So That's Me, Your New Teacher

Thirty little things about me

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As a kid, I would have liked to know all the new teachers who joined my school but started teaching right away. I wrote these thirty little things about myself, ‘the new teacher’, for 13-year-old students, hoping to roll into a fresh conversation, and get to know them too:

1. I still have scary dreams about being late for an exam.

2. My tummy is always in trouble.

3. I speak Marathi at home, but I listen to Tamil songs, watch Iranian films, and read Hindi poems. I write in English. 

4. I wrote my first poem when I was in 7th, it was about cats. 

5. I like people who raise too many questions about this world. I dislike people who raise too many questions about me.

6. I am obsessed with stationery. I even carry it when I travel. What if I need my scented eraser in an emergency? 

7. I know clouds have ten different names but I don’t know any of them. 

   

   Sharon Liu via GIPHY

8. I know the names of birds that I have never seen, but the birds I see daily are nameless to me. 

9. I’m the ultimate mosquito magnet. 

10. I have a bad habit of forgetting to cut my nails.

11. When I was a child, I had a funny bicycle accident. I haven’t been able to learn how to ride a bicycle since then. Or drive any vehicle for that matter! 

12. As a child, I would get angry with my curly hair for not being straight. Now I love them and get angry when people ask me to straighten them.

     

13. I am excited to move to Bangalore. I have lived in six and a half cities. Half - not because the 7th city I stayed in was a half city, but because I only spent six weeks there. But those were six unforgettable weeks. 

14. When I was nine years old, one day I had to dress up as a woman from Himachal Pradesh for a school event. All my friends were dressed like women from other states of India. That day we found out how heavy it is to dress up as a woman in any part of India. 

15. My handwriting keeps changing like the weather. 

16. I love curtains and earplugs and soft chaadars - anything that encourages me to sleep a little longer.

17. I have many friends. But only four of them answer my calls and tell me honestly if something is stuck in my teeth.

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18. I practice yoga. The best thing I like about it is that it shows you how difficult it is to reach some parts of your own self!

19. I think water in earthen pots is sweet and cool and the water in the fridge is tasteless and angry. 

20. I make amazing biryani! 

21. I can make hundreds of egg dishes. But that’s hardly a fact about me, it’s a fact about eggs, and their awesomeness.

22. I do not like jewellery at all, except earrings. I am ever grateful to the first human who thought, “hey, let’s use this extra piece of flesh to put up some shiny piece of art”

23. I am short and if you see three short people around me, you would easily guess there are my family. 

24. I have never failed in school. But I have failed in life. And I wished I had failed in school because then someone would have taught me how to be okay with failure. Because it’s not all that bad. 

25. I believe it is a good idea to be friends with aunties who make great pickles. I have often profited from this belief.

26. I love pumpkins. 

27. I used to watch lots of TV but that is a habit I am trying to break so that I can read more books. 

28. I am obsessed about stationery. Did I say that already?

29. When I was a kid, I was reading a paragraph out loud in history class when everyone started laughing at me. Apparently, I had pronounced chaos as chaa-os, when it should have been kay-oss. The teacher didn’t stop the laughter. Did I become a teacher just so that I could stop the laughter for someone else? Maybe.

30. I worry a lot. Trying to change that.