She walked into the class, the first day of college, bubbly and charming, her face round and her hair curly. She looked at us, her eyes strong and steady, looking through us that very instant. Her gaze so soothing and comforting, she introduced herself “Nisha Achuthan”, class faculty, 1st B.A. Journalism. She gave us the usual pre college pep talk and we listened to her, silent and all. We knew right then that some kind of a relationship would definitely be formed out of her and us.
A class of 57, our class was the most devastatingly brainy and intellectually stimulating (Divya, thank you for teaching us this phrase!) a class faculty would have ever seen. But, as usual, our brains were used for a different purpose (no bucks for guessing! The answer is talking!) on the second day of college, Mridula Ramadugu was caught talking by Nisha mam. Mam found it infuriatingly annoying when we spoke under her very nose. So she handed out a punishment to her of a 2000 words essay on the “ethics of journalism”. Poor girl had to write that traumatizing essay and submit it to her the next day! Her most famous sentence “punishments will fly like nobody’s business” puts us to laughter all the time. Her tone and slang is so cute and child like. From day 1 till the last day of the semester we found her anger adorable and funny. As known to almost everybody, we, the 15 of us sit in the last two benches of the class and it is most unfortunately marked as the two benches occupied by rowdies and a nuisance to the class. Though the rowdy part is true, we were never a nuisance to the class. Our over enthusiasm was termed annoying and we were called for a separate meeting with the class faculty. We were blasted left and right. If you think we were left there, you are mistaken. We were asked to write an imposition of 500 times saying “I will maintain silence in the class.”
She was handling book and article review for us in the first half of the first semester and we shared a great rapport with her. She supported and guided us in all possible ways and in the little time that we saw her, she had an impact on us. Her round eyes spoke a lot and her childish voice kept us mesmerized. The last day of the semester came and she broke the news to us, “I am leaving college. This was not supposed to be told to you. But I think it is important that you know. So please keep it to yourself.” Shocked though we were, we all knew that she had taken this decision only after deep deliberations and discussions.
We will all miss her round beady eyes which keeps visiting north and south pole every few minutes, her curly hair, her sweet talks, and more than this, her presence as a whole.
Cheers,
Aishwarya Kumar
