Now when I find myself in a situation where I actually feel could possibly influence a few younger souls around me, knowingly or unknowingly, it makes me think hard what kind of influence would I prefer to be. I went through the memories of the teachers who taught me to the date, and a few stood distinctly out.
Shashi Ma’am. I remember her from my KGs who taught me my Hindi letters. She always told my mother that I’ll make her proud. Thank God she never said around what age. That would have been an embarrassment. But her belief was something that still stumps me and fills my heart with gratefulness altogether.
Naqvi Ma’am, my second std. class teacher. She taught me that the first step of answering a question is knowing the complete question. We had the story of Alibaba and the Forty Thieves in our English syllabus, but it had an abrupt ending. As kids, we knew better than being hung on the ending, like we did later after Inception. We didn’t know that it covered just half of the story. So she took an extra period just to tell us about Scheherazade and the thousand tales, because she believed we should know it all to grasp the true learning from it. Or maybe because it was too fun.
Saxena Ma’am, English teacher in the senior secondary school, who even after knowing that English as a subject is my strength, always kept focusing on the looser parts of it. Never allowing me to be complacent about the fact that the English exams which people dreaded for never having ample time to solve, were wrapped up in half time by me. (Yeah I am a snob here)
But the teacher I think I would prefer to imitate, or the one who had the greatest impact on me would be Mr Brucey Parera, 8th std. class teacher. He was the man.. masculinity personified, maybe even with the hint of a certain toxicity. But what I would want to copy from him, would be his ideology of what should be taught to whom. He said to me once, “You might be a very good academic student, and sorry if me telling this hurts you, but you don’t have any practical awareness. Life lies beyond the books. Learn what you do not know.” He said, “I cannot teach what I do not know. But if I do not teach everything I know, what’s the point of teaching? So try to learn whatever I ask you to.”
At this point, I think I’ll throw in everything I know. Even if one right thing rubs off to someone in the right way, I would have done something right. Right?
ABSINRAW 