MY TAKE

MENTORS JUST SHOWED UP

Tapas recently spent an evening with Scouters Amy and Jerry Jutras, swapping stories about their camping trips.

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

In the biopic Srikanth, Jyothika plays Devika Malvade, the teacher who saw the potential in a blind child and guided him to success.

She didn’t let him fail like everyone expected him to. The character of Malvade is believed to be based on the real Srikanth’s real English teacher T. Swarnalatha.

In the television series Kota Factory, Jeetu bhaiyya takes the students at a coaching centre under his wing. As he tells his therapist, Jeetu ‘Sir’ can’t look after them like Jeetu ‘bhaiyya’ or brother can. These are all young kids, away from home and under immense pressure. They need someone they can come to for guidance on things other than just their grades, he says.

Jeetu bhaiyya is fictitious, but he reminded me so much of Dr DP Sengupta. The former professor and head of electrical engineering department at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore was also a dear friend of my parents and Kaku (uncle) to me. And thus we were often at each other’s homes. At their home, we would often find a bunch of his students. Just hanging out, discussing the politics of the day, or music or movies, issues with their campus residence... everything other than electrical engineering! Though those who needed extra help were always welcome, too.

Kaku would pull out his harmonium and sing old Mehdi Hassan or Ghulam Ali ghazals, one or two would join in, the others would listen enraptured, and aunty would supply everyone with endless cups of tea. His students walked in and out freely, one even camping out there for the night when his train back from his hometown reached Bangalore too late for him to make it back to the campus.

I was not scientifically inclined, but if I ever wished I was more gifted in that department, it was on those evenings, watching the students interact with their professor. I wanted a teacher just like Kaku. I also realized that I was fortunate to have learned so much from him even though I wasn’t officially his student.

Over the years, so many people have mentored me and my family.

Our neighbour, dear friend and my gardening guru Dorothy “adopted” me when we moved in next to her, brand new to the country. She taught me about Canadian plants, how to tell a robin from a cardinal and a loon from what I clubbed together under the generic “duck”. She drove me to my first funeral in Canada and sensing my worry about etiquette, told me showing up for a neighbour was what mattered, not the dress code. She told me about Canada in the old days, mirroring the stories I had read in Anne of Green Gables as a little girl. But most of all, she inspired me by her spirit and wry humour. Widowed at a young age, she had raised her kids on her own. Now adults, they lived in different parts of the world and though they all visited each other often, she refused to go live with them. She passed away at the age of 84, having taught me how it was possible to be independent and live with dignity no matter what challenges life threw at you.

Master KJ Cariati (right). Image credit: WOODBRIDGETAEKWONDO.COM.

Master KJ Cariati was our son’s taekwon-do instructor. And so much more. At every lesson, he’d take a couple of minutes to gather all the students and tell them to respect what they were being given in terms of the time, effort and money their parents invested in their training. He showed them that age didn’t necessarily command respect, knowledge did. An older student would bow to a younger one, if the younger one was a higher belt. And he taught by example that failure was a path to success. Giving a demo at a tournament, he broke a stack of concrete slabs with his arm. Added another slab, broke them. Added one more and broke the lot again. At seven slabs, he failed to do so.

There was a sharp collective intake of breath as he raised him arm, now swollen, the bars intact below. The seventh-degree black belt at the time  (he’s now a ninth-degree gran master), wasn’t the least embarrassed before a hall full of his students and their families. He explained that he had lost a little weight and that success in breaking slabs was determined by a combination of weight and the force he employed. “I will work on it and try again at the next tournament,” he promised. He broke nine slabs at the next much-anticipated event.

Scouters Amy and Jerry Jutras taught our son Tapas and his friends so many life skills along with camping. Don’t pack for them, she’d tell parents. They have detailed lists of what to bring, let them do it. If they forget something important, we have backup, but let them learn. On one memorable trip, they went through a checklist as they always did just before the parents drove them to the camp site. She asked if they had packed everything. All the kids nodded enthusiastically. “Are you sure?” she asked again. They were, they chimed together.

Turned out that one group had forgotten to pack utensils! So they had to wait while everyone else had their meals, wash those utensils and then eat. They didn’t go hungry, but learned a valuable lesson.

She taught me a few things, too. Once I was grumbling about the state of my son’s room and the way the clean clothes I left there after doing laundry were mixed in with others that needed to be washed.

She asked me why I was still doing his laundry. Her kids, older by just a couple of years, had been doing theirs for years. Give him a laundry basket in his room, and designate a laundry day for him, she advised. If he misses those days, he has to wait until his turn comes around again. “He can have a couple of ‘grace’ days, but don’t tell him that just yet!” she said with a big grin.

Years later, when she recently told us we had raised good sons, I told her we’d had lots of help along the way.

We can encounter mentors anywhere – we just have to recognize them.