It was in my class sixth in St.Joseph's convent when one graduates from junior school (class5) at the ground floor to a senior school in class 6th at the first floor. Both the promotion, that of the floor and from junior to senior school made us very proud and to some extent arrogant. The pride in attending the senior school assembly was enormous. we were awed by the big Big didies standing next to us. The pride has just started to swell when a new social studies teacher entered the class room. She was Mrs. Ullal, a Goenese who could speak no other language other than English. She was a wife of an army officer. This was in 1978
She started the class by laying certain rules in a highly Anglo Indian accented English. the class began with the reading of the lesson. By chance the student who was reading was almost stopped at every word for her improper pronunciation. In fact so frequent were the interruptions that we all out of fear paid no attention to the lesson but instead to the English in the lesson. It seemed she was here to teach us English and not social studies. The girl who was almost shaking with fear managed all the interruptions and further proceeded to pronounce Buffalo, as 'buffaelo'. all hell broke loose at this point and Mrs. Ullal asked her to repeat the pronunciation. Now completely pale with fear, she did it again by stretching further her 'ae'lo.. the immediate reaction which came from Mrs. Ullal was a gasp, an exclamation, followed by a shout. Oh! My God, you villagers, it is not Buffaelo, but it is 'bufflo' . The whole class was punished to pronounce it several times. thank God that we all were saved by the bell that day and the next period being a PT one, relievd us immensely. we all stood in a line and with due discipline went to the ground. The moment we landed there we all started to shout Bufflo, Bufflo... and erupted into laughter.
Mrs. Ullal was known to dislike our English and kept correcting our pronunciation regularly after that. But this is not what i remember her for. The humble social studies book was full of errors in spellings and often wrong citations. Not only that Mrs. Ullal did not like the book at all and would get the entire chapters deleted and re written by her ( the reasons i don't know), as it pleased her. I admired her for her independence and clarity of thought what should have been taught and what should not. she was vociferously critical about the content and by the term end we almost had cut 75% of the content and re written as per her wishes. This women was amazing. She taught me then and there not to believe in everything written in a text book, question everything, delete what you do not like. create your own book, and overall... that, social studies does not mean wrong English. I also remember how she distributed social studies test papers during a school picnic, where most of us had performed disastrously. we cried, felt disheartened at our performance, called her names, but soon after forgot all about it and moved on by playing. Thats how life is. manage your set backs, and don't' let the enjoyment stop.
Years later when I was in college, i happened to meet her at a family wedding and related these incidents to her. she laughed heartily and enjoyed listening to my impressions of her.
I often wonder and realise that she truly gave me an important lesson in empowerment. In an era where books are routinely banned and burnt, she taught me to read what i want to read, to simply delete and move forward after a few self mutterings as protest, to write my own books after criticisng them, and overall to be empowered enough to change course my self. make my own destiny. Thank you Mrs.Ullal for teaching the most important lessons of life in a very subtle way. You were truly an amazing teacher. Be it for English or social studies!!
