Being on Cloud 1556-1605

Yesterday was one of the most rewarding days of my life. Initially, I had constructed the sentence as “one of the most rewarding days of my professional life.” But that didn’t say much, whereas I wanted to say it all...

As a five-year-old, all that I wanted to do upon growing up was become a teacher. There was nothing particularly remarkable about that dream because almost every other five-year-old around me wanted the same thing. That dream lasted only a few years, and eventually got buried under other ambitions and plans for life. Eventually, perceptions – whether mine or of those around– convinced me that teaching was not for me. It demanded too much patience, and that was an area where I certainly lacked. Over time, I also grew interested in fitting into offices, surrounded by the paraphernalia and peculiarities of “regular, nine-to-five” jobs, and that’s what I did for four continuous years.

Upon coming to America though, teaching became practically the only professional option. As an international student, I am not allowed to work off-campus, and on campus, there are odd jobs, but those I am not keen about. Moreover, it was wonderful to get back to academics, and be in a university again, and full-time teaching seemed like something I could get interested in.

It was only in my third semester (second year) here that I received my first teaching assignment—a course on world religions for freshmen (first year students). It was an interesting process to teach students who seemed different in ways that were both good and bad from how I remembered my first year in college to be. In the next semester, which will conclude in a week’s time, I landed up teaching two courses—in addition to world religions, I began teaching the history of the Mughal Empire. I was asked to design it for upper division (final year) students of History.

Now I have always maintained that no one loves the Mughals more than I do, yet the first day of this class was particularly nerve-racking. These were serious students, they knew how social sciences worked, how movements progressed, and most importantly, this was the first time in the record of this campus that a course on Indian history was being offered. And I was saddled with that responsibility. I cautioned my students, I told them that this was my first time teaching something like this, and that I hoped to do a fair job because otherwise I could potentially end up messing up their perception and understanding of a country with over a billion people. They laughed, and with that we began the whole process of understanding the Indian subcontinent and the Mughals: how Babur—the military genius—loved fruits and hated Agra, why Humayun loved opium and pursued astrology, how Akbar was both a compassionate genius as well as a sexual predator, how Jahangir was creative enough to design his own clothes yet ruthless enough to blind his own son, how Shahjahan was almost effeminate because of his love for white marble, and how Aurangzeb can be is so easily and greatly misunderstood.

Yesterday was technically the last class of the semester, and we celebrated with a party at my home. I cooked an Indian dinner for all twenty-six of them, and received tremendous help from my "kitchen staff", a group of about six students who helped with driving me to buy groceries; peeling and grinding mountains of ginger and garlic; cutting little hills of potatoes, onions, tomatoes, and other miscellaneous oddities. Yet others pitched in by making desserts or bringing in drinks for the party. And finally, they justified my quitting a good job and coming to America on a whim when they presented me with a mug that read "I love Akbar." I had not laughed that hard in months.

I don’t remember if I ever did anything this nice for any of my teachers, but fifteen minutes ago when I brewed myself some cinnamon-spice tea in my new mug, my thoughts went back to several of them whose teaching styles have influenced and informed mine. To them goes my sincerest, "Thank you."