One who teaches learns the keenest of lessons

His life continued getting harder, the corporate world started taking a toll on him. It gets harder all the time, he once said. Harder, yet easier. One gets used to things getting harder; one ceases to be surprised that what used to be hard as hard can be grows harder yet.

Every saturday, he and his girlfriend taught some under-privileged kids in a small basti across the river Hindon passing Noida. He used to drive his Thunderbird to that basti and she used to be his hugging pillion rider. A nice couple they were, they looked good together, always jovial, happily ridiculing each other in their own world. He was an MBA and was in the sales team of some fancy beverage company while she was a doctor. But ironically he was more empathetic and social service inclined while she was more nonchalant and corporate types.

Their point of contact in the basti was a small guy who was just 18 years old and was quite talkative. The small guy told them that he was on facebook and that they should add him as a friend and hence cause an increase in his miniscule list of friends. She asked him how he felt about being the only boy in facebook from the basti, and he told that he was not happy. Facebook made him aware of things he could never achieve. It made him conscious of beautiful places in Africa, about posh malls, about gadgets while earlier he was happily ignorant.

The couple taught 16 kids and she mostly taught them English and Hindi while he taught them maths and other subjects and later told them stories to motivate. He used to love their belief that they would one day be rich if they studied hard. The kids liked him more than her because he was a storyteller and could de-metamorphose himself into a kid. He used to enact,mimic, lower his pitch and baritone and do all kiddish stuff. They used to enjoy his sessions and he used to love it. He was never aware that innocence of kids could have such an unwinding effect. It was a win-win situation for both the kids and him.

He loved to teach because it provided him peace of mind; also because it taught him humility, brought it home to him who he is in the world. While his source of enjoyment was direct, hers was moreover indirect. He enjoyed playfully teaching the kids, she enjoyed that bike ride to outskirts but above all she relished that peaceful look in her boyfriend's face.....