to ensure that there are no scars still remaining.

But hey, I still want to wish you a happy Teachers’ Day. You know why? Because you did “teach” me - in the real sense of the term - some of the most important life lessons.

You’re the reason why I will always be gentle to children and everyone else who can be influenced by my words or actions, why I will always try to empathise before judging, especially with them who seem hardest to understand and most different from myself.

You're also one of the reasons why I will keep working and growing and learning and unlearning, and one day when I have carved a niche for myself - I will come and meet you and tell you about my life like one tells an old friend so that you can know how wrong you were. This time, of course, by virtue of the fact that I am no longer a child you can repress, you will have to hear me out.

But over and above everything else, you’re the reason why I will always try to give love to anyone who needs it.

I subsequently left the school you worked for and went on to study in different places and explore different cities and I met some of the most remarkable teachers – those who did not mind if I talked too much or if my handwriting or my hair or even if I, in my entirety, was a mess.

I had a school principal who told my rather receptive parents to not try to hammer a round peg (me) in a square hole (the Indian education system) and let me do as much theatre or writing as I wanted to, another school principal who was a remarkable mentor and an even better friend, and a Psychology teacher who is the kindest, loveliest and warmest human being I’ve ever known.

I found friends in teachers and teachers in friends, and hence, this day will always be special for me.

But you'll always be a teacher too, because what is education, if it does not teach you ways to cope with hardships in life? And I did cope with you for two years. Although, I will never wish this kind of education upon anyone - there are other ways one can learn coping mechanisms too.

But you’re the reason I will always get to feel like Roald Dahl’s Matilda in some sense – and I am truly kicked about that!

So do I want to forgive you? Of course. But have I forgiven you yet? Hell no!