Thanks for teaching us

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Father Dominic Emmanuel [1]

As India celebrates Teachers’ Day, a couplet by Sant Kabir — which I learnt in my primary school — comes to mind: “Guru, Govind dono khade, kake lagu paay? Balihari Guru aapni jo Govind diyo bataye (If both, guru and God stood side by side, at whose feet would I fall first? It would surely be at the guru’s feet, because it is he who taught and led me to God).” Coming from a family where praying to God came above everything else, the couplet by Kabirdas was surprising. It is later that I realised that Kabir wrote such an insightful verse in praise of the teacher, without whose help we would forever remain tabula rasa (blank slate).
It is not that Kabir was putting a teacher above God. He was elucidating the teacher’s role in our lives. For it is from our teachers that we learn everything — from the skill to read the alphabet and numbers and how to write or enunciate them, to the great mysteries of science, philosophy, theology and, indeed, umpteen other things that without the help of a teacher we would find extremely difficult to comprehend.
India has been celebrating Teachers’ Day on September 5 since 1962. The day commemorates the birthday of Dr Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, a philosopher and a teacher par excellence. But September 5 has also gained prominence because of the life of another teacher. Blessed Mother Teresa, whose death anniversary also falls today, began her professional life as a teacher in a school though graduated later to teach the world the value of loving the poor.
When Mother Teresa left the security of Loreto School where she worked as the headmistress of the Bengali medium school, she began first by teaching the slum children at Motijheel in Kolkata. This was in 1942. Her desire to teach was so strong that even without a blackboard she began teaching the children by scribbling on the ground. We also saw in the film Taare Zameen Par, the fulfilment of what American journalist Dan Rather once said, “The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called truth”.
Teachers such as Kabir, Radhakrishnan and Mother Teresa were great in their own time and place, but our teachers who taught us so much are no less. While our parents have been our first teachers at home, the role of our teachers at schools, colleges can never be forgotten. Therefore, we must go all out to show our gratitude to the teachers who taught us.

Father Dominic Emmanuel is currently the director of communication of the Delhi Catholic Church.
He can be contacted at frdominic@gmail.com [2]