Quirky Fate

It is strange when three women from the same family, spread over three generations, coincidentally happen to take up their first earning jobs in the same profession and at the same age. Call it destiny or a quirky game of fate but that is exactly what happened in my family today.

My eighteen year old daughter received a call from her school principal yesterday, asking if she could work, until her college started, and substitute for a teacher who needed to undergo surgery. She started her first full time paid job today,teaching chemistry to classes seven to nine at the same school where she had completed fourteen years of education, just a few months back. I too, started my first part time job to earn pocket money at the age of eighteen, during my first year of college. I taught mathematics to senior school girls who lived in a building across the road from my flat. My mother needed to support a large family when her father met with an early demise. She passed out of high school at eighteen and taught mathematics to class nine and ten students in a co-educational school through the reference of her school principal.

As I sit sandwiched in the middle generation and watch the two ladies, I must admit I had the easiest assignment for facing a large classroom of children between fourteen and seventeen can be extremely daunting. While the students in my mother’s classroom pulled her leg, they also touched her feet to pay their respects to their teacher, a habit which is till date followed in Bengal. My daughter will be taking up to eight classes a day in a privileged school in the most aggressive city of India and I wish her all the best.

It is remarkable when such strange coincidences strike a family. It makes one smile and sets one’s faith soaring for I feel privileged to be in a similar boat with two such amazing ladies.