Prepping a Pro

Being a teacher has come as a 'luck-by-chance' to me, and given that I have to keep at it, reports say, I am becoming better at it. So, while I dictate decorum in classrooms and grow up goals in girls and build badass boys, I have come to wear this outstanding mask to keep people around me chirpy and cheerful. Deception. One should make a movie by that name. Perhaps there is one. The mask has become so much me that by the frail end of the day, when I wear it off, I am exhausted. All I want is sleep. But I have white papers around me to be filled with black inked to-do's, to be striked off on a tomorrow. 

While such pretty demons demonstrate their being, I have added to my responsibility, prepping a cousin for an upcoming competitive examination. His writing is fair, reading is just about alright, listening is sound and speaking atrocious. Was, that is. In a matter of four sittings, each lasting around three to four hours, I am a proud parent. He has changed. His writing is formal and better, reading is more attentive, listening is skillful, while all I can safely say about his speaking is, it is magical. A curve that has gone only upwards. I had joked when I took him up that this would be his life's crash course. Today, when he mails me assignments on time, and Whatsapps me about our day's schedule, it is properly punctuated and well-framed. 

And why am I writing about it? Because, I have learnt from him. I follow my family's pattern in not caring much about marks, but being solid about knowing lessons, humbly and executing them to the t. When he speaks, his continues to stammer, or have fillers which are unaccepted, but his content is outstanding and his growth is remarkable in its diligence and determination. While I provide him with questions and he answers them in time-slots, he fills me with awe with his thought process, and how acutely we can modulate it.

Today, he spoke of dreams, that, in a way it is a learning because generally we are given a glimpse of what we fear and are exposed to it in the dream, which prepares us to face it when it (god forbids) becomes a reality. How precise, how simple and how thoughtful. We share dinner and I have made it compulsory for him to keep speaking to me continuously in English, and were I a recruiter, I would have got him for the very act of his perseverance.

Tonight when I shed off my mask, I am no longer exhausted. It pays to teach. One learns. 

Each one learns.