Eduphobia

By U. Fathima Farzana

An old rusty fan creaks

In the centre of a dust-filled classroom.

The teacher glares like Poe’s Raven;

The students are walled up like his black cat.

Onward goes the teacher’s recitation

(Memorized, of course, from the internet)

Pens scratch out their lives on paper

Wasting ink and someone’s original soul –

The students memorize.

Theirs is a memory of a memory,

Twice removed from originality.

If a genius emerges, he is shot at

With the bullets of internal tests, tests, tests…

Brains get rusty like the old fan

And the heat-smoked classroom.

Lunch from tiny steel boxes

To keep their weak stomachs a-going,

Teenage boys sneak out for a puff

And girls gossip about boys,

Teacher catches them – suspension, T.C.

Girls faint, boys rage and parents weep.

Then comes the green eyed monster – Examination!

And its child – Results

(Like Grendel and his mother)

Do we have a Beowulf to slay them?

No, the heroes have already killed themselves.

No place for fancy or imagination;

Marks are their final destination

Those tiny black figures on white sheets determine lives

And people kill themselves and each other

For nothing better than black ink on white paper.

By U. Fathima Farzana