Teachers Day, writes Shweta Bachchan Nanda

Tear yourself away from the circus of the macabre that is the Sheena Bora murder investigation, and spare a minute of your time doing anything but figuring out motives, timelines, and relationships of the deceased to the accused, perhaps even remember, that next week is Teachers Day. 

Every one of us owes a debt to the people who have shaped our minds and influenced our thinking and very often reasoning. For some, it is a school teacher or then professor in college for others, it could be a family member, a character of a book or movie. The concept is rather fluid — whoever or whatever taught you something that is important. 

Here are a few anecdotes of the people that have taught me a thing or two.  

If you are determined enough and persistent enough, you can move mountains, or very big boulders at least

When my father was a young boy, he found a rather large boulder lying by the gate of his home. On enquiry, he was told that it was his father who has placed the boulder thus. One would need unimaginable strength to carry a boulder of this size and my father was quite amazed that any man would be capable of this feat. 

It was then explained to him, that during his morning strolls, my grandfather found this boulder and its aesthetics appealed to him. He began pushing the huge boulder forward by inches every morning, it took him months, but eventually he got the boulder home, where he sculpted it and painted it. 

It lies even today in my father’s home — a testament to my grandfather’s determination and persistence.  

Love and compassion has no language 

In high school, I was part of the Social Services program, which was run by a highly spirited American music teacher called Mrs Johnson. Under her charge, we would go every weekend to an old people’s home and take some of the elderly, especially those who didn’t have family or whose families wouldn’t visit, out for walks.

Most of them spoke French and Mrs Johnson only spoke English, yet she would sit with them hold their hands chattering away about her day animatedly, caress their faces and sing to them (teaching us to do the same)… they always looked forward to our next visit. One weekend, when I visited, one of “my old ladies” handed me a box of my favourite chocolates, to this day I cannot work out how she understood what I would talk to her about (she spoke no English and I a smattering of French) But it is a kindness I can never forget.  

There are more lessons than words that I am permitted and these two shall have to suffice for now.

I always find it ironic how we dismiss the young as being ignorant of a lot of life’s lessons, and perhaps they are, yet this Teacher’s Day, they would be the only ones carrying cards to school and honouring the people who are moulding their minds.