3
Anyway, the appearance of the head teacher uncle – bald, short, slim and clad in ‘white dhuti and punjabi’, was very comical to the boys in the class, especially to those in the fourth grade. A little aged boys. With his sunken cheeks, he looked aged much more than he was. He used to come on a big by-cycle, which was quite unusual for his height. And, whenever he tried to get over or get off the by-cycle, he had to take care of his ‘dhuti’. His ‘dhuti’ used to get caught at the front of the seat and he had to land almost half-naked while still trying to disentangle that thing off the seat. He had to employ a lot of effort to keep balance with his by-cycle as such. The awkward moment used to pick fun in some of the fourth grade boys. Many students of the primary school were in the habit of ruminating this disturbing moment happening with the head teacher uncle. It had been a real fun-maker of their regular talks among themselves. They even caricatured his appearance and mimicked the gesture of the head teacher uncle in his effort to keep the cattle in the line as he drove the herd along the way to the grassy land in the fields. Because, the head teacher uncle had a cowshed in his house and he himself looked after nearly half a dozen cows in there.
At that time, our school had three rooms for the three grades and the fourth grade had continued as an extension of the third grade. The head teacher uncle was able to get aid to build a separate room for the fourth grade much later. Even after I left the primary school and got admitted to the high school.
As I saw the head teacher uncle closely, his appearance or way he behaved never aroused fun in me. Unlike to my classmates, the head teacher uncle never looked funny to me. I did not find anything unusual as I saw him; rather I found everything quite natural about him. May be because of what my new mates in the high school told about me was right that I was too mature for my age. But, I think it is because of what my mother had taught me from the beginning that I should judge people not by how great they might look, but by how great they might have been towards doing their jobs. People like Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar and Albert Einstein, both for their assiduity in thinking and simplicity in living. One from literature and the other from science. Great men are alike – this single sentence of my mother is so hymnal for every scripture.
The head teacher uncle was not great among the iconic figures, but he was greater than many of his rank. He was a head teacher of a primary school, he was a cattle herder and milkman for his cows, he was a sower of seeds and a reaper of crops in his paddy fields, he was a forager for the troughs of his cows, he was a bargainer and a buyer in the vegetable market, he was a fisherman with a fishing-rod in his pond, he was a washer of the clothes, he was a sole bread earner for his family and he was a father too worried about his sons. And, everywhere he put himself up to doing his best. Best thing about him is that he did his job as it demanded, forgetting who he was. When he taught – he was a teacher, when he milked the cows – he was a milkman, when he sowed and reaped in the field – he was a farmer and a forager, a bargainer, a buyer, a fisher, washer, bread-earner.
