In school, I drew caricature-like faces in my notebook in Hindi class. Maths class was for writing poetry. In college, aiming paper planes at the Economics lecturer’s back was my revenge for being forced to take the subject as a package with English Literature.
As you must have got my drift, I was far from the ideal student; choosing to study what I liked and generally ignoring what I did not. It is a wonder I graduated, but I did, though not really covering myself with glory in the process.
And now my karma sits opposite me, and stares me long and hard in the face, in the form of an iPad.
The instrument of my delight, my constant companion through the writing of books and articles, and silent guide through streaming movies, often doubling up as my shopping partner, has also morphed into my medium of imparting knowledge. Yes, I have joined the ranks of teachers taking online classes.
My students should be in Kangra. Where I go for 10 days once a year, as much to teach as to feast my soul on the sight of snow-capped mountains that I can see all through the day in class or from my hotel window. But this year the students are safe in their houses, spread across half the country from Punjab to Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, and I am closeted at home.
Linked to each other and me, across my dining table for three hours a day, by the marvel of technology that a decade ago would have sounded like the whimsy of a wandering mind.
It should be easy, this online teaching; and in some ways it is. For one, I never need to fear the onslaught of paper planes. But I do suspect my students, some of them at least, are doing the modern equivalent of drawing caricatures and writing poetry... their inclinations tending towards WhatsApp conversations or streaming soaps, while ‘being present’ in class.
Don’t get me wrong, this is not a complaint. I know some students are present in body and mind on the other side of my connection; I hear their responses, I get their messages on the chat box, and more important I can see them, even when one of them forgets I am watching and chooses to pick her nose.
I am more concerned about the invisible ones.
The ones who are only a ghost-like outline in the box carrying their name. Whose audio symbol is muted, who exist in the closest thing to a vacuum I am aware of. They do come alive sporadically, especially during attendance, and cause me to wonder whether it is technology at its worst or at its best, at play. Then there are those who are hidden behind a photograph of themselves: in front of a monument, or dressed in festive finery, pictures more suited to Facebook than to a Zoom class. Sometimes the pictures find their voices too, but the real persons have successfully remained unseen.
Yet, soldier on, I must. Finding ways to lure the unseen to interact. Learning inventive ways to hook the unwilling to listen, learn, submit exercises. We make slow but steady progress. I am a week old at the game, but have learnt to play along, asking as often as telling; showing pictures and film clips to draw the class together, using words, to goad, enthuse, reward in my effort to keep the ball rolling. It’s a one-woman full-on entertainment show, aiming in 42 different directions at the same time.
As I enter week two, I doff my cap at the thousands of teachers in schools and colleges across the world, who must be walking this path, day after day even as we wait for the tunnel’s end. And then I think of my students, robbed now of the joys of being collegians. Who, once I close my computer, have to log on to another teacher, and yet another. And I realise I should shut up.
(The writer and Consulting Editor, Penguin Random House can be contacted at saran.sathya@gmail.com)