Humble Diamonds

DIAMONDS WHO DON'T KNOW THEY SHINE

On 8th March, 2019, I went to visit my mom’s new Zilla Parishad School. After 9 years of unstained service to the primary and elementary, she was transferred to a High School to teach the standards of 6th-10th. The first thing I noticed when I got to the school was that it has its own temple, a beautiful flower garden and some space dedicated to the new nursery concept that the school has adopted with one lakh saplings planted in order – definitely the first well developed government school I have seen around the district so far.

The arrangements for the Farewell party for grade 10 students and Women’s day celebrations were in progress and there were a bunch of school boys lifting the chairs, fastening the balloons to the stage pillars and setting up the sound system. As immediately as I stepped out of the car, a huge group of girls rushed toward me, gleaming; their bright smiles stealing the emphasis from their skinny and unfit figures. I was made aware that they were pre-informed about my visit and were all very excited to see their teacher’s daughter who goes to school in the city of Hyderabad. I greeted them all happily. All along, they followed me everywhere, showing me their classrooms and taking selfies on their parents’ phones. “You are like a heroine from the movies,” they said.

I remember being threatened to be enrolled into a government school during my childhood. My relatives had used that on me when I refused to eat food or do my homework. Only then had I drafted a perspective on government schools and hadn’t the change until now.

When the programme began, I was surprised to see two boys running around the school with DSLR cameras hanging from their necks, clicking beautiful candid pictures. I wondered if they knew people in the city pay to learn to click photographs which they were doing perfectly fine without any professional guidance. And students like us had a whole elective based on it. A while later, all the boys started signing their memories on each other’s shirts just like we did in my school. When a short break was offered, these kids refused to rest but wanted DJ to fill up that break instead. They had a mix of latest DJ Telugu songs with “Jai PUBG” (latest online gaming addiction) being one of them. They lifted their hair, pulled up their pants, wore cartoon colored shirts and danced barefoot with all that they have got.

“Their conduct has gone rouge. What do they gain by dancing like retards, styling their hair like thorns and being on the phone 24/7? We mustn’t have given them the advantage of having a farewell party,” my mother’s colleagues complained. She did not reply to that but looked at her children sympathetically before locking eyes with me. I knew what she was feeling. The world might see them as rootless weeds but when I see them, all I see is a group of kids who have been wronged their whole life trying to fit in. And I know my mother sees the same.

Two girls from grade 9 came to me, asking me to explain a paragraph written by their English teacher which they were supposed to include in their anchoring notes. After I read the paragraph, I couldn’t help but want to hear their English teacher speak; for the paragraph had six sentences and none of them made proper sense. It was unstructured and unruly. I wondered if this was what they were being taught since all the years at school.

Before I could come to a conclusion about the school or the kids, these children threw me another surprise. I stopped whatever that I was browsing on my phone when I heard a beautiful song being played. I lifted my head up only to find one of the girls who ran up to me earlier during the day and called me beautiful singing with the sweetest voice I’ve ever heard live. She was singing a song about mothers; oh, how her mother must be so proud of her! But her friend told me that her mother does not like her wasting her time on singing when she can spend all that on studying. I wondered if her mother would say the same if she knew such a voice and harmony could get the whole state listening to her.

The students were asked to share their experiences and feelings with the audience. One of the boys started his speech by saying that he wanted to share his opinions on three things that he was experiencing that day. “Pain, fear and happiness,” he began. “Pain is the thought of separation with your loved ones. Fear is the moment of separation, the idea that you can no longer see them and happiness is when you know everything is a fuel for lighting the brightest lamp of tomorrow,” he said in his own tongue. It gave me enormous joy to hear someone from the school talk about something so mature. He is the evidence against the myth that government school children cannot have a vivid vision of their expectations from life. Later I had asked him who he wants to be, his mother or father. “I have never seen him cry,” he says “I want to vent my tears in the form of sweat. Like the sweet smell of my father’s sweat. It is a fragrance that keeps my family going,” he finished with a content smile. I saw a poet in him in that moment. Everything he said was like a poem and I wondered if he knew that.

A little boy from grade 7 tugged at the end of my sleeve from behind shyly. “I practiced something yesterday. Watch me,” he said and retreated into the ground with no people. He effortlessly jumped to do a back flip and landed on his feet with a pose. What he did was an advanced gymnastics trick and I wondered if he knew that.

There was yet another boy, big, tall and heavy. He was regarded as the sports person of the school. He went on various competitions around the state. When my mother asked him where he would go next, he hung his head low. “Only you believe I’m doing good, ma’am. Every other teacher and my parents think I am only participating for escaping academics.”

These kids constantly try to catch up to those living among the tall buildings and city lights but they know not the means of applying their knowledge. They are oblivious to the value of the talents they possess and how the wealthy spend their fortunes on trying to acquire what they’ve naturally exercised upon their own free will. These diamonds don’t know they shine and no adult had helped them realize any better. All they need is a “direction”; something or someone who can shed light upon their hidden traits and show to them what they are capable of, show them that they can stand next to someone from the tall buildings and look them in the eye.

This reminds me of the poem:

“Unless, governor, inspector, visitor,

This map becomes their window and these windows

That shut upon their lives like catacombs,

Break O break open till they break the town

And show the children to green fields, and make their world

Run azure on gold sands, and let their tongues

Run naked into books the white and green leaves open

History theirs whose language is the sun.”

Stephen Spender (An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum)