"Our new accounts teacher!"

Our new Accounts teacher turned out to be a thin, middle-aged, fair and delicate looking Maharashtrian lady with curly hair. She was standing near the green sofa in the reception area and seemed to be searching for us with a thick book in her hand.  As we went closer to her, I took in notice her neatly pinned-up grey and yellow chiffon saree and her square-shaped rimless spectacles. My first silly thought which popped-up at her first sight was that her face looked like that of an innocent sparrow, with small, pouted lips and tiny, almond-shaped eyes. As we greeted her, she smiled nervously and led us towards the empty classroom at the corner of the west corridoor whose occupants were probably at the field for their sports period. “Hello!”, she started once we all were comfortably seated. “My name is Supriya Bandi and I will be taking your accounts classes. In this class, I thought we would just get to know each other well and we can start the subject in the second class after the recess!” For the rest of the class we kept on chatting and we all immediately bonded well with Mrs. Bandi. We came to know that she has not joined as a full-time teacher but as a visiting faculty.  In her second class after the recess,she taught us the basics of the journal entry and we cud see that she was really a very experienced and learned teacher. By the time the bell rang, we had spent a lot of time with our new ma’am and decided that she was ‘cool ’!

 “Khushboo and I have a Literature class with Mrs. Bhan now.” I said, extracting the navy blue text-book from my bag after our commerce class with Mrs Rubina, who was also a new faculty member and was very friendly and chirpy. “You guys cannot have Fashion-designing, right? Because Khushboo takes it too!” “Thats right Maaluuu!!” Sakshi said while jumping around the class and bumping into Amitayu, who scowled at her in return, “We have a free-period. These are meant for us to revise our lessons as exams get near but as the session has almost just started, it is a total fuuuuuuuun timeee!” I pretended to hit her with my text-book and made my way, with Khushboo, to Mrs. Bhan’s office where she took our classes. “So, moti!” I said, calling her by the hindi nick- name I had long since given her, “where had our dear Mr. Seth reached during the last lesson?” “I think,” she replied, opening her book, “last read, he was complaining about the man sitting behing him in the bus eating very,smelly goat-meat on their way to resort-cottages at the Heaven’s Lake. “Yeah!” I said, screwing up my nose, “now I remember!” we waited outside Mrs. Bhan’s office as she finished a conversation on her office phone and ushered us in, while searching for her own blue colored book before sitting down besides us on the only empty yellow  plastic chair by the window. We were studieng  an Indian novel called – ‘From Heaven lake- Travels through Sinkiang and Tibet.’ By- Mr. Vikram Seth, the author of the famous book- ‘A Suitable boy.’  “So girls!,” Mrs. Bhan started, opening her book, “ Where were we? I think Mr. Seth had arrived at the cottages and was happily surveying his surroundings and thick, quilted beds after having a tiring bus journey.” We nodded and I started reading further lines on Mrs. Bhan’s instructions-

“The lake is an intense blue, surrounded on all sides by green mountain walls, dotted with distant sheep. At the head of the lake, beyong the delta of the in-flowing stream, is a massive snow capped peak which dominates the vista; it is a part of a series of peaks that culminate, a little out of view, in Mount Bogda itself...”

Though Mr. Seth’s story of his  journey was in first person format as in a tale, it was endowed with many difficult synonyms and metaphors. As Khushboo and I took turns reading the chapter, Mrs. Bhan kept on explaining its gist and meanings. As always, as we read, she made us underline the confusing and unknown words with pencil for us to look them up in the dictionary later and tell her their meaning in the next class.  we had finished two long chapters (having marked the last read page by inserting a bookmark as Mrs. Bhan strongly disapproved of folding the corner of the pages) just as the bell at the end of the second Literature class rang." Tuesdays were good in this session’s timetable",i thought as we stepped out of Mrs Bhan's office- double economics, double accounts with a new nice teacher who doesn’t seem to be strict,1 commerce class , literature with mrs bhan,  and double english language with mrs ghosh after the lunch break!!!

Returning to the class for keeping our books before heading for the dining hall for lunch, we waited outside the class-room till the boys get finished with their Physics lesson with Mrs. Awasthi. After latter had left and we all walked towards the terrace, we discussed how nicer the place looked now after having being converted into an eating- mess. It looked like a roof-top restaurent and on cloudy, breezy days, it was a pure delight eating there.

We started ‘Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens with Mrs. Ghosh in the last class of the day and immersed in the heavily narrated tale of Pip and his sister Joe Gargery, who had, by the way, married a blacksmith.We had heard that Mrs. Bhan and Mrs. Ghosh  had seen the Bollywood movie- Bride and Prejudice, which had recently been released in the theatres to see how much it was similar to the classic they had read. We didn’t know if it was a rumour or not, but if it really  was true, I was sure they would not have related to it at all. on my way back home, I again sat with Venkatesh in the bus…..