A History Lesson
My grandfather was my history and civics teacher in school. He was very passionate about teaching the subject. He believed in experiential learning, and all of us needed to carry an Atlas to his class. Without an Atlas, there was no entry into the classroom. The class leader had the duty to check whether all of us carried Atlas in our bags. The punishment for not bringing the Atlas was to stand outside the class. The Atlas was our notebook too. If you opened my copy, you would see coloured markings and notes in the margins on the pages.
His class was the theatre. He combined geography and history lessons seamlessly. If he talked about a place, he expected the student to point the same in his Atlas in a few seconds. He would get upset if a student showed the wrong page or location, which happened many times in my class. A history lesson would go on for weeks, though one session was enough.
I recall the military campaign of Alexander the Great, the king of Macedonia. We had to discuss and mark the entire route with a colour pencil in our Atlas as a first step. My grandfather expected us to research the whole campaign in our free time. The school library had limited books because of the low budget. In the absence of the internet and Wikipedia, the library was the only source. Each student provided a brief description of each country he conquered. He must talk about the capital city, the people, the social and the economic conditions. Another student needed to explain the motivation of Alexander to attack a specific country.
My teacher assigned a few students to write a skit on Alexander to enact it after school hours. Each student got a task in the drama. One student had the part of the director, who would oversee all the preparations, and another had the task of designing and making the required weapons — bows, arrows, swords and shields. One student got the responsibility of ‘war’ music. I had to develop headgear using waste paper, twigs and gum innovatively as some uniqueness was necessary for the headgear design to distinguish them. For example, Alexander’s crown needed to be different from King Porus’s. There was no DOP as we did not have a camera. My grandfather would inspect the final output and give a green signal.
He would personally assign roles to the students for Alexander, Aristotle, Roxana, the king Porus, and his wife. The other boys in the class get the part of soldiers. Boys would play the women roles though we had girls in our class. Without the complete robe, the character would wear the school dress with a long flowing robe hanging on the back. The girls in my class generously donated their old colourful ‘dupattas’ to serve the need.
As soon as the dialogues and materials got ready, a playbook came into existence. My grandfather would decide a date for staging the play. The rehearsals would begin after the school hours, and he would personally oversee and make the required changes. If he were not happy with the performance of anyone, he would assign someone else to the role. The characters needed to be thorough in their dialogues two days before the due date. There would be a ‘dress rehearsal’ session one day before the actual performance, which was in the open air near my school ground after school hours. The students of other classes watched us with amusement, and some were jealous of us. Some of them offered their helping hand without any compulsion. There was a debrief session the following day of the event.
I remember Alexander’s campaign and the countries he conquered today- Anatolia, Syria, Phoenicia, Judea, Gaza, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia and Bactria, and he even came to Taxila, located in Pakistan now.
Ours was the only class that was lagging behind our portions. Being the headmaster, no one could go and complain to him.
