“For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”
And dances with the daffodils.”
Who on earth can forget these immortal lines of Wordsworth littered with emotionally strong words reflecting the beauty of nature, unkempt by humanity, and a reconciliation of man with his environment?!
And , can Time the villain of Youth obliterate even from the faint memory of a somnolescent student (yours truly) of TAHS the mellifluence of the golden voice of New RS Sir when he used to rhapsodize and riffle these lines vibrating with rhythmic resonance and metrical melody?
Alexander Humphrey Woollcott’s famous lines “I have no need of your God-damned sympathy. I only wish to be entertained by some of your grosser reminiscences” are not an understatement, for it feels so good to tread back along memory threads embracing episodes and incidents and go to days bygone and take in the good contained in them. For a few moments, at least for a few moments, that gives such a fine escapade from the unhappy realities of present.
Yesternight, before I decided to pay my maiden visit to the house of New RS Sir, I don’t know how or why, all of a sudden I found myself thinking of all those bygone days of school-life.Mentally I slipped from the hurray and bustle of the city to the deadly quietude of the village– Those days, It was such fun!!! I feel ecstatic even now by just thinking about them. Boys of our class, some of the incorrigible sort, used to do all sorts of naught and non-sense. Even in the class it was no less with our little strength of 20 odd boys and girls, and the teacher. I remember the frequent times when we were caught running through the long straight corridors, laughing and shouting, and had to serve a hands-up and knee-down punishment in sunlight for half-an-hour.
Ah…this reminds me of something too. A stitch on my head and a poke on my knees stand witness to till this day as an indelible mark of those vibrant, vociferous and walloping escapades during the short break in between each class before the next teacher takes over. This will abruptly come to naught when New RS Sir appears on the scene. Even the HM used to peek from the corner of his eyes along the corridors and see with utter disbelief the complete metamorphosis the very boisterous scene had undergone in a momentary flash. The commanding voice of New RS Sir from the corner room of thenorthernwing of the school used to lancinate through the din and dust of the long corridor unto the playground at the far end! Perhaps his colleagues also enjoyed listening to him, not inclined to arrest the flow of his language by their own interjections in their class rooms. More evident when you can hear clearly even the ruffle of a leaf wafting down the winds in its rescissory rectitude.
The proceleusmatic recital of the Daffodils combined with theexoteric expatiation would rather make Wordsworth shy of pedanticpedagoguishness.
My good grace! While writing about Wordsworth and pedagogues I remember his punning with words when a slight tinge of exasperation showed up in the contours of his face upon persistent prevarication by some of us. Shot the laconic retort“persistent perversity provokes the patient pedagogue to produce particularly painful punishment."(being ablunderbuss boy myself I used to jot down letter by letter every word that he wrote on the blackboard ). Shame to our Tamil politicians boasting of rhyme and rhythm!
I love those student days. Who does not? So far, if I’m asked to decide, I’d call them the best days of my life for it was absolute carefree-ness that marked those years. The worst nightmare and the greatest worry was the exams and the most pressing issue was a good score in the English paper and a pat in the back from New RS Sir was equivalent to obtaining a college degree!
Here is a little device he adduced for remembering the parts of speech:
A noun is the name of anything,
As school, or garden, hoop, or swing.
Adjectives tell the kind of noun;
As great, small, pretty, white or brown.
Conjunctions join the words together;
As, bread and butter; wind or weather.
Verbs tell of something to be done;
As sing, or play or skip, or run.
A preposition stands before
A noun; as in or through a door
How things are done the adverbs tell;
As, slowly, quickly, ill or well.
An exclamation shows surprise;
As, ah! how pretty! oh! how wise!
Three little words you often see
Are articles; a or an and the.
Instead of nouns the pronoun stands;
Your book, his work, her hat, my hand.
The whole are called nine parts of speech;
Which reading, writing, speaking, teach.
This little bit of poetry saved us from many definitions, and it has helped many pupils who have understood it.
Countless are the manifold ways he used to teach us good English speaking and writing skills.
Alas….the solace never stays afoot for time’s tread is just one-sided. And at the end of the day, it’s just those pleasant and so-nostalgic memories of the bygone days that I’m left with to cherish.
The cracking sound of a coffee tumbler brought me back from the crescendo of interstitial betides that never tire of intromitting down the glottis of gusty and gorgeous memory lane! The sweet and smiling voice of the Gruhni of the house, Srimathy New RS, brought me back from the utopian citadel of total self-indulgent enchantment where I sat alone for couple of minutes contemplating.
“Thanks Mami, why this formality? “A low murmur managed to muster just enough strength to gurgle few sounds out of my gutturals. As a matter of fact, the hot coffee helped me to get away from the shackles of lackadaisical moorings.
“Help yourself Kalivaradhan, be free and friendly. After all we are well ahead of the teacher-student relationship. We both have seen couple of generations after us and we are mature enough to understand and appreciate the transiency and transiliency of this transmigratory life !”
Well, I could perceive now the metamorphosis of the teacher of English into an Acharya of metaphysical philology! How metaphorical it would be to describe the transformation in the words of Longfellow's Psalm of Life:
"Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream;
For the soul is dead that slumbers
And things are not what they seem."
We all experience emotions quite omnifarious, from joy to deep love to anger to frustration to disenchantment to defeasance to self-defacement. We become slaves of situations! We always React rather than ACT ProActively! Vedanta appears to teach us modify our modus operandi by synergizing our mental energies towards the in-dweller, the SELF !
New RS Sir, the New RS Acharya , is beckoning you to come again next week to listen to a different track record, his experiences towards an ultimate goal to Self-Realization!
To be continued in Part-III
K Kalivaradhan
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