That time of the year when...
It will be soon that time of the year when another set of young men and women say good bye to the campus. The place that was school to them for a little less than two years would soon be alma mater, a somewhat vaguely defined relationship. For many of them the alma mater would just be a bagful of memories. For others it would be a badge of lifelong honour and pride.
I often wonder how many of them would miss the place as they head out to a world of expectations and promise. Would they miss us teachers a good part of whose lives revolve around them?
It is our engagement with the students that defines or marks our calendars. We plan our academic life around our teaching commitments. And our families plan their lives around our academic lives. Students have a larger impact on our lives as teachers than we might imagine. And I am not yet talking about the feedback, which sometimes leaves evergreen memories and, on some rare occasions, scars that you wish you could forget.
Which makes me often wonder how much truth there is to what some of my colleagues claim: We academics are at the heart of an academic institution. I ask instead: What would this school and our lives as teachers be but for its students?
It will be soon that time of the year when the trees would have all shed their leaves, in preparation for the hot and desiccating summer of Bangalore. To a more delusive or hyper-imaginative mind like mine it would appear that they do so in honour of the kids that are about to leave the campus.
Or may be it is their way of saying how much they will miss them. Like the flora of Ayodhya that is said to have left the town to accompany Lord Rama to the Dandakaranya forest when His father banished Him.
These trees are like mute witnesses to the vicissitudes of life on the campus. They stand there stoically for years and decades, watching the steady procession of people who live on the campus and then eventually leave as they graduate, retire or are snatched away by the Hands of Destiny.
I know most of these trees individually, as if they were animate creatures, and not the inanimate but living creatures that our science text books would have us believe. They must have stood where they are for many decades, like Lord Tennyson's brook, even as men come and go. I know how their leaves look, how their branches droop and the spread of their lush, generous canopies.
It will be soon that time of the year when the whole campus will go to sleep. The students' halls of residences will be vacant once again. Many faculty colleagues and their families will leave on their annual vacation, as if they wanted to say, What do we do here with all the students gone.
It will be soon that time of the year that I do not look forward to. In spite of being an old man I do not like transitions in life. And I do not like milestones that forebode impending transitions either.
As I walk back home to the hastening dusk on the December sky I visualise that time of the year that will soon be upon me which will remind that I will be closer to completing another year of my life as a teacher. It will soon be that time of the year when I will be one year closer to calling it a day as a teacher.
It will soon be that time of the year when I would have gone through another year of circumstances working their inevitable changes on my mind, ever so subtly that I would not even notice. Until I run into someone from my remote past who exclaims how much I have changed over the years, how taciturn, morose, quiet, grumpy, cynical or humourless I have become.
But this year will not be just another of those fourteen years that I have spent as a teacher here. I have been through some extraordinary experiences this year. I discovered a latent emotional need that I had never imagined that I had - the need to be an elderly relative of a kind that I have not been so far. But just as quickly I realised to my searing disappointment that this desire will remain unfulfilled.
It will soon be that time of the year when the strong arm of Rejection will have prised a piece of me away from the complex ensemble of personalities that my friends who claim to me know me well tell me I am - even though the rational side to me may have helped me come to terms with this unrequited need for belongingness.
Nanni...Namaskaaram..
I often wonder how many of them would miss the place as they head out to a world of expectations and promise. Would they miss us teachers a good part of whose lives revolve around them?
It is our engagement with the students that defines or marks our calendars. We plan our academic life around our teaching commitments. And our families plan their lives around our academic lives. Students have a larger impact on our lives as teachers than we might imagine. And I am not yet talking about the feedback, which sometimes leaves evergreen memories and, on some rare occasions, scars that you wish you could forget.
Which makes me often wonder how much truth there is to what some of my colleagues claim: We academics are at the heart of an academic institution. I ask instead: What would this school and our lives as teachers be but for its students?
It will be soon that time of the year when the trees would have all shed their leaves, in preparation for the hot and desiccating summer of Bangalore. To a more delusive or hyper-imaginative mind like mine it would appear that they do so in honour of the kids that are about to leave the campus.
Or may be it is their way of saying how much they will miss them. Like the flora of Ayodhya that is said to have left the town to accompany Lord Rama to the Dandakaranya forest when His father banished Him.
These trees are like mute witnesses to the vicissitudes of life on the campus. They stand there stoically for years and decades, watching the steady procession of people who live on the campus and then eventually leave as they graduate, retire or are snatched away by the Hands of Destiny.
I know most of these trees individually, as if they were animate creatures, and not the inanimate but living creatures that our science text books would have us believe. They must have stood where they are for many decades, like Lord Tennyson's brook, even as men come and go. I know how their leaves look, how their branches droop and the spread of their lush, generous canopies.
It will be soon that time of the year when the whole campus will go to sleep. The students' halls of residences will be vacant once again. Many faculty colleagues and their families will leave on their annual vacation, as if they wanted to say, What do we do here with all the students gone.
It will be soon that time of the year that I do not look forward to. In spite of being an old man I do not like transitions in life. And I do not like milestones that forebode impending transitions either.
As I walk back home to the hastening dusk on the December sky I visualise that time of the year that will soon be upon me which will remind that I will be closer to completing another year of my life as a teacher. It will soon be that time of the year when I will be one year closer to calling it a day as a teacher.
It will soon be that time of the year when I would have gone through another year of circumstances working their inevitable changes on my mind, ever so subtly that I would not even notice. Until I run into someone from my remote past who exclaims how much I have changed over the years, how taciturn, morose, quiet, grumpy, cynical or humourless I have become.
But this year will not be just another of those fourteen years that I have spent as a teacher here. I have been through some extraordinary experiences this year. I discovered a latent emotional need that I had never imagined that I had - the need to be an elderly relative of a kind that I have not been so far. But just as quickly I realised to my searing disappointment that this desire will remain unfulfilled.
It will soon be that time of the year when the strong arm of Rejection will have prised a piece of me away from the complex ensemble of personalities that my friends who claim to me know me well tell me I am - even though the rational side to me may have helped me come to terms with this unrequited need for belongingness.
Nanni...Namaskaaram..
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