Of Living and Dying and Continuing to Live in Others' Memory

Recently, a college mate shared the news of the demise of one of the lab assistants of the college where we studied. In passing, he mentioned about how this person was the one who never provided us with distilled water that we needed for our experiments; as a result, we always had to ‘steal’ it from the lab when he wasn’t around. Someone else remembered how he would always shout at us.

A third person then stepped in to say, “We ALL remember him….despite what my teenage thoughts may have made me say or feel, in retrospect, I’m thankful for the role he played, in giving me the life I live today.” This, I feel, is an amazing response, and quite the benchmark for how we ought to feel about all the unpleasant people we encounter through our life journey. Easy to say, but quite very difficult to practice.

But this discussion also set me thinking about something I read recently. Stephen Covey in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” asks readers to visualize the event of their own death. He then asks you to imagine “What you would want people from your family, friend circle, workplace, and any community organization to say about you and your life? What character would you like them to have seen in you? What achievements would you want them to remember? What difference would you like to have made in their lives?”

Over the past couple of days, social media has been full of eulogies for the great singer S. P. Balasubrahmanyam and what is astounding is that so many of them are from ordinary folk you and I know. SPB touched people through his music but unknown to many of us, he was also deeply involved with helping others – whether it was sponsoring chess champion Vishwanathan Anand’s team in the national team championship in 1983, or raising funds for charitable causes through his stage shows. Did you know, for example, that he set up the SPS Charitable Foundation in memory of his father? Through this platform, he was involved with providing financial help for a plethora of organizations involved with education, palliative care, serving the disabled, flood relief, cine musicians, orphanages, and on and on the list goes. 

Image courtesy: The New Indian Express

I watched a video clip on Twitter in which SPB is seen surprising a blind fan hailing from Sri Lanka. Another video showed me the legend’s humility as he touched the feet of the ‘doli’ bearers who were to carry him to the Sri Ayyappan shrine at Sabarimala. I read online about how, in August, when SPB’s health condition was steadily declining, the same temple did something it had never before done – it performed a musical puja to Sri Ayappan for SPB’s recovery, and after this, one of the temple musicians rendered the Naadaswaram to his award-winning “Shankaraaa….naadashareeraa…”

Well, if we had to correlate SPB’s life with Stephen Covey’s questions……you can fill in the blanks for yourself.

I haven’t told many of you this. On the night of 5th September this year, my nephew Shreeharsha passed away from issues that traced their origin to long-standing health problems. He used to write, too, and had even penned a piece of our visit to Haridwar and Rishikesh in 2015. (You can read that post here)

In his short journey of 31 years, he touched all our lives with his unique wit and humor and inspired us by his refusal to let his physical handicap limit his abilities to enjoy life and true to his name, spread joy. Harsha was a great fan of the Bengaluru Football Club, and a vociferous supporter, often traveling to different parts of the country to support his beloved team. Closer home, he was the inspiration for my son to get actively involved with football. 

After Harsha’s demise, we, his family, grieved his passing, reminiscing about the things he did and said and the way he lived. Quite surprising to us was the outpouring of grief from his larger circle of friends and even mere acquaintances. Twitter and Facebook were filled with posts from his friends, colleagues at all the places he worked and of course, hundreds of BFC fans. A common thread that ran through all their remembrances was his positive spirit and ability to make people feel comfortable after just a few minutes of interaction.

As I told my niece, Harsha’s sister Rajashree, about this phenomenon, she exclaimed, “I wonder where he found the time to do things to create such an impression on so many people!” As we pondered over this question, it struck me that impressions get formed by what one IS as a person – when that is impactful enough, there is never the need to DO something separately to create an impression.

Whether it was the lab assistant or SPB or Harsha or me or you whenever our time comes, it is the way we live our lives, the things we do and say as we pass through this life’s journey that will sustain in our wake.

On Being a Teacher in the Pandemic

I enter my ‘Classroom’, but I’m not going to stay there for too long. I’m only there to “Share something with my class” – the “Joining info” to let them enter the “Meeting” I’ve started on Meet. I toggle buttons to move back to the “Meeting” and wait for the students to arrive so that I can “Admit” them in.

I miss the luxury of having students waiting for me to arrive.

They arrive in one’s and two’s, but I can’t see or hear them – their cameras and microphones are turned off in the new classroom etiquette, and I won’t hear them talk until I invite them to do so by wishing them “Good morning, students!”.

I miss hearing their loud chorus of “Good Morning, Ma’am” that is capable of pushing everything beyond that moment from my mind.

I miss being able to smile at them and having them smile back, creating an infectious high energy vibe. 

I miss the unconscious scan my eyes and 6^th or 7^th sense would run over the class to measure their energy and interest level so that I knew how to amp up or down my pace of teaching

Some students take time to arrive. It’s no longer the “I missed the bus” or “I got stuck in a traffic jam” excuses. The ‘rate-limiting-step’ has morphed – it’s the speed of their mobile network service provider that’s the culprit for their delay.

Three minutes into the “Meeting”, about 80% of the class is in, so I decide it’s time to “Present Now” and choose “Present a Window” as I unmute my microphone and wish the class “Good Morning”. A few return wishes reach my ears. I don’t “Turn on my camera” because of various reasons that range from ‘no dress code for teaching from home’ to ‘family member dashing into and out of the bathroom nearby’. But the most important reason for not enabling video is that connectivity is always more stable with the video off.

I miss having my class look at me while I’m teaching. I wonder if they miss it too, and wonder if the energy in my voice is enough to sustain them through the hour. I pray it will suffice.

I continue to explain what is there in my presentation. I’ve sat up till midnight of the previous day to make sure that along with the text, my presentation contains diagrams and tables and graphs to help the students understand the topic better. I ask questions in between to make sure that they have understood what I’m explaining.

I miss being able to judge my students’ understanding – or lack of it – from a mere glance at their facial expressions.

I toggle between parts of the presentation as I go back and forth to emphasize an earlier point to explain the present one. I try to keep each slide in place for at least half a minute to make sure that all students – even the ones with a slow network – are able to see what I’m talking about.

I miss the way I used to walk from one side to another to connect the concepts I’ve explained by writing on the blackboard. 

Which reminds me – I miss my chalk piece and duster, too. 

I miss the dust of the ‘dustless’ chalk getting into my eyes when I rub the board. 

I miss the polka dot spray the white dust created on my shoulders. 

I miss having to wash my hands free of the calcium carbonate (instead of the SARS-CoV-2 I’m now trying to keep away).

After about 48 minutes of class, I decide to stop. When I myself cannot sustain talking for an hour, how can I expect my students to listen for so long? I check if they have any doubts. I ask if they have received the notes I sent. I tell them about some PDFs and links I’ll be sharing after the class. And finally, I say, “Let’s close today’s class” and give them permission to “Leave”. There’s a smattering of “Thank you, Ma’am”s that I hear as I click the red telephone icon to myself “Leave” the “Meeting”.

I miss the days when I’d overstay my time in class because we were discussing something important about a problem the students faced.

I miss the impromptu activities and games I’d sometimes have them play to learn an important life skill because either of us was too bored to study heavy-duty pharmacy syllabus.

We’re only teaching theory now in our online classes. Practical experiments will be done whenever regular college starts.

I’ve been missing the smell of chemicals that would cling to me after a lab session. 

I’ve even begun to miss the headache that would result after hours of non-stop peering about three times per microscope multiplied by 20 microscopes, repeated thrice a week. 

The only headaches I have now come from staring at a screen that connects and yet separates me from my students.

I’ve just begun teaching a new subject - Pharmaceutical Microbiology. And thanks to what I’m learning anew, as I write this blog, I realize that as a teacher, I’m not the strict autotroph I thought I was. I can’t make all of my own energy – I need to draw quite a bit of it from the emotional connection that grows as I interact day in and out, face-to-face, with my students.

On this Teacher’s Day, I’d like to thank all the students I’ve taught in all these 20 years before the pandemic. You’re the ones who made it a most memorable journey for me, and those memories will always stay special.

To the students I’m now teaching through a virtual medium, thank you for your cooperation, and hopefully, we’ll be able to connect better by the time we’re through this semester.