Madam’s Pet

When I was in my final year of B.Com at Cochin Arts College, a new teacher joined my college.  Sudha Rani – a young lady from Kozhikode, she had come to Kochi for pursuing her higher studies.  Along with her studies, she was teaching in my college.  On her first day in our class, she introduced herself and asked each one of us to introduce ourselves.  When we finished, one boy asked, ‘Madam, you heard all our names.  Can you correctly identify any one of us with our name?’.  She quickly pointed to me saying ‘Ajoy Kumar’!  The whole class was surprised, and everyone clapped.  It was a shocking surprise to me too.  I was not sitting in the front row.  I was sitting in the middle of the class, and I was neither the first to tell my name, nor the last.  Moreover, there was nothing special about me that would have caught her attention.  But with this incident, my classmates started calling me ‘Madam’s pet student’.

Sudha Madam was teaching Cost Accounting.  Within no time everyone started liking her style of teaching, making her one of our favorite teachers.  When she made us solve numerical problems, I was one among the first to solve them and she would ask me to read the answers loud.  We organised many cultural and social events during that year.  She used to be always with us giving us suggestions and helping us organise the events.  She was just about 2 or 3 years elder to us, which made us feel more comfortable to mingle with her.  She was also enjoying our company.  Though everyone called me ‘Madam’s pet’, I never asked her how she could correctly pick me from a group of fifty students on the first day.  It remained a mystery.

Days flew and it was time for us to leave the college.  One day Sudha Madam told us that she was getting married to someone known to her for long.  She said, she was leaving to Kozhikode the next day.  She collected our postal address for sending the wedding invitation.  That was her last class for us.  We all congratulated her and bid her goodbye.    Few days later, I got her wedding invitation.  When I opened it, I was in for a big surprise.  The mystery was revealed – Her fiancé’s name was ‘Ajay’!