Will You Walk With Me? - II

Dear Sri,

And Sridhar, I should say that you are quite a cult figure in IL! How you keep your readers mesmerised is truly amazing!

You might have observed one fact. Before you came into IL people had to read me without any choice for a better alternative. That can be likened to the days before spray painting where all cars from the Ford assembly line came only in black colour. And Henry Ford made his immortal statement "You can have any colour you want, provided it is black."

Only after you came in did I hone my writing skills. I saw you hypnotising your readers! You just rubbed a part of your skills on me.
Thanks a lot, brother, for the kind words.
And a greater thanks for consecrating this thread with your presence.

love,
sridhar

Dear Aruna,
In fact in the first write-up I had prepared, we reached the destination. When I read it, I fould that it was devoid of emotional content. It was insipid, something like an accountant's report. So I scrapped that and started afresh.
And we are not taking rest, Aruna. Having talked about R my mind is rather heavy and I can't walk any further.
AC is a huge campus, but well laid out so that even a new comer might not lose his way. But even a person who has been there for years, will still be lost in its majestic beauty. This is in spite of the fact that the entire frontage of the college is now hidden by the commercial complex, a row of shops just in the front of the campus.
Our journey will continue soon. Stay tuned.
regards,

Dear Mithila,

Yes, you are right. There are Rs in all walkis of life. They are basically very honest people and their intellectual integrity is unimpeachable.

But the problem, Mithila, is that under those conditions they can never hope to have a peaceful, happy family life.
Another observation I found from persons like R is that their emotional development does not match their intellectual development. That could be real hell. I know some great names like Allan Watts, who soared to dizzy intellectual heights, but remained frustrated as their emotional development could not keep pace with their intellectual progress. Allan Watts killed himself. Ayn Rand lost her mind during the last few years of her life.

Very rarely do we find teachers like the ones you have sketched in your essay.Hats off to them.

You are right. Many of them were not good teachers but excellent human beings.

When R spoke with the Professor I was also there my heart in my mouth,what is the Professor going to do?

You have described my situation when I was present in the scene. I still vividly remember the place where this conversation took place. At the entrance to Faculty Room, close to the wall. The Professor's face fell, he let out an awkward smile and then mumbling some excuse he walked in to the Faculty room.

I enjoyed reading this essay.

Thanks Mithila. Coming from a person who writes very interesting accounts of mundane incidents happening in day to day life, the words of praise carry a special weight.

Hello Vanaja,
It is nice to know that you have a genius within your family. I will be thankful if you can identify to which class the genius belongs to. (remember, you classified the geniuses functionally in your last post)

No way. From my childhood, I never wanted to be a teacher. Though it is a very esteemed profession somehow I do not prefer it. May be for the reason, a teacher ought to be a perfectionist.

In a way you are right, Vanaja. I love teaching. In fact soon after my marriage I resigned my job in TVS and set up professional practice. To make both ends meet I started conducting coaching classes for CA students. At one time it looked like I might become a full time teacher, as there was a good demand for my classes.
But after a year I found out that teaching is a thankless job and continuous exposure to teaching actually dullens your intellect. After three batches I knew every problem, every solution I taught by heart. There was no need for me to refer to the book at all. At that time I decided enough is enough and quit teaching for good.

You are right. We can easily live with a sinner for a year. But to live with a genius even for a single day will be more difficult. In fact I want to do a research on those who are forced to live with a genius - their spouses, children, friends etc. You will get many precious insights.

regards,

Originally Posted by varalotti

Hello Vanaja,
It is nice to know that you have a genius within your family. I will be thankful if you can identify to which class the genius belongs to. (remember, you classified the geniuses functionally in your last post)

That person is an intellectual and a creative Genius. The crown goes to the person's human psychology.

Sridhar,
Oh, this time we are in the college campus....that's nice and its also nice to see the way professors were in those days in your alma matter...
Rs are seen in every walk of life...my hubby is also a perfect eg. for that., intelluctual wise he is very very good., but worldly wise he has to learn a lot....me too.....

campus and the memories made you take rest over there., so we also take some rest and move along....

sriniketan

Dear Swati,

Welcome aboard, my dear ardent reader. Thanks for coming with me in the train, walking with me in the streets of Madurai and into the campus of my alma mater, The American College.

I am impressed by the feelings you have for R and the hatred you have developed for our system and the bureaucracy. This is one case we all know. Think of the thousands of geniuses crushed by the system.

The great physicist Subramanian Chandrasekar who had been Chicago most of his life came to India in the 70s to find out whether he can move over to India. We should have welcomed him with a red carpet. Instead even at the moment he got down from the plane, we showed him what bureaucracy and politics are. They were a group of scientists. Some were transported by bus and others by special Benz cars. Frustrated he decided never to come back to India.
You know, had he come back to India, India would have got the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983. A golden chance missed.

Thanks for walking with me, Swati and thanks for the fb.
regards,

Dear Lalitha,

Yes, we are resuming the walk after a long period of rest. We should have done it earlier but the poem, my love and hers, intervened. We had to stop for a while to read the poem.

Women's colleges are totally different. The teachers rule the students with an iron hand. I was associated with a leading women's college in Madurai as a member of their Academic Committee. I was invited to revise the syllabus for B.Com. And then the Computer Ma'am invited me for the same job in B.Sc.Computer Science.
I found that the teachers are very rigid. I had to put my feet down and tell them that their syllabus was way out of date and deleted major portions from their Accountancy Syllabus. And completely revised their computer science syllabus.
At that time I used to think if the teachers are so rigid here in the committee, how will they behave with their students. A person like R would have been failed and sent out of the college pretty early.
Now research has found out that co-education institutions are the best alternatives. They produce the best behaviour and above all give us excellent lessons in human relations, that would be valid throughout our lives.
On our way ahead lies the famous Visalam coffee bar and the AV bridge. Stay tuned, Lalitha.

love,

Dear Sowmya,
Thanks for the kind words which made my day. I am happy to learn that you have read my writings in Womens Era.

If my writings have made you feel at ease with our Madurai, then I can be happy that I have repaid a millionth of what Madurai did to me.

You are absolutely right, that very few lecturers in the Indian educational set-up encourage feedback or even active participation from students. But then, it is very much a two-way game, because by and large, Indian professors do follow the practice of 'dictating notes' during class lectures, and most students are happy with that. So far, a win-win situation, unfortunately..

You are right, Sowmya. Even in American College we had a professor who used to prescribe one text book for the course and buy for himself another text book. He would simply copy down from the other text book and read out his "notes". Well, one of my classmates found that out. The next day all of us had that text book opened under our desks. We were taken back to know that the dump professor was repeating every word in that book. We used to pretend to take notes (otherwise he would get offended).

I remember a professor who once told us, "To survive in teaching, you should be either an extremely knowledgable person, or a very good-hearted person. Either way, your students will accept you. Otherwise, you will forever be on a sticky wicket.'

That is perfectly true. One great blessing in my life is that I have been taught by a few persons who were both - extremely knowledgable and unbelievably good hearted.

Looking forward to more reminiscences,

Thanks. Stay tuned.
regards,

Thanks, Vanaja. Maybe you should write a whole post on him. I can't wait to know more about him.
regards,

Originally Posted by srinivasan_vanaja

That person is an intellectual and a creative Genius. The crown goes to the person's human psychology.