The Greatest Lesson (1/03/25)

The Greatest Lesson

[The glamorous, gorgeous, generous and god-blessed country BHUTAN, has given me so much. If I was lucky to have most of the students’ love, affection and respect, the following story went miles in instilling at the start of my teaching career, the basic core values of a teacher in an otherwise ordinary human like me.]

The Greatest Lesson

For me life was never going to be the same again……. 

In my late twenties, when I was a frustrated youth, having failed to major in English, I landed up with a teaching job in The Blessed Country called Bhutan. After my arrival in Bhutan, I was posted to a remote school in Ura in the central part of the country. Ura is a heavenly place with the only pilot school situated in the middle of the valley at an equi-distance from the BHU (Basic Health Unit) in the north of the school and the lhakhang (temple) in the west at that time.

The school had classes from PP to Class-IV with a total strength of some hundred and sixty-five students and 9 teachers, if my memory serves me right. I was made the Class Teacher of Class-

IV and in that capacity, I had to teach all subjects ( viz, English, Maths, Science, EVS) excluding Dzongkha, the National Language.

The life of a teacher was quite easy-going in our part of the world in those days and the teachers were held in high esteem. The average age of the students studying in Class-IV must have been around 16! Corporal Punishment was very much the in-thing in those days and my colleagues suggested to me time and again never to hesitate to deal firmly with the students.

Coming from a family of teachers, teaching was in my blood and I hit it up with the students within no time. Unlike most of my colleagues, I didn’t believe that the only way to teach the students was with the help of the stick as they understood the language of the stick the best. I must admit here that despite the use of force to tame a couple of unruly, wild students at times, I was the students’ favourite. 

I will always remember that wintry afternoon at Ura Pilot School in Bumthang, said to be ‘The Switzerland of Bhutan’, quite vividly. I had the last period with Class-IV. The moment I stepped in, the tired faces stood up and pestered me for a story. Feeling sorry for them, I had the class arranged in two rows in semicircles and the students were made to sit on the wooden floor. The girls sat in the front row, nearer to the Teacher’s Chair while I picked up a book from the Book Corner. I was going to read out to them from one of those Ladybird Storybooks.

It must have been an interesting story and the class seemed engrossed in it when Devi Maya Rai, a Southern Bhutanese student, wanted to go out. I nodded without looking up at her as I did not want her to interrupt the flow. 

Hardly had she gone out of the class when in came the

Headmaster, wielding his stick! A stout, thick-set, stylish man, Mr. K. K. Thapa looked furious. He was fond of me but that bleak afternoon he didn’t even bother to cast a look in my direction. Straight away, he called out to the smallest boy, Kuenga, in the class. Kuenga, with his innocent face, had become one of my favorite students within a very short span of time. 

He came snailing up from the back row, apprehensive. The Headmaster, without uttering a word, gave him right and left and beat him black and blue! What surprised me more was that though he himself got tired in the end, Kuenga, a chit of a boy that he was, kept gritting his teeth throughout the ordeal in order not to cry in front of his friends! 

“You know what this monkey was doing, Mr. Bhattacharjee?” Mr.

Thapa, his face still red from the angst and exhaustion, turning to me, asked me finally. One quick look down Devi Maya Rai’s kira (girl’s dress) behind him and I knew what was going on when I was busy reading out to the class. 

Kuenga, seated in the back row, with the most innocent face, unbeknownst to the rest of his friends, was busy cutting Devi’s Kira with a pair of scissors!

Now, in the early 1990s, I was a Contract Teacher and whether my contract would be renewed for the next two years or not, depended to a great extent on the Headmaster’s yearly performance evaluation report of the expatriate teachers. So, after Mr. Thapa had left, I got mad at Kuenga. But I called Devi Maya first and admonished her by telling her that she should not have gone to the Headmaster’s Office without telling me, their Class Teacher, first what was happening in the class. Devi did not look happy with the scolding and retreated back to her seat, muttering something to no one in particular.

There was a momentary lull next and in the ensuing pin-drop-silence, each student kept looking at me as if they were expecting Hell’s fury to break out in the class! The words of Mr.K.K.Thapa, something that he had told me a couple of days earlier, flashed through my mind :

“Mr. Bhattacharjee, Phub Tshering ( another teacher and a close friend of mine) was telling me yesterday that the students are being unruly, almost wild these days because of your indulgence.”

I couldn’t say anything in reply and stood in front of his desk with my mouth open as it was hard for me to digest that Phub Tshering, of all people, had made such a complaint to the Head

Master while preferring to keep me totally in the dark! Secondly, I really did not think that I deserved such a vehement attack on my reputation.

Then I called Kuenga.

The smallest boy with the most innocent face, ( I learnt later that despite his innocent face he was a menace, a great threat to the girls and one of the naughtiest boys in the school!) came forward again. 

WHACK!

I smacked him hard across the face as I was beside myself at that precise moment, thinking that my contract would not be renewed for the next academic session due to the unforgivable negligence and that I would have to go back to my place for good, leaving Bhutan, a country that I had come to admire and love so much within a short span of time. But I was totally unprepared for what happened next. 

Kuenga slowly snailed back to his seat, put his head down on the low desk covering his face with both of his hands. He was sobbing pitiably like the child that he really was! I was surprised beyond belief. Why was he crying, the boy who had withstood the onslaughts of the hefty Headmaster like a seasoned pro just a while ago? 

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I couldn’t get the incident out of my mind. As I retired to my room at a crow’s throw from the school in the afternoon, I kept thinking about Kuenga’s reaction to my outburst. I am not a very muscular or strong teacher. I couldn’t have smacked him all that hard either! Then what made him cry like the way he was???

I got the answer finally as I looked out the window the same evening. The sun had long gone down behind the majestic temple and I could see the boy of the neighbouring house in the field, trying to shoo his cattle back to the cowshed with a thick stick in his hand. The animals in a group, most of them jabbering peacefully, didn’t seem to mind neither the harsh tone of the master nor the occasional blows from the stick that landed on the few straying ones that hurriedly tried getting back into lines with the rest.

The reason why Kuenga sobbed like a baby, came to my head almost instantaneously, dear reader. Kuenga wept when I smacked him because he loved me a lot. Besides, he knew that he was guilty and he couldn’t take it from me as a result, especially in front of his friends. 

That day I possibly learnt The Greatest Lesson as a teacher. For me life was never going to be the same again as I realized that evening that if a teacher truly and let me stress on the word ‘truly’ here, loves his students like his own children, the students always find ways to reciprocate that love. 

I never tried to use force again while teaching the students after that incident.

The end