A Tribute

A Tribute

It was

Summer of  ‘74

Through dust and couple of DTC buses

A tentative shy lad enters your office

On the fourth floor overlooking

The green expanse of front silky lawn

With tall oscillating false Asoka trees

Already, he had lost precious six months

Of fellowship – at Waltair

“You can come and join my lab any time

But I expect hard work and first-rate results”

It took more than a month

To transfer from the coastal beach

To the hot dry Hauz Khas campus

Contrary to persistent hostel rumors

I found you to be more considerate

Even when I had absconded for four days straight

You hardly said a reproaching word

What is education? What is creation?

Ask a Maslow, a Piaget or Aurobindo

What’s to be imparted?

At a Nalanda, an IIT or Shanti Niketan

Or at any Ivy League school

Merely knowing polymer chain folding, Fourier space,

A MOSFET or Hall effect

Can take you only, thus far –

It cannot propel you to the heights of

J C Bose, Pasternak. or Balamurali

Yet

Education, nay, learning does happen

Silently, latently

When an earnest student

And a caring preceptor meet.

A rare phenomenon, anywhere anytime

© 2011 by the author, lines composed on the occasion of Honor the Mentor Day

(This should have been posted on Teachers Day instituted in the honor of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan. But as it happens, I am always the person running late trying to catch the super fast express train! I hope to write another article on my teachers and their kindness - as a gesture of gratitude. There are some specialized words here but with wikipedia the reader can educate himself.)