Friendship

My story dates back to 2010 when I was the class teacher of class five at Dayanand Anglo Vedic (DAV) Public school, Delhi. During that time Mrs Susan Pereira had just shifted to India after a five-year stay in England. She was the newly appointed English teacher of our primary school. She was tall, smart, pretty and highly qualified. She had a beautiful voice and a great teaching style. Everything was nice about her except her pride and temper. She was very strict and punished the students even for the smallest wrong thing.

Shaheen and Lata were two of my forty-five students. Lata was Hindu and a bright student whereas Shaheen was Muslim and academically weak. In spite of their differences, they were best friends. It was a Saturday morning, sometime around friendship day when Lata was going through a rough time in her life. Her mother had fractured her arm, grandfather had cataract surgery, grandmother was down with fever and her father was out of the city on a business trip. So she was giving timely medicine to her grandma, eye drops to her grandpa and helping her mother in the kitchen. In all that turmoil, she forgot to bring her English homework notebook to school. She realized that during morning assembly and told Shaheen about it. Shaheen told Lata not to worry and everything will be fine. On Saturdays, I used to allow friends to sit next to each other. It so happened that Shaheen and Lata had almost identical handwriting. During the English period when Mrs.Pareira asked for the homework notebooks Lata nervously stood up and admitted that she forgot to get her notebook(this was the first time she did such a mistake). She tried to explain her situation at home but Mrs.Pareira wouldn’t listen to anything. She started scolding Lata. Tears started rolling down her cheeks. Shaheen at once stood up and said – “Ma’am, Lata is trying to defend me. Here is her notebook. Look even her name is written on the cover.” So Shaheen was punished instead of Lata. 

According to the timetable, the next period was scheduled for Hindi. Mrs Rita Tiwari being absent, I got her substitution. Since I am not strong at Hindi instead of teaching Hindi I thought of generally talking to the students about friendship. The next day being friendship day I asked my students to tell about their amazing friends turn by turn. When Lata’s turn came she told the class how she was going through a rough time at home and how Shaheen helped her. Shaheen had changed the cover of her own notebook and written Lata’s name on the cover just to save her from the punishment. I was deeply moved by this act of Shaheen and praised her a lot. Of course, I shared Shaheen’s wonderful deed with all my colleagues at the staff room and recommended her name for the yearly kindness prize. Hearing about Shaheen’s friendship Mrs Pareira was highly embarrassed. She realized that her educational degrees only made her a highly qualified teacher but a ten-year-old taught her how to be a good human being.