The Boy Named Rohan

I drove to the institute where I had recently taken up an internship, it was my first day. Nerves came naturally and so when the traffic lights turned red once again, I screamed internally. Punctuality is an important characteristic of people, and first impressions matter. If I landed up late on the first day, it sure wouldn’t make a good impact. Yet, I was ten minutes early, and in those few minutes, I got acquainted with the teachers and was assigned my first student. I remember him very well, it was a boy named Rohan. 

“Rohan, this is your new teacher. Listen to everything she says, ok?”, said one of the other teachers, giving me a thumbs up sign as she left. The boy, Rohan, looked at me once, with a straight, expressionless face and at once started taking out his books from his bag. When he had placed them on the desk, I questioned him as to what he knew, and depending on that, I set him work and taught him further. Rohan was 6 when I first started teaching him. He had just begun his alphabets and numbers. I asked him to write the alphabets till what he remembered and turns out he knew till the letter F. Determined to teach him well, I made him write the next eight letters a minimum of 10 times, and by the end of the class, he could write and say the letters perfectly till N. The days went on, and so did my classes with him in the same monotonous way. The teachers started greeting me cordially and welcomed me each day. However, Rohan’s manner never changed. 

One day, I got frustrated. Rohan had been writing the same alphabet 30 times and still wasn’t getting it right. I snapped. I noticed that each day, when I had been setting him his classwork, he had been looking at the other teachers longingly and was always distracted in every class of ours. That day, his distraction was out of control. He had been fidgeting continuously with his eraser, his pencil, everything that was near him. That day, I got mad at him and snapped. I shouldn’t have. 

The next day, he didn’t come. I went home a bit upset, although the other student I had taught was quite good and had listened to everything I had said. I talked to my mom about this and she told me something which really impacted me. “Leela”, she said “You are living in a house, in your own room, with parents who love you and support you. You live in a good atmosphere and go to a good school. You are always surrounded by optimism. But think about Rohan. He lives in a slum. His parents work nine to five just to send him to a decent school and he probably doesn’t even get three meals a day. Think about what he has grown up in and then compare it with you. Do you really think you should scold him for getting distracted once in a while? For not focusing sometimes?” That really made me think. And the next day I went, I went with this thought in my mind. 

“Hello, Rohan”, I said. He looked at me with the same straight face, but a hint of surprise in his eyes. “How are you?” I asked. He took a second to answer. “Good”, he said. Smiling at his response I took out my pen and he took out his copies and we started our class. After some time, he began fidgeting with his eraser again. So then, I tried a new tactic. “How many erasers are there?”, I asked. “One”, he said with confusion. “Ok, now how many lights are there?” He turned around in his chair, counting with his fingers. “One, two, three!”, he said. “Very Good.”, I said. He smiled a bit, he quite seemed to like that game.

For the next few days, whenever he got distracted, I played that game with him and soon, he started listening to me more and more and one day, he did something really unexpected. I was just packing up, as the class was over when I felt a small finger tapping me on my hand. I looked down to see Rohan standing beside me. “Yes, Rohan?”, I asked, wondering what he wanted. “Bye!”, he said, and ran away. After a moment of surprise, I replied, “Bye!” and got into my car, laughing.

One day, he had completed his classwork a bit early and so we had 10 minutes to spare. “Want to learn something new today?”, I asked him. “Sure”, he said. So I turned to the last page of his notebook and taught him how to play ‘Tic-Tact-Toe’. He loved it. “Oh look, you won again”, I said each time, letting him beat me. And every time, he proceeded to show me how I could have won. “No, Ma’am”, he said “See, you should have done this”, and I nodded my head in wonder. That day, his mom had come to pick him up. “Bye”, he said as usual and I waved in return. My car was a bit late that day and so I couldn’t help overhearing his conversation with his mother. “Mumma”, he said “you know, Ma’am taught me a new game today”. “Really?”, his mother asked. “Yes, and I can’t wait to show it to you when I get home, it’s really simple and I beat Ma’am every time!”, he said with a smile lighting up his face. And that smile, I realised, was what this had been about all along.