Age and experience

This time in Bombay, I had the opportunity to teach some students at my college, a place I had not been to in twenty years (has it really been that long?). Visiting your alma mater is a bittersweet experience – you instantly recognize the gate, the corridors, the sense of familiarity that closes around you like a favorite jacket. Of course, many things have changed. In this case -the entire neighborhood. What used to be a tree-lined colony of small independent houses, an oasis in the big city of Bombay, is now full of tall buildings obscuring the entrance of the venerable institution. Some things inside have not changed, the canteen is still the same location, overseeing a patch of green. New floors have been added, some parts are being renovated. I visited on a weekend, but I was told that some of the teachers are still around.

Time flies but memories remain. I had to mention that I was an alumnus to the class of students and asked them to guess how long ago I might have been roaming these halls as a teenager. Some said 5 years, some said 8 – I was flattered with these guesses. One smart aleck said 19. That hit too close to home, so I did the only thing I could – I changed the subject. After all being a teacher does have its privileges.

A few years ago I met the man who had been principal of this college during my college years. It was easy to recognize him – he looked exactly as had done couple of decades ago. I was amazed that this man had stopped aging. He was still the bald, jolly, genial person he had been. His appearance gave me hope – I thought, perhaps I could also look the same twenty years hence. Then I happened to meet another gentleman who had also been a student of the same man ten years prior to my tenure. And he shared my views, although with a twist. While I assumed “Sir” had not aged, he corrected me by saying that “Sir” had aged in a accelerated manner in his youth and then hit a plateau. I am not sure if such a phenomenon has been reported in medical literature but here was one living example which we could simply not ignore.

In any case, I was requested to teach at my college, not because I was an alumnus, or because I was of the required age, but because of my experience, my interest in teaching and the fact that the subject on which I was to speak was of interest to the students. So it is age and experience that are supposed to go hand in hand not just age and baldness or graying or layers of fat around the middle. It is easy to hide the physical signs of passage of time but difficult to fake knowledge. I am glad to have the requisite characteristics and to share it with ones who are interested.