A tale of two teachers

What makes a teacher memorable?

Why must a teacher even be memorable?

What's the job of a teacher? Is it to ensure that the subject matter they are teaching gets communicated clearly, at least for the moment that they tried to parcel it into your brain? Or is it something grander, something supposedly more meaningful than merely getting the subject matter across?

I'll separate my answer to the above in two broad categories, which largely corresponds to the two different kinds of teacher I've met in my life.

Now, it doesn't mean that a teacher can only be one of the two. Far from it. The greatest ones are those who combine the two qualities into a single whole, and change their students' lives in the process.

The first thing that a teacher must do, and it is rather table stakes for a teacher, is to get the pedagogical job done. In other words, what they teach, you must understand. Now, the student has a big role to play in this too, but the teacher's most basic level of success depends squarely on whether what they teach you do understand.

As basic as that sounds, there is still a long road to mastery for this style of teaching. Someone who is great at this, understands the mind of the student. They understand the nook and crannies inside the student's mind where logical fallacies reside, they can estimate the mental jumps that the median student in their class can manage to make, and they are deeply familiar with the correlation between the specific points of complexity in the subject matter, and the specific gaps in logic that those will lead to in the student's mind.

This teacher, one whom I have known and studied Math from previously, is a master of the subject, and a master at mapping that subject matter to the median child's mind in a way that leaves no gaps in logic and understanding.

In the words of Parker J. Palmer, this teacher has successfully blended the Subject and the Student into their teaching style.

If you've ever been taught by someone like this, then you'll probably remember them fondly, and with a certain respect for how they brought clarity about the subject into your mind.

But there's another level of remembrance that I've experienced for another teacher. And you might have had a teacher in your own life who made you feel that way too. The feeling I'm talking about is something that goes beyond respect for their teaching, and beyond the feeling of awe that you might have felt at one point for an awesome teacher who was a master of their subject matter.

Some teachers have a way, not only of helping you understand something, but also of making you feel understood. Someone who accepts you, who opens a door for you to come in with all of your flaws and all of your ignorance, and makes you feel seen.

I've had such a teacher, and I'm infinitely grateful for having had them in my life. Which doesn't really make sense, if you think about it. I mean, it's really not the teacher's stated job to make an impact on you beyond getting the subject matter across to you clearly, efficiently and effectively. But that's the thing about this second kind of teacher, they don't keep in the stated job lane on the pedagogical highway.

Granted that, as a student, your primary motivation for even sitting in a classroom is the learning objective that the teacher has promised to achieve with you. That they will not only teach the subject matter well, but that they will teach it well in a way that's tailored for you. And that's where most ideas of pedagogical excellence stop, because even that first kind of teacher is unbelievably hard to find.

But there's an elephant in the classroom that this idea of pedagogical excellence is completely ignoring. As Parker J. Palmer will tell you, this idea of teaching excellence completely ignores the most important element in the act of teaching: the teacher themselves.

The first kind of teacher successfully melded the Student, and the Subject, into a singular whole, but the second kind of teacher, the one who made you feel seen and understood and accepted, successfully melded themselves, the Teacher, as well into the equation. By bringing themselves, and their experiences, and their personality, identity and vulnerability, into the hot thought cauldron that is a classroom, they are able to affect not only your mind, but also your heart. They fill not only the logic gaps in your brain, but the much more meaningful, much more impactful on your growth, and the much more personal, psychological gaps in your heart.

That shared vulnerability, the personality that they put on display in front of a room full of students, is what pulls vulnerability out of you as well, and makes for the most memorable teacher-student moments you may have ever experienced in your life.

That’s what makes for the most memorable teacher. What you get from them is much beyond the subject matter, and later in life, the feelings they unlocked in those shared moments of vulnerability in the classroom, is what you will remember when you think of them.

Not the fact that they taught you Chemistry, and despite no matter how much more you may like Math over Chemistry.

An understanding of the popular text about a dumpty egg, Mr. Humpty

A certain Mr. Humpty Dumpty, with the proportions and measurements of a large egg in general, one day figured it would be cool to sit on a wall. Well, he thought, what the hell. It must've been a good view it is hoped, what with all the king's army, soldiers and horses around. You could wonder how such a tense atmosphere would provide for a cool view, so to say, but what can you say about an egg's wish..

Precisely. Nothing.

So Mr. Humpty, while enjoying the view and the action, must've either done something stupid or embarrassing in view of the general mood of the event, or maybe just went out on a limb to look closely at the details of the ensuing action. But hey, God didn't foresee such a creative wish on the part of that species and Mr. Humpty's evolutionary family tree had not provided him with the faculty of a limb. And hence the absence of such a limb, and also the fact that gravity is such a nasty bitch, Mr. Humpty enjoyed a perfectly natural windy free fall from an innocent wall in the middle of a war.

A fall was provided by the ground, after the fall from the wall. And it broke poor Mr. Humpty's heart. He couldn't bear such a travesty to have fallen on him. Why, it wasn't his fault if his genealogy hadn't been as creative! Fuckin' ancestors, he thought.

And the weirdest of all things then happened, as if we weren't already uprooting some fences of imagination here. All the king's horses, and all the king's men, well, stopped and came over. Mr. Humpty the egg seemed to be broken and they must've felt it inhuman as well as inhorse to not help a poor egg in distress which they might've eaten away the next day anyway, if they had survived the war that is.

And behold, what can you say about such things. They tried, and sweated, and the horses' hooves must've felt really useless, but the fact remained that despite the shiny evening spent in helping an egg instead of warring, they just couldn't put Mr. Humpty Dumpty together again.

Yeah that's it. Really.

I wonder what they did after.

Other than feeling generally useless and lying about on the ground like wasted lives and pondering on the futility of evolution in general.

twinkle little stars

 "Do you love stars?", she asked her father. She would talk to him about the stars, and change the topic when he said he loved them too. She didn't think that an adequate answer, because she never said she loved them. She rather loved the distances between them. To her, it was the distances between them that made them so filling. Mesmerising, you could say. And the much reputed twinkle that they held? No she never thought that was any exciting.

"Do you love stars?", he would ask his daughter. Because he knew she did, and was only trying to make good father-daughter conversation. He thought her eyes twinkled when she asks him the same question. He tried to see the stars in them, imagined her to be mesmerised by them. And said, "Yeah, I love them too". Because he wanted her to keep her love for them, and the twinkle, even though he never could see what the said beauty was about. He must be old and wrinkled, he thought. And her daughter gifted and special, to see what he couldn't, and so he would add sometimes, "Aren't they beautiful honey? Look at them twinkle!"

A Queer Tree

Full unedited version:

I am a queer tree. I mean I'm straight but, you know, just eccentric. Like I can sometimes sway opposite to the wind just to confuse the other trees around me. Or start dropping my leaves way before autumn, gives them a real bad scare. And I love it, my eccentricities, my freedom, my sense of self. But, there's another side to me.

There's another side. A flat one. Like its not even there. Its not. Its surprising but it just never was. I simply never had in me whatever I was supposed to, on that side of my personality. Its as if some really sharp lightning just came and cut me in half right down the trunk, and removed the other half clean. It could totally have been so, except I don't remember the lightning. And there's no other side effect that would favor this theory, I'm pretty much normal otherwise. Really. Pretty much.

During childhood, with those other little plants around me, friends and otherwise, all trying to grow and become strong meaningful trees, I didn't even notice. I was too small, maybe. Or there was just not enough information. Whatever, I just didn't know that it wasn't how you were supposed to be. But a little bigger I grew, and I could say that there was something clearly different. Between me and them. Between me and everybody. Everybody else was normal. Ofcourse they had their eccentricities and differences and peculiarities, but they were still, in their basic selves inside, normal. And I somehow, just wasn't. There was one difference for sure that I never clearly acknowledged, but looking back, it definitely was real. I was weak, though just a little bit, but weaker than, say, normal. But I didn't know it then because I was taken care of well without any effort on my part. So strength apart, I still found myself a deviant, and the feeling only rose with years passing. It corresponded one to one with another feeling in me, that too, similarly, grew harder and more real as the years passed. It was the feeling of loneliness.

How I came to realize my uniqueness was actually because of my abilities. These abilities that I showed a flare for, made me known and talked about, and that really made me happy. It satisfied some inner craving for completeness which I knew not the cause of. And hence I tried even harder, and got better and better at them. It wasn't all of a sudden. Like what happened first was that I, in a moody swing one day, started swaying about me, a bit musically lets say. Its not something any tree can do, or does. Its an art, really, and there are trees popular in lands far far away just for their style of swaying. So anyhow, when I was doing that thing, pretty rookily I admit but atleast I seemed like I could do that stuff, I called out to a tree nearby. She saw me, and liked it! I was doing something on my own and somebody liked it! I was excited. So I did it more, and did it well. And kept trying. I don't know how or why, but I was fast. I pick up things fast. Soon I was all poetic in my motion and got pretty popular for it, atleast in the swamp. Trees used to turn to look at me do it when I called out for them, and used to nod in agreement, I was good.

And then I heard someone whistle. I never knew trees could do that. I mean wind made noises, sure, but to trap and move it inside you as you want it to and create those sounds that mean something, that's power. It is easily the most enchanting form of creative expression we possess. Revolutions have arisen out of the whistles of a tormented tree. And I could whistle. Its the most admired of art forms, and I really saw that I had some potential.

So yes, I had a few abilities, and was proud for them. But yet when I looked at someone with a normal, full round trunk with sturdy brown branches coming out of it, I used to feel something in me. Now he can't sway like me, can't wiggle his leaves like I can, isn't intelligent in its sounds and sure can't whistle, but he has something I don't. He is still, in some really basic sense, complete. He is normal, and I'm just not. And I can't for the life of me figure out why.

I saw it clearly somewhere in my adolescence. I saw the difference, right there, sitting in perfect view as if crying for attention. Like a chopped off half, like a joke. And the other half, it was in full bloom! It was all bright flowers and shapely leaves and poetry. But one half, just right there, naked. And I had a hint why. I could guess why I was so because I had seen more of life. Seen more of the others growing up to be normal, seen why they were turning out fine. And I couldn't bloody do anything about it. It was done with, it wasn't in my hands. And I thought what the hell, its alright. I mean I got abilities here ain't I. Show me someone who sways better.

And I saw trees who swayed better. Whoa. I saw some great trees of my time when I grew. Taller I grew, the more wonderful and able the world looked. And taller and taller I grew, for I was making up in height what I didn't have in width. I don't know if my incompleteness made me or I would anyway have been, but I was strong inside. Very much. And able. And I was using my abilities, my flexibility, and the beautiful spread of my leaves on one side, to hide the other flat side. It was awkward initially, it clearly showed, but I got better. I moved like a beauty, I whistled like a philosopher, and I started to atleast look like a perfectly normal tree, from a distance, yes, but yeah. Infact, given my moody sway, my mischievous tricks, my wild whistle, I think I'm now positively hot.

And lonely. I can excite other trees, I can make them want me, touch me, sway with me. I learned the tricks overtime. But I cannot make them love my incompleteness. I cannot counter my uniqueness, only the appearance of it, only temporarily. I can act, sure. But I don't want to. I don't even want to cover it anymore. I only want the company of trees that accept the fact. I want acceptance not without, but with it. I want to be seen in complete exacting truth, and then judged. For I believe, in all totality, given all my cracks and cuts, counting all my scars and losses, I'm still worthy of the pride I hold in myself.

My incompleteness made me what I am. It drives my instincts and makes me want to grow. Its fulfillment is the source of my satisfaction. I wouldn't have fought so much had I not had this reason to. An unsatisfied being, alone, is creative. And though I have not a hair's width of a guess as to how life would have been as a satisfied, complete, normal tree, I can say with all my power of belief, that this one is way more exciting.

And hence it is that I don't blame the seed I grew out of. It was only half a seed.

India TV the awesome

India TV is like those mirrors in amusement parks that make you look funny no matter how repressed or melancholic you may be in real life. India TV is the Himesh Reshamiya of news reporting, the Kanti Shah of film making. India TV is the voice and face of that progressive strata of the public that has the taste, time and need for "fun" over and above the regular trinity of food, shelter and clothing. India TV, incredibly, is both niche and populist. Let me explain how:

You see, the lower economic class watches India TV with interest and possibly restrained belief. The middle class watches it with incredulity, and occasional bouts of laughter. The upper middle class will talk about it with animated hatred and yet stop for a few half-a-lip smiles during channel surfing. And in fact might even use it as a patience test. And finally, the relevant portions of the higher economic class keep a tab on it to understand the genius behind the whole idea of it, and in turn understand its vast audience as a potential customer base.

It is my belief that everything genuinely good basically derives from undiluted honesty. And India TV has to be, deep inside, an honest idea to achieve such a layered appeal. It is funny, without trying to be funny. It is incredulous, all the more so because it seems to not know of the same. It is, basically, for everyone interested, a powerful object of interest. I think that says it all.


(written for a journalism course application)

The Rise And Fall Of The Apple

Apples have been falling on the ground since before humans were mean to each other. Since before the first law of thermodynamics, and even before Archimedes jumped out of the bathtub. But never, I repeat, never was it a problem. Because nobody cared. Nobody noticed. Anonymity was just fine for the apples. And life was good. Falling with a healthy thump, and sticking in the marshy ground with pride, claiming their space and sitting on it fat and plump.

But along came Newton. And ruined it all.

This is a story of an Apple's fight against the Law of Gravitation, the story of one apple's fight against the whole of scientific community, those arrogant windbags who think they know apples.

This is the story of the Apple that hung from a tree branch, right above the crossroads of History, and said "I have a dream".

"I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of anywhere.


Thirty two point five score years ago, a stupid man, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, discovered the Law of Gravitation. This momentous decree came as a great blow to the self-respect of millions of proud Apples who had been living their lives with great satisfaction and freedom of choice since the Sixth Day of Creation.

Now countless years later, the Apple is still not free. Countless years later, the life of the Apple is still sadly determined by the manacles of the Earth's mass and the chains of the Gravitational Constant. Countless years later, the Apple lives on a lonely island of determinism in the midst of a vast ocean of unexplained phenomena. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.


In a sense we've come knocking at the educated world's conscience to prove a point. When the man in that garden under an Apple tree wrote those demeaning words of the Law of Gravitation, he was signing a humiliating profanity to which every dignified Apple was hence to be subjected. This law was a belittling generalisation that all apples, yes, small and large, educated and illiterate, would guaranteed fall to the ground same as every other. It took away the Apple's "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Free Will." It is obvious today that the scientific community has taken for granted this really-very-stupid law; and instead of honoring our volition to life, given the Apples a stringent rule, a law of motion through that sacred space between the revered tree branch and the holy ground.

But we refuse to believe that this horrifying generalisation is a law. We refuse to believe that there aren't Apples who don't fall, but jump, of their own accord, in their own free path. Who here hasn't heard of the great lunges of Dapple, the Apple. And who hasn't heard since birth the stories of the daring, the adventurous Red Hot Balls, whose stunts in mid-air were an astonishment to the most experienced of flying apples. And so, we've come to prove a point, a proof that will give us henceforth the riches of freedom and the respect of complexity.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind Appledom of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of predictability or to take the tranquilizing acceleration of 9.8 meter per second square. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate, anecdotal out-of-syllabus boxes in the corner of a page in a physics book chapter to the esteemed befuddling titles of research papers. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of us God's favorite fruits. Now is the time to prove that Eve was right, in choosing us.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in my Branch of Birth.

I have a dream that one day on the colored pages of Resnick & Halliday, the rotund curvaceous apples of a proud red color, and the quarks and mesons will be able to sit down together in the star-marked questions and the Appendices in the end.


I have a dream that one day even the Newton biographies, those books sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into a story of the greatest false positive ever.


I have a dream that my four red neighbours will henceforth live in a world where they will not be judged by the value of their mass but by the content of their character.


I have a dream today!


I have a dream that one day, down in CERN, with its vicious scientists, with its Chief and his lips wet with meaningless words like 'Higgs Boson' and 'Heisenberg's Uncertainty' -- one day right there in CERN, little red apples and enthusiastic interns will be able to join hands and churn out sponsored research papers about fast colliding apples.


I have a dream today!


I have a dream that one day every Apple shall be unique, and every fall and landing shall be eccentric, the Apple's individuality will be recognized, and the Apple that fell on Newton's head will be vindicated; 'and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all carbon shall see it together.'


This is our hope, and this is the faith that I fly down to the Ground with."

Thus another one walked the line, the acceleration, and fast bit the dust, exactly at t=under-root(2h/g).