TEACHERS AND LOVERS

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence ends." -- Henry Adams

BITS FROM AN INTERNET CHAT I ONCE HAD WITH A BRIGHT YOUNG JOURNALIST :
(The name of the journalist has been changed to cover her identity. The conversation took place some nine months ago)

12:00 PM Me: AND i find you exceedingly level headed and honest. That’s more than I can say about the whole generation of boys I have lived with as a teacher, though some of these students have certainly been gems of the rarest kind .

12.01PM Varindaa: Do you miss teaching?
12:01 PM me: Most certainly, although I strongly feel that all I have left is formal teaching. What else am I doing stealthily with you for the past half an hour so? Subterranean 'Operation Teaching'?
12:03 PM Varindaa:-) Well...let me add that if that was the case...I hope I have learnt my lesson
12:05 PM me: In all my teaching career, I remember three students, two boys and a girl, whom I loudly used to ask never to come to my class because, as I told them, there was nothing I had to teach them. It would be enough if I could learn something from them. They were so far ahead - and not just in terms of knowledge. They were on a different planet from mine in pure wisdom, mental stature, breadth of vision and poise in personality. I feel that if I ever had the opportunity of teaching you, I would have to put you down as fourth such.

Varindaa : Wow....that is quite a compliment...one which I am not sure I deserve. After all…you hardly know me
12:07 PM And I have not exactly done things to endear myself in a manner fitting of a good student.

12:10 PM me: If you had ever been a teacher, Varindaa, you would know how lovable all students are; they look at you with such trusting eyes, and mostly we teachers betray their trust. They put their lives in our hands Their hearts beat in our bosoms, their hands are stretched out like that of a little infant reaching out for his mother. They lovingly surrender all they have, even their minds and all -- and yet we keep treating the relationship as 'just a job'. When a student is wondering how wonderful a person her teacher is, all he is thinking about how small his pay packet or how long his promotion is.
Teaching, my dearest Varindaa, is an unlimited high romance. No one who is afraid to be called a romantic fool has any business to be a teacher. All but high romantics and prophets should barred from entering any place of learning. Education is not for the wise. They do not know what to do with it, except to use it an incense in a brothel. Education is only for the possessed. It is for the “God-intoxicated people”, for the deeply committed and the deeply sincere, “for those who can afford to make fools of themselves.”

12:12 PM Varindaa: But what is pitiable is that majority of our teachers are not like that
Especially the ones in Humanities...which I studied and which specially needs teachers who are passionate about what they teach.
12:16 PM me: I would rather not call them teachers. "pedogogic workers'? The greatest asset in a teacher is not the information in his skull but the love in his heart. No one can be teacher without first being a lover. Teaching beckons you to the hearts and minds of your students, and there you are welcome as a divine guest till you let them down. I have never seen a student letting a teacher down; and I know that ten thousand out of ten thousand and one teachers fail to match the trust and love of their students. May be that is a bit cruel, but just a bit.
12:19 PM ‘to me the only yardstick to measure the collapse of a society is the manner in which teachers treat their vocation and also, perhaps as a consequence, the way the society treats its teachers.
12:20 PM Varindaa, you may have not noticed it, but i have already tried to deserve my salary as a teacher even in this relationship with you, even though that is the last thing I would want our relationship to be.
12:24 PM me: Incidentally, I was exceedingly lucky with my teachers. They were all gems, and I had a crush on them ( especially on an extremely dignified and beautiful madam who used to teach me Punjabi. A better and more noble person I am yet to meet, although she never encouraged my crush which bordered on ( in fact, crossed the bounds of worship.) Now, I am talking as a student. And this is what I meant by the purity in a student’s heart.
12:25 PM Varindaa: ha ha