They Called her Baby Miss

Her students called her Baby Miss. She called them fondly “My Children” Baby Miss was a very strict school teacher and later a headmistress. Even now, I could recall her booming voice that resounded across the school during assembly time.

One day, Baby Miss caught a student who was up to some mischief during her class. Promptly, the wooden ruler -which she always carried – came into play. Baby Miss quickly shifted the ruler to her right hand, turned it so that the edge of the ruler was facing down – to deliver the maximum impact. Swish..the ruler came crashing on to the boy's stretched palm. Cut after cut was delivered with the same intensity and force. Watching it from the back of the classroom, I flinched.

Surprisingly, the boy who received all the beating stood without batting an eyelid. He did not flinch, or even move. Not a drop of tear could be seen on his face. He just wiped both his hands vigorously on the back of his trousers and went back to his seat.

Same day, evening when school was over, I could see Baby Miss sitting with the boy with her arms around him. She had given him a “Kammercut mittai” a delicious but extremely hard to bite sweet. I could see the boy clutching the sweet in his hand and was crying uncontrollably on her shoulder. Baby miss hugged the boy even tighter and after a few words of comfort, the boy wiped his tears, nodded his head several times and choking a snifle said “good evening miss” and left.

I walked up to Baby Miss and asked her, “you beat him so much in the class this morning, but now you gave him a sweet and was talking nicely to him, why?” Baby miss looked into my eyes and asked me “Did you see him cry when I hit him?” I said “No” Did you see him cry now? I said "yes, he was crying very hard" She again looked at me and said: “that is your answer” ...and walked away.

After many years, when I recalled that incident, I could understand the ture meaning behind her cryptic answer. Baby Miss punished the boy harshly in the morning, she could have left it at that. The boy would have perhaps repeated the mistake and would have received another series of cuts and just wiped it off his palms and his memory. But, Baby Miss, walked up to him in the evening, hugged him like his own and had told him how she was saddened by the way he behaved and how she had to hit him. That compassion and care overwhelmed the boy to realize the gravity of his mistake. Her kindness melted him and he could not control but cry.

In recent times when I read news of teachers beating children so hard that they end up in hospitals or when I heard that a student had fatally stabbed a teacher in the classroom, I sometimes wonder that maybe teachers no longer have the time or liberty to sit one on one with a child and talk to them about right and wrong or simply the fact, that Baby Miss belonged to a generation when teaching was not a profession but a calling. Where teachers instilled the fear of god in them – not because of their apparently harsh beatings, but by the way they conducted themselves and cared for their “children”.

Baby miss was a representative of that generation of teachers. She was like the Kammercut – extremely hard exterior and a very sweet core. Baby Miss was one of a kind because she not only taught lessons from textbooks, but lessons that are valuable for life.

That is why, I will always call her, Baby Miss - even though she was my Mother.