Try peeling a three-year-old off Cartoon Network when you have exactly 20 minutes to scrub him clean (can’t be sure if he chooses to howl in the shower), shove a dosa down his throat (if he spits it out, well, he spits it out), get him to step into his dungarees (have to be prepared for ‘I-don’t-like-dungarees’) and drag him to school. That’s how I begin my weekday mornings and after I see my son off at the school gate, I walk back home with a swagger: as if I were a magician who had pulled off some stunning feat.

So when I volunteered to be a teacher for a day in my son’s Happy Valley Playschool in Delhi’s Anand Vihar, I knew exactly what I was getting into: Rishi multiplied by 20. I had never bothered to do this math for his teachers but now I shuddered at the prospect of being stuck in a room for three hours with 20 little monsters. Trust me, these kids do their best to earn the title.

9 am: I greet the principal and decide to start with Class Yellow. I hadn’t exactly hoped for a rousing reception but didn’t quite expect this either: complete indifference. A dozen 3-4 year olds are sitting on bright chairs, all in varied stages of disorientation. The principal had asked me to start with Hindi lessons. So I write random alphabets on the board and ask the class to repeat after me. “A-aurat, AA-angoor, KA-kalash,” the class chants with me. I choose a seat beside little Kashish, a bright-eyed curly haired kid and flash my best let’s-be-friends grin only to get a long stare in return. Oh, all right, I get the message and get back to the blackboard. It’s time to match objects with letters and most of them get it bang on.

... contd.