May be I should change the title – To Sir(s) & Ma’m(s)! But I continue to live in this world shamelessly subjugated to male psyche, where even those (all males & females) who herald the banners of women liberation suffer pangs of guilt deep inside consoling themselves that nothing is going to change in this hypocrite world of theirs despite all their valiant efforts.
But then that’s not what I was going to write about; the subject was my teachers who were desperate to pull me out of plume of ignorance and anti-social cataclysm throughout my span of life.
The first ones to teach me would always be my parents but like all infants I have no memoirs of the early days. The first lessons of walking, talking, drinking, eating, touching, identification etc. are so natural and inherent in nature that we refuse to acknowledge them as lessons at all. I disagree! Left alone, we all would have been Mogulis of Rudyard Kipling.
It’s only after a certain bit of maturity (I hope, I have that) that perhaps one admits the difference between education and teaching. While the former may be entirely facts – strands of formulae, loads of structures, reactions, laws, dates, maps-locations and other things, the latter is beyond all facts. (Though they may be facts themselves) If, may be, it was never said to us verbally; it was always between the lines - the codes of conduct, laws of world, laws of behavior, adjectives and virtues. And it is for this latter part, that I am most thankful to you.
When you told me that air exists beyond its invisibility barrier as a matter and has weight, I learned that there could be things where we see none. When you directed me in the laboratory, I concluded that rationality was the underlying principle of all things in world and if not then it must be questioned however blasphemous it may sound. In chemical reactions I saw the balance of nature; re-saw it in Newton’s third law and understood that to achieve a high placed goal I had to strive even harder because some energy was always lost.
After getting used to gravitation for more than 10 years (I was taught gravitation and atoms/molecules in class 3 because I found other concepts in the book boring, lolz), Einstein’s relativity was a blow for one of its points concluded that gravity was nothing but a byproduct of space-time warp and for this reason - hypothetical. And it proved to me that a man’s biggest enemy was Inertia – resistance to change. When I was introduced to algebra, I knew that the power of imagination was infinite. When I was taught the concept of system, surroundings and universe in my first thermodynamics class, I was literally told that a parallel existed between mechanical systems and the universe, between the creator of systems and that of the universe.
When Indus dwellers vanished along with Egyptians and the Chinese I saw how the things that once reached their zenith had to, willingly or unwillingly perish too. Rome followed suit with Constantinople and I knew that life comes a full circle. British ran across half the globe waving first the East India Company flag and then the Union Jack mocking the territories that had never heard of the concept of nation, sovereignty and union. Karl Marx propounded a theory and it became evident to me that success would always be incomplete if it was exclusive. A man in Meerut triggered a mutiny and I knew that a revolution had to be started by one man alone, if not more. A lawyer from Gujarat marched across the nation perspiring yet untiring, and I knew that leadership could do wonders to people.
But what you taught me was not in the books alone, it was and is in the world out there, glaring in the eye – acknowledged or not; for you taught me that ‘Truth Alone Triumphs’ and if for the greater good, it should be manipulated. That it was alright to feel depressed and dejected on having failed but was even more important to learn and rise again. It was almost natural to feel jealous but you were the ones who told me that I had to direct my anger the right way to profit from it. That even my friends could turn against me and I could find some where I never expected was taught by you. You were the ones who taught me that in a country where empty stomachs gave a stronger lurch than the mal-fed morality, corruption and crime were almost natural and in order to combat them a multi-pronged weapon was needed.
I love you all for those lessons that you taught me and even those that you did not because I went through them the hard way and know them by heart. For all the good that you did to us, you were always jeered behind your back and you kept on, still. Because even when you were firing all cylinders at me in the class, there was a fun in it (and I was silently laughing, face down); for I knew that it was all for a reason. Premchand once wrote in one of his stories that teachers see new batches every year, new boys and they forget them; but the boys never forget those who teach them, sometimes looking up to them as ideals.
Now that I am on a break from classes, I miss your voice ringing the classroom (and the figures that I carved on desks too). But then, you taught me that life itself was a continuous learning process. I may sometimes let you down, but please don’t give up on me for it is only on the citadel of your wisdom that I will ascend to the pinnacle of existence.
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