Everything Else Is Rubble
In this age of endless information, I sometimes pause and realize something strange.
I am drowning in information, but starving for memories.
Every day, my mind absorbs hundreds of headlines, messages, videos, opinions, and notifications. Most of them vanish without a trace. Yet when I stop for a moment, memories from forty years ago return with astonishing clarity.
Today, for some reason, my thoughts wandered back to my school and its teachers.
I remember my kindergarten teacher, Ms. Carol at Little Angels. She was Anglo-Indian, impeccably dressed, and absolutely determined that every letter I wrote should sit neatly within the four lines of my notebook. Not touching the ceiling. Not falling through the floor. Perfectly contained.
I don't remember what I had for lunch three days ago.
But I remember those four lines.
My first-grade teacher, Ms. Alice at BP Indian Public School, was another Anglo-Indian teacher who left a lasting impression on me. She was firm, disciplined, and carried herself with quiet authority. Looking back, I suspect my first real relationship with the English language began in her classroom.
Then came Ms. June Kenneth in second grade, who introduced us to the finer points of grammar. Around that time, there was a grammar textbook called Junior English. I have no idea whether it still exists, but it probably deserves more credit for my writing than I do.
The older I get, the more I realize how fortunate I was.
I simply had great teachers.
In sixth grade, there was Ms. Vijayalakshmi, whose command of English was extraordinary. Every sentence she spoke seemed polished before it left her mouth.
My favorite mathematics teacher, however, was Ms. Poorna, who taught me in eighth and tenth grade. Some people solve equations. She seemed to perform magic tricks with them. Concepts that looked impossible on the blackboard would somehow become obvious after ten minutes in her class.
I never thought I would enjoy History.
Then I met Ms. Jayashri Singh.
She was not a history teacher.
She was a storyteller who happened to use history as her material.
Kings did not merely rule. They plotted.
Empires did not merely expand. They schemed.
Battles did not merely happen. They unfolded.
There were alliances, betrayals, negotiations, victories, and disasters. Long before streaming platforms discovered political dramas, Ms. Jayashri Singh had already mastered the genre.
Listening to her felt very much like listening to my grandmother tell stories.
Many other teachers shaped us along the way—Ms. Kalavathi, Ms. Satyavati, Ms. Saroja, Ms. Lakshmi, Ms. Lalitha, Ms. Radha, Ms. Leena, and many others whose faces remain clear even if the years have blurred some of the details.
I also remember incidents that make me smile today.
In fifth grade, my mathematics teacher, Mr. Joseph, wanted me to deliver a letter to the post office.
I refused.
This turned out to be a poor strategic decision.
He marched into class, made me kneel down, and delivered a ruler-assisted lesson in cooperation.
Decades later, I still remember it.
The PT (physical training) periods had their own special brand of entertainment. If you got on the wrong side of the PT master, you would be sentenced to the infamous chair position—an invisible chair against an invisible wall. Five minutes felt like an entire geological era.
The school was not particularly known for sports, but our PT masters were fixtures of the institution. They seemed eternal.
So did the ayahs who kept the campus running. As children, we rarely appreciated how much of school life depended on people whose names never appeared on report cards.
The school itself operated in two shifts. The younger children attended in the morning. The older students—from fifth through tenth grade—attended in the afternoon.
Looking back, even the walk to school feels memorable now.
The Kanchi Mutt next door.
The afternoon sun.
The familiar roads.
The walk back home in the evening.
At the time, these were ordinary routines.
Now they feel like scenes from another world.
A few days ago, my brother told me something that genuinely surprised me.
The school is gone.
The building has been demolished, and a residential complex now stands where it once did.
I found that difficult to process.
How does a school disappear?
How does a place that occupied such a large part of your childhood simply cease to exist?
But perhaps that is how life works.
Buildings fall.
Institutions close.
Apartments rise.
Classrooms become parking lots.
Time quietly clears the land and builds something else.
Yet somehow, Ms. Carol is still correcting handwriting.
Ms. Poorna is still making algebra look effortless.
Ms. Jayashri Singh is still narrating battles.
Mr. Joseph is still holding that ruler.
The school is rubble.
But the people remain.
And perhaps that is all memory really is—the strange ability to keep alive what the world has already demolished.
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