Being “Prof”… is the title of a lively , humorous blogpost penned on the blogosphere by an academic Professor, Mr. G. Sabarinathan just a few hours ago.
It’s a delightful read and I was so inspired to respond to it with my own blogpost which you can read if you scroll right all the way down this page after you’ve first read of course the Professor’s own wise witticisms.
Here you go:
QUOTE: “Old age gives one the license to be a loose cannon. The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary describes a loose cannon as a “a person, usually a public figure, who often behaves in a way that nobody can predict.”
With that preamble I request readers of this post not to get offended. It is all in jest. Nor to write me off as having gone into clinical depression. I am sprightly as ever, full of malice, a la Sardar Khushwant Singh – sans his scholarship or wit.
I came to academia with the lofty goal of finding answers to questions that plagued me as an investment professional. I wanted to understand why there was so much consolidation across industries – big companies swallowing up smaller ones or even companies of comparable size. And then develop a view of the future of the industrial world.
Just to break the suspense I got nowhere near my goal. The question remains as unanswered as it was when I started my journey.
But twenty four years in academe taught me a few other things – about where I stood as a seeker of knowledge and, more importantly, where I stood in society as a teacher. Here are a few of those discoveries, in no particular order.
#1: Teachers, like cops, are best avoided socially. In any case they do not show up on top of the guest list for social gatherings. On the rare occasion they are invited, they are welcomed by the host politely, then left to look for anyone else who might be willing to risk a conversation with a teacher.
#2: That makes teachers the most unlikely souls of not just parties, but even family gatherings. There is this young relative with whom I had a tolerable relationship. And then by the time I found him in my finance class it was too relate to recuse myself on grounds of conflict of interest. Life was not the same thereafter. The gentleman studiously avoided any family gathering where I was an invitee, except his own wedding.
#3: The teacher-taught relationship is over-romanticised. Those moving stories such as that of Andrei Kolmogorov being looked after by his students for two years as he lay dying of Parkinson’s are exceptions that prove Discovery # 3.
#4: Teachers are the most easily forgotten among people you run into in life – unless they have harmed you spectacularly. That is a bit like the story of Jaya and Vijaya in Bhagavata who prayed they incarnate as enemies of Mahavishnu so they might always remember Him.
A student from an IIM somewhere in western India apparently asked his former teacher at an airport: Sir, I heard Prof M left the institute? Bewildered, the teacher replied: “The last I know, he was still at IIM* this morning. I should know – I’m Prof M.” (This is a true story).
I pray to my students that if someone asked them who taught them finance they should at least get the teacher’s gender right, if not the name.
There are more of those discoveries. Maybe for another post?
Meanwhile please dont beat me up, no matter you are prof or student. 🙏 UNQUOTE
End of the Professor’s story
Now , please read my own story and take on the above ⬆️
I loved reading this humorous tongue in cheek piece ! After reading it I thought the most thought-provoking line in the Professor‘s blogpost was this one :
#3: “The teacher-taught relationship is over-romanticised”.
The thought that immediately flashed through my mind was the famous Vedic invocatory chant known to us as “shaanthi paattam”:
ॐ सह नाववतु ।
सह नौ भुनक्तु ।
सह वीर्यं करवावहै ।
तेजस्वि नावधीतमस्तु मा विद्विषावहै ।
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥
Om Saha Naav[au]-Avatu |
Saha Nau Bhunaktu |
Saha Viiryam Karavaavahai |
Tejasvi Naav[au]-Adhiitam-Astu Maa Vidvissaavahai |
Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih ||
“Together may we move, “Together may we relish, “Together may we perform with vigor, “May what has been studied be filled with brilliance, and “May it not give rise to hostility”.
The above litany is a conventional invocation that students and the teacher chant in unison at the very beginning of every classroom lecture or seminar.
The last line is very very significant since very tacitly and delicately it too hints at the “over romanticised relationship of the teacher and taught”.
How truly wonderful indeed is the profound wisdom of the ageless Vedas that aeons ago they could clearly and surely intuit that in a guru-sishya bond great amount of knowledge and understanding can get transmitted, but that the same light of understanding can cut both ways however …
It can lead to enlightenment. It can also potentially lead however to hostility between the teacher and taught… I.e. it can lead to deep differences of opinion, wide differences in interpretations, views and outlook. Knowledge more often than not feeds the ego … and that clouds the light of knowing.
Winston Churchill’s quip best encapsulates the deep and undeniable tension there exists between teacher and taught and why that simmering subterranean tension often can break out into open hostility or mutual lack of respect and warmth. “I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught”.
Which is why the Shaanti paattamsends out a fervent Vedic prayer: may the Knowledge gained not separate us guru and sishyas but create a healthy intellectual kinship tie between us .
What a noble and lofty Vedic sentiment!
Sudarshan Madabushi