Teachers' Day in India. Since last midnight I have been inundated with goodwill messages, pronaam, cakes, sweetmeats and gifts. This would have been my last 'Teachers' Day' if I had been a school employee, so thank God I quit long, long ago. It is a season for reflection, though...
Every year something memorable happens on this day. This time round I think the prize goes to Prodipto Mukherjee, St. Xavier's Durgapur, ICSE 1996 batch, who called after a gap of 27 years to tell me how well he remembers my classes, and how thankful he is, and how much he has benefited and is trying to pass on to his son, now in class 8. That is the only way teachers can feel good about themselves, and truth to tell, I have had plenty to be happy about. I only wish it was plentifuller! and that people did not take that long to get back. Shivapriya from the 2004 batch visited a few months ago, husband and pooch in tow, and I told her the same thing. It is also a pleasing thing to note that the Whatsapp group I started with a few of my old boys and girls turned two today, and is going strong: I have managed to nudge friendships among several young and not-so-young people, which has always been one of the things I have wanted to do.
I wrote a post titled vanaprastha here very recently (though I find that too is already two years old!), and I am going to become a senior citizen next month. It seems to me that I have been teaching all along, and what haven't I taught, from helping one of my own teachers to write out her B.Ed. notes to summarizing the paper on jurisprudence for a judge who was trying for the third time to get his LlM degree to French and Economics and History and the Indian Constitution, and English, English, English all through the last 36 years. Yet over and above this subject and that, preparing students for this examination and that, I have always tried to inculcate certain values, for my ideals have never been mere instructors but men like Socrates and Confucius and the Buddha and Vidyasagar and Russell. I wonder if I have had much success with many people.
What values, you may ask? Well, those which I instinctively found to be important for both individual and collective civilization, for making this world a better place to live in, and were later confirmed from personal experience as well as the testaments of the thinkers I most came to respect. Many of these values were concretized through the literature course work that I covered with my students ... so I was always learning and thinking even as I worked for a living (not too many men have the good fortune to do that)! Values like punctuality, hard work, meticulous attention to details, keeping promises, courtesy, consideration, kindness of the tough-love sort, despising the merely rich, caring for the needy, healthy and polished humour rather than the toilet-sort, a certain contempt for 'what people are saying' and so never justifying one's actions and opinions with reference to the herd, the right kind of humility (as distinct from servility to people in power - from parents to political leaders and celebrities), self-discipline, respect and love for things of the spirit (knowledge rather than marks and livelihood, justice, music, poetry, art, charity, imagination)... and I have all along tried to teach by example, my own and (knowing full well that I am far from my own ideal) those of others vastly better than me.
I shall go on insisting till my last breath that without the wide spread of such values, no amount of advanced technology and material wealth will spell real 'progress' for humankind; indeed, they might well spell our doom.
As I realized early in life, I was not fit for many things. I don't think I could have made a good politician, or business manager, or doctor or policeman or judge. So I thank Providence every day that it allowed me to do just what I could do best for so long, and also to make a decent living out of it. On Teachers' Day, therefore, I have reason to be pleased with the way my life has turned out. As for the rest, kyun hua, kab hua, kaise hua... woh chhoro, woh na socho. From that attitude alone can come peace. And what can one in my position in life want more than peace?
7 comments:
Good evening Sir,
I hope you would have been flooded with happy teachers’ day messages on WhatsApp, email etc. and the past 2 days must have been extremely busy – chatting with visitors, students and ex-students at your doorstep. That’s why I decided to post this message after a short gap.
First off – I would like to wish you Happy Teachers’ day (rather pronaam will be apt). All throughout my academic journey I rarely felt the need for private tuition so when my father brought up the idea of getting admitted to Sir’s tuition, I felt rather uninterested. Nevertheless, I went along with my father and I remember that day when I interacted with Sir for the first time. He handed over a sheet of paper (I don’t remember the exact content on that page but at the very end was a quote from Michelangelo that caught my eye: Trifles lead to perfection and perfection is not a trifle) and told my father “Why does he need tuition for English? He will do well irrespective of whether he enrolls for my tuition.” When my father insisted, Sir jotted down my name on a sheet of paper and said “You’ll see that your son will learn much more than just English. He will narrate a few of them when he is at home”.
Since then it has been more than 2 decades and while I am not sure if I would fare any better if I were to take that spelling test again, I can say with a sense of pride that I do remember some of Sir’s classes, storytelling sessions and numerous anecdotes. I remember listening to “The Last Question” and wondering if entropy can be reversed; sympathizing with Caesar when Brutus inflicted that ‘unkindest cut of all’ or gasping at Madame Loisel who lost a decade of her youth (and that too in vain). Thank you Sir for all these!
Let me narrate one more incident. Our history (or may be Physics) teacher was absent on a certain day and while we were chuckling at the idea of a free period, Sir walked in (He never taught in our section at St. Xavier’s) as a ‘substitute teacher’. I think at that point Sir was on his notice period. For the next 30 minutes, he went on harping on one single idea that he summed up in the end with a one liner “Remember that there is no such thing as a free lunch”. After 22 years, I admit that this single line has been the most valuable piece of advice that I ever received and I can vouch for it through my own personal (sometimes painful) experience.
I sincerely hope that you continue teaching with the same zeal that has fueled you for the past 3 decades. I am not sure if majority of your students will imbibe your love for language but will certainly be grateful to you for lot many reasons.
Regards,
Abhishek Das
(ICSE 2003 batch)
Dear Sir,
I'd like to talk about something that you rhetorically asked on our WhatsApp group on 5th September. It is not a coincidence that some of us took up teaching. As long as we remember the values you imparted, I think we will nourish the love for teaching, no matter how depressing the employers are. As I grow older, I keep thinking about how you recognised each student for his or her abilities, no matter how insignificant they seemed to the person concerned. There was once a girl in my batch who had what they call, 'fangirled' about a Bollywood superstar in an essay. I was amused to see that you asked her to elaborate on the 'love' and added that it is important to articulately express admiration or love for a person. I understand the significance of that action now. Besides typically academic lectures, I look back on it now as a teaching moment that I'll remember as long as I myself teach. The necessity to be strict yet deeply compassionate, to lend a patient ear to students, to assure them that their opinion matters as long as they themselves are open-minded and polite- these are values that shaped my life, and if I'm not wrong, several others'. I pray that you keep well and do what you love, for exactly how long you like.
Best regards,
Sunandini
Dear Sir,
This was yet another of your posts which laid out your inner feelings and thoughts as succinctly as it could have been. You said so many things in so few words!
My apologies we could not meet this time when I was in India! I have to find time to visit Durgapur with a few weeks in hand, not only to feel how it was for me to live there, but also to spend some time with you at your home, in the same way as I used to almost two decades ago.
Perhaps, unlike many of your students who are in touch with you, I was never taught by you either in school or in tuition. It was only in one class where you were giving history lessons, and I was motivated to make a 'project' on World War 2 which you had appreciated very much. But the overwhelming majority of my interactions with you were either in the school library or in your home after the tuition hours. In that sense, I have learnt about these values not through your lessons or teaching of literature as such, but mostly from your worldviews, which were being constructed actively and authentically by you as you were interpreting the societal and institutional context that kept unfolding around you. Sometimes I feel probably that had laid a seed in me that manifested several years later in the form of a (social) scientific curiosity in how people interpret their experiences as they live or enact a certain phenomenon. You never know how many different kinds of inspirations your teaching might have lead to, taking shape in different forms and at different times! Isn't that magical!
I wish you a happy and long life (long only if it is a happy one!), and more opportunities coming your way to give more of your service to the world. There are people out there who need it. They find you sooner or later! :) And you are also getting a long record of good deeds for the door of Heaven to open for you when you face the moment of Judgement.
Last but not the least, I will not let you go with only my expressions of love and respect! I will also share a bit of sadness. Once while the students of my class were cleaning the library, I was on the left-front corner of the room cleaning the floor, you picked up a National Geographic magazine and showed the picture of a Walrus to the class and laughed, 'this looks exactly like Subhanjan'. All the students broke into laughter, and I was so embarrassed! But it was okay; I never understood though why you said that to me that day. May be you were trying to teach me a lesson for something that I did not get what it exactly was!
Wishing you all the best, and once again, a very Happy Teacher's Day!
It is around eleven degrees and slightly windy where I live. I had a nice time today afternoon beside a blue lake with ducks swimming, below a blue sky with white clouds, and tree branches full of red berries hanging above me. When are you visiting the Nordics?
Best regards,
Subhanjan
ICSE 2002 Batch
Subhanjan,
If I gave you hurt, I beg for your forgiveness. Just another example of how we, even with the best of intentions, often do things that we shouldn't have dreamt of doing. Only goes to show that the best of us are far from perfect beings. If I still deserve some consideration and kindness from the likes of you, it speaks much more of your magnanimity than anything I deserve.
Once again, I am sorrier than I can say.
Dear Sir,
I did not mention about something that happened so long back only to heal old wounds, but rather just as a memory that comes back when I think of the great times spent with you. It is good to have a mix of experiences! It is rather embarrassing for me if you would ask me for forgiveness. In fact, I am the one who made many mistakes in my past for which you eventually forgave me. I might have done some mischief that day (which I do not remember!) that made you crack a joke with the hope of making me and everyone laugh. The good memories in life always outweigh the not so good ones.
With best regards,
Subhanjan
Dear Sir,
I may be irregular with phone calls or responding to the Whatsapp group but not a day passes when I do not reminisce about your classes, or think about the many conversations with you, or make decisions in my life by asking "What would Sir have done?".
My earliest memory of you was in fifth grade when I had just joined St. Xavier's and loved to be in the library after classes were over. Those thirty to forty minutes before the school bus arrived were one of the best times in school. The conversations were mostly limited to good afternoon(s), thank you, and polite nods but I remember being incredibly grateful to you for keeping the library open. The first book that I read there was 'Jhiler Dhare Bari' by Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay. I would sneak in a look every now and then between pages to see what you were doing, and would always find you deeply engrossed in some book.
It was not until four years later that I joined your tuition classes. While I was never one to sit in the first bench in school or other tuitions, somehow I decided to sit right next to you from the beginning. It was part scary, part fun, always stimulating, and I am fortunate to have gone through this experience. And after each class, I remember flipping through your eclectic 'Window on the World' collection.
Discussing Babur on a cold, Delhi night to swimming lessons in Durgapur on a rainy afternoon- so many memories, snippets of laughter, and solemn moments (both equally serious: paraphrasing Russell here). A not so surprising side note- Sir, you introduced me to Russell through 'Unpopular Essays'.
I am deeply indebted to you and possibly the only way I can repay it, albeit imperfectly and incompletely, is by paying it forward. I tell them your stories in my classrooms, give them copies of 'The Last Question' in my Thermodynamics class, speak to them about finding 'Fafaia'....
This river can only flow because there is a glacier behind it.
Take care Sir and I hope we can meet next year.
With regards,
Saikat.
'This river can only flow because there is a glacier behind it'. Magnificent, Saikat. I don't know whether I should be more proud or more admiring or more grateful.
I do so wish that many many more ex students would express happy memories like this... I can think of no more precious gift, and I know that there are so many who do have treasured memories: why on earth wouldn't they take the trouble to make my heart full? One favourite old boy did me the kindness of letting me know this morning that he has just become a father, minutes after the glorious event. At such moments I consider myself truly privileged... that someone should think of informing me among the first few on his list! Not easy to earn, this kind of honour.
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