However, that day was different. The energy inside the classroom was palpable. It was the English period and the teacher had scheduled a class test that day.

Now the intervening time between two periods was generally well spent indulging in chalk fights and gossip (with a faithful friend always loitering around the door keeping an eye on an incoming teacher/coordinator) but that day, everybody had their nose inside their books trying to memorise quotes by Macbeth & Co.

Yes, we all wanted to pass but not because the teacher was strict.

But because none of us wanted to let Anuradha ma’am down.

As a few backbenchers moved a few seats ahead, Anuradha ma’am walked in gracefully. And all the bad memories that maths and economics had given us throughout the day, were immediately washed away.

Wearing a beautiful saree and an even more beautiful smile, Anuradha ma’am looked flawless. A right answer in her class was met with a twinkle in her eyes and a wrong one with a mock scolding.

Without a doubt, she was the best thing about that otherwise treacherous 8th period.

Yes, I guess it’s safe to say that a lot of us (me included) were in love with her. 

I’m pretty sure we weren’t the only ones enamoured by a teacher. First loves are reserved for school days and more often than not, teachers come within the ambit too. And like most first loves, they’re pure and selfless.

Maybe it’s their caring nature that draws us to them or maybe it’s a sense of respect we have for them. 

Or maybe, it’s a subconscious attempt to win the love and trust of a teacher that gives us a sense of comfort in an otherwise alien world of school. 

Whatever the reason might be, you work extra hard so that you’re able to answer all the questions in their class test, you’re willing to help them carry notebooks double your weight to the staff room and are left crying while the others are busy celebrating when a substitute teacher walks in instead of them.

The impossibility of it ever fructifying is what gives an infatuation for a school teacher its purity. The realisation that it’ll all just become a distant dream one day is what gives it such a pure space. 

Hence, while it’s highly possible for one to fall in love with one’s teacher in college as well, it’s the school love that remains so selfless and innocent.

Falling in love with a college teacher brings with it a set of realities owing to which there’s no aura left in the romance. We’re old enough to understand the implications and the consequences. As school kids, we’re naive enough to dream; our idea of love not yet marred with over-pragmatism. 

As we find the many loves in our lives, let’s take a moment to remember that special someone who’d taught us something more than their subject.