day

Today, I’ve sloughed off a skin to re-emerge as myself. It’s nice to sit back and relax and wait … for nothing in particular to happen. I watch the sun rise on my first morning of freedom and remember last night’s symbolic orange moon, still full a day after purnima, with black barred clouds across it, soon to be left behind.

The context is that for quite some time now, I’ve wanted to retire early and reclaim my days to pursue other interests which had fallen by the way due to my hectic work schedule. My family agreed that I’ve worked long and hard and earned my freedom now. So on 30 June 2023, I put in my papers with due notice to be free by the end of September 2023. I’m feeling relieved and free already, so my decision was right.

It was the simple things that gave me joy then, fourteen years ago – the mingled chirping of sparrows and young students singing at assembly in the school courtyard, the layered greenery planted by students in the entire campus but especially outside my office windows, their heads bowed in concentration over exam assignments, or with inward gazing eyes playing musical instruments… the list is long.

It’s still the same now, as I leave, much earlier than expected and so, taking by surprise those with whom I worked. I’m happy to see a few students nowadays, walking to school from neighbourhood homes instead of having to take the long bus routes. I am still soothed by the birds and the greenery on campus – every tree and shrub, either commemorating a student’s birthday or some momentous event in the school calendar, the raising of the Indian Tiranga or the DPS Tapi flag with many proud eyes following uplifted, the excited voices and applause after particularly stirring events that make everlasting memories of school, the sudden yet short lived explosive squabbling insecurities of childhood … and the list stretches on. This is my unique perspective of fourteen years of school, from the helm.

And then, the moving lingering display of affectionate regret at my leaving from teachers, students, their parents, and the ancillary staff, which made me feel a tad guilty, as if I was leaving them rudderless. But in Maya Angelou’s autobiographical book ‘All God’s Children Need Travelling Shoes’ that I recently read, I came across an African proverb that corrects my perspective: “If you want to know how important you are to the world, stick your finger in a pond and pull it out. Will the hole remain?”

This is a refreshingly bracing return to practical reality. I leave behind an efficient and committed team to fill the breach. So, I sign out, thanking all my friends in the DPST Learning Partnership for their contribution in our long collaboration and leaving them my best wishes. Change is the way of the world and the little world of school will move on in its busy schedule, even as the founding principal detaches herself to take the road “less traveled by” having ticked her last item in that particular To-do list. (Paraphrasing Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’), they go their way, I mine.