MR. MORRISON CONTINUED

July 2014

He didn’t give up even after I had once behaved in a dangerously reckless manner, though he did insist on recounting the incident, and rather theatrically, each time he introduced me to someone.

“Meet Amit, the little devil who tried to kill me.” He derived immense delight from the discomfort it caused me. I am yet to see another old man, a man who could barely take five steps without losing his balance, so full of childlike mischief.

In brief, this is what had happened. One day he had asked me to fix the plug of a table lamp. I thought it would be easy and did not care — or dare — to tell him that I had never done it before. He gave me his toolbox and sauntered off.

I pulled off the wires and then did what I thought I had seen electricians do: bite off some of the rubber, twirl the strands, push them back, wind them, and tighten the screw. I was admiring my work when Mr Morrison ambled back in.

“Done?”

Yes sir.

“That was quick! You can get yourself a side job as an electrician.” He then proceeded to plug in the lamp.

The plug crackled and then melted, and the light bulb blew up.

Lady came galloping in and started barking furiously at the lamp and me — she wasn’t sure which one was to blame. Mrs Morrison rushed in from the other room along with her students. All my escape routes were blocked.

While I stood there frozen, drowning in shame and guilt, not once did Mr Morrison show any consternation or give a lecture. He let me glean the big life lessons on my own: have the courage to not pretend competence; go gentle on others when they make an honest mistake; whenever you can, turn life's setbacks into a joke; do not grow up to be an electrician.

Christmas in a Suit

Christmas was another time when I ended up making a memorable fool of myself. Each year, Mrs and Mr Morrison would invite all their students over to wine-soaked plum cake and red wine that she made herself. This was an extraordinary experience for most of us, for never before had we had either. This was my one door to gentrification, and I was keen to impress and assimilate.

A cousin from Australia had handed me down his sky-blue three-piece suit. It was two sizes too big for me, but I decided it was just what I needed for the Christmas party at the Morrisons’. I had a tough time holding on to my pants and not letting the sleeves swallow my arms. I looked like a scarecrow, but neither of them said anything.

Lady, though, wasn’t as kind. Every now and then, she would spring from her corner like a jack-in-the-box and start barking at me. I guess all of us knew why but we preferred to let it slide. I never wore that suit again, or any other suit for that matter. I had been scarred for life.

Lady, a winsome black Labrador, had been mostly kind to me, though I had kept a distance since I was at that time quite unfamiliar with canines of foreign origin. Also, Lady had a rather formidable bark. I had suffered a casualty once.

While the elocution practice happened inside in the big colonial hall in Hazeldel, the house named after Mrs Morrison, all my writing lessons happened on the orange-tiled verandah. I would sit on the green bench and write and rewrite. It typically took nine versions before Mr Morrison was satisfied.

So, there I was one evening poring over Mr Morrison’s numerous red comments, some of which I did not comprehend at first. For instance, I kept frowning at the red circle around ‘headlights’. I was sure the usage and spelling were both correct.

Deeply lost in this mystery, I was unaware that Lady had come and curled up under the bench. I knew only when there was a loud spurt of guttural bark. It was like sudden gunfire. Startled, I lost my equilibrium, my pen slipped from my fingers, and the nib broke. That was my only fountain pen, and a Japanese Pilot at that.

Mr Morrison emerged, calmed Lady down, and asked me if I had finished my rewriting. I told him I was stuck at one place.

What’s so wrong with ‘headlights’, sir?

“Can you read out the entire sentence?”

I did, and confidently. “The newspaper headlights this morning were mostly about trivial local matters.”

He explained that it was newspaper ‘headlines’ and not ‘headlights’. I wasn’t convinced. I knew my English needed polish but it wasn’t that tattered either.

The first thing I did when I reached home was look for the dictionary. Those days most middle-class homes had a thick, hardbound Oxford or Cambridge dictionary which quickly started separating from the spine from overuse. I looked up ‘headlines’ and ‘headlights’ and my self-esteem teetered.

I knew where to go to restore myself — the same person who had demolished me in the first place.

For reasons that were unclear to me then, I would keep going back to Mr Morrison. Perhaps behind that apparent ruthlessness, I saw affection for my doggedness. Perhaps somewhere inside me I knew that this man could change the course of my life.

Elocution Competition

In his own way, Mr Morrison gave me the biggest gift any teacher ever gave me: he made me respect myself.

We journeyed along, he and I, like this, past all my comical foibles. He kept chiseling away at a rough block, trying to give it shape. Only when he was satisfied, which took eleven tenacious months of me cycling almost every day 5 km to and 5 km back, had he made that pronouncement — the elocution competition. And then he had trained me mercilessly week after week after week.

I remember three things about the evening of the competition: the school hall was full of nattily dressed men and women; my main competition said to me in the green room, ‘I am scared, you have been trained by Mr Morrison’; and how everyone had faded away when I had begun reciting my piece.

I saw only Mr Morrison in the far corner, leaning on his walking stick, watching.

I do not remember what happened when it was announced that I had won the gold medal. I do remember clutching it hard on the way back in the school bus, eager to cycle to his place first thing in the morning. He had not been able to come to the competition. My school was far, the roads were strewn with potholes, and a rickshaw ride would have been excruciating.

He suffered from frequent bouts of vertigo because of chronic vestibular imbalance in his ear. The dizziness was only a source of amusement and inconvenience to him, nothing more, but it inhibited travel outside his home.

He had already seen it in the papers when I reached. I touched his feet, he patted my back. “I knew you would, you little devil. Now promise me something. When you grow up, go teach others. With all your heart.”

I nodded absent-mindedly. Little did I know that some day that’s all that I would be doing, and with all my heart. Sometimes too much of it.

A few months later, when I had moved to a faraway town, I got a phone call to tell me that Mr Morrison had sailed away a few days before.

I never grieved because there was no loss. Mr Morrison never left me.

All through these past forty years, whenever I have made a presentation or taught a class, he has sat on my left shoulder like an elf, commenting and chuckling. He has sat there each time, no exception, ever since I won that medal in 1985. Once in a while, I think I see a glint of approval in his eyes.

If I slip up, he taps me with his walking stick. He notices everything: comma, conjunction, enunciation, modulation, pauses. It can at times be galling, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Mr Morrison, you little devil!

~*~