People who make a difference

Twenty days back I was walking down towards a mobile dealer shop to purchase a recharge card and I saw a familiar face trying to cross the road. She too caught a glimpse of me and she kept turning around hesitatingly, trying to place my face inside her head. By then, I had recognized her and the smile came across her face. All this in a few seconds and I beamed, “Hello, Ma’am!”. In a moment, Ranganayaki Ma’am held my hand and asked me how I was doing.

It was a pleasant surprise. Ranganayaki ma’am was my class teacher who also taught me maths in my +1 and +2 classes. I was meeting her after seven whole years and she hadn’t changed one bit. Quite unlike me, I actually saw myself absolutely free as I went on and on about what I was doing now, what had happened in the last two years, ever since I finished my grads and I found an earnest listener. I gave a whole round up of the post D.A.V life and finally ended with “No ma’am, am not yet married!” when that was the first question, she asked me after, “How are you?” “You look the same, you haven’t changed one bit,” she smiled.

Today, my mom, who also happens to be a teacher, a science teacher to be more specific, showed with all interest, one of the answer sheets that she was correcting. She was pretty amused about the way one of the guys in her class had written an answer, partly proud too! There have been many, many occasions where she would come and tell me all the fun that she had with her “kids” at school.

I would often think, what a noble profession, teaching is. It is a vocation marked by selflessness and one that would give a very high level of job satisfaction. After all, isn’t it a matter of pride to actually guide so many lives up the ladder of success? Personally, if there is one set of people whom I spontaneously give respect to, it is my teachers. I don’t know why, but till now, every time that I ran into a teacher, there is a reverence that appears almost immediately. I would agree to do anything, if they had any work to be done out of me and that would come without the slightest hesitation. And this has been true, especially with ACJ.

My granddad has been teaching for the last sixty years and at 84, today, he still continues to hold math tuitions. While kids who are much younger to me, come to study under him, I have seen batches and batches of guys and girls, attending his classes before who were much much senior to me. Infact, generations of students studied under him. I remember at least 3 cases where the parents and later their children got his training. One ought to be really gifted to light the lives of so many people.

And for all the teaching that he did, to this day, he commands respect from the oldest of his students, one of them being about 60 years or so of age. My mom too, comes home, loaded with gifts and hand made cards from her students, especially on Teacher’s day. She would come back and describe with heartfelt happiness as to how her class students burst the balloon on top of her head and a whole lot of glitters landed on her. I remember how my sis used to dig into her bag for “bday toffees”.

Teachers would send out batches and batches of students, hoping their kids would all settle down well and would come back to them some day. A post wouldn’t do to tell how much I respect the profession, especially with quite a few of them in my family itself. I have sometimes thought to myself as to how good it would be to handle KG students as a teacher. It should be so much of fun listening to all their sweet little complaints, “miss, he is hitting me..”, “miss he took my pencil” etc. etc. All cutie pies that could get really attached to you, if you could show them the right kind of affection! Probably, I would do that some day, who knows? :)