53% in PUC (Grade 12).

My parents were relieved that I had scraped through and not flunked. My sister, appalled at my casualness.  For the second time, my mother coaxed me to switch to Arts, after having failed to convince me once before after my 10th. She said I would thrive there. I hated her a little bit more, due to my own immature assumption that Arts were a lesser stream to pursue than Science.

But that’s all my arrogance resulted in – to loathe parents who had made their everyday lives entirely about giving my sister and me the best education they could manage.

While my sister understood that, I was the problem child who could not tolerate every conversation being about sacrifices, discipline, and comparisons with other kids. Somehow, flunking exams seemed like making my point – what point, don’t ask me!

And I did flunk Grade 8 in ICSE at Sophia’s, one of the most aspirational schools of my generation and my father had somehow managed to get us into. The school was more than happy to pass me and hand over a Transfer Certificate – an option my parents accepted before moving me to a state board school.

This is also the moment I believe my father became his most pious – visiting temples, churches and dargahs, because he believed in maintaining a diversified portfolio and perhaps felt the need of more than one deity to save me.

And I do believe in God because there is no other rational explanation for how I continued to scrape through with almost zero effort.

Previously with 76% in a state board Grade 10 exam, my dad pulled a heist and I somehow landed in Mount Carmel’s with the highly sought-after combination of PCME (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Electronics), much against my Mom’s will. This was aided by an Other Backward Class (OBC) certificate, and a recommendation letter by some distinguished IAS officer. But perhaps more importantly, it was powered by my father’s refusal to concede defeat to a little brat girl.

~

With my academics going from bad to worse and after that debacle performance in PUC, my sister suggested EMS (Economics, Mathematics and Statistics) in Mounts. One of the most beautiful graduation courses.  It had very few takers. Somewhere, I imagine, someone was fighting to keep that combination alive who had a future vision on Data Scientists and Acturians as a serious profession; but in that present day they needed at least twenty students to sign up. The only qualification required was Mathematics in +2 and a passing grade.

Just like that, I was back in Mount Carmel’s.

That is where I met Lakshmi Mam.

And she permanently altered my inner constitution.

Well, like all good love stories, this one also started with annoyance.

Most lecturers don’t have time to invest in every student. They usually have their prodigies – the students who make their existence matter and they focus on them. The rest, like me, remain largely invisible as long as we don’t directly offend them. And then there are those rare teachers who are humanity’s gift; people who go beyond academics and engage with vulnerable young adults at an existential level.

But Lakshmi Mam was none of these.

She saw you.

She judged you.

She made her dissent about your casual attitude register with you.

She had no empathy for laziness.

And there was nowhere to dissolve into the background because everyone was in her foreground. So inevitably, your only defence was to detest her.

Yet I could not stop admiring her.

Her absolute love for statistics.

Her passion for teaching.

Always brisk in the corridor, but utterly unhurried in the classroom.

It remains such a vivid memory.

When she unpacked theorems on the blackboard, she seemed less like a statistics professor and more like a literature professor – delighted by how a phrase in a poem could contain an entire prose passage. She had the same delight around coefficients and how much they packed into a single expression.

Frequently she would turn around with a radiant smile and look into each of our eyes, checking if we could see the magic unfolding. And as she finally derived the formula – putting down the chalk and dusting her hands, she would ask “You got it, girlsss?”

But her delight doubled whenever one of the nerds said they didn’t quite understand what had happened between line 3 and line 5. Picking up her chalk again, as though she had been waiting for someone to ask, she would move to another part of the board, explain it from a different perspective and then engage with them until they could tell her what came next.

She was exceptional in her teaching.

She was exceptional in her intimidation.

She was exceptional in the excellence she demanded of you.

~

Somewhere in the first few weeks of the second year, she had just completed a series of theorems. The final one was the F-distribution, and she wanted one of us to teach it to the class.

Opening her attendance register and peering through her glasses, she scanned the room.

Our eyes locked. “What Aishwaryaaaa… you’ll do it?!” The sarcasm was loaded.

“Yes, Mam.” The answer came without missing a beat.

For a fraction of a second she seemed to pause, holding back whatever rhetorical flourish she had prepared, fully expecting me to squirm and decline. I could not give her that pleasure.

And oh, did I prepare! I had two days.

She walked into class, went to the back and sat down while I stood in front.

The nerdy girls were all fixated on me.

And I knew it.

I had SLAM DUNKED it!

As I finished writing the final formula, there was some peppered applause here and there.

Lakshmi Mam got up, walked to the front and simply said, “That was well explained, Aishwaryaaaa…”

But more important than what she said or did not say, was the shift in her axis of gaze towards me. She never looked at me the same way again. I had always been visible in her vision, but the perspective had altered.

I had altered.

And that gaze was the only kind of gaze I have sought ever since. The kind where you are not just one more person in the room, but a person whose presence cannot be denied in the room.

Of course, it wasn’t just me.

Each girl in that classroom arrived with her own private reality and each one of us was a difficult girl whose core was constantly about fighting the constant input of what we were expected to be – specially with “access” being given to us…..urghhhhhh!

Lakshmi Mam seemed to possess an uncanny ability to see through that intersection of anxiety and ambition that each of us possessed and the defiance through which we expressed them. Yet, the standards she demanded was universal. But the way she pushed us towards them however was not.

Even now when we speak about her, it is never in a flat tone of gratitude and awe. The emotions are far more complicated than that. We remember being intimidated by her, irritated with her, challenged by her, and wishing she would simply leave us alone.

And yet, somewhere beneath all of that sits an admiration that feels almost involuntary. Perhaps that is what made her so remarkable with difficult girls.

She did not charm us into liking her.

She did not lower the bar to win our affection.

She simply remained unwavering in her standards and relentless in her belief that we were capable of meeting them.

And is there anything more attractive in a person than that?

To command admiration not because they seek it, but despite themselves.

~

I think what altered for me in the last 2 years of my graduation was not just Lakshmi Mam’s opinion of me. Until then, my parents had carried the burden of believing there was something worthwhile in me despite very little evidence. When she altered her gaze towards me, it felt as though she had validated something my parents had been trying to tell me all along. Without knowing it, she became the custodian of a faith that did not belong to her. And through the simple integrity with which she taught, she nurtured my parent’s belief in me into fruition.

The important thing I learnt from her was not statistics. It was having integrity towards one’s own craft. The joy she carried into the classroom. The seriousness with which she prepared. The delight she found in the subject no matter how many times she had taught it before.

That is what I really learnt from her – to remain in a state of love with what you do. Somewhere along the way, I did also master probability and game theory more intuitively.

~

Over the last two years, I have found myself draping a saree more frequently. In a way, it is an ode to my mother and being conscious about the values she fiercely protected all her life. And along with the saree, another insignia that accompanies me is the Namam botu – which is an ode to Lakshmi Mam.

She was almost always draped in South Silks, adorned with matching gold jewellery, a few glass bangles, silver anklets, a Namam botu and jasmine in her hair. These may simply have been expressions of culture to her. But for me, when I wear the Namam, it is a way of channelling her energy – the joy, the conviction and the self-respect she had internalised.

I met her a few months ago at her home along with Lavanya – her prodigal student who is actually an Acturian and now also the strongest defender for my daughter.

Going unannounced to Lakshmi Mam’s home, an almost old world charm we have lost – she received us so warmly while we interrupted her caregiving for a senior parent. She was quite delighted to see me and we had a hearty chat. Her mind was still razor sharp. She remembered so many of our batchmates and the notorious lot we had been.

She wanted to know how I was using those statistic lessons in my daily work life and kept double clicking everything I said. And while I was checking with her, what’s new in the department, she became animated sharing how the curriculum had evolved to integrate Power BI and she is excited to see how AI would advance things further.

It has been exactly twenty years since I graduated from her class.

And it was beautiful to see that while she has remained abreast of the times as an academician, as a person the sparkle in her eyes – lit up by that unmistakable smile, has not dimmed.

~

Looking back, somewhere between my parent’s faith and Lakshmi Mam’s standards, a difficult girl remained exactly that. Difficult. Just, finally, with a standard.