Teacher's Day 2024

Today is TEACHER's Day, all other brands are prohibited. (Teachers is a popular brand of Scotch). Jokes apart, I salute to all my teachers who have made a huge difference in my life by contributing towards shaping my knowledge and character.

It is not just limited to my teachers in  school and college. My parents were my first teachers. Then came friends, relatives, acquaintances as teachers in various forms at different stages in my life. There is always something to learn from every human being, a prince or a pauper, a beggar or a sorcerer, an animal or an inanimate object. Life is the biggest teacher. 

A good movie can be a good teacher too. In the iconic movie 3 IDIOTs, on the Teacher's Day of 5 September, character Chatur Ramalingam goes on the stage to recite a Sanskrit Sloka (hymn) eulogizing the teachers of his college. 

He rotes the Sloka by memory, without understanding a single word of it, nor caring about its content, without realizing that the original speech was altered by a playful and witty Rancho (played by Aamir Khan). As Chatur on the stage was about to vomit the Sloka he rote from what Rancho wrote, the later told his friends to get ready to hear a sermon about the former's farting prowess. Chatur recites:

UTTAMAM GAD GADATA PADAM,
MADHYAM PADAM TUCHAK TUCHAK;
THUR THURIYA KANISTAM PADAM,
SUR SURIYA PRANA GHATAKAM.

Roughly transliterated...

"Loud farts are majestically thundering;
Medium farts come along stuttering,
Small Farts arrive whisteling & sirening;
The silent ones can be life threatening."

As the crowd goes berserk and poor Chatur gets kicked out of the stage, Racho's dark humor teached us another lesson in academics - Knowledge acquired through roting sans understanding may earn you a Degree, but will take you nowhere. My father always emphasized on understanding rather than roting.

Decades ago there was this incident, when a sub-collector in Sonepur district of Odisha did this cowardly, shameful act of kicking a hapless school teacher, abusing him as a poor MASTRA (the way the word master is often pronounced in Odia, a term mostly used in derogatory sense for teachers back home). 

I remember a cartoon related to the above incident which came out on the local vernacular Newspaper with the following caption, (rhyming with our famous Sloka "GURU BRAHMA GURU BISHNU... "

GURU DEENA GURU HEENA
GURU SAMANYA MASTARA;
KANDOOKA SAMAN GURU
TASME SRHEE GOITHA MARA
ITI UPA- COLLECTOR
JILLA NAMA SONAPUR.

Transliterating in the same rhyme form to keep the theme intact,

"Teacher is poor, Teacher is mere;
Teacher is just an ordinary Master.
Teacher is akin to a football;
To be kicked for sure.
Courtesy Sub-Collector,
From the district of Sonepur."

I have heard folks asking in Odia to their children "KIRE MASTRA AJI KANA PADHEILA" meaning "Hey, what did the master teach you today". The English transliteration may not sound so bad but the way it is delivered in the native language is not a sign of great adulation.

My take is simple - A society which does not respect its teachers, can never  prosper. Period. Great nations are made by great men. Great men (and women) are shaped by their teachers. HAPPY TEACHER'S DAY to all.