farewell sir...

17^th January, 2014.

Dark clouds all over Delhi this morning. Though there was hardly any chance of rain, yet, I could taste the wetness in the air. But every atmospheric beauty seemed irrelevant today, if not unnecessary.

There was a farewell meeting to be held in the history committee room, as our beloved professor, personally, my favorite, Dr. P.K Chaudhary of ancient Indian history was taking his voluntary retirement. Such matter hardly seems important or relevant to me, but this was about Prof. Chaudhary we were talking about. Hard, strict, unforgiving at times, never laughed during the classes and a person you would never mess with. But even so, he became our favorite teacher for a reason. His ideas; he always advocates abstract thinking. Do not think big, think enormous, which is what human mind is for, to think and dream more than normal, he says. And not only has he advocated that, he follows that line to the meaning of literal and taught us to do the same. Now there are teachers who just come and babbles thing, half of which goes over the head, and the other half never reached us. He, unlike all, almost effortlessly made his way to our minds, filling it with ideas. History is not a subject for that, but then, a teacher is not known by the subject he teaches, but by the ideas he provides otherwise.

Now I can go on and on with the appraisal, but I choose not to. When asked why he was leaving (it was naturally an element of surprise for us) he said, and I quote - “I have been teaching in this college for almost 25 years, but I guess now it was the time to live my part of dreams. To quote Gorky, a man spends his entire life just in the preparation to live. I’d rather choose to live now, than just preparing for it until I die. I have plans, dreams, regarding so much and so little time. Furthermore, I am bored with the lethal routine for the last 25 years, nothing productive there. My plan now changes its course. I have some projects in my mind, and I need a complete focus on them.”

The rest is unimportant in contrast of relevance I suppose. The usual speeches by students, their emotions. I refrain such trivialities, so I maintained my silence. Before bidding his goodbye he just said one thing. As he regrets the fact that this generation is losing its ability to think logically or illogically, he hopes that we, his students won’t stop dreaming or thinking in abstract form… “Amurta chintan” as he’d put it. Think, read, dream, and do it in an abnormal way.

We, or at least I, would try not failing him on this one.

Thank you professor, for expanding my ideas and faculty for at least in a miniscule level.

Farewell.

                                                                    the man himself

Regards.