Happy Teacher's Day

I don’t know why but whenever I think about “Teacher”, usually image of Bishwajeet Sir, comes to my mind. He was our class teacher during our primary schooldays. He taught us mathematics. Our school was the only private English medium school in Bongaigaon, a well known town in Assam, those days. It was founded by a Mallu couple and even today, it’s popularly known as “Menon School”, even though both of them are no longer  associated with the school anymore. They returned to their native state Kerala, almost a couple of decades ago. Mrs. Menon, popularly known as Head Madam was the principal those days. Well, she was a tigress and was quite well known for her strictness and discipline. Mathematics was always my favorite subject, till I spoiled myself in Engineering college. Even today, I feel proud that I was one of the favorite students of Bishwajeet Sir.

When I was in my 7th grade, my father admitted me in Kendriya Vidyalaya, BRPL. KV was a different experience, I got lot of exposure. KV BRPL was like a mini India and I had the opportunity to interact with all sorts of people. Unlike Menon School, the new one had a big library and the image of our librarian, Pandey Sir, flashes in my head. He was a true entertainer and an amazing story teller. We had few opportunities to listen to his stories, usually when other teachers remained absent or when the library was occupied by other students. Pandey Sir used to tell us Indian mythological stories, especially kind of stuffs like "If anybody steals something then in next life, he would be born as a rat"

We had one more entertaining teacher, Hotilal Sir, our Hindi teacher.  I always felt literature subjects, both English and Hindi quite easy, but every time  my teachers deducted almost 50% of the marks in spelling and grammatical errors. I remember Shivlal, younger brother of Hotilal Sir. He was our class mate. Hotilal Sir tried to make his lectures interesting by his self appraisal kind of stories. I remember one instance when he told us he did his schooling with Kapil Dev. 

During my 11th and 12th grade, Mishra Sir was our Maths teacher. He tried his best to improve our mathematical concepts, but somehow we guys couldn’t follow him. He used to pass the entire lecture in solving one problem on the black board and quite often he got confused. We last benchers, tried our best to confuse him. His eldest son studied with us in the same classroom. Poor guy was very polite and quite innocent kind of, and was a soft target for guys who used to take great pleasure in pulling other’s leg. I remember one incident when our Mishra Sir once again became a proud father, while his eldest son was in 12th class with us. We asked for a party to junior Mishra and it seemed he felt shy about that. Even though it was quite unusual, but we felt proud about our Mishra Sir’s capabilities.

I remember one instance when our physics teacher, Mr Solanki Sir was quite upset with someone. I don’t exactly remember why he was so upset that moment but I do remember his precious words, even though those were out of anger. He said "Don’t ever compare yourselves with your teacher. No matter how much hard we try, but we have very limited growth, now. You guys have no limitation, no one can stop you from reaching anywhere and it’s all up to you how you go forward. We teachers are only there to guide you, that's all"

When we entered our 9th grade, suddenly Science became quite tougher and interesting. That was the time when we interacted with John Sir for the first time. Well, John Sir was a typical south Indian and was a man of principle. He used to teach us chemistry and was quite well known for his teaching skills. Most of the parents knew quite well that we needed a much better understanding of chemistry concepts for our career and some of them approached John Sir for private tuition. John Sir was not in favor of private tuition and gently denied them. Well, some other teacher got the opportunity instead. Next day, John Sir said to us “Yesterday, few of your parents came to me for private tuition. I don’t know why you guys need extra classes. If you have any doubt then please approach me any time, not only during school time but whenever you feel free.” But unfortunately John Sir couldn't be with us for a long, as in next few months he got transferred to his native place. 

During our 12th grade, just few months before our final board exams, our English teacher got transferred to her native place as well. A new teacher replaced her temporarily.  He was quite young, probably 24 or 25 years old. Unlike other teachers, he was different. One specialty about him was that he could easily connect with guys like us, I mean little Bigra kind of. He was more like a friend than teacher to us. He used to say "there's no difference between you guys and me. Even I also think in the same way as you do".  During our farewell many of our teachers gave speeches and it was quite monotonous and boring. But all of a sudden that guy arrived on stage, kind of shy and simply said few words.

"Well, all of you are very nice and intelligent people. There's no doubt that all you guys will do very well in life. Few might do a little better than others, but no one would die of hunger and everyone will do something in life. But whatever you do, always try to be a good human being, a good citizen of this country and always love your parents". 

While writing this post images of many teacher flashed in my head.

Happy Teacher's Day !