My life as an international executive took a curious turn in Manila when a university and a management institute both engaged me as a visiting professor the same month. Thanks to my itinerant life, I had the opportunity to deliver special lectures or even courses in some universities in different countries. It was a pleasant scholarly fringe to my life as a business manager, but essentially secondary. This was different. The twin assignments meant lessons and lectures, students and study plans would be a major part of my life.
 
There was a strange irony to this. I firmly believed that most teaching was useless. A well-known university had published a collection of essays in which mine started with the rebellious declaration, “There is no such thing as teaching.” In fact, I was convinced that a large part of teaching was quite harmful. Most of my friends who had been exposed to Shakespeare in college as a text, never read him later and hated him. I paid no attention to my professors of literature and took my lessons only from Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, loved Shakespeare and read him for fun.

How then to teach in a fashion that was helpful instead of hurtful? My unflinching decision was to make sure that the student should be at the center of the process, rather than the professor. The university decreed that a student’s final marks should depend on three things, a test, a project and class work, but did not prescribe the percentages. On the first day of the course, I told the students that they had the option of collectively choosing the percentages, in effect deciding what they wanted to give importance to. One class, for instance, decided 60 per cent should go to project performance and only 10 per cent to the final examination. Other professors thought it crazy to give such freedom to students, but I found students felt involved and committed to the course.
 
The Dean was fortunately a flexible person ready to go along with my innovations if she felt it would attract and motivate students. I let go of the classic lecture style and would begin a topic by inviting thoughts and questions from students. This in turn prompted students to study the theme in advance and prepare their mind. It also made the process highly participative.
 
The management institute was a different proposition. It followed, religiously, the case method of teaching and believed that that alone made the teaching process responsive to students. In reality, the culture of the institute was highly paternalistic and in class after class of other professors that I attended I found the process centered on the professor as the hero and savant. The students got the message and often focused on cultivating the professor and gaining an advantage. My inclination was to deemphasize the professor’s central role and place the ball back firmly among the students. I believed my role, both in the class and outside, was only to help the student’s own effort to learn.

The institute staff talked a lot about cultural differences, drawing ecstatic lessons from Japan whose upward curve was already beginning to sag, and, paradoxically, prided itself on its connection with a well-known US business school. It seemed to overlook that the case method, as practiced in a US institution, worked very differently in the Asian context, given pliant and overly deferential students. I argued with my colleagues that no method was a surefire guarantee of student enlightenment.
 
In both the institutions I tried to do two very simple things.
 
I took the course outline, largely modified and updated it, then wrote out a detailed framework, saying what really has to be learned and what the student can do to stay ahead of the curve. I suggested alternative texts, but left it to the students to decide what they found relevant and helpful. I have never quite understood why educational institutions, who talk incessantly of student responsibility, seldom give them useful clues as to how they can prepare for a course, cope best with the oncoming stream of new knowledge and offer guidelines that can keep the learner from feeling overwhelmed. Pressure and tension seem to be watchwords of current practice. My aim was to make the student at home and find the peace and fun that true learning should entail.

​The second thing I insisted on was to make myself accessible to the students in an extraordinary measure. I told them I would be available for consultation an hour before each class and two hours after. Since my university classes were in the evening, the ensuing two hours became a time for a party in my home salon. Students talked among themselves and with me, collectively and individually, when they wished. While I could not replicate the ancient Indian system of a student living in the Guru’s home, I tried to know as I could of their work and life, and it was the goldmine that let me shape every discourse based on their issues and problems. I have always disliked homilies that I could not relate to my life and experiences, and I wanted my students to know that education was worthwhile precisely because it would be germane to their life.
 
I am sure I failed in many ways and I should have done better for my pupils. They were gracious and indulgent and showered me with affection I cannot ever forget.

I learned little in the schools, college and universities I attended. No surprise really, because they had little to do with learning. Like most educational institutions, they were businesses that collected fees, maintained buildings, paid staff, turned a profit and pretended – not unlike many businesses – that they were doing something noble. Stuffing the minds of people with dull and irrelevant information was hardly noble, but as long as gullible people accepted the pretense and kept paying, the businesses continued.
 
It makes me sad to think of the long hours and many years I wasted in those institutions, with so little to show for it. I was lucky to have a father and a mother who encouraged me to learn whatever I found interesting and who struggled, given their modest means, to get me the resources I needed to learn. Besides my parents, I had the remarkable advantage of two loving and talented aunts who stirred my interest in art and languages. I also had a curious model to emulate, a disorderly, wildly curious elder brother who probed everything and deigned to accept nothing. I learned, almost all on my own, ploddingly, stubbornly, determined to know what I didn’t and find my solitary way, however long and forlorn.
 
Which is why I must pay tribute to a man no one gave the slightest importance and whom perhaps none remembers. I know he did something special for me and it made a big difference.
 
Father had noticed the poor marks I had received in school for the classical language, Sanskrit, a subject for which most of my classmates had nothing but derision. They saw little point in learning a dead language, something like Latin. Father thought differently.
 
“You seem to do well in languages,” he said, “and there is no reason you should squander the opportunity to learn a new language. You have a choice. You can continue like this and make do with an indifferent grasp of the language. Or you can make an effort and master the language. If you want to learn the language well, I can get you some help and get you started.”
 
I wasn’t entirely persuaded, but I said, yes, I wanted to learn the language, mostly to please him. A couple of days later father came home with a tall, large-boned man with large glasses and a small, comical Hitler-like moustache. He also had a comically old-fashioned name, Janardan. He taught in some school and had struck friendship with father through a curious incident. Getting down from a public bus, father had stepped on a banana peel and fallen, and Janardan had promptly dropped the bags he was carrying and pulled father up. I wasn’t half as impressed by the story as father was, for it proved his strength and helpfulness more than his skill with languages.

​Janardan certainly had a maverick style. He asked father to be scarce, for he wanted to talk to me one on one. Then he asked me, as if he was asking a professor, what I thought of languages. I said languages were fun, for I enjoyed reading novels and newspapers. Then he went to great lengths exploring the newspapers I read and the authors I enjoyed. Finally, he wondered if he could see any samples of my writing in English and Bengali, the two languages I knew. He read the pieces with rapt attention and asked my father to join us.
 
“You already know enough about languages, and I can see you love languages. I don’t need to teach you anything about a new language. You are quite capable of learning it on your own. I can only help you and guide you a little bit.” After this amazing statement, he added, “I want you to write a piece every week in Sanskrit, short or long, on any subject you like. I will review it and give you my comments. Those will be enough to give you a clue to improve – if you really want to improve your Sanskrit.”
 
I was astounded. No lessons, no grammar, no boring homilies or correction. Just an essay. That was the good news. But that was also the bad news. I hardly knew anything of the language. How on earth was I to write an essay, however short or simple? In my panic I forgot about cricket, my friends, everything else. With the pathetic little Sanskrit I knew I wrote, rewrote, studied, consulted grammar and dictionaries, and wrote again. For a week, I thought of nothing but Sanskrit, and when my tormentor, Janardan, finally came to take a look, he gulped and choked as he read the piece. He had marked a few parts and briefly hinted at the errors, but said, “You must have been rather absent-minded when you wrote this. Never mind. The treatment is very interesting. I will look forward to your next essay.” 

​Another week of mortification, of endless hours of study, exploration and dictionary-hunting just not to disappoint my guide of impossible expectations. Followed inevitably by another week of frantic study and feverish effort. You can imagine the rest. In three months I learned what people possibly learn in three years. I amazed my teachers at school and my father at home with my progress. Far more important was the change in me. I began to see the beauty of the language, found I had some control over it, and I could finally mould it to express what I wanted to express. I had at last a glimpse of the heart of the language.
 
Looking back, I learned the most important thing that became of inestimable value later on: how to learn anything. Give it an intense effort and focus on a concrete result. I also learned how to teach anything. Don’t teach. Just build on the student’s strength and interest. Give your pupil the confidence he or she needs.
 
Janardan knew how best to draw something out of his student. He was a great teacher.

Last night I dreamed of mother.
 
When I wake up, I rush to the computer to write down what I remember. I want to hold on to what has come fortuitously to me. I want it so desperately. As it often happens, much of the dream has dissolved. I just retain a vivid recollection of her face. Her gentle face. Looking at me.
 
I can’t give up thinking of that face. She is in her fifties. Her face is framed by her hair. She has her glasses on. Thank Heavens, she is looking at me. Only she can look that way. It is a placid look. As if she is saying, “It is all right. I am waiting for you.” She was always waiting for me. I wanted her waiting for me and loving me.
 
I feel like knocking my head, for I can’t remember what she said or did. I so want to capture everything she said or did. I am in tears that I can’t remember what I glimpsed only so recently. My mother has disappeared in the mists of time, with only a fleeting wisp of a memory.

​The rest of the dream is a confused mass. I am attending a conference. Something is not going well. Something trivial is troubling my mind. I remember restlessly walking a corridor trying to sort out a problem I can’t now recall. Then in contrast I am at peace with my mother. Probably I am visiting her or briefly staying with her.
 
I feel like saying: Mother, I have grown up. I am not a little boy any more, the boy who loved to follow you around in every room. Who listened to you, wide-eyed, as you spoke with friends and relations. Who stood aside when you cooked, disregarding your admonition to leave the warm kitchen. Who wanted to be near you. Who loved to sleep next to you.
 
You told me that, when I slept next to you, I held on to an end of your nightclothes, because I wanted to make sure you did not leave me. I held it so hard, you could not get it out of my grip when you woke up in the morning. You had to shed your nightclothes and wear other clothes, for you did not want to wake me up. No, I never wanted you to leave me.
 
Ironically, it is I who left you. Even when I took a job and moved out of the city, I would come back every weekend to spend time with you. When I returned to town, I made sure to find an apartment a stone’s throw from yours. For years I seldom returned home from work without a detour to your home and a special cup of tea. If I became too engrossed in a discussion with dad, you would softly remind me, “Your tea is getting cold.”
 
Then I fell in love and went abroad. I left you behind. I took jobs that meant I had to change planes and switch countries, and only rarely could I be with you, only for the shortest time. One time I came to your home looking so exhausted that you just pulled the blanket and ordered me to get in the bed, going off for a few minutes to fetch me my favored brand of tea. When the phone rang, you took the call and said, “The Grand Hotel says that they have a reservation in your name from your office in Washington.” Peremptorily, I said, “Please tell them that I am in a grander hotel, my mother’s home, and I will not move.”
 
As you grew older, you forgot some things. You could not remember some names. You brought me a second cup of tea, shortly after I had finished the first, imagining it to be the first. I drank it anyway. What amazed me was what you remembered. You remembered vividly what shameful thing a neighbor had done to me when I was child. You remembered the time I hurt an ankle when playing football and the tooth I lost during a hockey clash. You remembered my lifelong love for shrimps and lobsters. You remembered, painfully, the time I was briefly lost in a village fair or the time I took a risky boat ferry on a turbulent river. And you remembered, joyfully, every medal I ever got, for an essay, a debate or some inconsequential accomplishment.
 
I know now I have not grown up. In my dreams or in daylight, I want to hold to an end of your clothes to not let you get up and go. I still don’t want you to leave me. I need to see your face. I need to know you are with me. I need to hear your voice, the very timbre telling me that you love me, care for me, and will forever look out for me.
 
For years I lived with the illusion that I or my brothers needed to take care of you. The truth was I always needed you more than you ever needed me.
 
Maybe in my hubris of invulnerability I may have sometimes thought I did not need you. My work, my wife, my children occupied my time. You were always there, waiting for me. When I came and stayed with you – just you and me, dad was long gone – it was a time for realization. But I still did not see it. You are my mother. I will always need you.
 
Shamed I am to admit it: I miss you, mother. God knows I miss you even in my dreams. To my final breath, I fear I will not stop missing you.

​I can’t let summer go without a word.
 
When I lived in India, summer was the dominant season. It was almost always summer, except when it rained. The rains you could not fail to notice, because it was so abundant, often so violent. Accompanied by strong winds, they blew roofs, brought down energy poles and left streets flooded. Winter? There was no such thing in eastern India, where I lived. For about a month you donned a jacket you had, a flimsy blazer most likely, only because you left for work early or returned late from a party, and felt a gust of cool air on your face. For the rest it was all summer.
 
It was about the same in the Philippines, where I spent several years. In that country there are only two seasons, summer and more summer. Being an archipelago, when it rained it seem all hell was coming down, but it never seemed make the slightest difference to the temperature. The heat and humidity remained constant. In December, the Filipinos mentioned that winter had arrived, but I did see any difference. If I went for a walk at early dawn, I sweated before I had taken ten steps.

So, when I came to Washington, after years of peregrination, I was impressed that I could see the change of season so clearly. Its distinctive brand of summer departed with a bang, to be replaced by gold and orange leaves, rustling in the pleasantly cool breeze of early fall. I could clearly see the fall maturing into something different as I shivered as I stepped out of my home. Then there was a thin layer of ice on the sidewalk and my shoes slipped; I knew winter had arrived. The trees looked denuded, I fished out my mail from the mailbox with a gloved hand, and I walked everywhere in intrepid boots instead of my comfortable shoes. That too passed and new leaves appeared on the trees. The weather turned congenial again, heralding the advent of spring. Neighbors started strolling in our barrio, their kids ran around kicking an orange ball, and I started on my leisurely walk around the lake.
 
Clearly, there is much to be said for the congenial air of spring and early fall, but I thought in those days that winter was overly maligned. Granted it is no fun to get up at six in the morning, gulp a mug of coffee and step out for work when it is still dark, much of the time I was quite comfortable in my office, in the car and back in my den. Then came the shameless but delightful overeating of Thanksgiving and the ethereal conviviality of Christmas, and I could not put my heart in running down winter as a miserable interval when life is dark and pleasures are verboten. I had my soft corner for winter, despite the cold beds and icy roads.

Years passed, years since the time I spent my winter holidays happily in Minnesota, White Christmas and icy New Year’s Eve included. Parties did not seem lively enough, if the roads to them did not entail braving mountains of snow and overcoming detours through illusive roadside ditches. The world has changed, and so have I, perhaps more than the world. Now a pair of sturdy horses would not pull me out of home on a snow-laden day and I would rather look at snowflakes from a bedroom window than a car window. My affection for wintry days has gone south, my tolerance for frost and sleet has wilted, and I have learned to embrace summer like a long-lost lover.
 
Washington – which many early residents referred to as a “swamp” and Donald Trump seems to have revived the title – can be warm and humid. No doubt it is not the best place to be in July. I would rather be in Bogota, Bilbao or Brindisi, or the abundant beaches of Bimini. Yet, in a compromise with an imperfect world, I am quite content these days to pass my days in a warm and moist Washington.
 
The first thought that occurs to me is that I would rather have it than the rigors of winter. Maurice Chevalier said reportedly that old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative. In a similar spirit I contend, contentedly, with sweat rather than sweaters. I am happy to go around in tee shirts and shorts, and happier still to see women go around in distinctly less.

​Doctors are telling us more and more, though we are hearing it less and less, that it is no healthy living to spend all our time in confined spaces that are thermostatically heated and air-conditioned. We live away from sunlight and open spaces, and begin to lose alertness, damage our sleep cycle, lose bone density and get hypertension and mood disorders. We live like termites and our life becomes insect-like. The summer months offer a way out. To soak not just the sun, but life itself. To encounter other people who step out and to see a little of the world around us. To spread our invisible but real wings. 860
 
That is perhaps what the summer really means in this part of the world. A chance to venture out, explore what has remained unseen and unexplored, live in a different way than the way we have mostly lived, meet the people we haven’t met, the strangers who are our neighbors, and simply have a grand time.
 
So, as the pleasant autumn air brushes my face, I must take a minute and take note that summer is about to end. At least for this year.