Teachers' Day surliness

I kept my phone silent almost throughout yesterday. Otherwise I'd have been driven to distraction by the constant pinging (or whatever they are calling  it these days) - dozens of phone calls and hundreds of 'Happy Teachers' Day' messages - and could neither take classes nor attend to visitors as I do every normal day. I said a curt thank you to all those who posted in various Whatsapp groups of current and ex-students: to the countless individual messages, I did not respond at all, simply because it is beyond me. 

Well, no, not really - there is another reason. Such messages, coming from people who choose to remember you as a ritual on one single day in the year, and that too mostly driven by the herd instinct - 'I am sending a message because so many of my peers are doing it, and I am terrified of being left out' - frankly bore and irritate me. No offence to students - I feel the same about Fathers' Day, Friendship Day, Valentine's Day, Earth Day and all the thousands of other special 'days' around the year. If you have to remember any particular person or event only one day a year because custom and habit dictate it, well, it's worth nothing in my book. There is a tiny number of old boys and girls who remember and care and keep in touch all year round, year after year, and those are the only ones who matter to me. Sorry about the rest. Pause for half a second before you take offence: wouldn't you feel the same about people who get in touch with you dripping love and gratitude only on one particular day of the year? At least if you have been dealing with it for many decades at a stretch? Honestly?

This is the post with which this blog is probably going to cross the one million page views mark. I'll be watching...