The other day, as I was riding down a road on a two-wheeler near my home in Kochi, in the distance, I saw a woman with bobbed hair. I felt a sudden queasiness in my stomach. ‘Is that Miss Edwins?’ I wondered.
Miss Edwins taught me at St. Xavier’s School in Kolkata. She was a strict disciplinarian. When she walked, she looked neither to the left nor to the right. When she got angry, her voice sounded like a clap of lightning. And once, I got to experience her rage first-hand.
It was during an English class. Miss Edwins looked at me and said, “Come here.” With my heart beating fast and hands shivering, I got up from the fourth row and started walking, as if through quicksand, towards her. I stopped and waited. “You haven’t done your homework. Yet, you have submitted your exercise book,” she said. “Why?” There was a pin-drop silence in the class. “My mother has a high fever,” I said. “Yesterday, there were a lot of people in the house. I could not do my homework.”
“Then why did you submit your book?” Miss Edwins asked.
I did not know what to say. It was my fear of her that made me submit the book. Miss Edwins pulled out the gold ring from the third finger of her right hand and placed it carefully on the table. Then she pushed back the chair, stood up, and in the very next instant, slapped my face.
The sound felt like the burst of a thunderclap. My eyes closed and I saw stars under my eyelids. There was a sting on my cheeks, and all of a sudden, tears began rolling down my face.
Miss Edwins flung my notebook towards the door. “Go and stand outside till the end of classes today,” she shouted, as I numbly walked towards the exit. Outside, I wiped my face with a handkerchief. This was the first time in my life that someone slapped me. My mother had always scolded me, but never touched me. In fact, that was the only time Miss Edwins laid her hand on me. After that, I had always been careful. I did my homework on time
As I came abreast of the woman on that Kochi road, I looked sideways and realised that it was somebody else. Of course, it would be, since Miss Edwins died more than fifteen years ago. Sadly, fears do not go away.
Shevlin Sebastian
Email: shevlins@gmail.com