The K of Knowledge
The thing about best teachers is that they don’t teach. They just live what should be taught. Those who really seek, learn through observation. Others keep wondering staring into the oblivion waiting for an assorted basket of knowledge to drop into their hands that they can flash around as acquisitions to validate their selves as educated individuals.
Grades, awards, accolades, gradually fills up this assorted shallow basket bestowed upon pupils and they go home happily rejoicing their successful investment in education.
The best teachers will bless you with none of these. They will neither praise your wits nor will they assure a take-home goodie basket prescribed in the form of a syllabus or curriculum. What they will do is guide you to the door of wisdom. They will not tell you how to open it as the number of ways are uniquely infinite. Only a fool would want a copy of the key to be handed over. How you find that key equates to what you learn from the best teachers and what you do with your discovered wealth determines whether one day, you too can be one.
Fortunately, for me Krishnesh Mehta happened. He is the only teacher, second only to one I had in my childhood, from whom I have managed to extract some juice of his self-cultured fruit, samba. Those who have been his students have heard about samba and those who were really listening figured how to cultivate it themselves. If you don’t know what is samba then it’s utterly unfortunate that you can’t learn it in the foremost design institute of India, as this inventor of samba has been barred from entering the campus. However, when was knowledge barred from those who really sought it? Just ping him and he will tell you about this fruit. As for me, I make a living selling samba and I am doing good. I am currently exploring some new methods of cultivation.
You need to be creative to make your own samba. And you need guts to be creative. You need to be able to speak of ether when you are delving in alchemy; you need to be able to speak and understand sex and sexuality when you are a social innovator living in a country with a rape-capital; you need to be able to shed that invisibility cloak of ego, bias and conformism in order to see yourself bare naked. It takes courage to meet this peeled self and even more so to carry it around unabashedly. But hey, that's who you are. Otherwise, you are, just, invisible.
So, being fearless, the first lesson in K’s class. Hardly a module that you will find coined in the syllabus let alone any study material. K might refer a book or two, like, Creativity.Inc, etc. The best teachers, you always will find, never wears this stupid itchy clumsy invisibility cloak. So you can be fearless in front of them and question their views, their ways and their past. They don’t impose a pedestal authority but encourage an argument as equals.
Some arguments with K that made me a sensitive design thinker:
Problem Statement 1:
“To facilitate easier access to drinking water in village x where women otherwise need to travel miles to fetch drinking water for their families.”
K’s argument:
These women are anyways confined to their patriarchal homes all day taking care of household chores and this evening walk to the water source with their girlfriends allows them the much needed release. This is also when they get to meet their boyfriends on the way. Many traditional Indian poetry, songs and dances are themed around this phenomenon. Do you really want your design to take that away from them?
Problem Statement 2:
“Organic food label is often interchangeably used with herbal, natural, pure, organically-grown and hand-made labels. It is necessary for food authority to mandate information of the source, soil composition and manufacturing method of organic food.”
K’s argument:
Goodness of organically grown food doesn’t depend only on soil quality and process. None of the certifying bodies consider uncontrollable environmental conditions, such as, air quality to grade organic food. Until that happens you never really know what is in your food.
There is a famous old saying by Buddha,
“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
True that, the teacher does vanish when the student is not ready. Not ready to shed that stupid itchy cloak of comfort, influence and wrong-things-learnt. Not ready to peel oneself bare naked because there is no one around to bestow courage.
Once, on a particularly tiring encounter in the game called life and work, I needed his advice. In fact he often magically springs up in many discussions in order to strengthen our arguments. Given the ever elusive character he is, I message him, “Krishnesh, I miss you.” He doesn’t reply. The next day I message him again, “Krishnesh, I really miss you”. In a few hours he calls me back asking what happened. I cannot imagine or expect this from any teacher (except one from childhood) who I can count on for advice for all my life, given that it has been a few years since I have passed out of college.
Bitten by the optimistic bug, I am happy that the recent turn of events pushed me into writing this piece and I’m happy that one of the best educators in the country is fearlessly exemplifying what he stands for.
The seeds of samba, although, are with him in a dilapidated wooden box matching his former office cabin decor. I have some too, but they are not of the mother plant. Will the foremost design college of India enable to sow the seeds or will these become a happy meal for the pests infesting the institute causing the infamous jaundice, dengue and malaria in masses?
#krishneshmehta