Dear Ram Shankar Nikumbh from Taare Zameen Par,
You have broken all the “rules”, referring to your students as “Friends”, motivating them to think, instead of the current trend of cramming, revealing the weakness of your childhood, that you faced difficulties in studying then, instead of showing off your present degrees and qualifications,
You made us realize, these were stereotypes, never meant to rule.
I was actually shocked when you opened Ishaan Awasthi’s notebook, consisting of red ink even more than the blue one, and notebooks of our entire batch combined would not even together possess the impressions of red ink, that Ishaan alone had.
Honestly, if I would have been in your shoes, I would have blamed it on dyslexia, just like others, and gave it upon him,
But what you did, you actually made an effort to find out a pattern in his mistakes, the way he got confused between similar-looking ‘b’ and ‘d’, ‘9’ and ‘p’, and even went to his home, for making his parents realize their mistake, in the way he was treated.
Every teacher would want his student to excel, but not each of them feels happy to see his student excel even more than him, but when you felt to be on cloud nine, on being announced as a runner up, the first one being Ishaan, you had my heart.
Amidst all admirations, I have a complaint as well, when you took a promise from Ishaan, for him to return next year, I was filled with hope, that you both would return in our lives again, to teach us new life lessons, but unfortunately, that never happened.
Yours,
Someone who grew up admiring you
Happy Teachers Day, You are the teacher every student would crave to have in their lives.
By Srilekha Mitra