The Board

The day would begin for him at the black board. He would dust it clean, wiping off even the tiniest mark of chalk powder that’s left on the board from the previous day’s class. When he was young, his hands wouldn’t reach the top of the board. He would take a stool to help him. Sometimes when someone has kept the stool out of his sight, he would stand on his toes, make his hands reach the board’s top as if the hand was a long stick. The chalk powder, at those times, would fall in his eyes as he would write. He would then make his eyes small as those of someone from Japan and he would go on with his writing. He would always write in his beautiful big letters. All in CAPS.

Don’t remember exactly when, but I think it was the Third standard, when he was given the work of writing the “Thought for the Day”, for the month that followed. They would usually assign it as per your number in the roll call muster. From that day onwards, he would come to the class before anyone else did and would open his small notebook. He would then dust the board clean and write the thought he would have noted down in that notebook. The next day, he would do the same. And the next…

I remember, I was in Tenth and it was the last day of the school. We had all gathered early in the morning, to play one last game of football together. A bit too early rather. He came on his bicycle, when we had stopped for a breather. He entered the class and went up to the board. I followed him, without letting him know of it. I noticed, somebody had written foul words about a teacher in shabby handwriting on the board. He opened his notebook, it was looking very old but I could see that still all its pages were in tact. He opened one of the last few remaining pages. He had a look at the board, and started rubbing it clean. Those heretic words had been written using a wet chalk, so he was finding it difficult to wipe off. He opened his water bottle and sprinkled some water on the board, it was easy to clean it then. The board was looking brand new again, he then had a look in his notebook and wrote the thought for that day. For the last day of the school.

I don’t remember if I ever wrote a thought for the day. My roll number happened to be one count after his. Maybe he never wanted to give anyone else a chance, so that he could be the teachers’ pet year after year. That’s how we used to see it… Or may be he took the job that was given to him, to write thoughts, as an honor or may be he took it as a responsibility. I never took his thoughts seriously, but I never forgot to read them. As I grew up, I found them all one by one occurring to me, around me… His thoughts? We used to think he would copy it from some book, someone told me that his Dad used to write him a thought every night in his notebook of thoughts. He never would write those with a wet chalk. Even when he was young and the powder would fall in his eyes. Who knows, he may not be smart enough !! But, I remember almost everyday one or the other teacher had to wipe the thought off when there was no space left on the board for a new question for the test or for a maths equation… It would have been a waste of time for the teacher if the thought was written using a wet chalk… I don’t know what he’s doing these days. May be he’s still writing, or may be he’s just cleaning up things, someone messed up…