The Helpless Teacher || AP Neem Candies
Acharya Prashant: I was six years old. My sister Pragya was three and my younger brother was being born, mother was in the maternity ward. So, we two kids were having good fun. We had been relieved from school for a month because mother had gone to another city to be admitted for the delivery and it was a cesarean and all, a little complicated. So, these two kids would be playing and fighting the entire day.
I was playing with my sister and I broke her arm. Just casual kids play. I did not intend to, I didn’t even hit her hard. She got a fracture in the arm when she was three. And now, I was very guilty. I had not deliberately caused it, but it happened. And it had happened once earlier as well. I was chasing her, she entered the kitchen and hot boiling curry fell over her and she had burns all over her body. She recovered fully, but I had that memory as well, and now the fracture. So, it was a shock to my consciousness.
Now she had the plaster on her arm, from the same hospital and her hand would itch now. Under the plaster, her hand would itch. And since she was just three, so the plaster was not very thick. And I was feeling very guilty. Now what she would try to do, she would try to itch herself, scratch herself under the plaster. She would take a pencil or a pen and try to put it in and slowly she was trying to dismember the whole thing. The plaster was coming off; after all, it was just a plaster.
And as an elder brother and also someone with a guilty conscience, it was now my responsibility to ensure that she did not fiddle with her plaster. So, I was keeping a watch on her all the time. All the time she was trying to do something with the plaster, all the time.
And I knew the doctor had told, and it had been told to me in very clear, rather exaggerated ways that, if her plaster comes off or if she keeps fiddling with the arm, then the arm may not join properly or it can get bad for the entire life. So, I was very concerned.
Now, I would be watching her the entire day, and the entire day she would be doing something with her arm. That is the first memory I have of powerlessness, great powerlessness. I really wanted her to recover, and she was doing self-destructive things and I couldn’t even scold her because somewhere something in me was guilty that I had caused it.
For two months, even as a six-year-old I was having troubled nights. She would be troubled because it would itch, so she would get up and do something and whenever she would get up and do something, I would get up and try to cajole her, convince her, somehow pacify her into not doing that thing. Mother was busy with her own physical condition and after some time, the younger brother arrived, and he was extremely sick and both the mother and the kid were sick. So, no one was looking at her and I was the one trailing her all the time and she was doing something with her arm. She recovered fully but I remember that period; it is marked on my mind.
You know something is not right for the other person and yet you cannot help her from doing it. And you also can’t give up and you also can’t get angry. You can’t give up, you can’t get angry and you can’t stop what is happening. That’s how I felt as a six-year old. That’s how a teacher feels.
Full article link: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/helplessness-of-the-guru-1_42e1e68
