Teachers : Aaj Kal

This post has been published by me on the occasion of the Teachers' Day as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 2; the second edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.

Teachers are like bollywood movies. Its tough to find a perfect blend; as in bollywood movies, we need a miracle to have a good plot, good direction, good drama and good acting. What does one need in a teacher? Yes! you are right - we need a perfect bollywood movie in a teacher - good direction, acting, plot and a bit of drama to make it interesting.
Today teaching has become a mere means of earning rather than the urge and craving to teach. The long bell-bottoms(which were also called elephantas) replacing the tender sharp and narrow ones, big framed retro glass structures replacing slim plastic frameless glasses on the eyes,- these are not the only things that have changed from 70's teachers to todays' ones.
Teaching I feel is in the sideburns, with them disappearing so did the quality of teaching from 70s to the 90s. But its not that there are no good teachers today, the thing is we have lost good students too. Students choose to learn things themselves these days rather than climibing the college stairs for lectures. This is a vicious circle - lack of student interest leads to degrade in quality profs and lack of quality profs leading to a degeneration in the student interest.
Its funny that everyone hates teachers in their childhood but dont realize how they mold them into the person they are today. Ironically these are the worlds that can be derived from the letters of "teacher"
ache
heat
react
hate
retch
tear

But more importantly there is this vital other set too :)

reteach
reach
act
and the most imp one! -- heart

A good teacher is like a drop of mercury falling on the floor, no mathematical model or statistician can simulate how many and what forms the droplet will take once they land on the floor. Same is for the teacher whose pupils spread through out the world in different forms and take the learnings with them. Somewhere inside these students have a part of the teacher in them be it the teachers of 'kaal'(yesterday) or 'aaj ke'(todays) teachers.


(Image courtesy http://thm-a03.yimg.com/image/f49ff9af1ee1c9ee)

The fellow Blog-a-Tonics who took part in this Blog-a-Ton are Vipul, Rajalakshmi, Dhiman, Ranee[1], [2], [3] , Avada, Indian Pundit, Sojo, Aneet, Pramathesh, Aativas, Sid, Pra, Lakshmi, Govind, Shilpa, Bharathi, Shankar, Mytuppence, Azad, Pawan, Pankaja, Saimanohar, Guria, Shruti, Vishnu and Nasrajan. Click on their respective names to read their posts on Teachers : Aaj Kal. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.

The Cream And Scum Of Blogging

Well blogging has become a morbid mania as such these days. People like to express themselves, they prefer writing a blog rather than maintaining a secret personal diary of events. I still remember those old day college cinema which showed the girl hiding her private diary from the hero. But not the case any more .. the sari is replaced by bum-shorts and a tending to negligible top and so is the personal diary replaced by public blogs!
I guess the new "style statement" is to reveal ... reveal whatever you can, whether its the personal events you log or the tongue piercing you have (belly ring is outmoded btw).
I still cant fathom why people share such a huge amount of their personal experiences or problems on the blog, which is mostly due to having low friend-count. The idiot box is replaced by the super-idiot-box - the com-puter.

PS: this post was to support the blog-a-ton initiative by some innovative people out there who are keeping "quality" blogging alive rather than letting it die as people write pages and pages of day-to-day life., which I feel only losers are authorized to read ;)

The fellow Blog-a-Tonics who took part in this Blog-a-Ton are Arjuna, Saimanohar, Dhiman, Vipul Grover, Avdi, Daisy Blue, Sid 'Ravan' Kabe, Shankar, Shilpa Garg, Bharathi, Ranee, Ranee again and Pawan.Click on their respective names to read their posts on The Cream and Scum of Blogging.To be part of the next edition of this online marathon, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.