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Vexed Mrs. X
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What else can a school be but good, when the all-important words `New' and `English' are part of its name? C.K. MEENA tracks an anxious parent's misadventures
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Elsewhere in the city, the hot topic of conversation was the CET mess.
MRS. X had had nothing all day but a glass of black tea. She was distressed. Her only daughter had failed the SSLC exam for the second time.
Elsewhere in the city, including the apartments where she worked, the hot topic of conversation was the "CET mess" but Mrs. X understood nothing of that. A middle-school dropout, all she knew was that her offspring was going to college, come hell or high water. But mustn't she first cross the moat of SSLC?
Mrs. X had put her daughter in a "good school" which, in her book, meant "not a government school". It was English-medium, which gave it a higher status, although it had a teacher who taught pupils that the opposite of "grateful" and "neat" were "grateless" and "neatless". Nonetheless, Miss X nearly got a first class in the seventh standard public exam. But she failed Math in the ninth and was given her marching orders. Where could she go? Her mother, once again loath to approach a government school, went by a neighbour's advice. There was a new school in a residential layout near her house. Its name had the words "New" and "English" in it, so it had to be good, no?
School in house
This noble institution functioned from a one-bedroom rented house. It was run by a couple (let's call them Mr. and Mrs. Y) who lived nearby in a modest mansion of their own. The school had seven pupils who were in the third, fifth, and eighth standards. They occupied the hall. There were three 10th standard students (including Miss X). They sat in the kitchen. B-Miss taught all the younger children, while the SSLC class had the honour of having Mrs. Y herself as their teacher.
On Miss X's first day, Mrs. Y asked her to scout around for more students. "It's because there are so few of you that we have to charge so much," she reasoned. The couple had asked Mrs. X to fork out Rs. 10,000 for the whole year, but she haggled vigorously and brought it down to half. Unable to make a down payment, she borrowed the amount from one of her employers, volunteering to take a salary cut until it got repaid.
As for the other pupils, most came from impoverished and broken homes. A 10-year-old boy smoked cigarettes. An 11-year-old girl constantly stole money from the other children's bags, and would go out every day with strange boys much older than her. Needy children such as these were levied a reduced fee. As Mr. Y put it, "We are doing social service for them."
Pressing engagements would periodically keep Mrs. Y away from school for the better part of the day, and B-Miss would ask the three occupants of the kitchen to manage on their own. Sometimes she would pour out her woes to them: "My salary is only Rs. 400, and that too is not regular."
Towards the end of the academic year, Mrs. Y asked her SSLC students to pay Rs. 150 a month for "tuition" which she never took. She held a mock exam, though, in which Miss X came out with flying colours. Her marks were 70-plus or 80-plus in subject after subject, but she wasn't given the corrected answer papers — in fact they went missing. However, Mrs. X, buoyed by the enviable report card, was confident that her daughter would equal the feat in the public exam.
In February, Mrs. Y announced that the SSLC class would be given a send-off. Towards expenses for this momentous event she collected Rs. 5 to Rs. 10 from the smaller children, and Rs. 50 each from those who were being sent off. "We'll have pulao for lunch," she said grandly, "and poori-masala too, why not?" On the big day, the children skipped breakfast, anticipating a rich repast.
Instead, they were greeted by a medium-sized cake and before they could say hello to it, half of it was whisked away to Mrs. Y's house. From the remaining half, each child was given a single slice. It was a sorrowful farewell. Mrs. Y shed dignified tears, B-Miss sniffled inconsolably, and the hungry children were only too ready to wail along.
The send-off
Miss X sat for the SSLC exam in March while Mrs. X bought application forms from a couple of colleges. Result: Failed. Three subjects, no less. "I wrote exactly what teacher taught me," said a distraught Miss X. Maybe that was the problem. She wrote the supplementary exam in May and managed to pass one paper. Having lied to her neighbours that she had cleared SSLC, she couldn't very well sit at home. Must save face, but how?
The indomitable Mrs. X approached a PUC coaching centre which charged "only" Rs. 10,000 for two years.
Another loan, another series of instalments. Parvagilla, the tutors at the centre had actually done their teacher's training course. As for those SSLC back papers, a friend had given her the address of a charitable degree student who coached poor children in her spare time. Oh, her daughter would pull through somehow.
Mrs. X went to work every morning with the diamond of hope shining in her breast. Her daughter was now learning PUC subjects. She was going to "college", at last.
(Send your feedback to ckmeena@rediffmail.com)
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