A Tribute To All My Teachers...

"We are all like match sticks. We carry our fire within us but only as a possibility. We have to come to the match box surface, to grind ourselves in and bang our heads for the fire to come out. And a true teacher is like that – a match box surface..."

I believe everyone has at least one blessing in his or her life. Mine has been that God brought great teachers into my life. Many of them were formal teachers, yet many were those who presented themselves at various times in my life and taught great, invaluable lessons.

So, I was luckier than most in that aspect. However, I am sure that we can all look back at our lives and will be able to locate that one teacher who had that great impression on us and somewhere shaped who we are. These were the people who gave more and more without expecting anything in return. At least in their relationship with us, they gave out of love and they often gave of themselves. No gratitude expressed is enough for these great men and women, who, neither rich nor famous, will always hold the highest pedestal of reverence in my heart.

They say that human mind cannot distinguish between memory and imagination. To it, an actual experience and an imagined experience are quite the same (which really explains why positive thinking, visualization techniques and many other therapies work!)

As I look back at many of these teachers now after a gap of years and decades, the mind gets muddled in the detail of things. The line between what actually happened and the interpretation of what happened blurs. However, the impressions of what happened, to whatever degree they are accurate (and I should like to believe that they mostly are), are very real and sharp in my mind. And since it’s these impressions, and not necessarily the truth, which has remained with me and shaped my life, I would like to share some of them.

Year 1977-78, Jaipur, me about 11 years and in class 7…

Ms Anuradha Pandit is assigned our class as a young English teacher. Now, we were from that generation of ‘Hindi medium’ middle class people where English was actually a foreign language, a chore and something which had to be endured and scraped through. But that changed soon with Ms Pandit. Her classes used to be one fun filled riot. She would play pranks with us and occasionally even whistle!... We had a game where all of us had to speak in English and anybody using a Hindi word was fined 10p (the penalty always accrued but never collected). Hers was one class in the whole day everyone looked forward to.

And of course she taught. Taught better than many. But more importantly, she made me interested in a subject for the first time in my life. Before that you studied something because you were told to do so, you wanted to impress your parents and teachers, or whatever. For the first time I studied because I enjoyed doing so.

Personally, what I learnt from her, looking back, is the importance of engagement and fun in teaching. She was the first of the great teachers in my life and a smile comes on my face whenever I think of her and those years.

Year 1981-82, Delhi, me about 14 years and in class 9…

The session had just started. We were sitting in the class waiting for the new History teacher, someone who had come on transfer and had just joined the school.

By class 9th, it was clear that we were the ‘science’ types. There was neither any interest nor motivation to study History and the past experience with the subject was nothing to talk about. I think many kids, even if they were sure shot ‘arts’ cases felt the same and it was one bunch of 45 disinterested, lackadaisical and sleepy children awaiting the new teacher in a sultry July afternoon.

And the teacher walks in. He was one extremely fair, short and rotund guy in mid-thirties whose aspect ratio might have been rather uncommonly exaggerated for a human male. He had a kind face and mischievous eyes.

Plonk! He raised himself and sat on the table, facing us. He looked like someone who loved teaching and belonged, every inch of his girth, in that class at that moment.

And thus spake M Tahir Nayyar…

History is His (Mankind’s) Story and I will tell you the story.

Kitaaben band, copiyaan band… Mein kahaani sunaoonga aur tum sunna… Par kitaab padhte rahna kyonki main test mein sawaal kitaab mein se poochhoonga… Kitaab mein kuchh na samajh mein aaye toh bejhijak poochhna… Lekin ek shart hai… Mujhse ye na poochhna ki Hindustan kab aazad hua… Kyonki ye har kitaab mein likha hai aur ye poochhne ka matlab hai ki tumne kitab nahi padhi… Mujhse ye poochhna ki Hindustan 15 August 1947 ko hi kyon aazad hua, 14 ko kyon nahi aur 16 ko kyo nahi?

Only Tahir sir could have said that. What command over his subject, what love for the kids and what a story-teller!

I can still visualize people standing on the deck throwing cartons and boxes of tea into the sea! That’s how vivid ‘Boston Tea Party’ of 1773 and the whole of American Revolution is in my mind even today.

It was some coincidence that in 1989 when I joined Hindustan Zinc Ltd. at Zawar Mines after my B.Tech. he was the principal of the Central School there. He stayed there for one more year before he was transferred to Dehradoon but during that one year, I had a free access to his house. If I did not go for 2 days, he will call the third. Though his own children were much too small at that time, he loved me as his own…

I recently learnt that he passed away few years back and the world is much the poorer because they hardly make such teachers any more.

June 1991, me 23 years, in first class compartment of Chetak Express coming from Udaipur to Delhi on LTC…

The cabin had four berths. I occupied one of the lower berths and was waiting for the train to depart. It was still half an hour before the train left. The evening breeze was building up and felt good on my tired, sweaty face. Leaning on the window, I lit a cigarette and closed my eyes…

Images. Last few months had been bad. I was feeling suffocated at Zawar Mines. The lead-zinc mining township of Hindustan Zinc Ltd. had a population of about 25000. It was located 8 km off Udaipur Ahmedabad highway, about 45 km from Udaipur. Practically, it was a hilly adivasi area essentially in the middle of nowhere.

The plant was old, the technology nowhere close to what I studied in Engineering, the politics was as petty as it was stifling and the salary? Class I officer grade used to be ‘baees sau se chaar hazaar’. With Rs. 1064/- basic, I used to get less than Rs. 2000/- (after deductions, etc) every month for my life locked into the endless A-B-C shift misery.

The economic crisis was yet to hit India, Dr. Manmohan Singh was hardly a known name and liberalization was a word very few were acquainted with. For someone brought up in Delhi, I just could not see myself spending the next 35 years of my life in this back of beyond.

I had been telling my seniors for some months that I will leave before completing 2 years here. They used to laugh at me telling they felt the same when they initially joined. Now those guys were around for 15 year, married, kids… settled. I had joined HZL on 1st July 1989. This was June 1991. Time was running out…

Yet, what could I do? I had taken some MBA entrance exams but could not get through. The shift duties never really agreed with me and it was physically beyond me to put any decent study hours for the preparation.

Chucking the job that too a government (PSU) job was too much a risk back then for our middle-class (actually lower middle-class if you consider the salary that a government officer – my dad – used to get in those days!) situation and sensibilities.

So, here I was pensive and smoking, leaning on a train window. You could actually put a Dev Anand Hum Dono song as a voice over to that visual – main zindagi ka saath nibhata chala gaya, har fikr ko dhuen mein udata chala gaya… Only the fikr was more adamant in my case!

Two guys entered the coupe. Both in their mid-thirtees.

One was this heavy set giant of a man of about 6 ft 3 or 4 inches. The other was a more normal packaging. The train started. The two gents chatted for some time and then the ‘normal’ guy retired to the upper berth.

I could make out from their conversation (clarified further later by my giant friend) that they were both architects working for Udaipur town planning department and were going to Jaipur for some official work.

As soon as it was night, my friend took out a bottle of rum, some cola and namkeen and invited me to join him. The invitation was as earnest as it was tempting. I could not refuse. There was also no reason to…

Intimacy comes fast when the spirits are high! I do not remember what we talked or how we got down discussing my particular predicament but that’s the topic which consumed most of the evening. Considering my state of mind at the time and the magical effects of rum, it might have been an outpouring!

What I do remember very clearly is my senior friend telling me….. if you think you are not doing justice to the job and the job is not doing justice to you, it is criminal to continue. Leave NOW!... A worthy life may be tough but it is still better than a life of unceasing compromise… Do not imagine it will be easy. Your family and friends may call you a fool, numerable hardships may come but no compromise… For there is nothing nobler or more spectacular than a man living his life on his own terms with courage and conviction… and willing to pay the price…

With these impressions I dozed off. When I got up in the morning he was gone. I don’t even know his name nor I ever went back to enquire about him at Udaipur. But almost as a tribute to him, I reached Delhi and never quite went back to my job. It was 30th June 1991, precisely 2 years from the date of my joining HZL!

The least I can say is that conversation and the subsequent action changed my life forever and continue to shape it today. Though some people close to me would rather have it otherwise!

Thank you sir. Hope to meet you some day…

I hope that some day I will be able to touch a life like that! That would be a fitting tribute to all my teachers... Till then, let's remember them all. 

(This post is previously published in one of my other blogs)