💬 I hated chemistry till class 9, then Joseph sir happened

I hated chemistry. Not disliked, hated. Up to class 8 it was just formulas I copied and forgot by the next week. Then in class 9 at our school in Malakpet we got Joseph sir, a thin man with chalk all over his trousers. First day he didn't open the textbook once. He burned a strip of magnesium on his table instead. Half the class screamed. I was hooked, though I'd never have admitted it to my friends then. He explained everything with kitchen stuff. Why my mother's pressure cooker whistles, why lime turns tea lighter. Rust was my father's scooter. Soap was the reason the oil comes off your hands after biryani. He got so excited about it that you couldn't stay bored, even if you tried. And we tried. I went from 40 marks to 82 that year. My father thought I'd copied and asked to see the paper. He had one rule. If you asked a question he couldn't answer, he'd write it on the corner of the board. Next day he'd come in with the answer, sometimes from 3 different books. Never once pretended to know. I asked him why ice floats once and he spent 10 minutes on it the next morning, grinning the whole time. The boys who sat at the back started asking questions just to see that corner fill up. I didn't become a chemist or anything, far from it. But I remember those lessons better than most of college. Heard last year he retired and moved to Secunderabad to live with his daughter. Keep meaning to find his number and call him. Haven't yet, which is a bit embarrassing to type out. Anyone else have a teacher like that, the one who flipped a subject for you completely?

A strip of magnesium burning on a table is exactly how a class should begin. My physics teacher in class 10 used a torch and a cricket ball to explain the phases of the moon, and I can still draw it from memory. Do you ever think about Joseph sir now? I hope someone told him how many lives he changed.

History was that subject for me, thanks to a teacher who taught it through stories about ordinary people instead of just dates and treaties to memorize. Before that year I couldn't have cared less about any of it. I ran into him years later at a wedding and told him this, and he seemed surprised anyone remembered, as if he had no idea one class could leave that kind of mark on someone.