Acceptance Speech
Teacher’s Day Award Function
Mumbai, India
Distinguished dignitaries and dear friends,
Thank you very much for the award.
It feels like a recognition of my endeavors to achieve the benchmark I had set out for myself. This will inspire me to take up new challenges, without compromising on the quality. And at the same time, this will motivate others from our fraternity to perform better and contribute more.
Its been almost 10 years since I decided to leave a lucrative corporate career, and embarked upon this journey of self exploration through academics. During this decade, I have realized that if this is not your journey, it can not be a journey of anyone else; and will never ever be of your students, college or society. I believe that a teacher is one who helps, heals, loves, raises and redeems.
I would like to share an experience of a family with you;
A family of five was enjoying its day at the beach. The children were bathing in the ocean and making castles in the sand, when in the distance a little old lady appeared. Her grey hair was blowing in the wind and her cloths were dirty and ragged. She was muttering something to herself as she picked up things from the beach and put them into a bag.
The parents called the children to their side and told them to stay away from the old lady. As she passed by, bending down every now and then to pick things up, she smiled at the family. But her greeting wasn’t returned.
Many weeks later they learnt that the little old lady had made it her lifelong crusade to pick up bits of glass from the beach so children wouldn’t cut their feet.
Somehow I couldn’t resist myself relating this old lady’s act with that of a real teacher’s. Don’t you find parallels in what she is doing and what we, teachers should be doing?
Thank you very much.
Hardik Vachhrajani
5/September/2011
Dr Hardik Vachharajani 