I had taken Higher English in lieu of Kannada as the second language in classes 5 and 6, which gave me the option to read stories about Beowulf, Hiawatha and Ulysses. Books for this Special English Course were imported from England — pages full of brightly coloured pictures of ships at sea, rocks and gardens, and stories of artists and heroes of the western world narrated with simple magic. I had saved these books until very recently before reluctantly gifting them to my young neighbour who seemed hungry for books.
Miss Donne, our English teacher was a Dutch lady of generous proportions, with closely cropped blond hair and sea-blue eyes. She wore baggy blue skirts and flapping sweaters. It was from her that I first heard the words ‘dear’ and ‘darling’ with which she addressed her students. What mattered was that she was kind but hard where discipline was required. She gave us the impression that she was old but then students seem to think that teachers, as a species, are born old!
She lived in rented quarters near Lalbagh with another English teacher Miss Robinson. Miss Donne came to school in a battered Ford car driven by a wizened old driver, but on special occasions like the one when she chaperoned me and two other girls to a Band in Cubbon Park, she arrived in style in a horse-drawn gharry. Oh, glory!
During the Quit India movement in 1942, schools were suddenly closed indefinitely. The Father of the Nation had given a clarion call for the boycott of British goods and institutions and the country was in a national ferment. Naturally, Beowulf and Thomas Edson retreated into the shadows and a new set of heroes came into my ken. Those were exciting times and the country rose as one to the cry for freedom. Sandi and Lalita and I marched in a procession screaming Inquilab Zindabad, Vande Mataram.
Miss Donne must have weathered the crisis with her habitual calm for when classes reopened, there she was solid as a rock, with a stack of antonyms and synonyms in her bag. Under her tutelage, I developed a love of words, that has stayed with me to this day. When on some rare occasion she could not make it to school she sent the day’s lesson written on cards deputing me to conduct the class. Oh, what a thrill! It was this bond that made me respect and love her, never fear her.
All this was decades ago. It almost seems like another life. Miss Donne and Miss Robinson had left India around the time of the Indian Independence in 1947. When I sit alone on an evening, thoughts about my English teacher come back to me. Gone from sight, but never forgotten for the legacy she has left me.