The Gift

    This article  was published in a daily as middle space (550words limit) around two years back. As suggested by one of my student Ravi that I should share this with readers of my blog, I am posting it. It was supposed to be posted on 13/03 as per his insistence but anyway its better ...

The Gift

           The infamous summer of Chandrapur was scorching the city like a toast in the microwave oven. The last phase of examination of final year BE, the viva-voce of project, was over. The summer vacation had already begun.  I was about to leave the college after finishing the work when I got a call from a student of final year.  “Sir, I want to meet you. Are you free now?”asked the student.  “Tomorrow.” I replied. Next day she came to the department. I was in relaxed mood. She started with expected reference to the final phase of her graduation. She said she was thankful to me for my help in last three years. As usual I said it was part of my duty but anyway it was nice that I was of any help to her.

       “Sir, I have a gift for you kindly accept it. It will be a real pleasure for me if you say yes.”  I immediately responded with usual no with due explanation. Something of this kind was not new to me. I have always maintained not to accept any gift from the students not concerning what others do or whether it is right or wrong. In fact everybody has a justification for accepting or rejecting it. I explained to her that I didn’t want to hurt her sentiments but I didn’t want to set wrong precedent either.

          I always felt that some student may honestly feel for you , would like to have a gift for you but once the gift is accepted the message may percolate down, wrongly projecting it as a way of possible fine-tuning with the teacher. A part of teacher management skills of student. Considering the internal marks in the authority of professors some students of engineering colleges tend to use all the tricks in the book to please them even though these tricks do not always work necessarily.

         She said she was aware of the fact that I didn’t accept gift but insisted on accepting pointing to the fact that with final examination over ,  I had no marks to give, so no hidden element of vested interest. “It’s only an acknowledgement of your contribution to my life. Sir, you have inspired me. I owe a lot to you.”  It put me in a state of total surprise. I was aware of the respect she had for me but this was very much startling. She then clarified that in one of the sessions of debaters club that she attended I talked about the importance of communication skill, group discussion. I casually remarked then that if I could do this why couldn’t anybody. It gave her immense confidence that helped her in campus interviews. Eventually she got good placement in Infosys.

           I somehow convinced her that the gift she had brought for me could be purchased from the market but the real gift would be if she remembers me as a good teacher in years to come. This is the gift that nobody can purchase in the market. She went taking back the gift but not without teaching me a permanent lesson on the power of word spoken by a teacher for what I unintentionally uttered became an inspiration. The faith and respect she had expressed in me still overwhelms me.

(This is based on a true incident. The student got married recently.She invited me to the wedding reception which I attended happily.)