What It Takes to be a Prof?

As a student, we always crib and complain constantly that our profs are pathetic. They don't know anything. What will we learn from them? What is the point of attending class? We ask so many questions among ourselves. Here I try to answer some of them...

I am more of a student who believes in classroom study than self - study. I generally don't prefer to bunk classes unless I am forced to (or sleeping of course). And three years of college has intrigued me more and more that how the interest invoked by school teachers in studies is way, way higher than that by lecturers in college. A simple example would be, a question by a teacher in school would result in a chorus raucus, while in college it is replaced by collective silence. Why should it be so different to teach in a college?

This thought kept crossing me far too many times while my mind wanders aimlessly. I feel, though I may be wrong, that the lecturers or profs we complain about may actually have had other plans of earning their living. But circumstances change and bang! here they are trying to teach us in class. The point is not many today are actually willing to take up teaching as a profession. How many of you are willing to be a lecturer? The job, one feels is monotonous and boring.

I haven't had much of teaching experience. I just taught a few classes of the 'C++' language to the juniors when I was in second year. It was most enjoyable, mainly because I loved the subject. It was my favourite in class XII. The response I got was encouraging to say the least. Then I also realised that it is not enough to know or love a subject to teach it. The willingness to teach the stuff, the push to make the students understand, the enterprise to infuse interest in the subject are also key ingredients to become a lecturer. But most of all, every lecturer should keep in mind the fact that how it was to be a student in his days and how it should have been...

A Desperate Night

I reached Chennai Egmore after a tiresome journey from Trichy at about 9 pm. I ran, to catch a local to the next station to reach Central to see off a close friend. My stomach began to rumble on the way. I walked up and down the platform in vain searching for my friend. I called him up to find that he is still in the waiting room. Poor fellow, had a huge suitcase (The nerd was on his way to US via Delhi for an intern!). We waited for 2 more minutes for his father to arrive.

We made a move towards platform ten. With a war starting in my stomach, I was able to pull the suitcase somehow, for some distance, in addition to my laptop and backpack. I spent the remaining time, roughly fifteen minutes, gossiping, all the while trying to keep a straight face.

Then after the train left I decided enough is enough and went straight to the Saravana Bhavan there. I extended the cashier 50 bucks and asked for a traditional, but satisfying set of chappathis and curd rice. To my astonishment he informed me that I was four bucks short. I was simply too shocked to protest, yeah right like I could. I took the parcel and reached home by 10 45pm, washed my dirty hands and face and sat down for, what I felt at that time, a sumptuous dinner.

Alas, I realised that it was a drop in the ocean. My mother was not at home nor anybody else. In fact, I was the first inhabitant of the place to spend the night after some ten days. As expected, processed provisions in the house were running low. I raided the fridge at around 11 15pm. A bunch of my favourite dry grapes was never going to be enough. Out of sheer desperation I opened the freezer. To my happiness, I found three dabbas along with frozen ice cream spoons. Now my imagination ran wild, considering the summer season and my deep frying in the day train. I quickly dislodged the stuck dabbas from the freezer and opened them one by one.

The first one had dry green peas. So did the second one. And the third one, no surprises there, green peas again. I was mad. I went to my only solace, the Internet. Just when I was chatting with one of my closest friends, I heard a bell ringing. I was not entirely out of the trance, so as was reasonable a Kwality Walls three wheeler flashed across my mind. My dear friends, it was a bicycle with kulfis, surely not the ones you'd like to have at that moment. I would have had mess food for that matter! And so I slept that night thinking this will be one story with no happys endings.....

Cricket

My passion comes first and hence does cricket. And cricket for me is synonymous with someone called Sachin Tendulkar. I grew up watching him play. Cricket for me seems to be enjoying itself when he is on song. Its something I have tried time and again to express in words, but always in vain.

I do not say that he is the greatest batsman. But what I say is when the man is at his best, cricket seems to be at its elegant and graceful best. He is not as technically pure as Rahul Dravid or as explosive as Adam Gilchrist. But he blends the technical purity with subtle robustness that appeals so much to the eye. His straight drives of the back foot are a class apart. I have not yet seen someone else, who has dispatched the ever precise Glenn Mcgrath over square leg with authority and conviction.

If some one can stay at the international level for such a long time he is bound to have some records against his name. Records come, records go, but geniuses seldom do. Every cricketer goes through bad patches. The great Sir Don Bradman signed off his career with a pair. He achieved so much during his time, which was half as that of our Indian great.

If you compare the number of matches they both have played, you'll see that modern cricketers play thrice as much matches as compared to the oldies during the same duration of time. That is evolution of cricket from a game that was played to enjoy and pass time to a game that has become a money spinner.

In this regard, I should mention the recent aberration of the game introduced in the form of T20. If people call flying balls from players' bat to be entertainment, baseball is the game that they should be watching. Seriously, cricket was introduced as a ball game in which both the batsman and the bowler have an equal chance. But now it is a bat game that involves bowlers as jokers who try prevent scoring while batsmen are heroes who plunder runs.

In this context, it is important that test cricket is given highest priority. The true test for a cricketer is to last five days and do his best. Not to be the best in a slightly improved form of gully cricket and getting paid in astronomical figures for it. But who gives a damn! They are getting paid anyways.

People say its a fast moving world and we need to adapt to things accordingly. OK, right we are moving fast, but where are we heading to?...Only time will tell.