To Sir, With Love

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 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.