Teacher's day out!

Today is Teacher's Day, the birth anniversary of India's scholar-President S. Radhakrishnan. A great statesman, he happens to be like Nehru one of my national heroes. They might have been philanderers but as statesmen, they were par excellence.

I wouldnt have remembered the day's significance if Ash hadnt returned home from school 5 minutes after he left for school. The school authorities had not mentioned that it was going to be a holiday, so we packed him off to school as usual.

But Teacher's Day is not meant to be a holiday, but just a day when teachers can relax in staffrooms or watch as students conducted mock classes.

I once masqueraded as a teacher, in a sari of my mom's, when I was in Class 8, I think, in the Indian school I studied in Dar. I first went to a kindergarten class and sweated my session running behind lil brats who scooted this way and that. By the time I had finished a couple of classes, my sari, safely fastened with a dozen pins at all possible spots, was giving trouble and my hairdo was coming apart.

I think I decided then itself that teaching wasnt my cup of tea and decided on a not-too-interactive profession. Coming from a family in the teaching profession - my parents, an aunt, an uncle - and from a State where many an average person opt to become teachers or nurses (considering that one doesnt have to the leave the home state to find a job), me and my brother had chosen careers unheard of in my sleepy village - a journalist and an economist!