I keep seeing them. Dipanjan Rai
Chaudhuri, who taught physics in
Presidency College—a subject that I, an
English major, had not even the most
tenuous link with. But I spent count-
less afternoons riveted in his office, as
he recounted tales of the ’70s when he
was a firebrand Naxal (I never could
be truly radical like him). Later, in JNU,
Prof. Kapil Kapoor, the ideological op-
posite of DRC, introduced the radical
strain of Sanskrit into my ordered Eng-
lish literature world, which then altered
the DNA of my academic life forever (I
never could give the hours to Sanskrit
that I should have). My PhD supervisor,
H. S. Shivaprakash, would cook for us
while he taught a small seminar–class at
home and that was when I learnt to eat
his excellent ragi mudde with sambar
(I never did learn how practice and
theory are so effortlessly linked as he
made it seem in his life).Y
et, while their influence on me is
overt, quasi-parental, something
that I have digested as much as
I have rejected, I wonder why this
morning’s ride through the liminal
space of the city has unleashed this
particular childhood memory in lieu of
the answers I have been seeking. And
then, arriving at the gates of the college,
I try to remember New Miss’s face and
fail. But the wisp of her memory is
redolent with the answer. In my new
classroom, we shall confront ideas
and ideologies of course. But perhaps,
we must begin with kindness.Delhi, en route to the new liberal arts
university in Haryana where I have
just been contracted to teach first-year
undergrads. As I look around for a seat,
minding my stuff, something slices
through the morning and this story is
suddenly returned to me, fully fleshed
out, cleanly remembered, piquant with
details that I haven’t thought about in a
very long time.I
sit down, and try hurriedly to stuff
the papers I am carrying into the
oversized FabIndia bag I bought
recently in order to play the role of the
new teacher convincingly. In my head,
I see my childhood version sobbing
now—buck-toothed, awkward, too
tall—and witness her love for her young
teacher, complete in and of itself, and
I ask myself if, much like a pet’s for
their human, the love we had for our
childhood teachers, did not, in fact,
invent them.
I am pleased with this line of
thought, aphoristic as it is, but it is
of no use to me right now. I return
to more mundane matters at hand.
I have, in the weeks preceding this
assignment, spent a lot of time
thinking about pedagogic methods,
while I worked on a syllabus plan,
selected readings that would connect
with millennials, often shutting my
eyes and inventing 20 young people
in front of the phantom ‘new teacher’
version of me. But my own teachers
kept interrupting the tableau, sitting
in on the imaginary classes.Memory Roomreadersdigest.co.in 117