Letter to Teachers

Respected Species,

As I sit to blog, the internet connection conks off. It is very disabling. I will just write now, like I used to before the day of an examination, when I was in school. Random Thoughts -- big things they are. When I was in school I had never anticipated this day where I would be on the other side of a classroom's table. The idea kind of sucked, for lack of a better word at the moment. I never had the hots for any teacher. Some were really good (not speaking of their knowledge in the subject), and to an extent mildly attention arresting, if not inspiring. I strongly believe all teachers disliked me, and plotted to figure out a way to spank me. There was something irritating about me being a student who wouldn't allow a teacher the scope to complain as far as fetching marks were concerned. I was always content and not much judgmental about who taught how. I guess I was genuinely disinterested in studies. I do not remember as any class being exceptional; I just couldn’t concentrate for the entire period. But my mother, oh my mother, she was damn demanding and competitive. She insisted on grilling the concept of being within rank ten in any given class. It was painful. I am thus, heavily amused even as I write, how I happened to the profession of being a teacher.

They were just that, a thing I would never become. I actually thought they were stuck-up women, whether the young ones just out of college, waiting to be married off, or older ones having a lot of free time being the wife of some doctor earning a fat wallet. In plain words, they were boring. The tuition sirs were a more exciting chapter -- worth having fun with, a crush upon, or simply depending to gather a way to get the marks. Yet, now that I think of it, they were just that too, something I would never become. I always saw this profession as restrictive. I would on a given school day look out of the class VI window and fly with the aeroplane and believe I would be a pilot, till I was detected with myopia. I would yearn to be an MBA not knowing what it would entail, a Lawyer because I believed I could talk and the list was a serious long one of eliminating one into the other. Solid reasoning led me to believe I could be just about anything I wanted to be. An artist, a chartist, an entrepreneur, a drummer. Or, just be a writer I thought and be everything.

How naive every distant planning seems now. A series of un/fortunate events led me to become what I am today. It is a skill I developed, to teach. And I think I would have liked to sit in my class for some days. But how long can skill win over natural talent? I think I am blessed with the fine art of savoring the beauty of procrastination and believing in 'nothing can be so fulfilling'. And anyone for the respect? Not until I was at University. You could well say I have lost out on life by not having that 'one' teacher in life you look up to from time immemorial. I did fine, I would say. I had books as my teachers and buddies, the Enid Blytons and Sidney Sheldons. I learnt about lemonades and multiple-personality disorder.

I have great friends in people who are teachers, and I have absolutely nothing against the clan. But I really feel sad when students write to me that they had teachers who turned out to be a constant trauma. I dislike people like that, who cannot tolerate a little lack. Not that my dislike makes them any less. They must be great, and I must be unlucky to not have one good enough to inspire me to do what I like. Have you ever been with children? They are great teachers. The connection is back and I will publish this. It is funny that on days when I type a letter, I say I will post it :)

Many Meanderings,
K.