New ‘Teacherni’

After Harish Wadhwa on Saturday, it was Ramila Mistry’s turn today to be put through the initiation rites of conducting the exercises. Srichand Arora proposed her name, Ved Prakash Grover seconded it and the plucky bespectacled lady walked into the ring, raising a round of applause.
From the outset, Ramila did not betray an iota of nervousness or hesitation as she sailed through the half-hour free-hand session, confidently calling out each exercise, correcting whoever went wrong and barring a couple of occasions, needed no prompting. The best part was that she seemed to enjoy every moment she was in the middle (left pic). Who would say this was the first time she had taken charge of the exercises?
Arora was so impressed by her performance that not only did he thank her profusely, he suggested that “a resolution be passed to send the regulars on a holiday” so that we could prepare a new crop of ‘teachers’. Taking the farming analogy forward, Harish insisted that we should have a new teacher every week. Arora liked that. “Very fertile indeed,” he said, pointing to Harish’s head!
Amidst the incessant chatter, a cheerful looking middle-aged man (right) wandered into our group. Like the many strangers who invite themselves and disappear as abruptly, he did not look too serious about exercising. Nobody paid much attention to him, except towards the end when he thanked everyone for being nice to him. Then, as a parting shot, he added that he wasn’t sure of attending tomorrow because he had lost his “dimaagi santoolan (mental balance)”.
A hush descended. Clearly nobody was prepared for such frankness. We dispersed in silence, having realised that we had met one honest man today.
Harish Wadhwa:
* Good work, Ramila-ji. No wonder you are a good teacher. In fact, given a chance, anyone who has been regular for a while can conduct the exercises. No big deal as we are all a friendly lot. How about Bose-babu being the next, followed by Grover-sa'ab and Bhatt-ji?
* All people are welcome to our exercises. I only wish and pray that the stranger (who knows some of our senior colleagues too) gets well and finds happiness/ laughter in our company.