The Curious Case of Mr. Benton

Once upon a time, in the quiet corridors of St. Rosemary School, where the chalk dust flew freer than the birds and emotions ran deeper than the school pond, walked in a man who changed everything.

Mr. Benton.

The man, the myth, the English teacher with tragically good cheekbones and a voice that could turn The Rime of the Ancient Mariner into a love ballad. With a crisp shirt, perfectly parted hair, and a novel tucked under his arm like a second limb, he was the heartthrob of hormonal hearts and dramatic diaries.

Back in the sun-drenched days of St. Rosemary School, Mr. Benton was less of a teacher and more of a phenomenon. The moment he walked down the corridor with his leather folder tucked under one arm and Wuthering Heights in the other, a visible hush of admiration would sweep through the air. Girls whispered behind their notebooks. Boys tried, mostly in vain, to mimic his quiet confidence. His sleeves were always rolled up just enough to show a watch that probably didn't even work, but oh, how it added to the mystery.

During English classes, when he recited poetry, the words sounded less like verses and more like music. Even parents, during PTMs, found themselves oddly respectful around him as if he wasn't just teaching children but shaping literature itself. But, good things doesn't last long, do they? Mr. Benton had to add another feather to his crown and get himself enrolled in the M. Phil Programme at Bangaluru.

On his last day, chaos had turned poetic. Girls cried in corners. Letters were slipped into his hands with trembling fingers. One girl had written a full-page love letter and requested, almost tearfully,

'Sir, please open it only after you reach home.'

Another, in a moment of hormonal heroism, took off her blue Reynolds pen and gifted it like it was a parting relic. It was less of a farewell and more of a teenage uprising led by Shakespeare's ghost.

And yet, in the farthest corner of the class, sat Mitali, quiet, indifferent, pencil in hand. Observant. Unimpressed. She watched the whole storm unfold and quietly thought to herself:

Yes, she agreed he was charming.

Yes, he had read Keats.

But, he already had a fan base. And for Mitali, mass obsession was always a red flag.

No letter, no gel pen, not even a sniffle from her. She didn't even wave goodbye.

While Benton was being surrounded by sniffles and tributes, Mitali hunched over her desk and began sketching a rough, earnest image of Sachin Tendulkar from the day's newspaper. She wasn't sad. She wasn't thrilled. She simply knew that someone like him didn't need someone like her, and frankly, she had better things to do.

Little did she know, years later, Mr. Benton would drift back into her life from the dusty archives of Facebook, like an old pop song no one requested, suddenly blaring and oddly persistent. Life, with its impeccable flair for irony, had flipped the script.

Years went by.

With academic papers, heartbreaks, job switches, and the occasional over-sugared tea, Mitali moved on, growing up like one of those strong potted plants on a windowsill: weather-beaten, grounded, and thriving in her own light.

Like many important things in life, taxes, molting friendships, lost earrings, Mr. Benton too had drifted into her subconscious, folded neatly under 'Minor Teenage Puzzles'.

Until one random evening, at 28, when Mitali, fueled by boredom and nostalgia, mentioned his name and his fandom to a friend

'You know, there was an English teacher named Mr. Benton at St. Rosemary's. Someone everyone cried over and even Priya, who once said she was emotionally dead inside, wept like an onion had punched her.'

The curious friend insisted on seeing him. So Mitali looked him up on Facebook.

Still charming? Well... charming-adjacent.

A bit fuller in the face, still flaunting that 2012 sunset selfie like it was his Hogwarts diploma. He was now a Professor at Indrapur University. She also spotted a number of her friends on his friendlist.

Curious, Mitali sent him a friend request. Being her former teacher, an academician of English Literature, may provide her some insights on her new project report on the Hungryalist quartet. Besides, there is no harm in revisiting a blast from the past, right?

WRONG.

Ten minutes after he had accepted her request, Mr. Benton messaged:

'Hi Mitali, are you from St. Rosemary's? Wow, time flies!'

And with that, the floodgates of Cringe Creek opened. From small talks to funny memes – she received it all. Mitali tried to keep it formal but Mr. Benton treated the conversational boundary built by her like a speed bump in a go-kart. He acknowledged it for a second, then barrelled right over it with a grin and unsettlingly philosophical questions question that has no business being asked.

'What do you do when you're all alone?' 

'Do you want to get lost sometimes?'

She had tried to dodge it, may be pretending her busy schedule of enjoying a picnic. But, what flicked in her messenger was,

'Are you on a picnic? With a boyfriend... or just a picnic?'

He was like a digital foghorn in a peaceful forest, loud, confusing, and impossible to ignore.

He even offered her a job at his private university:

'I can recommend you... you'll be happy here.'

Mitali wanted to scream through the Messenger chat with such force that it might rupture her silence like a sonic boom, enough to jolt his eardrums through the screen.

It wasn't Hogwarts and she wasn't not Hermione Granger with low boundaries.

Still, she remained polite. He was her old teacher, after all. But when he started calling via Messenger and subtly hinting at his loneliness, she knew it was time.

She blocked him.

Digital peace was restored.

Maybe, just maybe, that was the end of it. But fate had other plans, and so did Mr. Benton's thumb. Barely two hours later, as she casually scrolled through her feed, there he was, his name gleaming fresh under a post by her friend Rishali. A post that was nine months old. Nine. Months. Old. He had clearly performed digital archaeology just to ask, 'How are you, Rishali?'

Rishali hadn't posted in nearly a year but, Mr. Benton had time-traveled her timeline out of sheer desperation.

It wasn't just persistence, it was the kind of uninvited enthusiasm usually reserved for quiz show contestants or motivational speakers at 7 a.m. webinars. Mitali could only blink, baffled, wondering if Mr. Benton mistook social media timelines for emotional lifelines.

She stared at her phone and laughed. Loud. The kind of laugh that hurts your stomach and shakes your inner child awake.

The man once worshipped by half the school now roams Facebook like a confused uncle at a school reunion.

Some men age like fine wine.

Mr. Benton aged like leftover biryani, still intense, but now mostly uncalled for.