a great loss

One of my favourite teachers passed away this morning after having battled with cancer. She was always full of energy in class, and even though many a times she took the class in the afternoons when Delhi sun would make most run back home, we would stay on because Dr. Subbu was teaching Paradise Lost and we couldn't miss it for the world...

It's strange how just yesterday while reading the conclusion of Two Lives by Vikram Seth, I was thinking of her... how I never was able to visit her in the hospital, and I was regretting not having been more courageous to do so... In the book, Seth mentioned a visit to a friend whose illness and hospitalization isolated her from her friends.. I know Subbu was not isolated, but that doesn't mean that I needn't have made the effort to visit. I feel guilty, and now I will live with this regret that I wasn't strong enough to face her in the hospital...

Once I met her in Hindu, when she had recovered enough to rejoin, and my eyes had welled up right there in front of her as she boldly talked about the cancer while readjusting her wig. Now, this last image of her brings a smile to my face, it was so typical of her and of me, that it borders on the ironic. At that time, of course, I had to do all I could to stop from sobbing in front of her... I am never strong in the face of another's pain... I was a fool... and it proves my point that the gift of true empathy is also a curse.

This news of her death shatters me... not only because of the regrets, but because she meant so much. I knew when the cancer re-emerged that her chances of battling through would be greatly diminished. But I still wanted her to be cured. It is really sad. She was one of the best teachers in the world. She not only taught the text in a way that you understand it and remember it, but she also made us engage with it in a personal way that makes literature so relevant and crucial to human beings. Not many teachers can do this, and I hope one day I will be the kind of teacher she was...

What a loss to Hindu College and to all who knew her...