By Naseer Khan
I am a government teacher; a position I have earned after a prolonged labour and sweat. I am under pump for my mediocre performance and despite my sincere efforts I couldn’t pull up the socks partly because I am like the rest of my clan, a part fugitive, a part the worn out victim of circumstances I couldn’t help. Despite my level best, I can’t be regular and punctual because regularity and punctuality are chances offered by peace and peace is an illusion in this part of the world. Sometimes I do hear some doves chirping and whispering the possibility of tranquil air. Yet their voices are silenced when hawks rant and return to the atmosphere and vultures hunt the plains. My back yard is back to flames and the emanating smoke chokes me. This hits my school and hits it hard!
Most of the time my school remains shut like this valley between mountains and it distracts my children to other activities. I don’t like sitting back at home as I am a wandering spirit and see Kashmir like Alaska filled with thrill, adventure and danger. Yet I have earned the reputation as a back sitter and kitchen bird because it is generally conceived that among all professionals teachers are more possessed about their wives. The nature of my job and the situation over here has consolidated this view point. I take it liberally because I am supposed to be tolerant.
Recently I came under severe criticism. I was almost lampooned by one of the well learned journalist. The article was read and shared widely with social media getting behind the author. It was argued that I have let down the society because I am not a parent at my work place or rather I choose not to be. In other words I prefer to be a parent of a private school than the school that gives me bread and butter. The author had not paused here but carried on with his banter. He had given the reason for my duplicity. I earn a hefty being a government school teacher and prefer to educate my child in school which half pays or under pays. I couldn’t hold back when a seasoned journalist makes such an ordinary statement without any logic and rationale. He further adds his wisdom to suggest a reliable remedy to ameliorate things. He adds, things won’t improve unless the government teachers admit their children in government schools. He is confident that this is the only prescription to the diseased system. A bureaucrat sometime back prescribed the same remedy.
I take it as an insult to the profession. I don’t have like many of my Co-professionals a school going kid, so I can’t be expected to be sincere with my job by this yardstick because as suggested only those ones would be sincere who have kept the future of the apple of their eyes at stake because they won’t consider the sons of others as their sons. In a stroke, the teacher student relationship is decoded like any other mechanical relationship without any attachment or involvement. It may not be the same as it used to be two or three decades back, when I had left my high school caring the image of my teachers with heads down, hands raised to shower blessings and eyes loaded with tears evading direct contact because of the stream of emotions flooding them while we parted ways. Off course, they were not our fathers and we were not their sons yet the picture painted more than words. I admit this happened twenty years ago and twenty years as O Henry’s Bob tells Jimmy, “twenty years is a long time but not enough to change a nose from Roman to Pug”. The erosion has happened but the bond between the teacher and student still exists and in a number of cases it is not less than a father and the son.
Another bizarre charge is I earn a hefty amount for nothing. Of all the professionals including bureaucrats, I possess the highest qualification but not the highest remuneration. I got a plumber to fix a tap and he charged me 500 for one hour work. The dentist did the root canal of a decaying tooth and charged 4000 for half an hour work. The list would go on and on, yet my income is a source of headache. I saw two policemen discussing my income and measuring their work against mine. I admit the nature of my state has kept him more busy than me but even the UN couldn’t help me.
So far, the question of admitting my own children to bring efficacy in the system under the golden rule, “charity begins at home”. I must say it is an insult to a professional as good as asking a doctor to admit his son/daughter to put sincerity in his /her profession. What a catastrophe!
Whileas, I won’t justify my poor performance but I must ask questions, Do I have the same infrastructure at primary level as a private school has? Do I have the same structure at primary level? Do I have the same manpower? Mostly I run my business in two or three classes. More ever, the students I teach have no one to follow up my effort. Most of them are first generation learners who are sent to me as a part time. Their vice is poverty and their children pay for it. I trust the government institution as much as other government employees do. For that matter, government is not for government employees only but for all who live within her territory. My being trust deficit in my own institutions is a common place feature of all my brothers and cherry picking my case as an example would be an injustice.
I must openly confess that I don’t trust government institutions because they set no accountability and it is as good a case with my school as say with a government hospital or any construction work. Sometimes, I am made to feel it is deliberately done to promote capitalism and private investment. Couple of decades ahead, I fear crony capitalists would be the actual de- facto rulers of all our institutions and even we will be asked to pay for the free air because by then it would be filtered because it won’t be safe for breathing.
Last but not least, it is said that I was busy with my phone to create an impression on social media to appease the government or my boss or the public opinion. It is said, I am building up a false perspective. Well, this is the fashion of the day. From ministers to preachers truth is packed up in beautiful cover ups and sold to create a favorable perspective. Truth to me is fiction sold by the media to the outer world. From celebrating national days and organizing events to offering schemes for subsistence, it is the gimmicks of camera work and sycophancy is a new evolutionary trait like the survival of the fittest. So I must be exempted from this sin because I have adjusted to this new character.
Naseer khan is assistant professor at Department of Higher Education.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
