Teachers

For the longest time I’d held as a basic assumption that no other person could really teach one anything. Nobody could teach another how to live, how to think, how to see things, how to understand. I was quite sure that teachers could teach one facts in better ways (facts in terms of numbers and figures, and how the human body works or how light is refracted and reflected, how to do a litmus test in the lab). They could teach one math in interesting ways or provide one the space to do math by oneself. They could teach one grammar rules, and how to write a language correctly. So I'd maintained that teachers could teach one the technical stuff, and the better the teacher the better they were at teaching one how things are in the world. Every now and again I wondered about this fundamental belief that I had because I did have very clear memories of the Headmaster of an old school and a teacher in high-school who had a significant effect on something more about myself than merely having an effect on the way I learned technical matters or facts or how things were – but I was able to brush off these instances as being unusual and they didn’t last for long enough, and I was never really sure as to what sort of an effect these teachers had on me or whether it was simply my own hare-brained imaginings that had me thinking that they had had an effect on me beyond the pale of the normal.

It took me till college to realise that a good teacher was one who got one to think effectively. And sometimes not effectively – but still, never to stop thinking and most importantly, to keep thinking. Never mind if it helped nobody else for those moments. A good teacher was one who got one to think about an interesting problem. Observing and thinking were better balanced by reading what other people had written. It was in college that I came across a teacher who stressed the importance of understanding what one was learning and/or thinking over. It wasn’t that the teacher told me to do badly in exams but he didn’t come and teach in the class so that we could sit for exams. I’d never not taken a class where one didn’t have to take notes unless (one were not paying attention, which happened often enough) or if it were the Bengali class in school (and only in specific years) where I could simply take joy in the class because I loved the class and maybe it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to claim that I most likely loved the teacher as well. But there in college I knew I was wasting my time completely in trying to write down without thinking – because it actually made sense to listen to what the professor in class was saying.

It’s been said before that when one is going through a lived experience, it’s very difficult to see what exactly is happening. It has to do with being too close to what is going on – and one can’t really understand what, if anything or everything, is happening. It was obvious to me by the second year in college that I was not making any significant contribution to my society. I was also utterly convinced that there was absolutely nobody on this planet who could teach me anything that was worth knowing or learning. And if there were anyone around – there was no chance that I was going to come across such a person. And really, if there was no way of contributing significantly by one’s own merit and if there was nobody around who could teach one something worth knowing – then there was very little point in sticking around for many, many years surviving only because one was too stupid and mentally challenged to do anything else. Deep down I’d always felt that people who’d had the advantage of having some material security in their lives owed it to society and to themselves to do better than just surviving. They had to do something – in a little way or in a medium way or in a big way if not in a great way – to make the world somewhat better than what it was when they had arrived. While in college the thought that struck me, and not on infrequent occasions, was that a lowly crocodile living in the Sunderbans was doing much more good for the eco-system while I, being a human being, with a conscience (apparently) was contributing nothing significant. I can’t say that this thought has disappeared – it has merely changed form.

This and that happened in the meanwhile - nothing earth-shattering. What I did find out all of a sudden though was that I had some excellent teachers.

They came from books or they were dead (and were certainly wiser than I was), and for the most part, therefore, did not exist in the real world. They weren’t just teachers in some detached and impersonal sense either. I got quite furiously attached to at least a couple of them and they showed me certain parts of myself that I didn’t think existed. They showed me, and rather unhesitatingly, the different things that a human being could ‘want’ or ‘desire’ or ‘experience’. They made me see myself, other people, and the real world out-there, and the shock of seeing was not something that I could always sanely absorb. For many times since, I have wondered about the extent to which “regular” human beings must blunt themselves or numb themselves or train themselves to think of only certain things, to see only certain things, to feel about only certain things, to know about only certain things while inhabiting the everyday world. It’s not possible to function normally otherwise, one may argue - although I wonder.

Then there was one who not only got me thinking but got me thinking and seeing myself and the world from different angles. It was seeing that a human mind is somewhat of a microcosm of all that exists on the outside. I seemed to carry parts of the world in my head. Even parts that annoyed me and irritated me and horrified me. I even realized that I harboured many beliefs not because I really had any good enough reason to believe them – but simply because I hadn’t thought them through. Are there any axiomatic values for living life?....There may well be (not without some ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’) but unless one is sure that it is an axiom that one has reached – maybe one should keep thinking and reading and reflecting over them as much as one can. And if the matter is something that is simply a matter of taste and preference maybe one should admit to that too and not try to make it into a universal matter of morality…

The interaction apart from other things, eventually involved what I wanted to do and with my life. Did I have any ambitions? Did I have any dreams? Did I have any realistic do-able dreams? It was all right to have fantasies about beautiful worlds and beautiful lives but what about the here-and-the-now? It wasn’t enough to be tormented by the world with its living horrors and its capacity for beauty - what did I intend to do in the real world? So it wasn’t just about things beyond or about the delightful and the bizarre in some fantasy land. It was also about seeing the world and to keep seeing myself and to be incapacitated by neither. It’s not a terribly easy thing to do and I know that I have still not succeeded in doing this but I don’t know whether people would say that it’s an essential thing either. I know what my response might be for that but a more justified question might be – “so what on earth did you do with all this ‘seeing’ that you are talking about?”

And in the meanwhile I remember there was other stuff that came up – stuff like Marxism, Feminism, Socialism, individualism, the environment, the economy, poverty, problem-solving, education, teaching, learning, time-saving, reading, laughing…and also literature, poems, stories, The Buddha, God and love….and about each of these things – my views shifted. Seemingly they didn’t. But they did.

Whatever the reasons may be – I know I’ve changed, and not insignificantly in the way I think about the world and its people and (even?) myself. I’ve realized what an exceptional teacher does – and does so charmingly and innocuously and with the Holy Spirit. The teacher quite gently gets one into choosing the way to think or to see. An exceptional teacher is one who makes one think, and he makes one think differently about things – but most importantly the teacher helps one see the many paths that seem to co-exist within one's mind, and gets one to choose the way. An unusual teacher gets one to purge oneself of the many bad habits – of the mind at least – and by asking questions, and sometimes through a series of questions or by making a statement which hits something very deep. It’s a curious feeling. The moment something hits – it is absorbed either in a flash or else so gradually that one starts believing that that is the way that one did indeed always see ‘such-and-such’. And one believes that one had always harboured a balanced view of ‘such-and-such’ or an open view of ‘such-and-such’ or a careful view of 'such-and-such'. But that’s not true. One never would have seen if it hadn’t been for that statement or the series of questions or the lengthy conversations with the exceptional teacher.

One changes within. One’s way of thinking, one’s beliefs, one's fundamental way of seeing is what is affected by such a teacher. The teacher lets some of the chaos be….The swirling questions remain. Some of them may be satisfactorily sorted out (and some may not be), and yet unerringly, the teacher, picks at the things that need to be picked on and fixed. Yet all along one is quite utterly convinced that one is doing it all on one’s own until one realizes one day that one isn’t. It is the teacher. And one hadn’t even seen the individual as one’s teacher. It takes a lot of humility to be able to acknowledge that there is finally one being who does know more and knows more about what matters and can sensibly transmit this knowing - no matter what else, and the nicest thing about all this, at least for me, is that the teacher is also wholly real (although sometimes I wonder about that too). Maybe it is only one’s own batty perception of how the interaction unfolds but what cannot be discounted is that one knows that one is hooked and doesn't want to be unhooked.

Can changes within change how one deals with the world and the real-world independent of one’s inner projections?...I am stumped here. I don’t have an answer for this, not even now - sadly enough. But if an exceptional teacher can’t make a difference – then maybe one really can’t be any better. If one cannot be the best one is capable of being even with a teacher who cares, who listens when nobody else does, who loves wisely when nobody else knows how, who scolds when everybody else has given up, who talks when the world is silent – then maybe one can never live how one is supposed to live. One then does become a loser and a pitiable loser at that. It's something like the horse and taking the horse to the water stand. Gently, innocuously, and yet firmly the horse is taken to the water-stand, and the horsey thinks he got there all on his own…what happens then? Does the horse drink or not?

One has to live one’s life. Even if one knows very little one still has to engage in living life – mistakes and all. There’s no way around this. And there are holes that I can’t fill, and don't know how to fill. For when it comes to living life I honestly don’t know whether reading, writing, thinking and reflecting and thinking hard, and all the dialogues within and without can make one live better and run with all one’s got. I don’t know how else one can do it but I don’t know whether engaging in all of these activities makes one regret any less. For when mistakes are made they seem to be made inspite of what one knows…I’ve never been able to understand this.

I don’t know too much about God but I’ll take the exceptional teacher who also happens to be one’s best friend. Cranky, moody, unpredictable, amusing, witty, brilliant, bright, sensible, knowledgeable, whimsical, temperamental, balanced…and with warts and all and one who is profoundly human. What happens in the ever-after is something I have no idea about, and that can wait. In the meanwhile, one realizes that one owes a debt. Not because it is imposed upon one by anyone else or by outer mechanisms or by some external agent but because it is imposed upon one by one’s very own soul. And in the meantime, one trundles along with a weighty albatross (or maybe a couple) and with some walks during dawns and dusks and noons along some paths not frequently traveled and keeps walking and running into an uncertain future.