School teachers: the unsung heroes of our stories

 

The 49^th Chennai Book Fair was a good event. The event was held between 8^th and 21^st of January 2026. I visited twice and could not finish seeing all the stalls. I heard of many people there who visited on all the days and still couldn’t complete seeing all the stalls. On the two days that I went, was the book fair overcrowded? I wouldn’t say so. The first time I went alone and spent 4 hours and the second time I went with a friend and spent around 2. Both days the crowd was not too much. Most of the stalls were empty and there were a lot of people cruising the aisle having not decided about entering into any particular stall. There were some with specific agenda, for example, there was a group of people with ochre robes, monks of some order, who were all crowding the spiritual and devotional literature stalls. As expected, the stalls that sold English books and novels had a lot of young crowds. My friend, with whom I had visited the second time knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted to start a collection of historical novels by the Tamil writer Sandilyan. Vanathi Publishers is the publishing house who have brought out his books. So, we just went through the list of stalls, identified Vanathi Publishers who were stall number 312 and we walked straight to that stall. The stall was crowded. People in their late 20s to late 40s were thronging Vanathi Publishers. There is a kind of resurgence of interest in the writing by Sandilyan. It is probably secondary to the slew of historical novels that have been converted to mainstream commercial cinema in the recent years. So many people were asking for, exploring and buying Sandilyan. My friend gifted me the whole three volumes of Sandilyan’s Kadal Pura (the dove of the ocean). I have not yet started reading the book, as I had bought 10 other books on my own, and I have decided to read them in the order in which I bought them. I have also decided I will alternatively read one English book and one Tamil book. I also plan to alternate fiction and non-fiction.

 

Last year I started a journal in which I wrote about the books I read. In 2025, I read 61 books. When I was just about crossing the 50 mark, I got the idea that I should call it “book-a-week” phenomenon. By this I mean, I should try and read at least one book a week, or 4 books a month. This would help me reach a target of 50 books a year. From prior experience, I know that reading books in a consistent rate is not easy as there is likely to be a lot of distractions and competing priorities. But I have noticed that when I have a journal to fill out, it keeps reminding me and making me want to read so that I can write about it. This year, I have slightly expanded my journal. Apart from writing the title of the book, the author’s name, the date on which I started it and the date on which I finished it and a few words about the reading experience, I will be writing a synopsis about the book. On January 26^th I returned home from Bengaluru, where I had been to attend the working editor’s meeting of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics. On my way back in the train, I finished reading a book. Yesterday I wrote a small synopsis of that book in my journal. It did not feel right to restrict the synopsis to my personal journal, and I decided to write a blog about the book and my reflections on the book. 

 

“Ordinary people; extraordinary teachers – the heroes of real India” by S. Giridhar was published first in 2022 by Westland Books. The book has 296 pages and is available at a price of around Rs. 350. I bought the book in the Book Fair. I love the teaching profession, have always been fascinated by the process of teaching and learning, and have worked as a medical teacher for more than 10 years. So, the moment I saw this book, I had to read it. S. Giridhar is the Chief Operating Officer of the Azim Premji University. He is one of the earliest members of the Azim Premji Foundation and has been actively involved in its community-based activities in the fields of education and health. As part of his early community-based work with the Foundation he has travelled to many districts where the Foundation was working with schools and teachers for improving the quality of primary education in the country and met and interacted with thousands of primary school teachers and head-teachers. In this book he narrates the stories of 100+ of these teachers and head teachers. He writes about their trials, tribulations, challenges, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. He writes about the indomitable spirit of these teachers, who against so many odds strive to provide basic education to the students. 

 

Cutting across the narratives there were some common characteristics. Punctuality of the teacher fostered trust; the morning assembly was seen as a great time, space and opportunity to teach; innovative teaching strategies were welcome by the children; seeing happy children, parents discontinued them from private schools and brought them to public schools. Every day during my journey to the rural clinic in the train and bus, I travel with a bunch of government school teachers who work in the villages near our clinic. Many of them travel from long distances so that they can be in their classes on time. Of the 20-30 teachers who would come in the bus, only one or two would have ear phones and listen to something on their mobiles. The rest huddled together talking and discussing something. I never bothered to understand what they were talking. But after reading this book, I wonder if they were exchanging notes about students, planning their sessions or discussing teaching strategies, because that is what Giridhar found the teachers doing during their free time during his interactions with them. He found them eager to improve themselves to provide the best possible education to the kids. 

 

When Giridhar writes about sitting cross legged on the floor, in the back of the single teacher class room, watching the interaction between the primary school children and their teacher, I felt like I was there sitting next to him. He writes about the mathematics problems that the teacher challenged the kids with, some of the kids jumping up and down with answers, eager to please and impress the teacher, some quietly writing down the answer with a calm nonchalance. The small dingy classrooms comes alive in the pages of the book. I felt like I wanted to pat the teacher on his back, and hug all the kids. At the same time, I wanted to silently sit there and watch, not disturbing the magic that was unraveling between the teacher and his children. 

 

Giridhar has classified the book into five chapters. In the first chapter he talks about the head teachers and how they operate like Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) by maintaining a smooth relationship between the school, community and higher administrative authorities. The second chapter is about the teachers’ commitment to lifelong learning, in which he writes about how teacher are keen to improve and upskill themselves. The chapter on equity and quality explores the extent to which the teachers try to treat every child fairly irrespective of their religion, caste, class or language. There is a chapter on the importance and emphasis on team work. Giridhar narrates examples of teams of teachers, for example, a science teacher who successfully conducts the science fair in the school with the able support and help of the Hindi teacher. Each of these chapters has narratives of exemplary teachers. We do not hear about them; we do not know them. When I read what Giridhar has described, I wonder if the 20-30 teachers with whom I travel every day could also be such heroes that we never hear about or know about. It was a humbling emotion and I see my co-travellers with a whole new found respect now. 

 

In the last chapter Giridhar maps the story of the teacher who converted two classrooms in his school to dormitories for the kids, so that the kids of parents who migrated out of the village for work, did not have to discontinue studies and go away. He writes the story of the village where only girl children are sent to the ‘public schools’ and the boys are sent to ‘prestigious private schools’. The teacher there strived hard to make the girls excel in sports and the girls turned out to win district and state level sports tournaments and were far more accomplished than the boys in the village! Giridhar says that he could not group these narratives along with those of the other teachers in the book, because these are all real super-stars. Throughout the time I was reading the book, I was laughing, smiling and weeping like a child! No book has taken me through such an emotional trip like this one. 

 

I strongly recommend this book for anyone who has had an inspiring school teacher who has influenced your life. You will see him/her smile at you through the pages in Giridhar’s book. Teachers are real super-heroes; unsung super-heroes. If I were to summarize the whole book in a couple of lines, I would borrow Giridhar’s own words, “Very few join the teaching profession out of passion for teaching. Many join for a livelihood, or for the lure of a stable government job. But as they interact and see the little ones learning from them and considering them as authoritative figures in their lives, the teachers are driven to learn, improve and make themselves better teachers. They do not have a choice but to become better.”