Saturday, January 13, 2007

The Guru

No, this post is not a film review of Mani Ratnam's latest offering. It is about an evening well spent, with one of the few people whom I consider as my Guru, one of the few teachers who has inspired me.

I met him yesterday in connection with getting a recommendation letter for admission to one of the universities. Once we were done with it, we had small chit chat, general enquiries about my batchmates, work, life, everything. I'd always loved listening to him, mostly because he has a different outlook towards everything - one of the few people who still resists using a cellphone - and, that, on many counts, I found his views to be strikingly similar to mine.

He said he played badminton with some of his students in the evening, invited me over to a game in the makeshift badminton court he had made in front of his department building. I happily joined him, teamed up with him for a couple of doubles matches against his other students, and promptly lost!

After the game, we both went back to his office to cool down for a while, before taking a walk to next bus stop outside the university. We had tea and snacks from a small shop there, continuing with our general discussions, and about my higher studies plans. When we were done with our snacks, we together took a bus to the city.

It was an evening very differently spent than my routine days in the infotech industry, but I enjoyed every moment of it. There he was, a senior professor and director of a research centre, with me, doing all those simple things, like playing a game or chit chat over tea and parippu vada in a small kerala tea shop. But then, to me, it is these simple things in life that give me joy, spending quality time with people I admire.

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