Teachers - 2

Teachers directly affect quality of education. But this is not a new observation and when you dont pay teachers what they are rightfully due (forget actually paying them the equivalent of what they are teaching you), you cannot complain that your teachers are not intersted.

Grants and commissions aside, my mum has a cousin sister who lives in Girgaum. Girgaum is in the heart of Mumbai, representing the very essence of the original 'Mumbaikar' and was made popular by a Marathi writer par excellence P. L Deshpande. But I digress.

She always taught all her life. Mostly in closeby schools. She used to take tuitions of neighbouring children and their friends and their classmates and slowly it got to a point where she had to turn children away. But as far as I can recall, she never did.

She never offered any additional services like bags or rulers or air conditioned classrooms but come result day, students first visited her before going home. They would actually cue up to take her blessings.

She taught maths, science and all languages. On occassions even social sciences. If my memory serves me right, she had all text books by heart and I say this because she once took a session on marathi and maths for me.

What I did not know then and got to now was that for all tuitions she took, she never took money. I was aghast. I did not know people who still did things out of the goodness of their hearts and here I had one in my very own family.

A couple of years ago her husband fell critically ill and was bed ridden. One student of hers (they never became ex students) arranged for a peon of sorts so that she would never have to leave her husband alone for any errands. He was then hospitalised and her students paid the hospital bills, medicines and made sure she never left his side.

I was glad that there are people in my generation who don't think twice about a good deed, especially when it involves money. I know there are no teachers of mine I share this relationship with. I am sure its not about the money but teachers like her are worth their weight in gold. Today she is alone and after nearly a year in seclusion, is going to start teaching again.