DailyPost 1763
GURU PURNIMA – THE MENTORS OF YESTERYEARS
What Guru translates into English remains unknown, if you go by the tenor, spirit and practice of this word down the ages. It cannot be brought down to the simple definition of teacher as it stands in the days of crash commercialization of education. The overall scenario is also equally depressing of a broken educational system, where education is the biggest causality. How we landed in this situation nobody knows; but the general presumption is that there is no mentorship today, which can guarantee both quality education ending in worthwhile knowledge and also responsible social grooming. A mentor or Guru is the guardian angel which impacts every aspect of the students life.
The story starts where nobody even thinks of. Is the Guru a role model? Does he want to be a role model? That happens to be the biggest challenge. Being a role model is not easy, if that means at the back end, your life itself has to be different. The guru becomes impersonal and professional in the modern sense of the term and that is his transformation into what we understand of teacher in modern parlance. Guru Purnima celebrates that complete mentor. He is generally missing in today’s world. But going by the number of messages being transacted on Guru Purnima it seems we are living in the world of super mentorship.
How many of the present generation have the proud privilege of having a guru, the way we have defined him to be. Secondly, can there be a well groomed individual without this type of a guru. Might be but for a few exceptions all of us need this nature of support. Ask the people who have been impacted by their teachers and how their life has been dramatically different because of that intervention. Outside the teaching world you have another genre of gurus who have been born only to change people’s lives. They might be in life skills, they might be in soft skills, they might in a be a lot of other skills, a long standing interaction with them changes one aspect of your life and slowly pushes into total transformation. Imagine of the sports coaches.
The professional arena you need gurus, they might be called by whatever name. They define what you will groom into as a professional. They provide you the building blocks of your professional existence. The professionals who remain wayward in their initial days, generally do not bloom into a top class professional. In one area if Gurus leave an indelible mark, then it is music. There is no great musician without a guru. The love and respect the shishya has for his guru, defines the life and existence of both. It goes on for lifetime. This is a model for all of us to follow.
LIFE BLOOMS TO ITS FULFILLMENT ONLY WITH A GURU.
Sanjay Sahay