In our parlance, a teacher goes much beyond the literal meaning of someone who teaches in a school or college. In our lifetimes, especially in our growing up years in school and college, we comes across tens of such teachers, teaching us various subjects. But we remember a very few – those who leave deep imprints on our heart and mind.
Later on, as part of our professional journey, we meet so many of our colleagues and in a sense we learn so much from many of them. In my first job, I was asked to sit on the despatch seat and my manager’s advice was to take help from the office peon, who best knew how to enter inward and outward letters, the stamp duty rates and reconciliation of stamp account. The next advice to me was to have full control of the transaction vouchers and the most appropriate person to learn proper filing and maintenance of vouchers was from the Branch Daftari. And this continued till the very day of my retirement – the first ledger entry, first DD issuance, tallying ledger balances, loan appraisal. Balance sheet analysis, Loan documentation and disbursement, LC/BG issuance, Bill negotiation, booking forward contract and so on. All those who painstakingly spared their time and thought to share knowledge with a youngster or learner were in a sense teacher. And those who influenced our lifestyles, behaviour and conduct were not mere teachers, but gurus in the real sense.
And my professional journey might have ended, but life journey continues and there’s so much to be learnt and done for which quest for new gurus and teachers continues.
A few days ago, we also celebrated Guru Purnima and teachers day on 5th September is another opportunity to pay our gratitude to those from whom we learnt so much. It’s besides the point that teachers and gurus, like parents, do not need a dedicated day to be paid respect to, but they deserve respect and gratitude on each day that we live and breathe.
Happy teachers day.
Arvind Arya blog 