Happy Teacher's Day!

Through this blog, it’s turning out to be a ritual for me these days to express my gratitude for everyone who has been a source of happiness and inspiration in my life. And today happens to be one of those very special days, which is dedicated to the exceptional people who are an integral entity of the society, who work as a potent catalyst in the growth process of the generations, who come into our life at some important junctures and enlighten us with their noesis, perception and knowledge. It’s Teacher’s day, a day consecrated to celebrate the people who transformed our lives through education, showing a path towards reasoning and knowingness.

In fact, in Sanskrit, there is a better word, Guru and has a deep spiritual meaning. Gu denotes the ignorance that we all human beings are in. Ru represents the radiance of knowledge that dispels this ignorance. Eastern history is just filled with so many great stories of Guru and disciple. Though the definition of deep devotion for a teacher is no longer that pure and untainted as it used to be, but the essence of the beauty in the relationship between a student and a teacher can never die, at least as long as this universe exists when it gets established between a mother and a child even before the life starts to exist in the outside world.

Working as an engineering professional, if I go back to the point when it all started, I remember the day I joined DAIICT in the year 2002 with purely no expectations and was not even ready to embark on this journey. Engulfed in varied forms of negativity fused with loneliness and solitary, I was surely with a blank state of mind and my mind was not even trained to engender thoughts fitting the requirements of that tough time. I was just dropped in the environment which was not at all familiar to my consciousness. Completely detached from the outside world that I was seeing around me, there was a glimpse of hope in the form of a professor having a glittering, sterling career who joined the college in the same year after serving IIT Kanpur for number of years. In the very first semester, He taught us Basic Electronics Circuits, a course supposed to lay the foundation of learning and to ignite the interest in electronics if a student happens to like it as a subject. With his phenomenal style of explanation, he not only sowed the seeds of electronics in minds, but also nurtured them to the extent where students can see it fulfilling their ambitions in the form of a career.

As I understand it, He is a person who has a great ability to impart the essence of the knowledge he has, using his eloquence and method of speech to make students understand it in the right context and he gives a pragmatic approach that helps a lot to go closer to complete the understanding of the subject. Everything is a form of information when we are first exposed to it and it turns into knowledge only when it finds a golden touch of such people’s perception and approach.

With his scholarly disposition and serene demeanor, he was the favorite of everyone since the very beginning, and for me, he was much more special because in the first semester, his course was the only one that my little brain was able to find a connection with. He inspired to enjoy the journey while keeping focus intact on the goal. I was a mediocre among the kind of students I used to see around, but still his methods were always helpful for me and I was gradually finding something which I was getting intrigued about. His amazing command over language and speech makes him a blissful speaker and I always love listening to him and in fact, since those initial days of college when It was difficult for me to even understand English, he has been a big force of inspiration behind my increasing inclination towards the language in general and particularly with English being an international language for communication, it motivated me big time to improve myself in that direction as well. I remember when he once philosophically said, “There is space for everyone in this world. So don’t get disheartened by the failures and with increasing competitiveness, they are just bound to come. So there is no need to worry and just be conscious to see whether you are learning or not.” Along with all those virtues and qualities, he is greatly in love with his work and greatly understands his duty and responsibility to catalyze the process of forming not only good professionals but also noble citizens. I can’t forget those college days when he used to be excited about every lab, personally teaching TAs about what they are supposed to teach, carrying out a demo of upcoming lab experiment, preparing write-ups and well thought-out plan about what he wishes to teach and let students learn. He is indefatigable in every context and his passion to make students learn has not faded away even a bit. He has been really instrumental in my growth process as a professional as well as an individual. So was a great pleasure to meet him in person when I was in India last year and since my trip to India is just around the corner, I wish to meet him again, flip those pages of past and receive words of wisdom from his very own experiences.

Thank you Sir. You have been more than a teacher for numerous students like me. Thanks for all your teachings you bestowed upon us. May God bless you good health and eternal prosperity and I wish you keep inspiring everyone around, for the years to come! Happy Teacher’s day.

PS: Dedicated to my beloved Prof. R N Biswas, who taught 3 courses to our batch of 2002, and it’s simply ineffable to describe a magical personality like him.