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A Class Diary - contd

by Krishna Chaitanya
(Srikakulam, India)

A wind blew at once, through the stems of the trees behind which whispered the leaves.
"Don't you speak? Don't you speak a word? Ah! you won't, will you? You just cry inside like a tree which conceals the emotion even when the stems are broken with a sharp axe, or the leaves taken away by the wind."

The sun behind her was slowly sinking into the river. It's as dry and as dreary as me. It had lost its natural shining and energy, just like I had. The darkness had been falling upon it, as upon me.
"Did you love me?" I said my first statement at this meeting.
"Ha ha..." laughed she, and continued, "Ridiculous your words are, as every time you do. I love you!"
"But you are just sixteen! And all that you have in you is an attraction."
"What's this suddenly!"
"It's all an attraction."
"Yes?"
"Because you don't know anything about love. You are too young to know about it. You're only fourteen."
"Never. I know about love more than anybody else knows here."
"How?" I said physically, but subconsciously I remembered a reminiscence in my head.
"I am a child prodigy."

Now it's clear in my mind. My head twirled. The same thing happened when I was a student and I was fourteen. And now after twelve years, again something strangely happened. I knew this wasn't fair.
"But you're are a student and I'm a teacher." She was silent.
I went on, "and I'm sorry that I's was lately discovered that my love on you is all that of a mother's."

She was dumb-mute. For the rest of the year, she didn't talk to me. And later, I left the school. But I knew that I's right, and what I did was what should be done. And that love child prodigy would definitely comprehend me. For the rest of my life, I never felt sorry about 'some odd love' as a teacher. I was retired as a good teacher, though I'd worked as a teacher for only one year.
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