Charcoal
It was value education period (shortened to V. Ed.), sixth grade. The format deviated from the usual years where a teacher would be assigned to make us open our V. Ed. books to imbibe ourselves with holistic values to become good citizens.
V. Ed. was weird as it was. I remember reading in our textbook a tale of a boy who was heaved into a cave at birth and denied access to society as an experiment to check if God exists. The boy one fine day woke up and said “I want to see THE ONE who made the sun”. Hence, God's existence was proven.
Anyhow, this year the class was mostly a free slot—perhaps the school did not find a V. Ed. teacher to underpay. But that day, we were shuttled to the other building and packed in a dense combined classroom, awaiting a guest teacher. On average, we were quite rowdy indeed. Teacher meltdowns were a daily affair, with tears and shrieks, and assertions of us being a fish market or a jungle of wild animals or both. Of course, there was an attempt at some symmetry as we rascals were beaten up sometimes too.
For about half an hour, I was immersed in my notebook of doodles as the regularly scheduled desk-banging, running around and yelling were in order. No teacher had come yet. At some point, the turbulence started to dissipate. I looked up to see why. An extremely frail old man stood there with his droopy stoic expression facing us, seemingly staring into a distant void. He had already scrawled sprawling misshapen words, spelling out a clear message.
I AM DEAF.
“I cannot hear properly,” he said in a shrivelled yet soothing voice, reminiscent of David Attenborough. “Please be quiet so I can hear when one of you is telling me something.”
The man was shockingly well-spoken for a value education substitute teacher in our school. Even if a bit incoherent. He was picking out random students, asking them about their lives and casually chatting with us. Getting our opinions on things. It felt strange. It was rather unusual for this animal kingdom to be heard.
A few minutes passed this way. He then seized a moment of silence and blurted out, “Have you heard of the Mayan Calendar?”
“Yeesssir”, rang a chorus from a section of the class who were already growing fond of him.
“To those who do not know,” he walked towards the blackboard and inscribed a jagged date of '21 December 2012'.
“That is the last date in the Mayan Calendar.”
He turned towards us as his aged expression gazed into the distance with a deep melancholy. We shared ten seconds of contemplative silence with him.
“Do you believe in the end of the world?”
A student answered—”Sir, the Mayan Calendar thing is not true, sir. The world will not end in 2012. I read that in the news.”
The substitute V. Ed. teacher looked to the side out of the window, his expression unchanged.
“It is said that one day, the sun will expand and engulf all the planets in its fire.”
He turns back towards us, back to staring at nothing in particular. He continues with an assured tranquillity.
“Child, I request you to go find a piece of coal. Or maybe a charcoal, which you will get after burning some wood.”
“I want you all to hold up and stare at this charcoal for a long time. I want you to think of the planet while you look at it.”