Greatness In Shades Of Grey

‘SJ passed away’.

When somebody posted the update on the Whatsapp group of my schoolmates, it triggered an avalanche of memories.

Ms Susan Jacob, better known among her students as SJ, was my mathematics teacher during my high school days. Though I hadn’t seen her in over 17 years, I heard about her being inflicted with cancer a year back. It was not until I heard about her demise that I came to realise the affliction had been chronic.

SJ  was a character who was hard to forget.

Rewinding back the years, a student of those times would remember SJ as a teacher whose strength of personality was unparalleled. She was not a tall lady, but, when she strode in with that confident gait of hers, holding a thick maths textbook close to her chest, silence would engulf the four walls of that classroom.

She was never late and irrespective of whether she walked in during the first period of the day or the last, her energy levels remained the same. Her English was crisp, fluent and flawless, though she had her own trademarked catchphrases. Her subject knowledge was ostensibly absolute and there was not a question on trigonometry or algebra that she couldn’t answer. If there was a mathematical problem, SJ could find the solution – she was a master of her craft.

Now, you might think that I’m in the process of writing a eulogy of my favourite high-school teacher. If you did, you are a little off track here.

I was far from being one of her best students and she was far from being one of my favourite teachers. I was in fact, terrified of her.

When SJ walked into my classroom, I could hear my heart beating faster. When SJ turned her head from the blackboard and faced the students to ask a question, I would slowly slide into my seat and try to keep my head hidden from her view  using the head of the student in front as a shield. She had the eyes of a hawk and if she spotted a student avoiding her gaze or trying to hide from her view, she would definitely direct a question at that student. And more often than not, I would end up being that hapless student standing for most of the period for not having answered her question.

I remember a time when I changed my strategy and started looking her in the eyes when she was about to pop a question – the trick worked for a while but  she saw through it before long and I was back at square one eventually.

Sometimes she would write a few questions on the blackboard and ask students to solve them in their notebooks and then she would go around scanning each notebook to see how each student was faring.

And that was the time I would go through a panic attack. My palms would start sweating profusely and my heart would start pounding. The moment I felt her presence behind the back of my bench, my obstinate brain would cease to function as if saying: I’m out of here man, deal with her on your own. My directionless problem solving would then be met with a pinch on my arm in conjunction with that trademark chiding in her shrill voice (humiliatingly audible to every student) “What are you doing?” I would hastily scribble more gibberish and before long, she would go back to the blackboard and write down the solutions step-wise in a minute. At that point, I would heave a sigh of relief and gladly copy down the solutions from the board.

There was not a sweeter sound than the ringing of the school bell during those days – that was the indicator for my heart to return to its normal pace.

Undoubtedly, in those days I loathed her stringent methods and style. I often felt humiliated and that had deeply battered my self-confidence so much that after a point, I would not even attempt to solve those problems on the blackboard.

After leaving school, I completed a 2 year pre-degree course and then graduated with an engineering degree. But the irony was that for many years later, I continued to have nightmares of sitting in that classroom and staring at a blank notebook page with the presence of one terrifying maths teacher looming in the background.

But looking back at those years in hindsight, I now wonder if I had judged SJ too harshly.

In my harsh criticism of her, I often lost sight of her better qualities. I may disagree with her methods but her intentions were probably much better than what I made them out to be.

Despite her fearful personality, she would never refrain from helping a student who went to her with questions. In the one-on-one interactions in her staff room, she was infinitely patient and took time out to help students.

Of all the mathematics teachers I had seen from school till college, I seldom found a teacher as passionate and devoted to her subject as SJ. While I have seen many teachers use notes or bits of paper as references to tackle or explain tougher concepts, she never used any such aids. That could only mean that she dedicated much more time in mastering her subject than most others and therefore would never let down a student, faced with that insanely difficult maths problem.

Every year, in the last term, before the final board exams, SJ would handpick students who she thought were relatively weaker in her subject and give them extra weekend classes. She took the pain of traveling an hour to school on the local buses on those days while earning no extra remuneration.  She never talked about the sacrifices she had to make for that gesture of hers every year and probably the only reward she got was the performance of her students in the final board exam. Despite being a relatively weak student, I scored a 79 (a fairly competitive score that year) during the ICSE (10^th board exams) in 1997.  I would be foolish not to give her credit for that. Joe, one of my oldest friends, who took those extra classes with me used to tell me how he eventually ended with a distinction in mathematics contrary to everybody’d expectations because of her tutoring.

There was another positive quality to the lady. In all the years that I knew her, I don’t remember her showing preferential treatment to anybody – a rare quality among teachers. If a student did well, she acknowledged it and if a student did badly, she chastised without mincing her words too.

She taught in our school for more than twenty years before her illness made her quit her profession. In those twenty-something years, she taught thousands. And I’m certain those thousands would never forget that voice, or that sly sarcasm, or that unique smile of hers with her lips curved down at the corner of her mouth, or the innate passion with which she taught.

Even in recent years, every time I came across a student who was still studying or had just graduated from my old school, I would enquire about old school teachers and of course, SJ. And every student who had been through her classes had similar opinions about her – she was strict and difficult, but she was dedicated and she taught brilliantly well.

Sometimes greatness isn’t as clear as black or white. Sometimes it comes in shades of grey. Greatness sometimes is not just perfection in all spheres but unparalleled mastery in a chosen sphere with just those bits of human vulnerability in others.

SJ’s legacy was her greatness with those shades of grey. And that is a legacy that will live on in the memories of the thousands she taught for a long time…

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