NOTE: I had posted this a while back - perhaps a year ago, but for some reason, this blog post completely disappeared from the main page. I managed to retrieve it after trawling through unwanted files. Given that Mrs Dinshaw is very much in my thoughts, along with another inspirational teacher (who is more of a friend, Mrs Bulsara), I felt it worth publishing this entry once again. - KF
I received another letter in the post (yes, by pigeon post no less!) from one of my teachers who taught me for 4 years in school. She was my English teacher, and my obsession with English Literature, with Shakespeare and Poetry, Transcendentalism and writers from India, and my love for teaching and writing are all thanks to her. When I was thirteen, I remember the first class we had with her. She was a very large imposing, intimidating sort of woman - almost regal in appearance, yet you knew that behind the scary exterior there was a woman who lived to inspire, educate and challenge her "girls" as she called the students of my school.
She knew my name even though I had never had a class with her until that day. She addressed me as "Felifeli" - pronounced Felleefellee" rather than Felfeli! Actually, rather than Karishmeh (which is what she should have addressed me as, I thought!). She asked me to stand, and I will never forget her words " Felifeli, I know you think you are the cat's whiskers because you run around playing piano for this function and that choir, and because you win all the Drama competitions, but I warn you - you are in my class to study, and to learn and obey. You are no different to any other student in this class, and there will be no special treatment for you in any way or form. Do you understand?"
A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT - Read HERE
I received another letter in the post (yes, by pigeon post no less!) from one of my teachers who taught me for 4 years in school. She was my English teacher, and my obsession with English Literature, with Shakespeare and Poetry, Transcendentalism and writers from India, and my love for teaching and writing are all thanks to her. When I was thirteen, I remember the first class we had with her. She was a very large imposing, intimidating sort of woman - almost regal in appearance, yet you knew that behind the scary exterior there was a woman who lived to inspire, educate and challenge her "girls" as she called the students of my school.
She knew my name even though I had never had a class with her until that day. She addressed me as "Felifeli" - pronounced Felleefellee" rather than Felfeli! Actually, rather than Karishmeh (which is what she should have addressed me as, I thought!). She asked me to stand, and I will never forget her words " Felifeli, I know you think you are the cat's whiskers because you run around playing piano for this function and that choir, and because you win all the Drama competitions, but I warn you - you are in my class to study, and to learn and obey. You are no different to any other student in this class, and there will be no special treatment for you in any way or form. Do you understand?"
With my face the shade of a tomato, and my voice which had gone three tones higher, I said " Yes Miss, I understand" yet underneath it all I was freaking out, to put it mildly. To be singled out in front of a class full of girls I did not know, to be warned that any diva behaviour would not be tolerated - I was embarrassed and angry in equal measure. As I sat down, we began the class for the day. It was Poetry - and the poem we were studying was by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It was called "The Psalm of Life". I was determined to keep a very, very low profile for the rest of the class, which was not difficult considering I was four foot nine and could easily fit underneath the desk if need be!
Without even opening the book, Mrs Dinshaw began reciting the poem. "Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream ! " I will never forget the chill that ran down my spine when those words were uttered. I was right - she WAS an extraordinary woman of some sort. Every word took on a life of its own, and there was something in her eyes as she looked at each and every one of us as she continued " Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant ! Let the dead Past bury its dead ! " and on it went. She began to talk to us about what the poem meant. About the relevance it had in her own life....she said there were two poems that had kept her going when the going got tough in her own life (we didn't know it then, but she had battled cancer twice, and had gone through a lot in the space of a few years). The first was "A Psalm of Life" and the second Ulysses, the Tennyson poem. She told us how important it was to stop whinging about stupid things, how dreaming and living in the past would only result in the present being compromised and destroyed. She went on to explain the lines " Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave" - telling us that while we will all end up in the grave(!!!), as the poem says "to dust returneth", we can try and ensure that with every passing day we have done a little more than the previous, and achieved something - no matter how small.
Anyway, the point of all this is that it can be very painful, very time consuming, very difficult to look inside oneself....I don't mean in a superficial sense " oh, I'm finding myself. I'm soul searching for all the answers" - not that way at all. I mean that looking inside oneself and being totally prepared that answers may NOT exist, or that the truth of what you find may not be very pleasant, or easy to stomach. But that it is important to be decisive, to battle through life's difficulties - whether they may be things such as illness or bereavement, separation or job loss - whatever it is, it is possible to overcome if one "Trusts no Future, howe'er pleasant ". I also think that if I've learned one thing these past few years, it has been not to give up when the going gets tough, but to fight to make things work, and to plough ahead despite all odds. So many decisions we make every day are influenced by the future, and our desire that the future may be better than the present. That it may bring us more love, more contentment, more money, more happiness, a bigger house, a better job or in my case a house full of cats and dogs(!) whatever it may be. In obsessing about the future, the present is obscured by indecisiveness, self loathing and regret. The one thing I have learnt from people like Mrs Dinshaw, is that old favourite "carpe diem" - now is what counts! Of course Robin Williams went on and on about it in Dead Poets Society, but I'd like to think Mrs D is a better role model for me!
Strangely enough, the last poem we studied with Mrs Dinshaw was Ulyssess - another magnificent work, though far more difficult to memorize. What I forgot to mention was that after that first class on the poem, I was determined to work as hard as I possibly could for Mrs Dinshaw's class - to top the class in English (even though I wouldn't top the year, as I was so hopeless at Maths and Physics, bah). I would get the class to put on plays all the time, of whatever we were studying (Shakespeare particularly), and for poems that were difficult to memorize, my job would be to set them to music, and Mrs Dinshaw would watch patiently while I taught the class the entire "song" - a particularly silly example comes to mind, Elisabeth Barrett Browning's "A Musical Instrument" about half man, half beast God Pan! I even drew a cartoon to go with the music for this one. Needless to say, after all those years, and despite the fact that in year 11 and 12 (the final two years), we had a different English teacher, I did top English in the school, and in the country (with 96%), and while the only person I cared about "impressing" was Mrs Dinshaw, what this had actually led to, and ensured, was my love for the language, the literature, for the Arts in general and for teaching. Music, Literature, Art, Theatre, Film - how lucky we are to be able to have access to so much more of it now than when I was growing up! Back to the book for now, a collection of short stories by Rohinton Mistry which I've read over and over again, but which, like most good short stories, never fail to keep me absorbed on repeated reading.
