Teachers' day

September 5. 

In India, this day is celebrated as Teacher's day, commemorating the birth anniversary of Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (the first Vice President of India, the second President of India, renowned teacher, philosopher and writer). Above all, a day to remember and honour our teachers.

From early years, I looked forward to this day as it was celebrated in a very special way during my schooling years (and this is more than a few decades back!). On this day, teachers took a break from teaching. Select students got to be a teacher for a day, with each student being assigned to be one of the teachers in the school, taking up his/her duties in different classrooms as per the day's schedule.  Once I got to be a Hindi teacher and another time, I was the primary school headmistress.

This also became the one day you could wear colour dress to school. Super excited for that!

Sounds super cool! but it was always far from easy. To hold the attention of a class, to even get through a page let alone a chapter, was bone breaking. At the end of the day, the excitement of getting to wear colour dress waned off..

This summer, I visited my secondary school with my sister and our kids in Trivandrum, Kerala. 

I cannot explain the feeling - 

to walk through the corridors reminiscing quick chats and bellowing laughs shared during breaks, 

to peer through the windows into the classrooms where you spent some of the best times of life, 

to stand at the threshold of the labs trying hard to recollect experiments you were busy cracking your head over, 

to look over the massive grounds where you cheered aloud for many a tournament till your voice turned hoarse, 

to pass by the cafeteria where you shared many a cutlet and juice with a dear friend, 

to locate your route number in the fleet of buses parked, 

to meet your teachers who are gracious enough to still remember you.

But it can best be summed up by the question my first ever class teacher posed to me that day, she asked, "How does it feel to come back to school?"

"Miss, I feel loved and cherished. I feel a sense of belonging. It is a feeling I will never experience elsewhere. The heart is full."

To all teachers and alma maters - you make a difference!