I Remember You Part 1

When I first met him I knew that he would amount to nothing much in the end except work on a deadend job, get married and recycle the trash of being human. He was all there was in his eyes, in the way he spoke, in the way he thought, in the way he walked and even in his name. His name was Ramachandran and that was all that he became.

I sat behind the teacher's table and had this worrisome thought of how cynical I have become. I could literally see the future of my students the moment I laid eyes on them. Whether it was Mohammed, Pei Kwan, Jester or Joseph the future had already been written in bold black words on their foreheads. 15 years of teaching either made me a negative, critical, old spinster or it gave me the insight I never had. I could tell which student came from a broken family and which were rich and which were scraping by. I could tell who had been raised by maids and who had been raised by guardians other than their own parents.

It didn't help me in any way because I was getting tired of being a teacher for so long and have nothing to make my lonely life any better 15 years ago than what it is now. Every new semester I would skim through the attendance sheet and roll my eyes at the thought of reintroducing myself again and start with the management's mandatory rules and regulations lecture.

Sometimes I got faces that were bright and zestful, other times I get them sour and apathetic. In every class there was always the leader, the groupies, the cliques, the nasty and the ostracized. After all the years of high shcool brainwashing I was devastated that the kids had learned nothing much about independence, tolerance, responsibility, communication and respect.

And then one day, I saw him. I saw a student who carried death in his eyes.


to be continued