Keats was a tuber...

I had very recently watched the English play 'Keats was a tuber' during Saarang.. It sent reeling into me a long debate. What exactly is the role of a teacher in the society? It isn't a new question and neither is the answer new. But the age old query seems to be coming out with totally unexpected and shocking answers of late.

What is it about teachers that generally attracts students? One is their teaching, another is the affection they shower upon us. No student hates affection being showered upon him by a teacher, and irrespective of the teacher teaching well, the attraction stays. It is such a very satisfying experience to stay so close to a teacher of yours. I say that from experience, as in the last few years I have had a teacher in K.K.A sir who stands unparalleled in the amount of affection and mastery in the art of teaching you can shower upon a student. A good teacher to a student is more than just a
teacher. He/She is a parent, a guardian, and a very good friend.

The story of 'Keats was a tuber' was based in a college, and was out and out about the English department of the college, where there is an old professor who is a bachelor, who develops feelings for a couple of his students, and one of them who is now a professor in the same college, develops similar feelings for him, eventually dies because he does not realise that she has feelings for him. Morever, another professor who has just joined the college, falls in love and eventually gets the girl the old prof had fallen for, leaving the old prof miserable. I branded this play as Enna Koduma Saravanan. The name of the play was so because in the English text, there was a chapter by name Keats was a tuberculosis patient, and it was such that half the title, Keats was a tuber was on one page, and culosis patient was on the other, and while students studied, they mugged it that way. The title was a pun on this custom in colleges.

I was on my way with life when I came across this article in the paper a couple of days ago about a professor trying to harass his student. This psyched me out. It restarted the debate in me. Why are professors and teachers respected? It is solely for the art they impart to you. I staunchly believe in the fact that without them, we cannot achieve anything, whatsoever, in life. They are our lifeline to all successes in life. But, is the fact that they try to exploit with a student's life for their personal gains, right? It so obviously isn't. It is such a shame to the teacher's community that among them exist black sheep who try to play with the physical and the mental fitness of the witness, I mean the student. It is some kind of emotional blackmail, and they try to exploit the condition of the students, for their own gains. This is evidence of how cheap the country has gotten today, but the truth is that with more care, we can change things for the good. We try to play peaceful with everything. We give an extra room for everything. It is not now that the country is seeing relationships among guru-shishyas. But unless there was mutual compatibility and mutual acceptance, it hasn't gone too far. Though such relationships do show some faculty of the teaching community in bad light, the community which needs immense respect for the general good it is doing to the world, needs to buck itself up, and maintain the integrity the job needs for itself to stay. The world has had enough of rogues, doing the sacred job of teaching, and it has to be restored in good hands...