We squirm, we’re skittish
You the mighty red-eyed leaders
In your lovely dulcet tones
Every morn do tell us
Not to sing-speak or drone
But we respect your hard work
And your awe-inspiring presence
And falsely comply with an inward sigh
Greeting with overbearing exuberance.
And hearing our faked enthusiasm
Through a skill honed over the years
Filtering through blustering lies
And tackling complains and moans
I heartily salute both of yours endurance
For having never once publicly groaned.
The Maths teacher in all his glory
Booms across the silent class
A mentor but number possessed
Who favours witty Punjabi remarks
Drills how-to-write-step-wise-solutions
Into our numb skulls without usual snark
Rigorous remedial and unrelenting repetitions
Until the algorithms leave an indelible mark.
The Economics teacher is an opportunist
She seizes all our glorious free time
And passionately expounds on her subject
For ignorance is an unpardonable crime
She explains about market equilibrium
And badmouths those lacking scruples
But for all intents and purposes – the hypocrite –
Says economics is ethically neutral.
The English teacher with her usual quirk
Twitches a smile at our endearing antics
And delivers a loquacious soliloquy
To explain the delicate intricacies.
And dissecting the literary devices
I do recall her bemoaning the fact
O how it kills the beauty of literature
And how many times has her heart bled
to perniciously discern every word
And then feed it to us dunderheads.
The Chemistry teacher with broken beakers
Stands aloft and yells for attention
She narrows her eyes in supreme annoyance
And questions our questionable retention
Of antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,
And thermodynamics, conductivity and carbon conclusions
Yet we are able to produce the accurate solutions
Without listening to her daily untiring gripe
And for all her uncanny powers of observation
she never notices the textbook under the desk
But shakes her head in exasperation and confusion.
In the voice-lit Physics class,
Period after period, the time does pass,
And the teacher stands erect explaining with devotion,
In monotone with a sullen, stoic and serene emotion.
The duster freaks and the chair creaks,
The window screeches as the chalk squeaks,
But the class lies quiet, as quiet as a dead dog;
Less due to the teacher, more due to cold and fog-
The fog that lies in our clogged brains,
So though the five firmly stand and explain,
We light a cigar in our text-vexed mind,
And bask in the golden chalk-white sunlight.
And only when we graduate do we comprehend
That nothing but dedication did you demand
And in the daily rut of school hood innocence
We never did thank you for your earnest reprimands.
by Akanksha Gupta (Batch 2013)
~ Dedicated it to Mohan Ma’am, Divya Ma’am, Deepak sir, Gurpreet ma’am, Deepanwita Ma’am, Smriti ma’am and Rahul sir ~
The Pluming PoeTree 