“Buzz, buzz!”
“Buzz, buzz!”
My mobile phone silently made a customary sound, indicating I had received a new message. A fresh air breeze traversed through the open cab window and caressed my face while I read the SMS, “Sir, the lecture is in class 303.”
“Okay, thanks,” I typed and clicked the send button on my phone.
“Honk, honk.”
“Beep, beep.”
“Move fast! Even though it’s Saturday, daily wage workers have to work, you know,” bellowed an impatient driver at a pedestrian crossing traffic while peeking out of the front window of a black-yellow Kaali-Peeli.
“Well, he seems to be in a hurry,” I whispered as we crossed a lush green circular garden on the right.
In contrast, my cab driver calmly and proficiently traversed the ongoing traffic as we smoothly reached college in no time. I paid the driver, said, “Thank you,” got out of the cab and briskly started walking towards the main entrance.
A broad and large red-carpeted two-story staircase greeted me as I walked through a metal detector. I passed a couple of guards who greeted me by nodding their heads as I climbed the stairs, jumping two steps at a time. I sprinted past white-colored sofas placed outside cabins at the first-floor landing. I climbed two more floors briskly and, huffing and puffing, reached room 303 to begin the third week of my teaching journey.
“Huff, huff!”
“Two sessions of three hours! Well, how can anyone speak for six hours straight?” I thought as I gathered myself and pushed the wooden door to enter the classroom.
“Creeeaaaaak!!”
“Chatter, chatter.”
“Yeah, yeah!”
As I quietly walked in, the chatter in the room was replaced with pin-drop silence. The classroom could easily accommodate twenty-five members. Ergonomic chairs were scattered unevenly in the class. The left-handed flip-up tablets provided space for students to keep their Laptops, but I didn’t see many sockets for the Laptops to be charged.
I walked toward the corner of the classroom near the window, where an old-fashioned desktop table stood firmly. I placed my backpack on the nearby chair and faced the classroom. The batch had fourteen students, including a mix of biomedical engineers, pharma graduates, botany students, and a few medical professionals.
“We will go through the patient journey today,” I announced as I picked up two markers and walked toward the whiteboard.
Sarika, the botanist seated in the last row, sometimes made funny faces, trying to distract me. Ignoring the behavior, I walked toward the board and drew a blue rectangular box near the top left edge of the board. Next, I drew an arrow next to the rectangular box pointing to the right side. I drew a combination of a few empty boxes and arrows and turned to face the students.
I explained the process and said, “The patient takes an appointment,” while putting the word appointment using a black marker in the first box.
“What happens next?” I asked the group of students, who looked at me in stunned silence.
“Unhhhmm!”
I didn’t receive any response, so I continued my monologue, filling the board with rectangular boxes and arrows. I occasionally turned to the class to see if there were any questions, but I only saw glum faces. A few students held their chins with their right palm, while a few had nearly dozed off.
Manav, the only male student in the class of fourteen, was seated in the middle, near the back, next to the window AC. He had an emotive face, and his expressions would easily give away how the class felt. I could see him shaking his head, rolling his eyes while tapping his feet.
It was my fifth session, and I had already taught these students for twelve hours over the past two weeks. Slowly, time went by, and the whiteboard was filled with content as we neared the end of the session.
Manav slowly raised his arm, still shaking his head. I nodded as he stood up with a frown on his face. The furrowed eyebrows were a hint of what was expected.
“I don’t understand one word of what you are explaining?” he said as his voice echoed in the classroom.
I felt a knife piercing my heart as the classroom plunged into silence. I stood near the whiteboard, unmoved, not sure how to respond.
“I’ll try to e-explain this again after the b-break,” I stuttered while replying, standing there and hearing my pulse racing ahead.
As the class rose and dispersed, I heard a murmur, “Why is he even teaching US healthcare?”
But it felt like, “Why am I teaching at all?”
My mind raced with thoughts, unsure if I could survive this journey of teaching the students for thirty-six hours.