Teachers and Mentors

It’s been a while since I wrote any blog or worked continuously on any side project. But today I feel like writing this and it was always in my mind for the last 2 years. So, I thought of writing this as a first step to re-write my daily routine and to check off an item in my list that are there for a long time.

It is Teacher’s Day today and I always wanted to dedicate a post to all those who directly or indirectly taught me various things in the course of my life. I’m always thankful for what I am today. This particular position that I am in today is somehow because of the impact that various people had on me. Thanks to all my teachers/mentors. There are a lot of things I learned from various people but there are some striking qualities that I imitated/learned/assimilated from a few of them. This writing is a special dedication to all of them and I want to list what I learned from them. I think it would be better if I go in chronological order on how they have an impact on my life and how I changed eventually to become a better person.

Starting with Primary School - I was considered to be a dumb student, at least as per the marks sheet which is the final deciding factor to judge a student in Indian Education System :P. That is when I gradually ended up talking to my first teacher Mr. K. Satyanarayana who brought a drastic change in me by encouraging and pushing me to study better. If you’re interested in something then the fundamentals of that topic are well known to you and you enjoy exploring it, this is what I believe and he was the one who built the basics strong for my math and a reason for my special interest in math and problem-solving.

Next is definitely one of the youngest teachers who taught me, Mr. J. B. Ram. Probably he is just like an elder brother to me in age but he was the one who pushed me further. He always said that if you don’t question something you will never learn about it well and if you think you understood something then you must be in a place to answer anything about it. That was the point where I started to explore things and question stuff I don’t know. This quality is much needed for a person who wants to learn things by himself. I should say that he is the first one to indirectly encourage me to go towards self-learning which is much required for any person in my opinion. I should share an incident that happened, I remember that one day we were taught some concepts in Math and that concept was from the third chapter (assume I don’t exactly remember) and I was trying to solve something that is from the fourth chapter by sitting in the last bench. He saw that I was writing something in the notes while he was teaching. He asked the person beside me about what I was doing, just to make sure I’m not doing anything that is not supposed to be done in that class. The fellow beside me had a glance and complained that I was solving problems that are not yet taught (in a tone that I was doing something wrong). Then Ram sir came to me to have a look at what I was doing, I was a bit frightened as to what he would say. He had a look at my notes and said, “Good, that is how a curious student should be. But never do this in class, do it in your free time or you can even come to me so we can do it together”. He also said to my fellow mate that there is nothing wrong with what I was doing and that his tone of the complaint is not necessary. That was the moment I learned that if you are curious enough then there will always be a person who will guide you.

By the time I was in High School. I had to move back to my hometown and I was already missing both of the previously mentioned teachers. I was in a feeling that I would never get someone who would encourage me like that and who will guide me in the way they used to. But I was lucky enough to find Mr. Satyajeet Rokad who was a great guide for me. He was more of an elder friend than a teacher to me. I was very glad that I could finally find someone who can resonate with me and guide me. Until I met him all my education was to gather information and put it out in the examinations to get good ranks. But it all changed after I met him. There is a popular quote that says, “Knowing about something is not Knowledge it is just information. Information when understood and interconnected will become Knowledge”. He was the one who inculcated that thought in me. Instead of just gathering information he insisted us to build a good knowledge base from that. In most of the schools in the area I lived they only evaluate and give better grades for your answers to questions in exams if they are almost the same as what is written in books. So it all feels like reproducing content with a photographic memory. But Stayajeet was the one who used to discourage people who do that, he always use to encourage people with the answers to questions which are in their own words of their understanding and logically correct no matter the length of the answer. These all led me to become a good self-learner.

After High School and till graduation I didn’t find a teacher from whom I could learn something that changed my life drastically. Then Mission RnD happened, which I should say has changed my life in many ways. I found great teachers, mentors, and ambitious friends over there. I found Peri Sir and KC Sir there. If I had to write what I learned from each of them and what I learned from all the people from Mission RnD then it would become a mini-series of blog posts. In short, I would say that I got better at my skills and better at looking at a problem from a different perspective, though it is a math/coding/real-life problem. KC always made us think beyond what we could already do. He comes up with hard-hitting realities that enlighten you. For example, you can have a couple of views for a problem say, bird’s eye view, straight forward view, blah blah blah but there comes a KC view :D from which you always seem to find the problem very easy and interesting to solve. He reinforced self-learning, conceptual learning, and many other important things with his talks. And to talk about Peri Sir, his teachings are always peculiar (so are KC’s) they are fun and always have an inner meaning which is deeper when you listen to the same class again and again, that could be the reason why we and our seniors rush to his classes in the name of assisting him when he is teaching our juniors. There is definitely a lot to learn from him but I always feel like I wish I could attend more of his classes in person. Ethics, Values, Character, and Discipline are some things that I learned from him (though I’m not completely following discipline now, which I feel bad about). --- Recently one of my friends, Hari said, “Discipline is something we lack in our day-to-day life or at least we should have good discipline in our work life. That is what I learned from Peri sir and Americans during my masters”. I definitely agree with that, we are not completely badly disciplined but we are not at the level of what we wanted to be. I should work on this.

Here comes my transition of learning from Mentors after Teachers. One day KC introduced a nerdy guy in our class who was supposed to teach us the basics of React.js. After the class KC said that the guy’s name is Aravind Balla and he is currently switching to a remote job, also added that he is one of his favorites. That is when I had a hook to that moment and I started learning about what a remote job is and who is this guy that KC spoke about. Eventually, I ended up following Aravind on what he did to end up as a good Engineer working for a remote startup. Luckily fate was so good that I ended up being a colleague to him and a good friend cum mentor. I then came across this https://www.instagram.com/p/B3thXqCljSN/ . After this, I started looking for people who can indirectly mentor me and then I found Raghava (full name Sai Raghava Acharya indeed an Acharya) who is a friend of Aravind, another mentor that I would never forget. Also, I found mentors in my childhood friends Sai Peddiwar, Murali, etc., I don’t deny the fact that the absence of these people would have affected my life in a very drastic way. I have learned a lot from each of them and I reciprocate them.

Finally, the most underrated teacher of my life is my mother who is responsible for my self-learning behavior which is a quality that I got from her, and my father who literally taught me the meaning of the famous dialogues ”Viluvale Aasthi” even before that dialogue was out.

I couldn’t mention everyone but the above-mentioned are the ones who brought great changes in me to become a better person. On a final note, all I want to say is that there are a lot of people who influenced me and had an impact on me and that is the reason why I am here today and I am glad for that. I want to end this by saying that we can find a lot of people from which you can learn in enormous amounts, you just have to be curious and keen to find them, that’s it.