The Fine Print of Teaching
We find so much of ourselves in classrooms. Our teachers, then, become the bridge between the gaps of so many different versions of ourselves. Through education, we remain both young and old at the same time - because, here, we are allowed to make mistakes, but are also taught to reach beyond where we are. Teachers don’t just expect us to answer; they teach us to question, too. The classroom becomes a sacred, crucial space where thoughts and ideas are nurtured to someday be able to change the world. This Teachers’ Day, we want to honour some of these educators who dedicate their lives to lifting others higher. We want to bring to light their stories and journeys that have aged into their wisdom over time.
Dr. Karuna Gokarn
Among the teachers who embody this spirit with grace and passion is Dr. Karuna Gokarn - a name that resonates with wisdom and unwavering dedication. For three decades, she has poured her heart into teaching and transforming microbiology from a subject into a lesson of lifelong awareness. This Teachers' Day, we celebrate her not only as an educator but as a guiding light, whose impact will be felt for generations to come.
“What I love most is being able to explain concepts in a way that students truly understand.”
This is the heart of Karuna Ma’am’s classroom. Her teaching is never about rote repetition; it is about comprehension, application, and discovery. She insists on making her classes student-centric, nudging her students to test theory against practice, to apply what has been taught. The reward, for her, lies in those moments when the understanding clicks, when a student can finally say, “Yes, I get it!”
Her journey began, though almost inadvertently, at quite an early point. As a child, she would hold mock classes with her elder brother as her student. Years later, during her M.Sc., she experienced what she calls her 'eureka moment,' when a professor praised the clarity of her presentation. Industry jobs never excited her, “I didn’t even enjoy attending those interviews,” she admits. Instead, destiny nudged her back to where she belonged - the very day after her M.Sc. results, she was called in to teach at the Institute of Science. What began as a temporary post eventually extended to two years; following which, in June 1995, she joined St. Xavier’s College. Three decades later, Ma’am looks back with gratitude, knowing she found her true calling.
Her teaching is alive with stories. In Food Microbiology, she recalls the moment at Flora Fountain with her friends, about to enjoy panipuri, when a bird-dropping fell into the pot of pani. To their horror, the vendor simply stirred it in and kept serving. That image has stayed with her, and she shares it with every new batch to remind them how contamination is often invisible, yet never harmless. In Pharmaceutical Microbiology, she recounts a trip to Silvassa, where she found paracetamol tablets six months past their expiry date. The shopkeeper brushed it off casually, but for her students, the story reinforces the idea that science is not just theory; it requires having to be alert, responsible, and careful in the smallest details of daily life.
“If not microbiology, I would probably have studied and practised law,” she told us, reflecting on the crossroads of her youth. Law fascinated her for its rigour and its ability to shape society, but microbiology captured her imagination and, in time, her dedication. It is fitting, perhaps, that she found her place in a discipline that grew alongside her, from a paramedical course into a field respected in its own right. And through that growth, she has remained constant- a teacher whose clarity, stories, and passion make science a way of seeing the world.
Dr. Pranoti Chirmuley
“Thank you for correcting something that you did not do wrong.”
In sociology classrooms, there is room for all those voices and opinions that might be unwelcome outside those four walls. Open dialogue, almost like a living, breathing thing, is passed around eager hands waiting to be picked.
“There is an energy in the class - attentive, empathetic, and inclusive. I’ve been studying the discipline for 3 semesters now and have felt myself change as a person. I owe so much of that to the teacher who creates that energy in the classroom, to Pranoti ma’am”- Pia Oza, SYBA.
Dr. Pranoti Chirmuley is a professor of Sociology who exudes empathy and fosters inclusive and accessible teaching and learning.
Sociology is a discipline that, when combined with her specific style of teaching, broadens your mind, and you can feel it happen. Ma’am told us that in her early years of teaching, she used to be starry-eyed and rigid with rules. Yet, today, there are digressions in class conversations, which are often accompanied by delays. Ma’am says she has unlearned a lot of her dos and don’ts for her students over time, and worked to make herself calmer and more approachable.
“We have to accommodate derailments because sometimes somebody musters up the courage to speak for literally the first time.”
There’s one thing Dr. Chirmuley says she learnt from a mentor, and that shines through each lecture of hers I’ve attended: “You have to keep the verbosity minimum or negligible, and make knowledge, education, conversation and ideas accessible.” Often, the sociology classroom is where we students are most comfortable - in opinions, agreements, and disagreements. Here, they are accessible. All of our thoughts matter because ma’am makes it a point to make us feel like that.
“Sometimes people have come up to me on Teachers' Day and said, ‘Thank you for helping me gather my thoughts, or get over my fears, or be noticed. And one of the things that people have written that makes me very emotional is thank you for correcting something that you did not do wrong. It’s a gesture from students who feel very, very safe in my class. That’s where I feel like, yes, if I can touch people’s hearts by making them feel heard, and making them feel like a person, then I made the right choice when I left my corporate research job for teaching.”
The Department of English
Every classroom has four walls, a blackboard, and the soft hum of fans battling the heat. But an English classroom is never just that. Step inside, and you’ll find stories spilling out not just from books, but from people. Laughter, arguments, epiphanies, and the occasional tears sit alongside Shakespeare and Amitav Ghosh on the timetable. As students, we often think of our professors as figures on the other side of the desk, guiding us through texts and theories. But when you pause and really listen, you realise they have their own stories, just as vivid as the ones we study. There’s a moment in every literature class when a character stops being just a name on a page and becomes real.
Dr. Prasita Mukherjee, Head of the English Department, has a sweet voice and lively presence that never lets our attention wander. Her classes are engaging and enriching, making our learning both enjoyable and meaningful. She excels at encouraging our ideas, valuing our perspectives and ensuring that every student can voice their thoughts. Her ability to observe details in both the text and the classroom is unparalleled, pushing us to become better students of literature.
For Prasita ma’am, her characters come to life every year with The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh- “In the fourth semester, while teaching The Shadow Lines in the SY class,” she shares, “I do end up revisiting a personal understanding of the Partition and the condition of displaced identities. The character of Tha'mma is so real when I think of my grandfather and his behavioural patterns, his responses to situations.”
As she speaks, you can almost picture it: a young little girl listening to her grandfather’s stories, unknowingly gathering pieces of history that would one day resurface in her classroom, years later. It is also a reminder to her students that the stories we study have roots in our own families, cities, and bloodlines. Just like Ghosh’s novel shows how borders are rarely as solid as they seem, life and literature are no different. The stories that we read are never restricted to a mere piece of literature, but rather reflect reality itself.
Teaching is often imagined as a one-way street: professors teach, students learn. Yet, sometimes, the roles reverse, and a student ends up teaching the teacher. For Dr. Rashmi Lee George, that reversal came in 2011, during an FYBA Effective English Skills class. The discussion was on family, a seemingly straightforward topic. A student raised their hand and said:
“Ma’am, my parents are divorced, but I don’t think I am from a broken family.” This statement was an unexpected shock. Ma’am recalls: “It shook my core as an English teacher because I was accustomed to the equivalence drawn between divorce and brokenness. It compelled me to re-assess my usage of terms, labels and connotations that I had assembled in my repertoire as part of my life experiences.”
That moment was transformative. “I will always remember this statement,” she says, “because it heralded the recalibration of my vocabulary and perspective on various aspects of life.”
To this day, whenever she speaks about families in her lectures, there’s a different tenderness in her voice.
Some people spend their lives waiting for that ‘aha’ moment to confirm they’ve chosen the right path. For Ms. Amrita Shenoy, Faculty, Department of English, that moment isn’t a singular event. It happens every single day.
“This realisation comes every day in class when I face my students.”
For ma’am, teaching is about creating a space where voices are truly heard, something she believes is becoming rarer in today’s world. Her encouraging and lively voice often leads to various debates, and she makes sure that every one of those thoughts is heard. Her insistence that there is no right and wrong instils in us a confidence that can only be found in Amrita ma’am’s class.
“In a world that stifles voices and breaks wills, teaching is a rare field that facilitates a person’s expression to so many listeners at a time. The experience of having your ideas acknowledged, heard, taken seriously and remembered is powerful and validating. In addition, teaching is also delightful to me because of my love for discussion, both inside and outside the classroom.”
Her love for discussion makes the classroom feel alive. “So, I experience my ‘I made it’ moment when it dawns on me that I get paid to partake in something like this in a professional capacity!”
But beneath her joy also lies a conscious understanding of the responsibility that she carries: “The literature we teach shapes the values and visions of future generations,” she says. “I am awestruck at the immense responsibility we teachers have, to shape characters, outlooks and visions! I am therefore proud of our community.” Each lecture, for ma’am, is a tiny act of hope, a belief that through stories and conversations, we can leave the world just a little better than we found it.
Some classrooms hold more than just lessons. They hold memories. For Ms. Stuti Kute, Faculty, Department of English, who was, in 2021, a Xavierite herself, LR 31 carries extreme importance: “LR 31 was my full circle moment at St Xavier’s. Built as it is, strangely with a load-bearing pillar erected in between, I remember being one of the slightly belligerent kids who used to sit behind it for no reason in particular. And of course, I remember my teachers shooing me out of my rebellious (without cause) hiding place.”
Four years later, she returned to LR 31, not as a student, but as a teacher. “The first day I walked into LR 31, I too shooed the rebels without a cause out of their hiding and into the light (not a metaphor). Life, for me, came full circle at that moment.” LR 31 became a bridge between the past and present, between the student she once was and the professor she has now become.
It is through these teachers that we realise that education is so much more than lessons from a syllabus. We may not know much about your past selves, and you, about our future ones, but somewhere in the middle, students and teachers meet- shaping, nudging, and learning from each other in ways that last far beyond exams or assignments. Together, they create spaces where thoughts and ideas matter, where voices find courage, and where learning becomes part of who we are. And maybe that is what makes a classroom special- not just the knowledge it holds, but the people who carry it forward.
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