Teachers as brand ambassadors of ideas

In media what is most valued and envied is the freshness of ideas. The ideas that can set you apart. The ideas that help you rake in moolahs. How? By way of high visibility on TV or in newspapers. And, the ideas that help you identify with a product such as Fair & Lovely cream or service such as Reliance Mobile. How does it happen? Is it God-gifted? Or you can do this practice? Do you see the influence of your early role models, quite likely teachers, in this?

My daughter had a miscarriage

I remember my Sanskrit teacher and warden Dr. B N Upadhyay stopping me outside his office to say: Jaante ho meri beti nichha gai hai. Oh! Kitna khoon or kitna dard ? (You know, my daughter had a miscarriage? How much bleeding and the consequent pain she might have had?). I stood speechless. As a 9th standard student, straight from village, I was hearing these words for the first time and trying to comprehend them. Though partially successful, I got the message that my teacher was very sad and something very bad had happened to his daughter.


A mundane mishap to an Indian woman communicated with extraordinary simplicity and
courage. The first thing that struck me was: can I share such things with Upadhyayjee? Will he not feel offended? The next moment I got the answer: I had not felt offended with what he had said, why should he? Don’t you recall the most popular of our times: AN IDEA CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE?

You sahriday and he an actor

It was my first lesson in compassion, communication, empathy, and courage of thinking out-of-box. Why so? Because you feel as if you are one with the speaker (here, the teacher), like a sahridaya of Bharat Muni’s famous treatise Natyashashtra.

Who is a sahridaya? The one who is in communion with the communicator, in Bharat Muni’s case an actor, male or female. How does it so happen that the communicator and the communicated are on the similar wavelength? Bharat Muni has the answer: the actor through his expertise, dedication to the art of acting, and empathy is able to create the same picture of a situation in the sahriday’s mind (here a member of the audience) as his. This process is called sadharnikaran. Simply put, it means simplification of a complex situation in terms of articulation or putting it across to others.

Sharing is strength, not a weakness

Why this analogy? My teacher told me so many things in a few words: sharing of one’s agony is strength, not a weakness. Done in simple words and with honesty, it arouses empathy. No incident or fact of life is without a simple way of its expression. And, most of all, as a teacher you need to go to the level of the taught to strike a chord with him.

And, all this happens through the act of communication. After all, what does an ideal teacher do all his life? He spells complex things to his taught. These things may be old, evolving or absolutely new. But, the process of communication is always fresh because no two situations or two people are in the same mental state at two different points of time. The newness of situation gives birth to new ways of saying or looking at the same thing. Put differently, the teacher who embodies courage to say and listen to even the mundane things with extraordinary simplicity and empathy, becomes a harbinger of new ideas. He does it because of his faith in the creed that says ‘ let thousand flowers bloom’.

A good teacher and unprepared

The second lesson came in college, seven years later when my development economics teacher Dr. Hari Om Verma, a Ph.D. from Delhi School of Economics, had this to say immediately after entering the classroom: I couldn’t prepare for the class last night. Please point out if I am inconsistent or off the topic. Was it crisis management? Was it an exercise in confidence building aimed at his students? Or creative response to a harsh reality, i.e., he had not got time to prepare for the lecture?

Irrespective of the reasons, it was a very powerful way of telling or communicating a situation. What is so great about it? The ‘idea’ that accepting a mistake can be more inspiring that covering it up. The ‘idea’ that not only good students but even good teachers can be unprepared for the class?

Loloo Prasad at his best

Those who watched the debate preceding the Trust Vote in the Indian Parliament for the Congress-led government at the Centre on July 22nd 2008, may recall the response of the Railways Minister Laloo Prasad to the opposition’s attempts to shout him down. He said: …sab koi PM ban-na chahta hai. … mai bhi ban-na chahta hoon… mujhe koi jaldi nahin hai… harbari ke biaah mein kanpati par sindur…(… everybody wants to become a PM… even I do… but I am in no hurry…lest I look like a groom who instead of putting sindur on the middle of his bride’s forehead did it on her temple…)
Is not Laloo Prasad darling of media? Is he not a teacher to millions of people, mostly villagers, who say most of the complex things in their own rustic ways? Is he a lesser brand ambassador of ideas for the people who say less of KAGAD LEKHI (bookish knowledge) and more of ANKHIN DEKHI (experiential knowledge)?