Mr. Maverick, School Teacher

The calling comes whenever one was ready and open to it. My own calling came when I was nearing 40s. I was trying to become a social entrepreneur when the word was quite unknown. This quest was what brought me in contact with Mr. Maverick, the champion of this story. My classmate who had put me in contact with Maverick told me he was the most eligible bachelor in the top private marketing agency. When I met him, I could not disagree with the assessment. I could imagine the hearts of women go fluttering like a butterfly when they saw him.

He was civil and sharp as an arrow. We got along very well. Continued to be in touch much after I left my social enterprise and had become great friends. His calling came when he was perambulating the Mansarovar. I considered him lucky as the cue must have come from the Shiva himself. He left his lucrative marketing career after a good MBA from a reputed institute and became an educationist. When I had met him, he was on the way to become a social entrepreneur himself and had started an educational enterprise called ‘Maverick’ which name I have chosen to call him in this story. I believed the name was quite apt.

I cannot recall between us who introduced  J. Krishnamurthi to the other. He was another maverick but a great philosopher and a teacher. JK, as we refer to him, had said “Right education should help the student, not only to develop his capacities, but to understand his own highest interest. Merely to stuff the child with a lot of information, making him pass examinations, is the most unintelligent form of education.” My friend has internalised this understanding about education. He became a teacher himself in one of the schools started by JK on the banks of the Ganges, which we as a nation worship but also have filled it up with filth. As he was teaching, he was also learning from both the students and peers but also realized even such hallowed institutions tend to outlive their objective or get quagmired in vested interest.

About the time he took leave of the Krishnamurthi school that was when he had met the NRI. NRI Ramakrishnan had crossed the seven seas from a village near Pollachi in Tamilnadu where had studied his primary and secondary school. Many years had passed and the school had changed hands and went into ruins. He too was looking for an educationist who would pick up the school and bring back to its glory. He had the material and financial resources while he was looking for someone with integrity and intellect. It was not by chance they met. Their internal yearning had crossed path which led them to meet.

Maverick had made this school his new home. The school located fairly remote at a distance of about 20 km from the Pollachi town amid open scrub jungle. Peacocks and other birds give him company. He lived a simple life, cooked his own food. Spends time on contemplation and interacted with nature itself and met people who can bring skills and talent to the school. From a system of education which believes in rote, he was trying to bring about changes to a new way of learning, for the teachers, the students and the parents themselves, embedded in the precepts of learning conceived by JK.

Please join me in wishing him well for he has

“Miles to go before he could sleep

The path is ridden with hitches and rather steep.”