Which teacher inspired you most?

When I was in school we had a maths teacher named BVN. He used to teach advanced math (like trigonometry, calculus) for class 7 onwards. We used to fear him a lot because he is the strictest of them all. Finally when I got to seventh I met him as a teacher. And boy, he is one of the persons to change my life. He inspired me learn math like no other, he is the one who showed me how to work with computers (with those big 5¼ floppy disks and BASIC). I liked him so much that during my tenth class I even played his role during teacher’s day (It is the birthday of the second President of India, academic philosopher Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan. It is considered a “celebration” day, on this day, the responsibility of teaching is taken up by the senior students as an appreciation for their teachers. more)

I met many more wonderful teachers during rest of my life, Prof. Kuldeep and Prof. Ram Kumar at IIM Indore, Prof. Seetharamaiah during my engineering days and of course my grand mother, who is probably my very first teacher in life and school. People to whom I am always thankful.

One excellent quality all these people share is, they all taught me to be passionate. They all told me to give everything for stuff I care about. They told me to question. And that is the most valuable lesson any teacher can impart on you.

I couldn’t help but remembering all those wonderful teachers in my life when I saw the Randy Pausch‘s the last lecture. He is a professor at CMU famous for his contributions to Virtual Reality and HCI. When he learned about his critical health condition due to pancreatic cancer, he chose to deliver “last lecture”, a talk to impart his life’s learnings to students and inspire them.

If you haven’t seen this lecture, please watch it. It is really inspirational.

Who are the most inspirational teachers in your life?