The Teachers Behind the Teacher This Teachers’ Day, I realised something I wish I had realised much earlier. I have received countless messages from my students over the years, but I have never sent a Teachers’ Day message to any of my own teachers. I remember them. I remember what they taught me. More importantly, I can still see their influence in the teacher I became. And that made me think about the teachers behind the teacher. Mr Lewis, my English teacher, was the one who made me fall in love with language. He taught me to look at literature more closely, to analyse it, to question it and to find meaning beyond what was immediately visible. Miss Namita, my Biology teacher, made me curious about the human body and its intricacies. Because of her, I wanted to read more about human anatomy, simply because I wanted to understand it better. Then there was Anita Sood Ma’am, my Science teacher during my primary school years. She taught me something that I still use every day as a...
After We Swipe Away I was looking at the pictures from Nepal today. A family standing in front of what was once their home. Walls gone. Belongings scattered. The familiar suddenly made unfamiliar. I stopped scrolling. For a few seconds. Then my thumb moved. And I went on. That small movement has stayed with me. Because what happened in those few seconds? I felt sad. I felt helpless. I thought about those families and wondered what it must feel like to lose the place you call home, perhaps in a matter of hours. And then I continued with my day. Perhaps that is the strange contradiction of our times. We have never had so much access to the suffering of others, and yet we have become remarkably good at moving past it. A photograph appears. We pause. We feel. We scroll. Another tragedy appears. We pause again. And then we move on. I don’t say this as an accusation. I do it too. In fact, that is what troubles me most. I am very good at feeling concerned. But what a...