A Relook at Mark Twain's "Is He Alive or Is He Dead?'

Since my hibernation during the Mid-Term Break, the only thing that has kept me going must be relating to an achievement of some sort. I feel extremely proud of the fact that I have, in my own way, contributed three blends to the language that has redefined my life and they are:

1.      Chable = chair + table,

2.      Esstory = essay + story, and

3.      Neprocrastination = nope + procrastination.

But for the last one, I am confident about the success and continuity of the other two. No, reader, you are wrong in thinking that I am trying to lay a claim to fame. On the contrary, I am just trying to get over the frustration of not being able to do my utmost for standard-X. I am still a bit worried about the performance of the students in the Mid-Year Exam. Though I wasn’t exactly expecting them to pull out a rat of their hat, I did not expect only four students to score over 50% in Paper-I. Agreed that they more than made up for their poor performance in the Language & Writing Paper by doing extremely well in the Literature Paper,still then I decided to have a private talk with Ms.Palden Wangmo, who has been dealing with Standard-X for long. Last Tuesday after the Assembly, she reiterated the idea of exchanging our classes for the benefit of all. As Mr.Tenzin Dorji, our Academic Head, was standing close by at that time, I broached the subject to him. He told us that he would let us know soon.

Now time does not stand still for the Board Examinees and the least I can do for them is by not letting them waste their time. So I decided to get on with Mark Twain’s immortal story : Is He Living or Is He Dead? In case, you reader, are unaware of this classic, let me give you the gist. Four very budding artists, fed up with the hand to mouth existence, hatch a plot of doing something drastic for their sustenance and survival. By casting lots, one of them is made to go underground under the pretext of being dead and deceased! The grounds are made ready slowly by spreading rumours about this very talented artist being seriously sick, cleverly manipulating the media and unbelievably arousing the people’s interest in the deteriorating condition of the artist and his superlative works! The neat outcome of this plot is, they all make it big beyond their wildest imagination by hoodwinking people into buying the sketches of the so- called dead artist at exorbitant prices!

The moral of the story is simple. If people do not appreciate your talent, true worth when you are alive, the only way of having monuments and statues erected in your honour is by making them think that you are dead! In other words, people honour talented people only after their death.

Now that is all about the story. In the last 3 days since we started with the story, we could get no further than the first three pages as the class has not been very interactive and enthusiastic. I realized that I had to do something to keep their interest in the story going. So I thought of playing a game today with them in the sixth period. The rules I talked about at the start of the class are :

·        There will be two rounds. They have to take a quiz in the first round and write down the answers to 10 questions correctly in 15 minutes. (Refer to the attachment )

·        Next they will exchange their notebooks for corrections and award marks.

·        Students who can answer all questions correctly, will qualify for round two and have to answer one question in 15 minutes.

·        The student whose answer contains all the points, will be the eventual winner.

Exactly as per my calculation, the students answered the first 10 questions in less than 10 minutes. Then they exchanged their notebooks and marked them. Though most of the students could do well and made no more than one mistake, unfortunately only three of them could get all their answers correct. As a result, only Tek Nath, Tshewan and Dorji Om qualified for the second round on the basis of having answered all questions correctly in round one. In Round-2, the question they had to answer was: Describe the man going out of the Hotel des Anglais after the narrator.

As all three of them could finish answering within 10 minutes, I asked Tek Nath to read out his answer first. He replied so promptly and flawlessly that for a moment, I doubted his integrity. But the second time he dispelled all my doubts by telling the answer without even looking at his notebook.

 His name was Theohile Magnan. He was old, retired and a very rich silk manufacturer of Lyons. He liked to keep himself to himself and did not talk to people much. He had a sad and dreamy look on his face most of the times. He had been staying at Hotel Anglais for long.

I asked Tshewang and Dorji Om more for formality’s sake than anything else afterwards as Tek Nath had even mentioned the name of the hotel in his answer, something that I did not have on the model answer! I do not know if the students enjoyed the game, but I learnt an important lesson at the end. I realized that a little effort to get out of the cocoon on our part, may bring the best out of our students!