October Rain

11th October 2002: It started with a bright sunny October day. Today was the last working day of school before a week long Durga Puja vacation. The dry yet fresh scent of air seemed to welcome the all time romantic winter season. After nearly three months of overcast skies, humid atmosphere, torrential rains and muddy playgrounds the change of weather felt better. The cool breeze was also making me feel special with a constant reminder that in less than a month from now on, I will be celebrating my birthday with gifts, chocolates and some of my favourite cuisines cooked by Maa. It was not only me, but the mood inside the classroom was also high. With vacations round the corner, there would be a week long freedom from home-works, submissions, unit tests and results. :D
After the morning prayer, the classes started. Even though teachers tried their level best to bog us down with tons of holiday homework to be submitted on the school re-opening day, still there was an eternal confidence in our eyes. A 'hope-full' confidence that the boy or girl in the next bench would meticulously work out the assignments and we have to just copy it down and submit. It was only a matter of time that which one among us will crack under pressure to complete the homework and who all will remain the copy-master bravehearts of the class. :D :P
By afternoon the holiday homework list was going way long as the skies started to get overcast. The bright noon sun was hiding behind clouds. Internally my jubilant mood was also getting damped with the increasing list. With 15 minutes remaining to the last bell, the teacher also stopped teaching and sat down on the chair to take rest. The noise inside the class periodically waxed and waned with the intermittent but stern "Keep Quiet" of the resting teacher. As I kept on looking at the wrist watch impatiently, waiting for the final bell to go, it seemed time was running more slowly than ever. No wonder, I was experiencing time dilation effect. The final 15 minutes before the much awaited vacation seemed like an era when sharp at 3:35 pm, the final bell rang. The entire class was filled with echoes of "Happy Holiday" greetings. Warm handshakes with classmates was a symbolic gesture to say - "Dude !! One week and we all will be back here only."
As I just unlocked my bicycle, all of a sudden, there was a heavy downpour. For the next half an hour, I stood there in the cycle stand and watched some of my friends boarding the school bus and shouting "Bye bye !! Happy Holidays !!" from within the crowded bus. Slowly the buses started departing one by one. With the school buses and auto rickshaws gone, the traffic outside also got eased. The unseasonal rain caught me off guard and as expected, I had no raincoat that day. On the other hand, this was the perfect moment to enjoy cycling in the rain. Before, my friends could react, I shouted "Happy Holiday !!" and applied a strong thrust on the pedals to set off the bicycle like a rocket. Fortunately, the rains had reduced to a mere drizzle and the wet yet empty roads pumped up my adrenaline to move ahead at full throttle. Rather than the shorter usual route, I decided to go all the way racing across Rourkela Ring Road like a bullet fired from a gun. The rhythmic force on the pedals accelerated the bicycle like a bullet train picking up speed. Finally after enjoying each and every bit of the smooth ring road with cool air dashing on my face, I reached home at 5:15pm.
Like an obedient child, I didn't tell Maa that I was enjoying the drizzle outside the Tom Cruise way. I hope she must have thought that I might have stayed back in the cycle stand and waited for the rain to stop. She didn't ask, I didn't tell... ;) :D :D

Teacher's Day

3rd September 2015: Two days from now and India will celebrate the birthday of former President Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan as Teacher's Day. After a long day's work, I am typing this blog as I am deeply pained by the way we celebrate this pious day nowadays. To be brutally honest and blunt, 5th September is a date in which we inattentively hear all the famous speeches; eat vadas, samosas n jalebies after the function and finally go home. A day in which we should pay our respects to all the teachers who have made us what we are today, has become another formality. Thanks to social media like facebook & twitter, now I can celebrate this day at the click of a button by sharing awesome picture messages i.e. Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V = Teacher's Day. Why has this tradition deteriorated over time ?? To seek an answer, I am going back to my memories.
One evening in March, my room-mate came after appearing Maharashtra CET. He asked me - "Do you know the chemical formula of Phenol ?". Before he could give me the options and finish the question, I cut him short and answered - "C6H5OH". He was stunned at the way I was able to answer his question about a topic that I have read almost 8 years back, during my 10+2 days. He said - "By God !! How come you remember all those crazy organic chemistry formulae !!". I said - "I owe it all to my teacher who taught me chemistry when I was preparing for engineering entrance exams." My teacher did not just dictate notes in his chemistry class. Rather he bought chemicals and conducted live experiments and demonstrated students the physical manifestation of everything he has taught. He never stopped at teaching the effect of heat on acidity of water. On the other hand, to substantiate his explanation, he added a trivial piece of information that drinking hot tea causes acidity in stomach. I don't know, whether this trivia is actually verified in the laboratory. But such joking moments made me fall in love with the subject, not only to clear the entrance exams with a decent rank but to remember everything he has taught.
Coming back to present, a teacher is someone who shows you the path rather than dragging you along. Our ancient traditions refer this type of person as a "Guru". A Guru discovers the hidden talents of a student, and nurtures it. This is depicted in Mahabharat during the archery test at Dronacharya's ashram. Yudhisthir was able to see many things apart from the eye of the bird. He had the natural inclinations of being an able administrator who has the inborn talent of assessing risks and collateral damages in an administrative decision. Bheem and Duryodhan were muscular characters who had the raw muscle power needed to fight a mace battle. On the other hand, Arjun was the only student who had the unparalleled ability to see nothing except the target. Dronacharya discovered their talents and nurtured them accordingly. During the stay in Gurukul, a Guru is a father, mother, teacher, mentor and counselor rolled into one. Hence we say - "Guru Brahmaa... Guru Vishnu... Gurudeva Maheshwara..."
Unfortunately, today this beautiful relation is no longer seen. This is mainly because of commercialization of literacy. Here I am intentionally using the word literacy rather than education because the latter refers to the overall development of character and knowledge. Students come to the class to mug up everything thrown to them; be it physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology or even the Shakespearean era archaic English language. A teacher's capability is measured in terms of how many of his caged parrots have been able to mug up and successfully vomit in the answer script. Nobody ever asks the student whether he/she is really interested in the subject or not. The consequence is that every year after the board exam results are declared, the newspaper gets flooded with suicides. Nobody ever asks the teacher about his/her specialization or aspirations. When the learned and revered Guru is under severe pressure due to number game played across the degraded educational system by petty clerical minded accountant level personalities, his frustration rises. And when this frustration crosses the limit, it pushes a Guru beyond the edge. Consequence is that we come across instances of corporal punishment, verbal abuse and even sexual abuse of a student. In other words, a student-teacher relation in today's world is unfortunately a saga of annual speeches followed by vadaa samosa & jalebi blended with nice picture messages shared on Facebook.
No matter how mundane the Teacher's Day celebration might have become, I still believe in it. A teacher is not only a person who takes attendance in a lecture class or a person who gives assignments and evaluates the answer scripts. I believe, anybody and everybody who teaches us something useful and productive is a Teacher. On this Teacher's Day, I want to thank all such persons in my life who have taught me something or the other however trivial it might sound. I feel indebted to my father who taught me how to write. My vocabulary is incomplete without my mother who taught me the first word - "Maa". As a passionate but amateur photographer, I am incomplete without my uncle's knowledge who taught me how to see the world through the lens of a camera. It was my sister who ignited the gamer inside me with a 64-bit Nintendo console & tons of Super Mario cartridges. My love towards gadgets and technology is the gift of my friend who taught me the ins and outs of cellphone hacking and ways to counter it. I owe some of my culinary skills to my infinitely patient friend, who has taught me how to prepare delicacies like Gulaab Jamun and Dal Fry, but never loses cool when I report the cuisine as a "Total Disaster" !! To sum it up, I owe all these wonderful moments & teachings to this God gifted Life and 5th September seems a perfect day for celebration. As they say -

"Never stop learning, because Life never stops Teaching..."