MY GURU - II

 MY GURU - II

One thing that has been haunting me is, neither Prof. T.R.B nor those widely 

respected as brilliant teachers, have been honoured with the best teacher award. I 

am not detracting the merits of the awardees; but by any reckoning these unsung 

Professors were second to none. I shall try to present all the facets of his 

personality as a teacher and leave it to your own inference on my rating of him. 

All the features of my portrayal of Prof. T.R.B are from my deeply etched 

memories of the person.                                                                      

How I vividly recall them after 60+ years, is testimony to the impressive spells he has taken us through in every one of his lectures.

His disposition to work:

On all occasions, he entered the class at the stroke of the bell and took a central position at the teacher’s desk. The first thing he would do was to record the day’s attendance for the students. Once he began his lecture, there was no let up anywhere. We, the students used to be in rapt attention with all our senses focused and glued to his mesmerizing delivery. He made it a point not to carry any readable material except what he mentally possessed. This was a gesture that signaled caution in to us that he is totally equipped for the occasion. He had mastered the art of lecturing. I reserve more of it for later. He never digressed from the course content. I specifically bring it here just to break the belief that deviations would help to avoid monotony. There was no moment of dullness or monotonous feeling, though he stuck to his topics.  He was so thorough and comfortable that he perfected the nuances of delivery. I feel that the audience suffers in writhing pain only when the teacher’s delivery is laborious. On the contrary, with Prof. T.R.B’s lectures, deprivation was felt only when the bell sounded the end of the hour. Being a professor of Biology he had to depict diagrams. He did those with consummate ease without stopping the lecture. His understanding was so clear that he could draw diagrams in a right to left sequence / orientation, as against the common  

left to right pattern. In everything he did, he was perfection-personified without revealing the efforts he should have put in. He had a rich vocabulary, penetrative looks, a captivating voice, an immaculate modulation and an accent in English that rarely brought out his nativity. He was an embodiment of virtues that make a teacher the most sought after.

His lectures:

At a very impressionable age, I first saw a lecturer who could truly lecture. We were all gripped by the sheer style and ease with which he took the whole class by storm. Our initial response was one of disbelief, since many other lecturers used to take pains to explain things. But this man was so much endowed, that his lecture itself was sufficient to clearly place all facts in the most palatable form. Every lecture was a feast and all of us would throng to attend his classes. After a few lectures, we realized that we need to gather his information in a form that can be used for facing the examinations. We always felt that asking for “notes” from this giant would amount to denying ourselves the pleasure of listening to excellent lectures. We started discussing with our seniors as to how to get our requirement for notes without disturbing his lectures. There were no clues. We assembled our notes by a simple understanding among the class mates who used to be seated in a row. [His lecture was quite spirited and packed with updated information.] Each boy had to write 3 or 4 sentences and elbow the next man to start. It was done in a regular sequence and every day we assembled excellent material that had no parallel in any single text book. Diagrams had to be drawn by every student of our group. This training gave us enormous training for listening and writing as simultaneous steps, with ease.

To continue                                       Prof. K. Raman