The Teacher by Catherine Lim

Look, said the teacher to the colleague who was sitting beside him in the staffroom.
Look at this composition written by a student in Secondary Four. Shes supposed to
have had ten years of studying English, and see what shes written? Ill read it to you.
The title of the composition is My Happiest Day.
The teacher read, pausing at those parts which he wanted his colleague to take
particular note of:

My happiest day it is on that 12 July 1976 I will tell you of that happiest day. My father
want me to help him in his cakes stall to sell cakes and earn money. He say I must
leave school and stay home and help him. My younger brothers and sisters they are too
young to work so they can go to school. My mother is too sick and weak as she just
born a baby.

Can anything be more atrocious than this? And shes going to sit for her General
Certificate of Education in three months time! And listen to this:

I was very sad because I dont like to sell cakes I like to learn in school. But I am scare
my father he will beat me if I disobeyed him so I cannot say anything to him. He ask me
to tell my principal of my school that I am not going to learn anymore. I was scare my
principal will ask me questions. Lucky my mother came home from the hospital where
she born the baby, and my mother say to my father that I should learn in school and
become nurse later. So I can earn more money. Sell cakes not earn so much money.
She begged my father and at last my father agree. I think he agree because he was in

good mood. If in bad mood like drunk he will beat my mother up and make trouble in the
house. So my mother told me I was no need to stop learning in school. And that was the
happiest day in my life which I shall never forget.
The teacher said slowly and meditatively, I wonder why most of them write like that?
Day in, day out, we teach grammar and usage. For my part, Ive taught them the use of
the tenses till Im blue in the face, but they still come up with all kinds of tense mistakes!
Ive drummed into them that when narrating a story or incident, they have to use the
past tense, but I still get hideous mistakes such as the ones you heard just now.
A week later, the teacher, while correcting composition exercises in the staffroom, again
dropped his head in his hands in despair. It was a different colleague sitting beside him
this time, but the distress in his voice was equally acute as he said, showing her a page
from an exercise book:
What do you think of this as a specimen of Secondary Four composition? I give up! I
resign!
Ah, theyre all like that, sighed his colleague in sympathy. You should see the
grammar mistakes I get from my pre-university students, mind you, pre-university.
The teacher held the offending page in front of his colleague and with his forefinger
traced the lines that had given most pain. Now look at this: I would like is become a
nurse and successful career so I can have a lot of money with luxuries,by the way, I
had got them to write on My Ambitionso I can buy a house for my mother and
brothers and sistersthis is the only sentence in the whole composition that is
grammatically correct. Listen to this one, can you make anything of it?and my
favourite ambition I must strive very hard and make hard afford for if have no ambition
to help my mother and brothers and sisters they is sure to suffer for my father he dont
care at all everytime come back from selling cakes only he must drink and spend all
money on drinks and sometimes he beats my mother. Its that Tan Geok Peng from
Secondary Four C, you know that timid, mousy-looking girl who looks ready to faint with
fright the moment you call her to answer a question. You know, Im getting very worried

about the standard of English in my class. I guess I shall have to get Tan Geok Peng
and the likes of her in for extra Saturday coaching, otherwise theyll never make it in the
exams. Three months away, I tell them. Just three months in which to polish up your
grammar and vocabulary and punctuation, and write the first decent composition in your
life!

The extra coaching did not save the poor teacher from the despair he was continually
experiencing. Ah! he said, shaking his head sadly. What shall I do? Read this muck!
Let me seeyes, its from that girl Tan Geok Peng again-that girl will be the death of
me, I tell you. I keep explaining things and going over and over the same things with
her, but she insists on giving me such nonsense. Listen to this! She was supposed to
write a story with the title The Stranger, and all she did was write a great deal of trash
about her fatherHe canned me everytime even when I did not do wrong things still he
canned meshe means caned, of courseand he beat my mother and even if she
sick, he wallop her. This composition is not only grossly ungrammatical, but out of point.
I had no alternative but to give her an F9 straightaway. God, I wish I could help her!

When the news reached the school, the teacher was very upset. Poor girl. What? She
actually jumped down from the eleventh floor? Such a shy, timid girl. If only she had told
me of her problems. But she was always too shy and timid to speak up.

FAMINE
S. Rajaratnam
After the drought came the famine, so that it was like walking out of one nightmare into another
still more fearful. In the rice-fields, where the harvest should have rustled, heavy and golden,
was only the half-burnt stubble of their crops. The farmers stared at the dust and ruin in their
fields, and searched one another's faces for an answer, their eyes becoming deep and dull as the
days passed by. At night, when the hungry children whimpered in their sleep, a hopeless anger
would seize their hearts. Sometimes the wail of a woman would rise above the whimperings and
groanings, and they would know that Death, which had stalked noiselessly among them, had
found another victim; but after a while they forgot even to shudder at Death.
This obscure village was so remote, and the famine universal, that there was no possibility of any
immediate relief. They had to survive as best as they could till help came. When their stock had
dwindled away they scoured the country for food, eating any kind of birds, roots and animals
they could find. Soon even these grew scarcer. Only the vultures wheeled high above the sky and
scanned the earth and flapped their wings, while down below rats grew fat and sleek.
As always, a calamity brought the villagers nearer to one another. They sought food together and
saw to it that the misery of one was the concern of all.
When the earth failed to provide them with the food they needed, the villagers, good Hindus
though they were, slaughtered their cattle. The very thought had nauseated them. They had
looked uncomfortably at one another as they contemplated this act of sacrilege, but hunger was
an uncompromising tyrant.
After a while when they had slaughtered all their cattle they were hungry again.
"My little son kept crying the whole night and I had to slap him hard .. ."
"Perhaps the relief train ... I dreamt it last night. There was so much to eat. Bags and bags of rice
there were."
"Fool's dream!" cried an old woman with wild eyes, "I too dreamed. But there were dead men
everywhere and God came and talked to me about death. Wretches! He is punishing you for your
wickedness. There is no hope. I know God . .."
"Shut up, you old hag. You will frighten the children with your wild talk."
The village priest motioned to be heard, the well-fed sleekness having long gone out of him.

"There is no food," he said, "except what the mercy of brother Murugasu can give us. Yesterday
evening I saw him drive his bull to the shed. If we could persuade him then we will have food for
a few days."
Farmer Murugasu lived half a mile away, isolated from the rest because he was both rich and
unfriendly by nature. There had been much ill-will between him and the village. He was a dark,
muscular creature, whose strength made him an object of fear and hatred. He kept very much to
himself, working his field with as little help as possible, and at the toddy-shop he would gaze
gloomily into his toddy mug oblivious of the shouts and laughter around him. Ever since his
mother had died people had hoped that he would marry a woman who would bring some
friendliness into his heart, but he had not so much as even nodded at the village matchmaker.
When the famine came he had stood aloof from the others, and had not participated in the
organised search for food.
The priest had to argue with the villagers before they agreed to go with him to plead with
Murugasu.
"Would it not be simpler," suggested someone, "if we just went and stole it without asking him?"
"It's better that we should ask him first," said the priest. "He cannot refuse."
"Why not?" objected the other. "We know him only too well."
"Anyway we shall ask him first," said the priest firmly. "Besides he locks his bull away in the
shed every night."
Murugasu was busy at his bullock-cart when the villagers came to see him. He lifted his face,
with its protruding yellow eyes, and regarded them silently for a moment. Then he returned to his
work chopping at a log of wood with a heavy axe. A few yards away the bull lay under a
withered lime-tree.
The priest coughed and walked slowly towards the broad shiny back of Murugasu.
"Brother," he said, "you haven't asked us why we have come."
The axe flashed in the sun, but Murugasu said nothing.
"We have come to ask your help," said the priest, "the women and children are hungry."
Murugasu stopped hacking at the wood and faced the priest.
"What has that got to do with me?" he said gruffly. "I have none to give."
"You have a bull, brother . . ." said the priest.
"And look how fat he is!" called out someone.

Murugasu faced the crowd, his eyes glinting like a blade flashed in the sun.
"So I have. And what of it, eh?"
An angry murmur rose from the crowd. The priest bade them to be quiet.
"Can't you forget your hate just now, brother," said the priest soothingly, "the people are hungry.
These are times when we should help one another."
"Ho! Ho!" said Murugasu, mockingly, "that's funny. So even a priest is hungry enough to sin in
the face of God. A Brahmin priest inciting these people to eat the flesh of a sacred animal!"
The priest flinched under this taunt, but with all the quietness and dignity he could summon he
answered :
"These are difficult times, brother. What matters is not whether one eats horse-flesh or beef, but
whether one lives. Even a Brahmin is human enough to fear death."
"Die then!" said Murugasu angrily. "Better that than be reduced to the level of pariah dogs. I've
seen how you stained the earth with the blood of sacred animals and ate their flesh without
shame. Anyway I shall not be a party to such a sacrilege. As long as I have strength left in my
hands neither you nor your starving children are going to kill my bull for food. I shall not
become a pariah dog to please you all. At least I have the courage still to be a good Hindu."
"Your hate, brother . . ."
"Yes," said Murugasu, "I hate you all much as you hate me even now. Only much more than hate,
I have contempt for you all, first because you want to eat the flesh of a sacred animal and
secondly because you come cringing for my help."
Angry murmurs rose from the crowd and Murugasu gripped tight the handle of his axe. The
priest, fearing that violence might result, begged of the crowd to keep calm.
Murugasu returned to his work and, after a while, the villagers left him. Murugasu spat on the
ground and rubbed his hungry belly.
A few days later the priest led the people in the direction of Murugasu's farm. The pinched,
haggard faces of the men were quiet and determined this time. The nightmare of the last few
days, when death had moved among them more frequently, had become intolerable. It had
become a matter of counting one's life by the hour and listening to the rumours of approaching
aid.
The crowd, among whom were women and children, advanced slowly through Murugasu's gate.
Lean ribbed, hungry eyed, they looked like some fearful procession of the dead. Silent, except
for the crunch of the loose soil beneath their feet.

Murugasu was squatting by the door of the shed, and he lifted his head as the crowd stopped in
front of him. He had changed completely within the last few days. The body was still broad and
muscular, but it did not radiate the strength which they had always feared. His eyes moved
lifelessly in their strangely hollow sockets, whilst his hair was almost grey.
The priest hesitated a moment before he spoke.
"We have come for your bull, brother. We mean to have it this time."
"Bull? What bull?" said Murugasu. as if to himself, and his forehead puckering as though he
wished to remember things. "Ah, the bull? Of course the bull. It's in the shed."
"Then we must kill it and share it among ourselves," said the priest. Murugasu's restless eyes
steadied themselves as he stared at the priest.
"Food. Ah! Ah!" he said haltingly. "That cannot be. Because . . . because, let me think. . . . You
cannot eat the flesh of a sacred animal. I told you so before. I won't let anybody eat my bull."
A dribble of saliva escaped his mouth and trickled slowly down. Half a dozen men stood around
him and stared.
"But you must, brother," said the priest. "There is nothing else to eat and the people are desperate
and hungry. Have you no heart ?"
"That I have," said Murugasu, looking at a boy, "but the bull is a sacred animal."
Mind you, brother," said the priest angrily, "we intend to have your bull even if we have to use
force. If you don't give us the key we shall break open the door."
He held out his hand for the keys. Murugasu stood up and pressed his back against the door.
"I won't let you eat my bull. Keep back! I'll . . ."
He lashed out with his fist and the men struggled with him and in a little while had him pinned to
the ground. He screamed and struggled, and then became quiet all of a sudden as he heard them
break open the door of the shed.
The doors were flung open and the crowd moved eagerly forward.
Then they stood still and stared at what they saw.
The bull lay half buried in the straw, its body stiff and bloated. Here and there were red weals
where the rats had nibbled.
The crowd held their breath and stared. One of them moved forward and touched the glassy eyes
of the bull. He drew back startled, as a dark swarm of flies rose in a buzzing, angry cloud.