BY SANDHYA DESHPANDE 

 

 

 

EVERYDAY some classes of the school may be engaged by substitution teachers or arrangement teachers. This is done because the teacher who has this as a regular period is either absent for some unavoidable reason or he/she has got some other school duty. So, to engage the students some teachers are sent by the substitution department. Students generally enjoy these as a surprise package. One should see the twinkling eyes with extra brightness and the smile when they see the substitution teacher entering their classroom. After wishing him/her happily their minds get engaged in how these 35 minutes to be utilised the best. Some take permission and move near their friends for talking, chit-chatting, some start playing stone-paper-scissors etc. some get involved in drawing, colouring, making some cartoon sketches and what not. It is so wonderful to see them getting into the activities of their choice automatically. Some also read books, though the site is rare but thankfully exists. I got an arrangement in one of the primary standards and as I just mentioned the things went in the same way.

 

I started doing my work after appreciating the whole class for being so good. I found some students were tearing pages from their notebooks and were trying to cut them into smaller pieces. I tried to stop them but then they smartly moved to the back benches and continued with it. I stood up and addressed the class in Hindi, ‘Vidyarthigan kripya dhyaan den’…..Oh! What a pin drop silence. All stopped whatever they were doing and paid full attention to me in a happy but surprised way. I said, “Let me tell you all the story of the paper”. Story of paper, they exclaimed. I said, “yes”. Somehow, even today the children are very excited. Everybody sat very attentively and I started narrating the whole journey of a tree becoming a sheet of paper of different types. So many trees lose their lives so that you get the paper. A large amount of freshwater is polluted due to the usage of harsh and strong chemicals. The air of a few kilometers gets polluted due to the release of bad and foul smell which is because of rotting of plant tissues or pulp. Then bleaching, rolling, drying, dyeing into colours and a series of processing.

 

When a tree loses its life, it is just not the tree, but the birds, insects, bees, butterflies, spiders and so many other creatures become homeless and their families are destroyed. All this long process in which we have degraded the environment in every possible way and then we spent some money to get these notebooks home and now we are tearing. If one student tear just one page we have 40 students in just one class, so 40 papers from one class, but we have 5 sections of each class and that till 12th. So, have you ever realised this huge wastage of paper, by doing so how much harm are we doing to nature. Finally the soul of the tree questions, are these the ones for whom I lost my life, aquatic animals died, air got polluted, people suffered respiratory disorders, some birds also lost their lives. Now, it is up to you to decide whether what you are doing is right or wrong.