Did Your Goldfish Die?

Malini Seshadri

“Did you have a nice weekend?”
“Yes, Miss”
“I’m Miss Cruz”
“Good morning, Miss Cruz”.
“Good”, declared Ms Cruz.
“Please take out your notebooks and write a poem of four lines on something you did or something that happened in the weekend.”

Stunned silence. I mean, we were just seven or eight years old, right? Practically babies.

And then came the exclamations, protests, expostulations. How…but… we can’t…

Ms Cruz just sat at her table unmoved, and looked through some papers. “You have till the end of the period”, she said calmly without looking up. “So get started.”

Some of my classmates were practically in tears. But I felt this almost insane desire to jump up on the desk and dance. Poems! I loved poems! My fingers tingled as I picked up my pencil. And then my brain froze.

At the end of that interminable period we handed in our “poems”. Two days later, during the next English period, they came back with comments. Mine said, “Shows great promise”. A warm tide of gratitude flooded through me. And then I heard my name being called. I was being asked to read my poem aloud to the class. Goosebumps of a different kind. I shuffled to the front of the classroom and mumbled out my four-line creation. Polite applause.

I knew I would have to face jibes and barbs from my classmates. My close friends were happy for me, but there were a few who, for the next few days, called out “Teacher’s Pet” and “Madam Poet” as I walked by.

But it had been worth it.

Had that been my moment of epiphany? That first period of the first day of Class Three? It must have been. How else would I have decided that I wanted to be a school teacher? A teacher of English, a teacher of poetry. A teacher who would discover great promise in her students… or at least in one student!

By the time I got to high school, I had known for some time that teaching was my inner calling. But, having acquired the practical wisdom to conceal potentially contentious opinions as long as possible, I gave deliberately vague responses when asked about my plans. My parents, secure in the knowledge that my grades were good, were content to assume that I was “keeping all options open.”

One day I braced myself and declared to my parents that I wanted a career in teaching. Teaching? We can see about that later. Many years to go before any such decisions have to be made.

But the decision is made, I insisted. I want to be a teacher. Of English. In primary and middle school.

Utter consternation! This was a googly they were ill prepared for.

What? But your science grades are so good. Your maths teacher also told us…..

It hasn’t been an easy ride getting here. My classmates were on their way to becoming doctors and engineers and lawyers and other careers that their parents could contentedly talk to friends about. My parents were telling people that I was “trying out some avenues before deciding” and that since I was a sensible girl, I would choose wisely.

I stayed the course. But how much of it was sheer bravado and how much was true conviction? There were moments – many moments – of serious self-doubt.

My interactions with my erstwhile tight circle of friends started falling away as our paths in life started diverging more and more. They were going forward in life. I was going back to school.

So there I was, a newly minted school teacher on the first day of her first job, facing class 3.
“Did you have a good weekend?”
“Yes, Miss.”
“You can call me Ma’am.”
“Good morning, Ma’am.”
“Good,” I declared breezily, “please take out your notebooks and write a poem of four lines on something you did or something that happened on the weekend.”

They stared and squirmed. They protested despairingly. I grinned inwardly in glee. I had been there before.

“You have till the end of the period,” I said calmly, shuffling through some papers with exaggerated unconcern. “So get started.” They licked their pencils and played with their hair. Reluctantly they began to write… and to erase… and to write. There was one little girl in the second row from the back, nearest to the window, who looked as if she had been crying. Tight plaits, small face… could have been me at that age. Perhaps she had a fight with a brother or sister, I speculated idly.

At the end of the period I collected all the books and marched to the staff room. I couldn’t wait to get started on them. Would I find a work of “great promise.”?

I had got only half-way through the pile when the bell rang for my next class. This period was for Class 7… I must try a more conventional approach… I couldn’t try the class 3 ploy there… maybe I could introduce Keats. The class didn’t go well. These children were more street smart than the little ones. They could smell a newbie a mile away. Let me just record that they were disruptive, unco-operative and generally what is euphemistically referred to as a “challenge” to control. I did not rise to the challenge. At the end of that torturous period, I left the room in a state of considerable distress of mind. Ideas of resignation had surfaced. Wrong career choice… wrong profession… square peg…. not too late to strike out on a new path. I must have been a picture of misery as I trudged along the corridor, shoulders slumped and looking woebegone.

I was almost at the door of the staff room when I felt a tug at my saree. It was the girl I had noticed in class 3. Her eyes were still red, with dark circles under them.

I was still in turmoil from my latest experience at the hands of the class 7 rowdies.

“Yes?” I demanded impatiently.

Her voice quavered. “Did your goldfish die?” she blurted out, almost in a whisper.

To say I was taken aback would be an understatement! “Goldfish? No…” I stuttered.

“Then why are you so sad?” she wanted to know.

“Do I look sad? No, no, I was only thinking about something…” My words sounded lame even to my own ears. Of course I must have been looking sad. My dreams were crumbling around me.

“Go along and play,” I told the child. She went without another word.

I picked up where I had left off with the pile of class 3 poems. Might as well rub salt into my fresh wound. Might as well find out how totally inadequate I was to the task I had so blithely taken up.

My eyes ran more and more cursorily over attempt after sincere attempt to find rhyming words from limited vocabularies. The pile to be read had shrunk to just a few. I opened a particularly grubby notebook.

The entry read: “On satday my goldfish died. He drownded. I can’t write poem.”

I was pole-axed! Here I was at my most fragile, my most vulnerable, and the planets were colliding around me. Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls…

I don’t remember much of the rest of that day. My first day at work, but most of it a blur.

At home I confronted my virtual self in the mirror and demanded sternly, “Did your goldfish die?”

Maybe… or maybe it was struggling to survive.

“This is not about you,” I scolded my doppelganger. “This is about a little girl who is facing the first great tragedy of her life. What are you going to do about it?”

My virtual self and I stood up straighter. Tomorrow I would start to make a difference in a young person’s life. She had said she could not write a poem because she was grieving. That was a cry for help if ever there was one.

And so, the next day I was a woman on a mission, a teacher hoping to teach more than poetry of four lines.

I sent for the girl during recess. She arrived, eyes bright and shining with the joy of life.

“I am so sorry about your goldfish,” I began tentatively. “What happened?”

I had rehearsed my opening lines multiple times before breakfast. I had tried out a variety of approaches. I must not stir up misery in my efforts to assuage it, I told myself.

I could have spared myself the agonized self-debate.

“He finished living,” she told me. “He finished swimming. Can I go to play now?”

“Of course,” I responded, with what I hoped was a genuine smile. “Of course. Go and play.”

The other day, before I discovered the reason for her distress, I had told her to go and play. And now, a day later, after an evening and night of emotional turmoil on my part, I was telling her once again to go and play. When your world falls apart, you must go and play. When your dreams dry up, you must go and play. When your goldfish dies, you must go and play.

Out of the mouth of babes! Had I helped her? Or had she helped me?

Since then many years have gone by. I have ‘discovered’ some budding poets in class 3. I have cracked the code to channelling the high spirits of class 7 students into more literary pursuits than launching paper rocket missiles. I have taken out and dusted off some earlier dreams, and am now working towards a Ph.D. in the poetry of the late Elizabethan age. I have even got in touch with some of my school classmates thanks to Facebook. My parents are now proud to tell their friends that their daughter was the youngest ever recipient of the Best Teacher award. “We knew she would choose her career wisely.”

Another new year, another first day of school, another Monday with another class 3.

That morning after breakfast, just as I had done every Monday morning since my ‘goldfish epiphany moment’, I had taken out, unfolded and re-read some lines scribbled on a dog-eared notebook page.

Weekend

My goldfish died
he stoped living
he stoped swiming
I cried.

A haiku-like distillation of deep wisdom. She had turned in her poem the day after our brief encounter in the staff room. It cast such a spell over me that the spelling didn’t matter. “Shows great promise” I wrote on the paper. Then I asked, “May I keep it?”

She didn’t ask why. She wasn’t even particularly surprised. She just said “Yes,” and went off to play.

So I kept the paper. To it I pinned four exquisite lines of poetry that have reverberated in my mind over the years… from Tennyson’s magnificent “Locksley Hall.”

Knowledge comes but wisdom
lingers
And I linger on the shore,
And the individual withers,
And the world is more and
more…”

I walked with a light step into the classroom.
“Did you have a good weekend?”
“Yes, Miss”.
“You can call me Ma’am.”
“Good morning, Ma’am.”
“Good,” I declared breezily,
“please take out your notebooks and write a poem of four lines on something you did or something that happened on the weekend.”

Malini Seshadri is a freelance writer, editor and translator based in Chennai. She can be reached at malini1seshadri@gmail.com.