To mam, with love...

This past week, a childhood friend crashed into my life, like she would do, when we were school buddies. She would travel every year to Jaipur - her home town - from Jakarta where she has settled down, but our assortment of talks carried a mostly cordial and slightly restrained flavour, in spite of the fact that the two of us share some raging years of hormonal turbulence between us, always in awe of each other and never willing to submit to the other.

Sujitha mam with my kid Araina

Madhu on Ariana's b'day (May 14)

But, this year was different. We went on an exploration trip and discovered ourselves anew, finding in that shared space, some precious moments. One such detour to the school trip that wound down 20 years back had us time-travel to the 1995 class of our English literature teacher Sujitha mam. It popped out of me, quite accidentally, if I may say, while explaining to her how I found her back, this time as a teacher again, but not mine. She teaches senior classes in St Xavier's School, where my six-yr-old daughter has begun her journey into formal education with her nimble steps in class 1.
Now, this woman never ceases to amaze me. Not then, not now twenty years later. And, my obsession with books and literature in high school ensured that I was, at the risk of shameless bragging, one of the few students she lavished with her attention.
Madhu, my friend, couldn't hold her excitement. I was, however, amazed by her sudden urge to meet the woman as I believe she would be last person to come this close to academics and be in adulation of a teacher who was extremely particular of not only how we read and wrote English, but how we spoke the borrowed language. She was perhaps the only English teacher in the Capital of a desert state who would be obsessed with phonetics at a time when wives of army officers posted in our town dabbled in teaching - they would be coming in and going out every odd year - and engagement with books for most of my batch mates was carrying back the mandatory novel from school library every week and handing it over to me and couple of other friends who merrily took the booty home. I remember vividly students being in awe of her. One day she corrected a guy who was impressive with studies in his pronunciation of the word Grand Prix. Yes! That.
What amazed me on that scorching noon when I was seated across Madhu at the center table in her air-cooled home was her lunging at me for "hiding" this fact. Whoa! I seriously didn't know of all things, she would be seeking Sujitha mam in her home town, when her life has been roller-coaster ride across time-zones with books being the last on her to-do list, which she so punctiliously keeps jotting in her sticky-pad till this day. I showed her the photograph that I had embarrassingly requested of Sujitha mam to be clicked with my daughter who completed her first day in school. She had obliged. Then hell broke loose. Madhu wanted to meet her.
I told her, I didn't have her number.
What! She said her eyes rolling over with incredulity!
I said I shall find out as Mahua, my wife, who's heading the Jesuit group's college is in touch with her.
Later that day, over the What'sApp, during a casual conversation about a common friend, she asked, "Why?"
Because I wanted it to be special, I said.
I waited six years to meet Sujitha mam knowing fully well she was in Xavier's (group of institutions) where my wife also works. Every year, they would bump into each other and she would ask of me. My wife would remind me to call her. I wouldn't. I told Mahua, shall meet her, not over the phone. And, I am so glad I did. After six years of knowing where the woman who had in some way mothered me in my school years - she went beyond academics and even took to counselling me on my dates - is, my daughter's first day in Xavier's school was also the day when I went out looking for her and found her. There. Seated among other teachers in the staff room, where I was guided to by a school student, I almost missed her and asked a colleague sitting right next to her. Is Sujitha mam around?
Life had, in those fleeting moments, come a full circle for me. She is no longer Sujitha Chandran, but Sujitha Kumar. I am no longer a school student and didn't walk up to her wearing the striped tie and red school badge. But that moment was special. 
Madhu is flying back tomorrow to the capital of a thousand islands, half of which the locals didn't even bother to name. She didn't get to meet Sujitha mam. She was leaving for vacations, the day Madhu made that call, and would return only after her departure. Will definitely catch up with her next year! She giggled. And reminded me of my offer, 'We can go together. No?'
"Of course." And, I thought to myself, I still haven't saved her number.