Right after the
presentation on Phrasal Verbs, I gave the Weekly Test Papers back to them, verbally
providing the feedback in the process. IX A has done comparatively better. No
one has failed in the Test and most of the students have secured above 65%,
with Karma Zangmo getting the highest marks from among all the sections. Keep
up the good work.
It was time
then to introduce the poem, “Amalkanti” by Nirendranath Chakrabarthi. I told them that though the poem is written by
a Bengali poet, unfortunately I do not know much about him. I asked them to try
to find out more about this writer besides what is written in the textbook,
browsing. As we are asked to do in the Teacher’s Manual, I took off by asking
them their views about if it is important to dream in life. I asked them to
answer three questions in 10 minutes:
1. What do you dream about being in
life?
2. What are you doing (state at least
two things) to realize your dream?
3. How will you cope up in the event of
your dream not coming true?
The response
was prompt. In IX B, Nima Wangchuk, one of the back-benchers, was the first to finish. His
dream is to be a choreographer (unusual for a IX grader). He is planning to
take some dance classes during the summer holidays and he has some dance
programs lined up for his friends in the near future. He is so keen on being a
choreographer that the question of failure does not bother him at all! In IX A, Arvind shared his dream of being an architect. He is taking the science subjects seriously and just
like Nima Wangchuk,he would not let the thought of failure worry him too much
(this is the 21st century and these are the future citizens of
modern Bhutan). Then Rajesh shared his dream of being a leader and Lakxmi Raika, her aspiration of being an air hostess.
I was quite
impressed and commended them on their unusual dreams and wished them all
success. But the whole class chorused their sentiment on the importance of
dreaming and dreaming big. I tried reminding them about the SMART way of
realizing their dreams. Then I wrote the name of the poem along with that of
the poet on the board. For a change, I scribbled the two difficult words with
their meanings as well, the two words being ‘to conjugate’ and ‘printer’. I
requested the students during the introductory class that I really will
appreciate being corrected whenever they find me making any mistakes.
Naturally, it was a pleasant surprise when the whole class chimed in unison
‘whose’ as I had hurriedly defined the printer on the green board as someone
‘who-- job is to print’!
Next, I
asked the students to read the poem silently to themselves for 2/3 minutes. As
I asked a volunteer to read it aloud to the class, Rajesh expressed his desire of reading the poem he has written on the same model. He writes in a lucid manner and his language is also easy to understand. I told him afterwards that it would be nice if instead of the lawyers and doctors like in the original poem, he can replace them wiih the architects and air-hostesses. Many hands went up in quick
succession as i asked them to read out the poem once more. I had to call out a roll number as a result. Kabita, the cute girl
with specs did a great job. With the right kind of intonation and vitality. I
tried to explain:
Amalkanti
was a friend of the narrator. They used to go to the same school. Probably they
were classmates. Unfortunately, Amalkanti was not all that serious about
studies, like many of our students (I decided to make the most of this
opportunity of putting in some values here regarding the importance of studying
seriously in life). He always came late to class; here one of the students
wondered aloud the reason why he came late. Probably, he had to help his
parents at home. Someone remarked that probably Amalkanti was a dreamer and the
sight of the late afternoon sun coming out from behind the clouds after a
refreshing shower dazzled him.
I enjoyed
listening to their views and comments and after a quick word of encouragement,
I continued with the explanation:
He was not
serious about his studies and as a result, whenever the language teacher asked
him to conjugate a verb, he looked lost, not knowing how to answer the
question. He looked out of the window to hide his ignorance. He looked so out
of sorts at the time that the whole class felt sorry for him…..
After I had
finished reading out the second stanza, Arvind stood up: Sir, I think you’re
wrong in thinking that Amalkanti had an unusual dream. I think he had a great
dream. He wanted to be as bright as the sunlight, spreading happiness and love
like the Buddha did.
I was
momentarily taken aback by his reasoning and admitted straight away that it was
definitely wrong of me if I had stated anything like that. But the fact of the
matter was Amalkanti had a dream. His dream was to be the sunlight, not the
bright, glaring sunlight of the late morning, but the soothing sunlight after
rains - the sunlight that gets reflected like a smile amidst the trees.
Many years
have rolled by since then. Amalkanti could not be the sunlight. He works as a
printer in a dimly-lit room somewhere. He is still in contact with the narrator
and keeps visiting his place now and then. Over a cup of tea, they talk about a
lot of things (here I tried to elicit from them some of the topics of their
conversation) and then he gets up to leave. All their friends have become
successful in their own ways. All save Amalkanti, who was so taken by the
sunlight that his sole aim in life was to be the sunlight.
Having noticed
the keen interest of the students, I decided to explain some more till the gong
was heard a couple of minutes later. I asked them to write the story of
Amalkanti in their own words before taking leave.
In the next
class, having clarified some of their doubts, I asked them to answer two
questions in 25 minutes. One of the questions being, if they would like to be
someone like Amalkanti? Why or why not? (It did not surprise a wee bit that a couple of students felt that it would be nice to be a dreamer like Amalkanti). I also asked the captain to collect the
notebooks from the students and leave them on my table.
Some students
finished before time and I tried to check their answers. After 25 minutes, I
decided to recite the poem once more with the objective of discussing the
figures of speech being used in the poem – Amalkanti’s dream of being the
sunlight (Metaphor), the sunlight clinging like a smile to the leaves
(Personification) of the jaam and the
jaamrul (Alliteration) and so on.
If I was
surprised at by-hearting the poem within a day, Rajesh Rai surprised me even
more by venturing to recite the poem with action. He did such a grand job that
I decided to video record it a few minutes into the recitation. A thunderous
applause greeted him in the end. The class seemed contented and instead of
assigning them some tasks, I made up my mind to leave it just there, just like
that!
