I don’t remember any of my teachers till class 8….probably because boys are never meant to remember them.
Or probably because till class 8, my brain was being used for more important things such as playing, fighting, eating, avoiding homework, losing pencils, getting scolded by the mother, etc.
But I remember many of my teachers from Kendriya Vidyalaya, Madurai – which I joined in class 9. Maybe because by then, something else had also entered my life – testosteorone.
Till 8th standard, girls were classmates but in 9th suddenly girls became “girls.” And teachers were no less. During this phase there were a few teachers who could make your heart start banging like an alarm clock trying to wake up an athlete for the Olympic trials.
Today I want to write about a very important topic – why teenage boys fall for their teachers.
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My first teacher-crush was my English ma’am, Rajalakshmi Miss.
She was newly married, and sometimes her husband used to come and drop her at school.
I hated him for being so good with his wife. It wasn’t my fault – if a man is dropping the teacher you love, he is villain. Simple.
I would see him near the school gate, dropping her off, and my blood would boil.
How dare he? Who gave him the right? Marriage? Society?
As a teenage boy standing near a school corridor with a bag on his shoulder, and pimples on his face, I would look at the husband from a distance and think, “Enjoy while you can, brother.”
Not that I had any plan and not that Rajalakshmi madam’s husband knew that I existed. Which in a way is good, because if he had noticed, one slap from that newly married husband would have ended my writing career even before it started.
Rajalakshmi Miss always wore a saree, and she looked very pretty in it. When it wasn’t even fashionable she wore contrasting blouses – not the light brown saree and dark brown blouse kind of matching that other women of her times were doing.
And occasionally, she would come with jasmine flowers in her hair. I hated it.
To understand my hatred for the flowers in her hair, you need to understand how Tamil cinema had conditioned us.
In Tamil cinema of my era, jasmine flowers were less ornamental and more a bribery for intimacy.
Whenever a husband wanted to get intimate with his wife, he would come home with mallipoo (jasmine flowers) and Tirunelveli halwa.
Jasmine plus halwa meant the song was about to start…it was time for the heroine to be shy, and for the hero to smile at the prospect of getting ‘some.’
And we boys, sitting in theatres (or in front of VCRs) with hormones and confusion absorbed all this as cultural education.
So when Rajalakshmi Miss came to class with jasmine flowers in her hair, how was I supposed to focus on English grammar? After all, we Rajans also have some self-respect.
My love for English started because of my love for Rajalakshmi Miss.
True linguists will tell you that they fell in love with English because of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats, Jane Austen or some other dead person. But in my case it was because of my English ma’am who wore sarees and occasionally jasmine flowers.
Don’t blame me. Sometimes God uses strange methods for the end goal.
But if I gave full credit to Rajalakshmi Miss it would be unfair to one English sir, who taught me English for around six months when I was in 11th standard.
I have forgotten his name, which is very sad because I remember his ideas even today. He was majorly into drama….and he would dramatize every lesson while teaching us.
As kids, we loved him. He was like my Robin Williams from Dead Poets Society.
But as it happens with many people who are ahead of their time, he was misunderstood and sent away by the school. We didn’t understand why.
I can never forget one class of his…the one where he asked: “How does opportunity look?”
We didn’t know the answer. It was a question that wasn’t in the textbook, so even the rote-masters of my class couldn’t answer.
Then he described opportunity. He said, “Opportunity is like a bald man with no clothes, no hair on his body, oil all over him, and only one tuft of hair on his forehead.”
We all visualised opportunity as he described it, even as the teacher continued, “And when he comes running towards you, you have to grab that tuft of hair and not let go.”
That is how you snatch an opportunity, he said. And I have always done that – the only time I missed was when I let Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay get to Trisha Krishnan before I could.
There were only two reasons why I didn’t fall in love with that English sir – he was a man, and I wasn’t gay.
But I respected him. And between Rajalakshmi Miss and this sir, reading and writing became something more than a subject.
Then there was Geethakumari Ma’am, my Biology teacher.
With her, it was different. I liked her very much, but it was not the same as Rajalakshmi Miss.
If with Rajalakshmi Miss, there was love, with Geethakumari ma’am, there was respect.
She had a beautiful smile. The kind that did not make you want to write love letters, but made you want to become a better student.
With her, my relationship was platonic. With Geethakumari Ma’am, I wanted to do well in class. Not because I loved Biology, but because I wanted her to respect me. And how else can a student earn respect but by scoring well.
If she asked a question and I knew the answer, I would raise my hand with the seriousness of a King Prawn served on a plate to a couple…ready to sacrifice myself in the line of ‘love’ duty.
If she smiled after I answered, my day was made.
Teachers don’t just teach subjects. Sometimes they teach you what kind of person you want to become in front of them.
Rekha tells me that my face naturally looks guilty, but back then I didn’t know that. And I always put in my most sincere look every time she was in the class.
For her I may have been one batch, but for me she is a memory. She may not have known this, but she made at least one confused boy want to be worthy of her respect. And if a teacher can evoke that feeling in a student she has done her job for the day.
To impress these two teachers, I even became the School Pupil Leader, affectionally also referred to as SPL. Even though when you are a teenager with foul body odour and pimples all over, there is hardly anyone who offers affection.
SPL is the highest position a school student can hold. There is no salary, but you get to wear a badge, shout at junior students, and feel important.
I don’t remember exactly how I became SPL, but I am sure at some level I wanted Rajalakshmi Miss and Geethakumari Ma’am to think, “This Rajan fellow may not be handsome or brilliant but he has potential.”
And I did do some good stuff. Not sure if these two teachers liked me for it.
For instance, during my tenure as SPL, I once led a hunger strike by placing our lunch boxes in front of the principal’s room until a particular teacher apologised for beating a classmate of mine.
And during the same tenure, I along with a few of my friends, got suspended for writing a bomb hoax letter to school.
Yes, you read that right – a bomb hoax letter. The interesting part was the letter said, “The bomb would blast on Saturday and if it didn’t then it will NOT blast on Sunday. In such case it will then blast on Monday.”
Because the letter writer was worried the school authorities may think the bomb will blast on a Sunday, and not announce leave.
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So why do teenage boys fall for teachers? There are many reasons, and lets dissect them one by one.
I think the first reason is that teachers are the first women outside the family who take teenage boys seriously.
At home, mothers know the truth. They know that the boys don’t bathe properly, that their socks smell, and that their handwriting looks as if an angry rooster was tied to the pencil when he was writing. They know that the teenager is no hero.
Sisters at home are even worse. She has seen your full life, and can destroy your self-respect multiple times daily.
But a teacher does not know your complete history, and sees the best version of you – bathed, combed, in uniform, with your shoes polished. Well, at least most of the time.
And for the first time, a boy feels seen by an adult woman who is not his mother, not his aunt, and not his neighbour aunty.
This is why when a teacher said, “Good answer,” this Rajan melted. And when she said, “Very good, Rajan,” he started naming the kids together.
This is how weak teenage boys are. You give us one compliment, and the whole blood circulation changes route.
But I think it is not fair to just say all of this happens because the boys are weak. Some credit is also due on the teachers – they are neat, composed, and smell nice.
For those who have never been in this situation, it may seem small. But imagine a teenage boy’s whose world is full of similar foul smelling teenage boys…now isn’t that a tragedy?
So when a teacher enters, in a fresh saree, with jasmine flowers in her hair, a little perfume, a stack of books in her hands, and a calm voice, the teenage boy’s whole world changes.
Immediately the classroom becomes a better place. Now isn’t that what a lover is? Someone who makes your world a better place?
This is why teenage boys fall for teachers – because they bring in grace in our world of testosterone-driven nonsense.
I think Indian movies also need to take credit for us students falling in love with teachers.
I first saw one-sided student-teacher love affair in Raj Kappor’s movie ‘Mera Naam Joker’, and it could very well have been any teenage boy’s first heartbreak.
The movie released in 1970 – five years before I was born – so if you don’t know it, consider yourself lucky because you got more years to live.
It was Rishi Kapoor (for the new gen, Ranbir Kapoor’s dad) first movie and he played the role of a student in a private Christian school who develops a deep crush on his teacher Mary. He tries to win her affection by bringing her flowers, spending time with her, and seeking her attention…but when he comes to know that she is going to get married to another person, he experiences his first heart break.
I would go on to see a lot of cinema – both Tamil and Hindi and get corrupted.
We were not watching women as real people. We were shown women through titillating songs (I will be honest, I still love ‘midnight masala’), jasmine flowers, halwa, rain dance, violin music, and slow motion runs either on the beach or through the farms.
Cinema taught us that if a woman looks back twice, love has begun.
If she scolds you, she secretly likes you.
If she ignores you, she is testing your commitment….so don’t give up.
This is dangerous education for a teenager who is already bursting at the seams from the testosterone that’s filling up his body.
But we boys aren’t all innocent. In 1992, I watched a Tamil romantic comedy called ‘Sundara Kandam,’ which was written and directed by K. Bhagyaraj. In the movie Bhagyaraj was a college professor and one of his female student falls in love with him and pursues him obsessively.
For a few months after that, I wanted to be a college professor…because back then I thought that was a sure shot way of finding love in life. In every batch I would have one girl student falling in love with me. And since I would be teaching BA Economics students, that’s like one girl each from first, second and third year.
In case you didn’t know…K. Bhagyaraj passed away in Chennai yesterday morning . May the man who thrilled young boys with his ‘double meaning dialogues’ rest in peace. After all, wasn’t he the one who in his classic film ‘Mundhanai Mudichu’ famously popularized the drumstick (murungakkai) as a comical aphrodisiac, using it as a prop for suggestive comedy.
But having blamed the movies for why we teenage boys fall in love with women older and higher educated than us, I have to be honest and say that the reason is not that simple.
Teenage boys are desperate to become men, because then we are in what I call a ‘bridge phase’ – one is neither a child nor a man.
One’s voice is changing, face is changing, hair is sprouting everywhere except between the nose and the upper lip, height is uncertain, confidence is fluctuating…and among all this we want to be loved.
And teachers become the first screen on which boys project this desire.
It is not really about the teacher….it is just that at that age we want to know if we have become a man.
Of course, he has not. He is still the same fellow who needs five minutes to take out his geometry box before geometry class.
That is the tragedy and comedy of teenage boys.
Note: This article is dedicated to K Bhagyaraj, who instilled in me the urge to become a teacher – maybe not for the reasons people usually want to become teachers. Unfortunately, we lost the fantastic storyteller early – on 27 June 2026.