Dear,..........,
Hello. Yesterday, I narrated my becoming a science graduate. No jobs on the horizon. And with nobody rooting for me, I was just wasting away my time. That was the time when the general population felt that educating their children would ensure that they would have a better future. The condition of schools continued to be bad. We still had the "Jabri Zeth" type schools in each locality. Translating "Jabri Zeth" it meant "Forcibly admitting children in run down school" (A child would normally not like to go to school. He would be forcibly taken to the school. While going, he would be weeping. This would happen with most children.) So there would be openings for educated unemployed persons to be home tutors. It would start with teaching the children of our relatives. One of our close relatives had two young school going children. I was sent for coaching them. I would go everyday and at the end of the month I would be paid Rs. 5/-. The mother of the children would be nearby working in the kitchen. If she would hear me telling the child that she had not done her homework or not done the sum correctly, the mother would come out of the kitchen and shout at the child. On occasions she would thrash the child too. She gave me a stick too to discipline the children if necessary. I would sparingly use the stick.
In addition to these two children, I coached two more children from two separate households at Rs. 20/- each, per month. Life was moving on without any direction. One of my close friends living nearby, and also a graduate (Arts stream) got a job in Mission School located at Fateh Kadal - about a kilometer away from our house. After he had been working there for about two months, he learnt that there was a vacancy for a science teacher in the school. I went there and was appointed a teacher on a monthly salary of Rs. 58/-. I was assigned to teaching in lower primary classes. Occasionally, I was asked to teach in higher classes when the senior science teacher would be absent for any reason. My performance was nothing spectacular. I have three main remembrances about this school. One, the school was probably the first school in the valley started by Englishmen. The school was housed in two or three buildings constructed around a compound on the banks of the river. There were verandahs on the first floor and second floor level. When the whistle for assembly of children in the compound was blown, all the children were expected to reach the compound in a minutes. There were a number of vertical wooden poles available for children to slide down from first and second floor. This was a sight to remember. In the twinkling of an eye, the children would swarm in the compound. The second was that I met Pandit Samsar Chand in this school. He was a geography teacher. Only two persons from India have ever been awarded National Geographical Award. He was one of them. He knew all the birds, their migration timing, their plume particulars, their sounds and the type of nests, etc. etc. In his class room, he had several dozens of different nest of birds on the ceiling. He was very much sought after by European visitors who would take him with them on their visits to the countryside, lakes and swamps to identify the birds for them. He was a very simple person always wearing a turban, pyjama, shirt and coat. He was a resident of Rainawari about three kilometers away from the school and would everyday walk up and down the school. Aditya Raj Koul who is a Kashmiri Pandit activist very active on the social media today, happens to be his great grandson. My next remembrance is meeting a Teacher by the name: Mr. Mohan Lal. He was probably a Matric Pass. He became my friend. My brother in law Mr. Jawahar Lal Sultan, (my wife's brother) had also been a teacher in this school before I had joined there. Mr. Mohan Lal was his friend. Through Mohan Lal, I met Mr. Sultan.
One day after I had been employed in the mission school, very early in the morning, I found someone calling for me by shouting my name outside our house. We were all sleeping. I got up and looked through the window. There were two boys, one of them was my class fellow when I was in F.Sc, and his elder brother. The elder brother was working as a science teacher in S.P.School - the same school from which I had passed my matric. He had got a higher post (demonstrator in S.P.College) He was not being relieved by the school Principal unless he would provide a substitute. He requested me to be a substitute. I agreed because, it was a government job with a time scale salary 70-6-130. That meant that I would start with a salary of Rs. 70/- per month. Every year, I would get an increment of Rs. 6/- till such time I would reach Rs. 130/-. I had worked in Mission School for two months only.
There were six science teachers already in S.P.School when I joined as the seventh teacher. The six teachers were veterans. They were well educated and impressive looking personality. I, in contrast looked a boy. Lot of boys in the school looked more aged than me. I started teaching better than what I was doing in the previous school. The children would not get scared of me because I lacked the overbearing presence of the other teachers. The boys felt more relaxed with me. They would seek clearance of their doubts. They were happy with me. The children in other sections felt that they were unlucky not to be in my section. This feedback reached the Principal too. He (Gulam Rasool Dar) called me to his chamber and took me in the evening with him to his sister's house. His sister had a son in Grade 9. I was to teach him science and maths. The boy's father was the Chief Fire Officer in Fire Brigade in Kashmir valley. My father who was a station officer in Fire Brigade then was very pleased learning it. The Chief would give him respect and most staff in the Fire headquarter knew that fact too. I am happy that I was a reason for my father to be proud of me and getting lot of respect in the headquarter.
Bye for now. I will continue with my narration about my performance as teacher in school in my next blog. I would like to add here that I did not get paid for my home teaching the Chief's son. (The Principal would have got insulted if I had asked for money. He did not offer and I did not ask.)
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