The Ideal and the Teacher
I come from a family of teachers. So growing up, the default answer to the question, ‘Beta bada hoke kya banoge?’ — was Professor. Teacher seemed too scholastic. Educator wasn’t coined yet. Professor had weight. It commanded respect. Its authority preceded itself. All the good things I had seen my father live up to, not to mention like 200 holidays a year! I am sure he had bad days too but we tend to ignore those don’t we? He also taught in an all-girls college, did I forget to mention that?
But by the time I reached college, the sheen had begun to wear off. My father had a stable job and he retired with full honours, a part of which was me delivering a very cheesy farewell speech in chaste Hindi. But I had also began hearing horror stories of how many of his colleagues had not been confirmed after years in service. Some were even working on hourly basis at wages comparable to casual laborers. And an upfront bribe to secure even these positions had become the norm. An education loan of sorts to be able to teach kids who had taken education loans themselves, that’s how open markets work.
A boom of private colleges was underway with relaxing of norms. And like all booms, it had neither logic or foresight. Just an oversupply of graduates. A new class of landless laborers to struggle against a new class of zamindars. Actually, the zamindars were the same. It was just a new generation who had returned from a Eurotrip cum graduation and now posed as trustees of institutes, NGOs and funds. The word trustee was always ill-fated…
I was to enter the work-stream the year immediately following my father’s retirement. And I had ended up in Science coz ‘Arts to ladki log karta hai.’ Between a Masters and an equally pointless lab job, I ended up doing an MBA, as did most people from my generation. Corporate jobs became the government jobs of my era. And the Professor became a relic as much as ‘General Knowledge’ used to be a hobby and journalism used to be the fourth pillar of democracy.
In the business world I met a new species of teachers called Educators. These were professors you could smoke with and they were paid enough to be able to afford cancer treatment; for a couple of years. But I had already tasted a few months salary and capitalism would not let go of me now. The rest; as they say, is part of my TEDx talk.
Guruji jokes aside, the reason to write this today is to remind myself why I still feel indebted to my school and college teachers even from my suburban public school background. Teachers in our books and movies are always shown as ideals, the kind that get shot in the end but still don’t stop saying the truth or wearing Khadi kurtas. And in the internet world, there is no place left for ideals. From lists of millionaire college dropouts beginning and ending with Bill Gates to the saddest ‘Life is the greatest teacher’ quotes, the only space left for teachers is that of service providers. When you pay lacs in fees even to Kindergartens, all you have left is a subscription, not a meaningful social relation.
We very easily forget that almost everything we know from the alphabet to not spitting in people’s food was taught to us by someone. Many teachers did not live up to the ideal but the few who did made all the difference in your life. Success always seems self-earned and against all odds while failure is always a collective effort. Even in our own life stories we tend to play entitled Bollywood heroes.
In standard 8th, I was scoring 90+ in English and Social Studies while living in Kandivali. Though I still live in Kandivali I would have never known what to do with my acumen if Mrs. Nair had not introduced me to the wonderful world of novels and fiction. It kept me going through nearly two decades of academic and professional drudgery and finally got me into stand-up and beyond. You can always buy education or stumble across it on YouTube. But you can never repay someone who went out of their way to show you a world that was not restricted to your neighborhood. At least once in your life you will need someone to believe in you more than you believe in yourself. Remember them on a bad day and pass on the goodwill!
Happy Teacher’s Day! May they never be replaced by algorithms…
