Today is 5th September this day had its own significance and importance in everyone’s life at least for span of 12yrs while we all were in school. Since I was in govt. school in my early days and apparently there was no decorum but we used to celebrate in our own deprived way, touch our Shukla Guruji’s feet, I don’t know if he was fascinated by Abbas Mastan but fact is I never saw him in any other color than white Kurta Paijama akin to this duo. You know why we used to call him Guruji? Because we had not been taught what does Sir & Madame mean? Before we reach 6th standard till then English meant alphabets only. And only word our vocabulary was equipped then to address him was “Guruji”. Shukla Guruji never told us why are we celebrating this day? What is the significance of it? We never bothered to ask also, all we knew that on 5th Sep we’ll get half day leave and that was the real reason for our jubilation.
While we reached in 5th standard Binnu Guruji came to our school. He was the 2nd teacher after Shukla Guruji. Unlike Shukla Guruji who was aggressive, ferocious and used to act like Army commander in Kurta Paijama . Binnu guruji was calm , composed and approachable. And then came September we all were elated that we are going to have our half day leave, in exchange all we need to do is just touch 2 feets instead of one this time. The day came & we all reached our class to see black board has “Sikchhak Divas” written on it. Though we all knew this is what the day is called since we have been told by our private school going friends that this is an auspicious day & they will give gifts to their teacher’s to showcase their gratification. After a while Binnu Guruji came in the class we all stood-up from our “Taat Ki Patti” to greet him and said “Namaste Guruji” in chorus, this sit-up and chorus was the ritual we used to follow every time guruji enter our class. He placed his register on the table and got settled in chair then we all got settle down. We had our roll call , we had to say “Upshthith” after guruji calls our name. Guruji called one new name today “Richa” & we came to know that new Girl Richa has joined our class; her father got transferred from Chirmiri that’s what Binnu guruji told us.
And after this routine affair came our moment of truth, Binnu Guruji asked, why do we celebrate “Shikchhak Divas”? We all were good in pretending to be deaf & dumb in such situation and we did exactly that. Midst of pin drop silence the new entrant Richa spoke-up and we heard some weird doctor name “Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan”, she said he was born today and day is celebrated on his honor. And this is how we came to know what does this day is celebrated for.
Later I did my high schooling from RSS patronize school and we had celebrated this day with meticulous planning and decorum in place.I gradually came to know more about Dr. RadhaKrishna, he was everything you can dreamt to be, if you are a bookworm. He was widely respected professor in Oxford , wrote many journals and books on India Philosophy while keeping western sentiments in account and needless to say bridge the gap between east & west during freedom movement. Eventually India rewarded him by conferring first Vice President and later President Position, which anyway we do with all right thinking people like Mr.Kalam, Rajendra Prasad instead of using their expertise in more constructive manner. I don’t know what Ambedekar was thinking while he was chalking out President Role in our constitution, perhaps he would have been soccer coach some point. Our President is like soccer captain you can only have press conferences and lift the trophy if gets lucky but can’t plan, strategies and don’t have any control over the team. Should we be celebrating this day as Teachers Day? or rather introspect as why did we not use more appropriately one of the most evolved mind India has ever produced? “Happy Teachers day” to all who are shaping the future of this country….....may our system produce more Binnu Guruji than Shukla Guruji's :-) :-)
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