My Students, My Teachers — Forty years of stories from a teacher who believed that every lesson worth remembering began with a human being, not a textbook.
Ramya was my neighbour before she was my student, which meant I knew her in two registers simultaneously — the child her family saw, and the child her school saw — and neither picture was entirely flattering. At home she was the younger of two daughters, the tomboy, the nonchalant one, frequently pulled up for being too childish, too unbothered, too cheerfully indifferent to the expectations that surrounded her. Her mother worried aloud about her often. At school, she lagged behind in her lessons, was slow with her work, and had a talent for quietly sidestepping tasks she found tedious.
I will be honest: I found myself drawn to trying to win her over more as a test of my own skill than out of any clear sense of what she needed. I was young, and that is what young teachers sometimes do.
She liked me, and so she talked — about food, about a dress she had worn, about a quarrel at home or a remark that had stung. I listened, patiently enough, but I did little to help her make sense of any of it.
What I did notice, slowly, was something the reports and grades could not capture. Ramya had a generosity that operated entirely on instinct. If a child was thirsty, she would quietly offer someone’s water bottle — not always her own, but offered with complete sincerity. If a small child in kindergarten was lost and looking for her classroom, Ramya would simply take her hand and lead her there, late to her own class without a second thought. Her classmates, initially amused by her ways, grew fond of her. She built bonds without trying to, which is the only way bonds of any worth are ever built.
I noticed this. I appreciated it. But I did not yet understand what it meant.
One summer afternoon, a commotion broke out on the school grounds. A troupe of monkeys had found their way onto campus and were making swift, cheerful work of the students’ school bags. Word spread fast. The bell rang to end the period, and children began moving out into the corridors with the bright excitement of those for whom a monkey raid is a welcome interruption to a school day.
I did not move. We were on the second floor, and the classroom felt like the safest possible place to remain. I have never been particularly brave about wildlife encounters — people who know me well are aware that a cockroach is sufficient to produce from me a response entirely disproportionate to the threat. I lingered, with what I hoped appeared to be calm deliberateness.
Then two monkeys swung in through the window from the branches of the banyan tree outside and landed in my classroom.
I froze. Completely and without dignity.
From nowhere, Ramya appeared beside me. Calm, focused, entirely unbothered. She assessed the situation in a single glance and told me, in a clear and practical voice, to pull the lunch bags out of reach. Then she picked up a satchel and flung it at the monkeys.
I followed her lead — she had, in that moment, the only plan in the room — and together we grabbed what we could and drove the monkeys back out through the window. We shut it behind them. By the time the rest of the class came rushing back to hear the story, order had been restored and I was receiving, entirely undeservedly, the credit for it.
The class believed I was the hero. I knew otherwise. Ramya had seen what needed doing, done it without hesitation, and asked for nothing in return — not acknowledgment, not praise, not even the satisfaction of being seen to have saved her teacher’s dignity. She had simply acted.
That afternoon she taught me something I have not forgotten: that presence of mind and common sense, deployed at the right moment, are forms of courage as real as any other. And that the children we are quickest to underestimate are sometimes the ones most worth watching.
My impression of Ramya changed completely from that day. I looked upon her, from then on, as the quiet saviour of my reputation — and, more honestly, as someone I had not seen clearly enough until a pair of monkeys forced the issue.
Twenty years later, I chanced to meet her mother. There was a twinkle in her eye as she spoke — Ramya had become a successful engineer, responsible, settled, a source of considerable pride. The woman who had once worried aloud about her nonchalant younger daughter was glowing.
I told her I was not surprised. I had seen Ramya take charge, I said, years before anyone else thought to look.
I did not mention the monkeys. Some stories are best kept between a teacher and the student who rescued her.
Presence of mind is its own kind of intelligence — and it rarely announces itself in advance. Look twice at the child the world has underestimated. She may already know exactly what to do.