My Dear Diljeev

(Diljeev wanted to escape from my class. I wanted to escape Diljeev We found our shelter in the stage,)

Diljeev I know

 My dear Diljeev,

Three months had already passed, and every day I would say...

I am not meant to teach Class 7. I have an English Honours from one of India's top colleges, and here I am with the brats who just can't stand still. Tomorrow I will go to my HOD, and please allot me at least Class 8. These are just babies...

And there was one in particular who was unstoppable. You Diljeev. You would move around the benches and just keep moving.

"Why can't you sit still? I will throw you out of the class..."

This worked for five minutes. I guess you knew I wouldn’t do it, so up again and moving. Probably snatch someone's pen, eat their tiffin, and God knows what.

HOD hadn't done a thing despite assuring me, so basically, I was stuck with 7F for the rest of the year. It would be fine if it weren't for you.

Yippie, December. Just a month to go for the session to end. I entered the class excited as I would go to the Auditorium for the Christmas Carol play I was putting up with my eleventh graders, and I saw you in yet another fight with A...

"Enough," I said. "Just keep standing in the class today."

You did, and before leaving, I said, "Diljeev, come with me."

There is only one way, I thought.

Tarun was practising his Christmas "Bah, humbug!" and Veena trying to feed the sick baby Tiny Tim. The Tiny Tim of Class 10 looked older than V's clerk's wife.

Tiny Tim is not working, I thought.

You were in the Audi, mesmerised as if you were transported to a wonderland.

You hadn't fidgeted at all.

"Let Diljeev try Tim."

The glee on the face and the spark in the eyes...

"But can you sit still?" The question didn’t need an answer.

You stood there with your little crutch and said, "God bless us, everyone." The miracle was not the line. The miracle was that for three whole minutes, you did not move.

And the rest, as they say, is not history...

You had tasted the opium that a stage is and would be there in all the assembly plays, "Aao Aao Natak Dekho," stand-ups. For the next four to five years, the school saw you, and more of you, and fell in love with you. But you did not fall in love with yourself, but with the stage. Perfecting a character became such an obsession with you that as Gandhi, we were on the Dandi March with you when you said , Hum Dandi Jayenge.

"I started feeling like Gandhi on the stage. I was no longer Diljeev."

I thought, just like many other kids, your hobnobbing with school theatre would end with school. But for you, the stage was not an infatuation but a lifelong romance.

You were in Pune, studying your craft and living it.

Next, I know, you were in Mumbai, trying everything.

You knew it was going to be difficult, but you were proud of your choice.

You kept saying,

"Kaam karoge to kaam milega."

It kept flowing in trickles, but deep down, I know you knew the trickle would soon become a gushing stream.

Zouk hai to sukh hai. Band of Boys. A Cuckoo Flew Over the Nest...

How do I know?

A message on my WhatsApp.

"Ma'am, I did this."

“Need your review on this.”

I just say,

"Just the beginning.Tathastu, Diljeev."

Sometimes I think, " Why do you even do this?

A teacher pulled you out of Class 7 to the stage where you always belonged, and you keep acknowledging her.

You did not say, "DPS mein ek teacher thi."

You said,

"CHD ek school mein Jaya Ma'am thi, who said there is something in you, Diljeev."

Do you even realise how much this statement means to me, Diljeev?

I can never take credit for putting you on stage. The stage was meant to find you.

But your gratitude and humility are so, so humbling.

It gives me the courage to pull more students out of their classrooms and help them discover themselves.

In the discovery, they will also start sitting still.

Tathastu.

Forever grateful to my HOD for keeping me with 7F for a year.