Blackboard Bride

I liked Geometry. It was the stuff of dreams during mathematics lessons. Mrs. DandaPaani taught us the dreaded subject. (yes, you read it right! That was her name indeed.) Her face was like a sphere. Her hair knit in a tight plait emerged from it in a precise perpendicular. In my mind’s eye, it made for quite an interesting pendulum! Anyway, we mostly saw the circle of her head backwards, while she was busy dressing the blackboard in white-chalk numbers. The sphere of her head and the angle of her elbow wobbled along into 60…70…90 oh and 110 degrees as she continued speaking to the attention-grabbing black board bride… My geometrical day-dreams were intermittently broken each time she turned around to ask her favourite one word question, ‘Understood?’ Nothing to worry though, as it was a rhetorical question. She never bothered about the responses. The one word question was a ‘comic relief,’ the ‘pause’, if you will, amidst some intense numerical theatrics that embellished the blackboard bride of my day-dreams.

My sheer love for music, dance and drama informed the narrative of my geometrical dreams. So much of it was interconnected! There was art in every aspect of knowledge or the development of human thought. Well, Pythagorus would have surely loved the imaginative accounts of his theorem unravelled in my dreams…

Did the teacher have a second pair of invisible eyes hidden behind those well-oiled , tight-laced hair? Often, while admiring the numerical salsa ongoing with the blackboard bride, I was hit by the white chalk dart. She never missed the shot! Mathematical precision, I guess! Hmm, I was most certainly in trouble in those mathematics lessons and found ‘out-standing’ ever so often.

School co-curriculum , the bit I was in love with, provided a perfect alibi to sneak out of those mathematics lessons. Much to the chagrin of Mrs. DandaPaani, I managed to miss her lessons for some duty or another. My parents heard the music at each PTM and my ears got attuned to that chorus - ‘Practice and work hard…practice and work hard…practice and work hard…’ - as it cacophonically echoed at home and school for all 365 days, year after year after year…

Never mind the cacophony! Remember, the power of day-dreaming I had. I could merrily blank out any cacophony with backstage melodious drama that filled every inch of my mind space. Come to think of it today, I acquired most of my skills in the chaos of the backstage and the aesthetic enigma of the stage. It enthralled and empowered me. It had geometry and science. It had language and art. It had the rhythm and meter of life itself. All those C’s that the erudite call 21st century skills, were built amidst the stage and backstage for me. You had to think critically to make situations work effectively. The dramatic sequences demanded artful and effective use of language, the theatrics of public speaking, compassionate empathy for characters being enacted. Everything needed collaboration, co-agency with adults and peers as it was all a team effort. One learnt to negotiate and strategise with clarity of thought. One learnt the disciple of an orchestra, the concentration and perseverance of a miniaturist. There was mathematics and science in it. There was history and geography in it played out in a range of geopolitical dynamics. There was language and art in it. Creative thinking was at the very heart of it...

Our mind seeks pattern in everything. Scientists have gathered today, it is a survival skill for human beings. What is mathematics, but a study of patterns within data? Similarly, there are indeed patterns in almost everything that we ought to learn around our world. Everything is interconnected indeed, and in multiple ways. When we disconnect with this pattern, the biodiverse rhythm of nature, that the planet and existence get challenged. This isn’t the disruption we need to cause, the disruption much needed for human flourishing is one within education. It is real learning that has the power to transform and transcend. As care givers and educators, let’s remember that learner within each one of us. Let’s make the magic happen…