Remember that one great teacher...

Most great teachers have that trait—kindness. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

In 1957, the great French author-philosopher Albert Camus wrote to his schoolteacher a few days after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

This is what he wrote:

Dear Monsieur Germain,

I let the commotion around me these days subside a bit before speaking to you from the bottom of my heart. I have just been given far too great an honour, one I neither sought nor solicited.

But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you. Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching and example, none of all this would have happened.

I don’t make too much of this sort of honour. But at least it gives me the opportunity to tell you what you have been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the generous heart you put into it still live in one of your little schoolboys who, despite the years, has never stopped being your grateful pupil. I embrace you with all my heart.

(Signed) Albert Camus

I have spent most of my academic years, from high school through graduation and post-graduation, as a backbencher. I followed the Indian middle-class peer-reviewed roadmap that was given to kids of my generation by our parents as a guarantee for a better life than they had had. Like most of my friends, I did not apply too much thought about life choices, and got an engineering degree from an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and an MBA from an Indian Institute of Management (IIM).

But I was a lazy and rebellious student. While the teachers solved problems involving Kirchhoff’s law of voltage and stoichiometry at our IIT entrance coaching class in the city that was then called Bombay, my friend Arvind and I would be sitting on the last bench, solving the crossword in that day’s Mid-Day, which we had bought in the break between the lectures. I was even suspended for a week from the coaching class for a prank I played.

Yet, even a renegade like me developed a deep and unconditional respect for some teachers.

Blessed are all of us who had at least one great teacher. For me, it has been the late Prof. G.S. Sanyal of the electronic engineering department of IIT Kharagpur and later director. A wonderful teacher and filled with kindness. Most great teachers have that trait—kindness. They do not forget that they too made mistakes when they were young.

It is very rare for IIT directors to teach a course, since they already have their hands full with their many administrative duties. Yet Prof. Sanyal took time out to teach electromagnetic (EM) theory because he loved teaching and wanted to stay in touch with students. EM theory is not the easiest of subjects to comprehend, let alone teach, but almost magically, he seemed to make it simple.

Thrice a week, he would manage an hour out of his busy schedule for us, and his love for the subject he was teaching was infectious. He was the only professor in IIT whose classes I did not bunk. At the farewell function organised for students about to graduate, when I was called upon to say something instructive to our juniors, I said: “Have fun, but don’t get caught.” Prof. Sanyal walked up to me and said: “I really liked that.”

About 30 years after graduating, in a phone conversation on some work-related matter with someone I had never met, the person asked: "Are you the Sandipan Deb that Prof. Sanyal used to talk about?" It brought tears to my eyes. It is quite simply the highest tribute that I have ever got, that Prof. Sanyal remembered me with some affection.

Two of the other students of his that he would sometimes talk about, this person told me, were R. Gopalakrishnan, former executive director of Tata Sons, and Arjun Malhotra, co-founder of the HCL group of companies. What marvellous company I was in!

But the teacher who had a profound impact on my life—much more than Prof. Sanyal—was the late sociologist Saila K. Ghosh of IIM Calcutta. Apart from being an excellent teacher with ideas and theories that opened the students’ minds, he had the remarkable quality of treating us as adults. One day, he spotted me smoking a bidi (I had run out of money to buy cigarettes) and said: “Ah, khaki brand cigarette! Give me one! Haven’t smoked a bidi for a long time!” We congenially shared a smoke.

Two years after I had graduated from IIM, I was working in a multinational company but getting increasingly restless. I was not doing poorly at my job, yet was faced with an existential crisis—is this what I want to do for the rest of my life? I wanted to be a writer. Journalism was an obvious option, but there seemed to be no precedent of an IIM graduate quitting an MNC to join journalism, which certainly meant lower pay and perhaps a more uncertain future. I was also newly married. It was a huge decision to make.

So I visited Prof. Ghosh in his office. He heard me out. Then he said: “You are still in your 20s. Make that choice and follow your passion now. Once you are 40, you won’t be able to. If you fail, in six months or a year, you can always return to the standard corporate career. I’ve seen so many of my students regretting that they didn’t have the courage to do something different when they were young. And then they find solace at the feet of some godman or they take up some hobby like gardening.” I made the decision to change careers and I have never regretted it.

In the early 2000s, when I was working on a book on the IITs, I got in touch with Prof. P.V. Indiresan, former IIT Madras director (though he had spent most of his work life at IIT Delhi) and as legendary a teacher as Prof. Sanyal. At some point, in reply to some question that I have long forgotten, he told me: “Teaching jobs may not pay as well as some other professions. But the satisfaction that you get when you’ve explained a difficult concept and you see that light in the students’ eyes when they suddenly grasp the idea and get excited—that makes it all worthwhile. No other profession can give you such pleasure.”

I was awe-struck and humbled.

Blessed be the good teachers and blessed are all of us who had at least one great teacher.