Being Taught

We can give ourselves all the excuses for not doing what we wished we would have done. And there is no dearth of excuses either. But when a student comes to us, there is no choice but to shake-off the inertia and keep aside all those excuses. By inertia, I mean - inertia of motion and NOT inertia of rest, Mind It! - in the Rajani style :-)

About 10 days back, a 3rd year UG student came to me at the end of a lecture class. Though I ask many times if anyone has any difficulty to follow and not to feel shy about it, there may be few who would prefer one-to-one discussion to clear any doubt. But this time, the attention was sought for a different reason. "Sir, many students here follow your blog or facebook postings. Could you please share one of our effort that aims to serve the society? If you do, then it will reach out to many." 

I requested him to send the material. Always wondered if what I scribble here or share in facebook are having overtones that may not be a big draw for general audience. Watching 'Two States', 'Bang-Bang' or 'Haider' does not necessarily make one contemporary or understand general psyche of today's youth. Heard from our cinema projection team that the student show of 'Haider' was more than full-house - even the stair-cases were not spared. The other occasion when I got little off-balance years back was an IEEE student symposium. In that,  at the end of my introduction that ran through my CV, there was an additional reference to me as a 'blogger.'

The adjoining facebook conversation says it all. The effort of this student group tries to come up with a database of voluntary blood donors. One can enroll oneself by filling-up this online form (KGP BloodConnect). One can also give suggestion to the young team to help them deliver better and I may add, a word of encouragement would motivate them a lot. 

In coming up with this post, found that the previous 'Teacher's Day 2014' post (Link) was remaining half-done for more than a month now. Completed it with Sept. date stamp. Without that the Sept. field would have gone empty! The month Sept. gave us opportunity to get taught by teachers where the teaching was delivered outside classroom. We had host of guest speakers at IIT Kharagpur speaking about what they learnt from life about life. The following videos may please be considered as return gifts to that section of students who teach us virtues of what we do and enhance our self-belief!! The video description describes the speaker and the occasion.

Swami Suddhidananda on 11th Sept., 2014 during Chicago Day celebration:

Prof. Ajoy K. Roy on 16th Sept., 2014 during Hijli Martyr's Day celebration: 

Director, IIT Kharagpur; Sri Chandrasekhar Ghosh, founder of Bandhan; Smt. Subhashini Mistry, founder of Humanity Hospital on 9th Sept., 2014 during Teacher's Day celebration of IITTA: