The DAY or THE Day

August 22, 2015 by Usha Pisharody 4 Comments

… either way, whichever, however you look at it, you could say it was quite a day 🙂

Long Post Alert. It’s 1600 words plus, and yet, for me it isn’t enough. That says it all 🙂 Read on at your pleasure, if you so wish ❤

The DAY was one that surpassed others of the same kind by being most overwhelming, in a manner I have yet to experience. The days to the run up were way underwhelming, if you can grasp the meaning of the word (first heard in the film, “10 Things I hate about you” starring a young Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles 😛 ) – but it being the August Month, it is always appealing and something to eagerly look forward to, like the March-April Ariean Month 🙂 Last year, and the year before that, this day, sorry The Day, was rather special too. Outbursts of spontaneous, excited surprises waited in store. Fond love etched itself in numerous creative ways – be it in words, pictures, actions, songs and so on and so forth.

Having successfully arrayed before you the well known unsubtle distractedness I’m prone to these days (along with coining words leftrightandcentre 😛 ), I know I owe it to you to tell you where this write is going. It’s travelling back, a few days, to a day that I shall find hard to live down, or live up to, for that matter. A day that came  on sunshine wings, and poured so much joy, frosted with pixie dust, all aflutter … errm, yeah, right, I AM waxing poetic aren’t I? It’s a fangirl moment here – thinking about how a Cinderella must have felt with the glass slipper sort of day. Except it was way better. Still not getting to the point aren’t I? Sigh.

So this is how the Day The DAY went. Expecting a call at midnight, as has been the norm, I went to bed the night before, but slept right through pings from the phone. Wakey wakey early enough, and I find an SMS from an unfamiliar number, which is identified 11 messages later. Sigh. So much for a good start. A couple of happy phone calls later, I’m ready for school. It’s a Thursday, and the next day is a holiday. Much fun.

Understatement. Way more fun. In the tense first period, I got asked to leave class, by my own kids 😀 A first definitely. A barely polite, urgent requirement it was, apparently. I barged in impatiently a few minutes later to some rather outrageous scenes 😛 A boquet, a cake on the teachers’ table, a ‘U’ shaped container, made by an artistic girl, containing gifts, cards, a birthday cap, a singing knife to cut the cake, and snow spray. Well. Well. It was a blast! To song and many wishes, a song, a speech, and much shared cake, laughter and a general letting down of hair. Well yes, it was their teacher’s birthday, and this celebration, apparently had been cooking for a bit.

It speaks of the RAW at work in the Intelligence Unit, in the class, and, as I later discovered, other classes. 😛 The next class, I did not even have to get to, before random kids came up to shake hands, offer pens, as gifts ( I do NOT have any of their papers to grade, pliss to note 😀 ) – the RAW there too was well informed. It has so happened, that a couple of years ago, this year’s 12th grade kids, sneakily discovered that The DAY was that day, through alert eyes of their siblings of friends, who happened to be on my list on Facebook. News like this really does not matter, usually, but then I discovered that indeed, I am that eccentric oddity, who HAD to be noticed 😛 😛 And greeted.

So the next year, last year, more kids, particularly, my very own XD (the 14-15 batch – the Number 47, remember? )  had this session of pastry cutting, giving me an awesome watch, and generally making me feel special 🙂 Lovely hand-painted card too, from their seniors, the ones who started it the previous year.

But this year, Boy O Boy! It certainly was different. It felt as if somehow the universe at school had conspired to make my day. And me in a ‘koora saree’ as a colleague put it – an uninteresting saree, to put it mildly 😛 – to not celebrate myself 😀 ! Well, to get the highlights of the day, it went spiralling upward, after the fist period. Every class I went to, songs came my way, cards, and wishes. A young lady from Class 7 (I have just gone there once, this year, to tell them to keep quiet 😛 ) came during the lunch break, clutching 3 red ink pens, for me, she said, wishing me very solemnly. Despite my telling that she oughtn’t to have spent money like that, I could not persuade her to take them back for herself. I took one, and told her the others were a gift back 🙂 What a sweetheart! The day was filled with such moments. There were kids, with knowing smiles on their faces, simply walking up to this ogre to shake her hands, and offer wishes. To be sure, I felt rockstar popular 😛 😛

The first lot of kids who started wishing me, a couple of years ago, were back with their painted card and pictures framed. Oh my! Beautiful beautiful wishes and creativity with it 🙂 And the littlest of the lot, whose classes I visit, made tiny paper earrings with quilling paper, and instructed that I wear it, as and when I had a saree to match 🙂

It was barely afternoon, when I was spirited away to a corner of the school, by urgent calls for help there, by *a teacher* , according to the students, when my former AK47s were ready and raring to go with guitar and song and the pastry again 🙂 along with a beautifully illustrated card, in the form of a story 🙂

And then, with yet a couple of classes to go, song and cards later, we come to the special class that evening. The lesson was Subject Verb Agreement. You know how much of agreement there is, usually in a Grammar class, especially with a Grammar Nazi taking that class. Ten minutes into the lesson, I could hear rumblings, and murmurs, each time I turned toward the board to write something down; it was clear indication as to a plot brewing, but how it would unfold was anybody’s guess, for me. Well to cut to a longish story, it began with a young pert lady coming up to me, with her workbook, to ask a doubt (it never happens 😛 ), and me asking her to get back, so that she can ask from there, as it could be a general doubt that the whole class, maybe, had, but she doesn’t go back; instead she opens the book to a particular page wherein is tucked a sheet of paper which says “Happiness is… celebrating your teacher’s birthday…” That stumped me. You see, we need to go back a few hours, when I had class, with the SAME lot, and they never uttered a SINGLE word 😀 So had this entire party planned out. They then burst into songs, English, Hindi, Malayalam; did a kind of Mexican Wave thingy, holding up A4 size sheets that had a letter or punctuation on it – which went to the effect – “We love you teacher, and you will remain in our hearts forever” – something more too 😀 Overwhelmed is a word that does not quite cover what I felt, as I did that afternoon, the whole day, in fact. But it still was not over. Each child came up to me, with a hand made card that I accepted with good grace, though by now I was beet red 😀 They, thankfully did not bring cake. They had chocolate – three slabs, which I broke into bits, and fed each of them 🙂

Taking stuff home required that I make two trips to my car, with my arms laden with cards, posters, notes… 🙂 A tiny bouquet too. ❤ Opening the cards later, I was struck by the one made by the Master of Irony in one of our classes. A simple minimalistic card, a Happy Birthday, nothing else, and on the back cover were these profound words : “Insert deep meaningful verse here” You could say I had been had. 😛 I loved that card as much as I did the semi album of my life they had compiled, along with the kind of warm affection they concluded my day at school with.

But yes, more than the “loot” as I call it, the day had to do with an outpouring of affection; a day that began really quietly and sombrely for me, with no expectation, but for the previous years’ kids coming to wish me (I know you guys 😛 ) and songs and handshakes. Bas. What unfolded was a mega private show, that spilled into the corridors, and brimmed over with love. That, that, made it special.

 

I’ve yet to have a birthday party of my own which was as long and as awesome as I had that DAY. 🙂 It’s going to be the last of ’em too, with the thoughts running down the corridors that it’s really not ok to spend so much of time and effort into these things, when it’s just  another day.

Not this DAY, this year. This will be forever etched in my ❤

Thank you to all you magical people, who pretend to be kids at school, for us 🙂 You make me believe in Miracles and Fairy Tales, though I never really stopped believing in them- you strengthen the feeling that it takes a child to lead you to the door of your own truth 🙂 ❤

Thank you. Infinitely.

Finally completed on 22 August, 2015, having begun a week ago, almost 🙂