Bharat Chand
The mentor of our village, who laboriously instructed very basic skills on multiplication, division, subtraction and addition at primary level, has recently passed away. The information about his passing dragged me to the days I had spent with him as a student. He was not only a teacher but an elder brother by relation. A strong belief he held was that one needs to be competent enough to overcome problems on mathematics by having the knowledge of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Failure to recite the multiplication and division from two to twenty would at times irate him and scold to non-performers harshly or even apply the method of punishment too. His punishment method in general would include making students stand on one leg for almost half an hour or less than and caution them not to repeat the mistakes. This was the kind of punishment very commonly practiced by him. Though those days were hard enough to endure his punishment, but it proved to be fruitful whenever the task of doing multiplication and division came across in life. I bow down my head for what he did to me and my entire generation and would ever remain indebted.
It is undoubtedly understood that teachers are the second parents of a child attending school and each effort they lay on helps build the foundation of the child to be successful in his/ her career. To be a teacher in the village for many reasons is a difficult journey as one has to take all the responsibilities of the children leaving home for school. The parents sending their children with the local teacher have a tendency of keeping faith onto the teacher with the intention that their children would safely return home. I vividly remember that my grandmother, who now is running at 98, used to meet the teacher every alternative day at his house and tell him to take care of me. He would console whoever came by responding that he would take care with utmost priority.
I have a vivid memory of how I let my sleepers loosened I was wearing while crossing the river even though I was told not to leave the grip over the sleepers. Right after I lost the grip over the sleepers, my teacher ran after the sleepers as fast as possible leaving behind me stranded on the next side of the river. And an arduous effort he laid helped him catch the sleepers flowing down the flat surface of water. He angrily scolded me for what I had done and was consoled harshly later to make no mistakes in the days to come. Nodding the head with what he oriented, I was handed the sleepers and became quite happy to get them back.
Most of us, on our parts, would get new sleepers bought on the occasion of Gaura festival, one of the popular festivals of people residing in Mid and Far-Western Regions. The day when one used to get a new pair of sleepers would walk faster to let his/her counterparts know that new sleepers had arrived for him/her. The jealousy to owning a pair of new sleepers like the one witnessed would increase one’s passion and end up insisting relentlessly with mother or grandmother or father to buy the same.
The teaching and learning process he adopted was purely a traditional one as he would often tell the rules first and provide examples based on the rules however the students he had instructed have become successful as a whole. One of the techniques he knew to inculcate on students was to make them competent over multiplication, division, subtraction and addition, a very basic quality to be had on students to solve the problems of high standard in the succeeding classes. Even though he was not as studious as one needs to be but he was competent at addressing and solving the problems on mathematics quickly without taking long time.
Despite having the knowledge on basics of mathematics, he lagged some basic behavioral attitudes to be had as a teacher too. Sometimes he would take advantage of students by placing his two hands on the shoulders of a boy student and ask him to pull him like oxen in the farmland and it used to be very tiring as well as difficult task for the kids aged 11 or 12 to pull the guy weighing eighty kilograms on the steep path. Few behaviors he had developed on him were repeatedly told to reform by his seniors living in the village and he would get irritated with this sort of telling and at times discard just by smiling.
The penchant for making his own children educated remained a dream even though he had tried his level best to teach them in the best possible way. With the intention of having better education in their life, he sent his two sons to Dhangadi, the district headquarters of Sudurpaschim province, and instead of doing well in the studies, they were rather sunk into the problems he had never imagined. They were, in the proximity of other guys with a habit of drinking alcohol, immersed in the bad habit and could not complete their schooling with better marks. The habit they had developed during the school days impeded their higher education as well.
The meagre amount of salary he got as a primary teacher did not stop him from buying the land in Terai. People in the village would take his name on the ways of saving money. Never ever had he spent money on buying unnecessary items that we see people spending these days. Never would he buy the new clothes until and unless they look filthy and untidy however he would often be seen wearing neat and tidy clothes whenever he would go out of home. The tendency of saving money whichever way he earned either by saving from salary or selling the vegetables at local market helped him buy the piece of land and raised his status as a man with property in Terai.
Besides teaching, he would ever get engrossed in growing vegetables of various sorts with the intention of making money so that domestic expenditure could be run with the selling of vegetables. It was he who would eat fresh vegetables in the village, discarding the milky products. He often used to come to my house and stay focused on discussing about the variegated ways of producing vegetables of different sorts. People in the village when needed new seeds of vegetables would often end up visiting his home.
The man who successfully devoted his entire life in educating the pupils at the later stage faced painful situation as he had been suffering from heart problem. Last year, when I met him in Baitadi in his own home, he insisted me to take garlic as I could see the bunches of garlics hanging at the façade of his entrance of the house. I felt overjoyed seeing him after many years of hiatus between him and me however I did not have plenty of time to talk at length. The farewell I bade last year to him became my last meeting with him.
May you attain Mokshya in heaven!
[Bharat Chand is an independent researcher.]