The Teacher - A personal tribute..

He was a short, diminutive man with dark, deep black eyes.  His head was covered with sparse white hair and his back would slightly hunch forward as he walked with his hands twined behind him. His face would slant a little as he talked, and in his left hand he would perilously hold a thick half broken pair of glasses, that he would wave back and forth as he gesticulated while making a point. Always dressed in a half shirt that was never tucked in... He would never have passed for a professor, until one hears him speak...

He was my history teacher in High school: Mr Ramanaprasad - the man who initiated me into a world which I never knew existed before I met him - the world of informal knowledge, the excitement of learning and discovery through the written word, the path of introspection and the need to understand life as whole, and not in specialized compartments. He was a complete misfit in the educational system. He scarcely gave thought to what syllabus or curriculum or examination that he was tutoring us for. I remember he would walk into class with a textbook in hand with all the intention of sticking to "formal portions" needed to pass the upcoming exam, but even before he could get though the first few lines, he would cast the book away, remove his glasses in a swift movement and start on a journey that would ramble across Mohenjo-Daro, Euphrates, Bedouins, Churches, popes, Charlemagne, Renaissance, Rembrandt, Jefferson -  moving across seamlessly from one era to the other, weaving them into a tapestry of Human endeavor; interspersing the sometimes heavy dialectic with humane anecdotes, so that the fourteen year olds in class would resonate in unison(without getting bored !!) to the timeless panorama of action in the field of life.

He spoke the English language with meticulous precision. It was almost as if sentences tumbled out fully formed out of his brain, and all he had to do was to become their instrument. I have never heard him compromise the quality of his language to water down whatever he was teaching; instead we were inspired to reach up to his scale. Every now and then he would speak in our school assembly meetings, where each Friday was a short session on religious matters, and if the administrators were unsuccessful in getting a speaker, Ramanaprasad would be asked to pitch in, always impromptu.. He would silently, with head bowed down walk up the podium and without the slightest hesitation or a written note in hand venture on a Half hour investigation or expostulation on Vedic origins, Shaivites or vaishnavites, the dialogues of Plato or the Consolations of Boethius, the Bible or the Upanishad - with equal élan and intensity. Most of us couldn't understand what he was saying, but we sat there mesmerized watching this Man speak so prodigiously and fluently. It is like listening with rapt attention to "The Goldberg variations" of Bach, without understanding its complex counter patterns.

During the two years that I studied under him, He left a deep impression in me. Subconsciously, he personified for me the beauty of knowledge as a treasure in itself, without having to always be utilitarian. His view of human civilization always emphasized that real progress would mean more time for introspection and appreciating the beauty of this Universe. Otherwise, it is not worth it. I am now beginning to realize the value of his teaching....

I use to visit him at his home in the residential club where he lived with his family. My brother and I would go there for sports and then I would silently slip into his home to talk to him.  Those were wonderful evenings, when he would read aloud the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle or Rider Haggard or Dickens, with a Victorian flair to his diction. He would pause at critical points to explain the elegance of a phrase, the crispness of a description or a brand new word. I guess, those moments have somehow magically seeped into me without my volition. And I am grateful for it...

My brother messaged me today morning that Mr. Ramanaprasad is no more. Somehow, I didn't feel pain on this loss. It has been more than twenty years that I last saw him physically, but never for a moment in these long intervening years, has he ever left me. In a way, I have been living the dream that he sowed in me as a young boy. Can I then grieve over his death? How can I be in grief over someone who is an integral part of myself? Probably, this is what Plato meant by "immortality", when he said that a thought can never die... If this be so, Then Ramanaprasad lives: in me; and I am sure and in many others, whose lives were touched by this wonderful teacher. 

Sir, You live on......

God bless...