Skip to main content

From a Teacher’s Diary


Henry B Adams, American historian and writer, is believed to have said that “one never knows where a teacher’s influence ends.” As a teacher, I have always striven to keep that maxim in mind while dealing with students. Even if I couldn’t wield any positive influence, I never wished to leave a scar on the psyche of any student of mine. Best of intentions notwithstanding, we make human errors and there may be students who were not quite happy with me especially since I never possessed even the lightest shade of diplomacy.

Tactless though I was, I have been fortunate, as a teacher, to have a lot of good memories returning with affection from former students. Let me share the most recent experience.

A former student’s WhatsApp message yesterday carried two PDF attachments. One was the dissertation she wrote for her graduation. The other was a screenshot of the Acknowledgement. “A special mention goes to Mr Tomichan Matheikal, my English teacher in higher secondary school, whose motivation and kindness was one of the paramount reasons behind my decision to pursue English Literature academically.”

Krishna Hari was a science student at school. But she wrote excellent poems in English and that’s how I, her English teacher, took note of her. I featured her here on my blog when she was in grade 12. See: Where do old birds go to die? Now, four years after she left school, I’m proud to read the dissertation she wrote for her bachelor’s degree. I’m even more proud to realise that I have a place in her heart.

Titled 'The Confluence of Marxist Ethics and Religion in Cinema: An In-Depth Analysis of Ranjith's Pranchiyettan and The Saint', Krishna’s dissertation is a scholarly study of an unforgettable Malayalam movie in which the protagonist Pranchiyettan struggles to realise the meaning of his life. Pranchiyettan – a hypocorism for Francis – is a successful and wealthy businessman who is driven by an acute sense of inferiority complex due to his lack of education and sophistication. He wants to get a Padmasree award to compensate for his lack of public validation. But a character no less than Saint Francis who appears in person to Pranchiyettan teaches him that the greatness of human life lies not in public validation but in faith, love, and compassion. 

A still from the movie

Krishna’s paper critiques the movie through two lenses: Christianity and Marxism. “Though Marxism opposes institutionalized religions’ upholding of the exploitative monopoly of the bourgeoisie, modern Marxist theorists cite compelling links between religious values and Marxist ethics, predominantly Christian,” Krishna writes in her dissertation. I used to describe Jesus as the first Communist in my classes. You never know where a teacher’s influence ends, though Krishna’s collocation of Marxism and Christianity may have nothing to do with my observations.

In Krishna’s interpretation, Saint Francis in the movie becomes a symbol of the eternal values versus the ephemeral capitalist values of Pranchiyettan. Eventually, Pranchiyettan moves from his ephemeral world towards the sublime heights that Saint Francis beckons him to.

A fortuitous coincidence is that Krishna’s dissertation came just when I stopped teaching at school officially. I bid farewell to school on 28 Feb. I’m thrilled to start my retirement with a reading of a former student’s brilliant dissertation.

Comments

  1. Yes, indeed! " One never knows where a teacher's influence ends." This is been my experience also, looking back over my experience as a teacher of Philosophy, Religious Studies and Social Sciences, in the seminaries of the Catholic Church,for almost forty years. In retrospect and hindsight, my teaching has had a Ripple Effect of having triggered liberative impulses in the students, like setting time-bombs for the future. The least expected seem to have e received the great impact...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The least expected seem to have received the greater impact... That has been my experience too. And those whom I regarded as my best, many of them have never turned back even to say an occasional hi.

      Delete
  2. Hari OM
    I am inclined to think that those teachers (or any adults) who leave their mark on young minds do so not because they are offering wisdom via words, but that - via those words - something beyond the mind and intellect is touched within that youngster. For me, the English teacher I had in my first year of higher school took the time following an assignment we'd been given to say that I should never stop writing, for I had talent. I haven't stopped - although I may not have fulfilled the promise he saw in me. Another was my computer science lecturer who saw the philosopher in me and whose words meant much more to me several decades later... "It doesn't matter". To explain that would take a dissertation - which is what I did for gurukula! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, indeed, it's not the knowledge or even wisdom we provide as teachers that touches hearts.

      Delete
  3. You never know what lessons will resonate with students. Or even what off-hand remarks. Nice she reached out to you. Interesting dissertation.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was thrilled to get that message. A sense of fulfilment.

      Delete
  4. Happy second innings.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thank you for sharing this insightful post!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...

Empuraan – Review

Revenge is an ancient theme in human narratives. Give a moral rationale for the revenge and make the antagonist look monstrously evil, then you have the material for a good work of art. Add to that some spices from contemporary politics and the recipe is quite right for a hit movie. This is what you get in the Malayalam movie, Empuraan , which is running full houses now despite the trenchant opposition to it from the emergent Hindutva forces in the state. First of all, I fail to understand why so much brouhaha was hollered by the Hindutvans [let me coin that word for sheer convenience] who managed to get some 3 minutes censored from the 3-hour movie. The movie doesn’t make any explicit mention of any of the existing Hindutva political parties or other organisations. On the other hand, Allahu Akbar is shouted menacingly by Islamic terrorists, albeit towards the end. True, the movie begins with an implicit reference to what happened in Gujarat in 2002 after the Godhra train burnin...

Empuraan and Ramayana

Maggie and I will be watching the Malayalam movie Empuraan tomorrow. The tickets are booked. The movie has created a lot of controversy in Kerala and the director has decided to impose no less than 17 censors on it himself. I want to watch it before the jingoistic scissors find its way to the movie. It is surprising that the people of Kerala took such exception to this movie when the same people had no problem with the utterly malicious and mendacious movie The Kerala Story (2023). [My post on that movie, which I didn’t watch, is here .] Empuraan is based partly on the Gujarat riots of 2002. The riots were real and the BJP’s role in it (Mr Modi’s, in fact) is well-known. So, Empuraan isn’t giving the audience any falsehood as The Kerala Story did. Moreover, The Kerala Story maligned the people of Kerala while Empuraan is about something that happened in the faraway Gujarat quite long ago. Why are the people of Kerala then upset with Empuraan ? Because it tells the truth, M...