I had gone to our village with my family during Dashain. Some old men had come to receive us at our Grandfather’s new home. Two of them were my mother’s teachers from school.

They asked us a lot of questions and said that they were proud that all us (my sister, brother and me) had stood first in our classes. They added that is was an inherited talent as our mother had been a good student and their favourite. We all beamed at this.

Our mother’s English teacher asked whether we had taken part in any inter-school competitions. He also requested that we talk to him in English.

My sister replied that she had taken part in a Sanskrit Shloka Competition 2006, and had stood first. He congratulated. Then I said that I had taken part in a Nepali poem competition, and that my poem had been selected among the poems of first standard. I was even given an award by National Poet Madhav Prasad Ghimire. He congratulated me too.

Then as we left to have tea, he requested our mother to stay behind and teach him to speak English as fluently as the three of us. She was shocked to hear such an unusual request from her English teacher.

She replied, “How can a student teach a teacher who had taught her for years?”

But he persuaded her and she agreed.

Peering through a window as I watched her teach him, I marvelled at how the world had changed in a second — a new revolution from one generation to another: a student teaching her teacher.