The Deference made the Difference

The path and the destination

Words: 1332

It must've started long before then, but I think the start was in the eighth grade. That's when we picked our subjects, you see. The optional subjects we wanted to pursue, based on the careers we aspired to.

To help us, there was a career counsellor. The counselling, it said on the notice, was to be a strictly one-on-one session. Only the student and counsellor were to be present - no teachers, no parents - nobody who would, with all good intentions, comment, nudge and interfere.

There were three basic options in those days - Arts, Science and Commerce. You had to opt for one of these at the cost of the other two. My aptitude test showed scores of 28 and 26 respectively for Science and Arts, and a low 8 for Commerce.

We were given our timings for the counselling sessions. They were to be held in school, in our classroom. We were in the playground, ordered to reach our classroom 10 minutes before our allotted time, wait outside for the previous student to finish, and go in.

I was unlucky enough to be the daughter of a teacher.

So, Mom was in school on the day.

She came in search of me in the playground during her free period. "Come on," she ordered. "We're going to the counsellor."

"My turn isn't for another forty minutes," I protested. I might as well have been speaking in Greek, for all the notice she took of me. Unceremoniously, she grabbed my wrist and dragged me into school.

As we approached my classroom, I looked apologetically at the one waiting her turn outside. She nodded sympathetically. My classmates knew what a dragon my Mom could be.

When the student inside emerged, Mom yanked me in.

The counsellor, being an outsider (on purpose, so as to be unbiased) didn't know this dragon. She looked up, smiling.

"Roxanne?" she asked, peering at her list.

"No," my Mom replied, grabbing the list. She pointed at my name. "I am only free now to come in with her, so you must do her session earlier than scheduled."

"But parents aren't supposed to be here."

"Oh, I'll be here. I am a senior teacher."

"Teachers aren't allowed, either."

In my heart, I was cheering the counsellor on. You go it, Ma'am, I said in my head. You tell my Mom that I am a person, a teenager, and I can think for myself for a change.

Needless to say, Mom won. She stayed for the session.

"Please write COMMERCE here," Mom ordered the counsellor, indicating the 'Recommended' slot.

"But -" gasped the lady. "She has no aptitude whatever for Commerce. Look at her scores."

"Scores be damned. My daughter is going to study Commerce."

It took me 24 years to forgive my mother for that, and tear up the paper saying Recommended - Commerce.

So, I found myself in the Commerce Class, amidst aspiring Chartered Accountants. They lived, breathed and dreamed balance sheets and bank statements. They reveled in costing and Income Tax. Their calculators were their toys. I clutched my teddy bear at night for comfort.

I was miserable. I didn't understand a lot of what was going on in class, and having no goal to work for, couldn't find the motivation to apply myself. To encourage me, my cousin, a Chartered Accountant himself. gave me a part-time job in his office. I lasted six months before throwing up my hands in despair.

Mom redeemed herself a bit by grudgingly asking if I'd like to switch to Arts after a couple of years. The thing is, I was already older than my classmates, and to start again would be to widen that gap. And - truth be told - I wanted to defy Mom by wallowing in my misery and making her feel her remorse.

"I'll continue with Commerce," I said, through gritted teeth. She shrugged. That was the end of that conversation. I completed the five year Bachelor of Commerce degree with a second class. I'd never got as low as a second class before, but that was better than some of my batchmates. The syllabus had changed that year, the examiners had got things mixed up, and we'd been given questions way beyond what had been covered in class.

So there I was, with a second class degree in something I hated to do.

In the meantime, Mom saw an advertisement wanting advertising copywriters and pushed me into it. Somehow, I passed the copy tests and interviews and landed a job in advertising. My first sensation was that of relief. At least I wasn't messing up someone's Income Tax Returns.

The initial glamour of advertising soon palled. It was all about working into the wee hours of the morning meeting impossible deadlines for inefficient clients. It was about daily rejection and pandering to those who had the money to pay for a full-page campaign but couldn't string a sentence correctly and insisted on writing their own copy anyway. It was about acidity, ulcers and headaches.

Then came the breakthrough.

At a party at my uncle's place, I met his cousin, the owner of a school. Casually, she asked me who my favorite author had been as a child. Two hours later, I was still answering that question. Get me talking about children's books and I talk. I went into the merits and demerits of dozens of authors and publishers.

As she was getting into her car, the lady said, "Come and visit my school tomorrow."

I took a half-day from work and went to her school. She took me round. It was a lovely campus. The teachers and students looked happy. There seemed to be many facilities and amenities.

"Have lunch with us," she urged.

"I have to get back to work," I protested. "I'll lose my job if the boss sees me out of my chair much longer."

"Ah, your job. That's something I wanted to talk to you about." She signaled to her assistant, who produced a sheet of paper. Taking the paper from the assistant, she handed it to me.

"Here. This is your new job, if you'd like to sign there and accept it. It's your appointment as librarian here."

"WHAT?"

"You know so much about kids and books and are so passionate. You'll get my students to read. Join me."

*********

Everyone in office thought I'd gone crazy. I was going to one-fourth (yes, twenty five per cent) of the salary advertising paid, and I was leaving a good corporate job to sit in a school library.

None of that matters.

What matters is the cards I get on Teachers' Day. "To the one who made reading fun." "To the teacher who taught me how to debate." ... and so on.

I taught the kids to appreciate the plot of a story and how characters are created. Two of my fifth graders collaborated on a novella after that. I had them understand the styles of illustration, and the part interpretation plays in the enjoyment of a story. I had them appreciate non-fiction with books about dinosaurs - and then had them compare these to works of fiction on the same theme. I had them reading and writing poetry.

The earlier batches of the students I taught are grown up now. Some of them volunteer and help me with my Harry Potter quizzes. "You transformed my childhood, now I'll help you transform others' childhoods," one of them said.

That one calls me 'Mommy'. Being unmarried and childless, I am moved to tears by this. She calls her own Mom by the South Indian name for mother, but I'm 'Mommy' because she confides in me. I could get no higher compliment.

Thinking back on it, had I taken Arts at that time, I would've studied Literature in a set way. I'd probably have taught Literature that way. I might've been happy.

But now - having studied Commerce, I'm forced to find my own path teaching Literature.

And that has made all the difference.