{"id":7441,"date":"2016-05-17T03:40:36","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T22:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=7441"},"modified":"2016-05-17T03:40:36","modified_gmt":"2016-05-16T22:10:36","slug":"my-literature-teacher-my-fondest-memory-of-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=7441","title":{"rendered":"My literature teacher: my fondest memory of school"},"content":{"rendered":"\nE<\/span>very school has one of those\u2013a teacher so old, so wonderful, that a kind of mythical folklore\u00a0 springs up around them. Everyone wants to be in their class, anyone who isn\u2019t feels cheated,\u00a0 and every year their lucky students discover that the hype around them is real. For me, that\u00a0 teacher was Ma\u2019am Chattopadhyay, an elderly Bengali lady who taught English literature in\u00a0 my high school in Calcutta. Everyone called her \u2018Chatto\u2019. She wore simple cotton sarees, big\u00a0 bindis and rolled her greying hair into a bun. She had been around longer than anyone could\u00a0 remember\u2013several of my classmates\u2019 mums and aunts had also been taught by Ma\u2019am\u00a0 Chatto!\n\nLiterature teachers have been romanticised in popular culture as eccentric but deeply\u00a0 empathetic guides for their students\u2013think Robin Williams\u2019 beloved Mr John Keating in the\u00a0 1989 film Dead Poets Society. And with good reason, too. In the confusing and chaotic high\u00a0 school years, a passionate literature teacher can provide an oasis of comfort for overworked,\u00a0 overwhelmed and overanxious adolescents. Like Mr Keating, they remind their students that\u00a0 there is life beyond marks, exams and college applications. They help us find ourselves in the\u00a0 stories of others and we come into our own in the worlds we explore in literature class.\u00a0 Ma\u2019am Chatto was the OG Mr Keating. Decades before the film was made, Chatto was\u00a0 teaching impressionable teens about the power of stories and showing us how, to paraphrase\u00a0 Mr Keating, words and ideas have changed the world.\n\nThough Bengali, Ma\u2019am Chatto would conduct class like a snooty 18th century British\u00a0 aristocrat lording over his estate. We had to follow a very specific and admittedly peculiar\u00a0 decorum in her class. We got brownie points for alliterating while speaking and an extra mark\u00a0 for spelling it correctly in tests. We had to refrain from using abbreviations, referring to\u00a0 \u2018SparkNotes\u2019 when writing our assignments, and above all, slouching. This was the law\u00a0 according to Ma\u2019am Chattopadhyay. And we followed it. Her ridiculous energy and stern\u00a0 attitude made us sit straighter, think harder and critique smarter. When she\u2019d snap her fingers\u00a0 and say, \u201cWe will now stop daydreaming about Bold Sir Lancelot and focus instead on\u00a0 Tennyson\u2019s description of the countryside in The Lady of Shalott\u201d, nineteen girls would\u00a0 actually wake from their reveries and belatedly try to recall said description of the countryside.\n\n

She gave us juicy details about their lives to show us that these celebrated literary figures were actually quite like us; flawed, quirky and remarkably human.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nMy favourite were Chatto\u2019s poetry classes. Our ICSE syllabus featured works at least a\u00a0 century old and written by dead white men, but Ma\u2019am Chatto always brought their words to\u00a0 life. Perched precariously on the edge of her desk, she\u2019d sit ramrod-straight, one hand\u00a0 clutching the book and the other tracing elaborate circles \u00e0 la Porphyria. She wouldn\u2019t just read the poems aloud; she\u2019d recite them and perform them. That\u2019s how we learned about the\u00a0 nuances of rhyme, rhythm and meter – from hearing Ma\u2019am Chatto recite poetry. Years later,\n\nwhile watching Dead Poets Society for the first time, I had goosebumps during the scene in\u00a0 which Mr Keating explains the importance of poetry to his disinterested students. He says,\u00a0 \u201cWe don\u2019t read and write poetry because it\u2019s cute. We read and write poetry because we are\u00a0 members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion.\u201d These may well\u00a0 have been Chatto\u2019s words.\n\nMa\u2019am Chatto didn\u2019t know this, but I\u2019d always dreamed of being a writer. The problem was,\u00a0 as a teenager, I put my literary idols on pedestals. The stories and poems I read in books\u00a0 seemed perfect and my half-baked first drafts paled in comparison. Most times, I didn\u2019t even\u00a0 try working on them. Chatto was the first person to tell me about famous writers\u2019 struggles,\u00a0 self-doubt and failures. She gave us juicy details about their lives to show us that these\u00a0 celebrated literary figures were actually quite like us; flawed, quirky and remarkably human. I came to see them as mortals who had lived lives filled with love, pain, wonder, longing,\u00a0 loneliness and hope, and who created beautiful art out of these emotions and experiences. I\u00a0 learned that to write, one must first experience life. I was a shy, introverted bookworm who\u00a0 preferred reading over talking to people. Believe it or not, my literature teacher helped me\u00a0 realise the importance of putting the book down and actually paying attention to life\u00a0 unfolding around me. Without this, I may well have never become a writer.\n\n

One of our early classes was devoted to dissecting \u2018Asterix and Obelix\u2019, which she believed was as literary as anything in our syllabus.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nChatto did more than just lecture us about Romantic poetry in the afternoons. She made\u00a0 literature accessible and relevant to a generation that was swiftly getting addicted to\u00a0 BlackBerry messenger, online multiplayer games and social media. She\u2019d effortlessly draw\u00a0 parallels between the East and West, the Classic and the Modern, serving up the world\u2019s\u00a0 greatest writing and best ideas to us in a delectable mix. One of our early classes was devoted\u00a0 to dissecting \u2018Asterix and Obelix\u2019, which she believed was as literary as anything in our\u00a0 syllabus. She encouraged lively debates in class: Who was the better detective, Poirot or\u00a0 Feluda? Did the Sonam Kapoor-starrer Aisha do justice to Austen\u2019s brilliance? Did\u00a0 Shakespeare really write all the works attributed to him?\n\nChatto taught us how to think for ourselves\u2013 she was our only school teacher who beamed\u00a0 with joy when we disagreed with her interpretation of a line or a verse. In Dead Poets\u00a0 Society, Mr Keating tells his students “When you read, don’t just consider what the author\u00a0 thinks, consider what you think.” Over two years with Chatto, I learned to develop my own\u00a0 perspective on art and on life. It\u2019s been over a decade since I was in Chatto\u2019s class, but every\u00a0 year on Teacher\u2019s Day, every time I read a new piece of poetry or an old favourite, every\u00a0 time I see Robin Williams\u2019 smiling face in a still from Dead Poets Society, I fondly think of\u00a0 her.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Literature teachers are heavily romanticised in cinema, and for good reason. It takes a poetic perspective on life to escape the specificities of science and mathematics. Literature teachers help us find ourselves through stories and poetry when we\u2019re growing up, and that\u2019s what makes them so special.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[11400,11401,6196,1741],"class_list":["post-7441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person","tag-dead-poets-society","tag-english-literature-teacher","tag-poetry","tag-teachers-day"],"yoast_head":"\nMy literature teacher: my fondest memory of school<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Literature teachers are heavily romanticised in cinema, and for good reason. 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