Guru Parampara - 1

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गुरुर्ब्रह्मा ग्रुरुर्विष्णुः गुरुर्देवो महेश्वरः । 

गुरुः साक्षात् परं ब्रह्म तस्मै श्री गुरवे नमः ॥

First I heard the word 'guru', with immense delight,  was from the side-hero, Balakrishna, in the 1951 movie "Patala Bhairavi' (పాతాళ భైరవి).

He says: "మోసం గురూ! మోసం గురూ!" (Cheating Guru! Cheating Guru!)

...And then this clever shishya Ashaadhabhooti (ఆషాఢభూతి) from Panchatantra who cheats his Guru badly.

...And then, when I reached Vizagh in 1958 for my university studies, I discovered that friends who turn thick as thieves would address each other: "guru", absurdly.

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Every shishya has a guru...often more than one. There is no dearth of gurus. No hoarding and blackmarketing.

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa had many gurus during his lifetime as he progressed in his spiritual efforts. : Bhairavi (who taught him Tantra), Jatadhari (Vaishnavism), Totapuri (Adviata)...

My own PhD guide Prof SDM used to boast:

"I am the Higher Court, Prof MSS the Lower Court"...meaning:

"Don't rush to me with your silly questions on Mechanics! First go to MSS and if he fails to answer you, then and only then come to me"

During the Farewell Function of Prof MSS, I went up to the dais (which was rare) and said:

"I had the unique good fortune of having the Lower Court as well as the Higher Court as my gurus.

And gurus need not all be human beings. Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi used to say that the sacred hill Arunachala in Tiruvannamalai was his Guru...he never left his Guru from when at the age of 17 he approached Him to 70 when he departed from this world.

And the Avadhuta Dattatreya declared he had as many as 24 gurus, most of them non-human:

Once, while Dattatreya was roaming in a forest happily, he met King Yadu, who on seeing Dattatreya so happy, asked him the secret of his happiness and the name of his Guru. Dattatreya said that the Atman alone was his Guru, and yet, he had learned wisdom from 24 individuals, who were therefore, his Gurus.

“My 24 gurus are: 1. Earth, 2. Water, 3. Air, 4. Fire, 5. Sky, 6. Moon, 7. Sun, 8. Pigeon, 9. Python, 10. Ocean, 11. Moth, 12. Bee, 13. Honey-gatherer, 14. Elephant, 15. Deer, 16. Fish, 17. Dancing-girl Pingala, 18. Raven, 19. Child, 20. Maiden, 21.Serpent, 22. An arrow-maker, 23. Spider and 24. Beetle.”

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Let me enumerate my own umpteen gurus during my long innings of 77 years and more.

Mu gurus came in three flavors:

1. Positive: I adored their knowledge and wisdom and tried to imbibe them

2. Negative: I noted their failings and tried to avert them

3. Neutral: I admired their knowledge and wisdom from a distance but had no desire to acquire them

My gurus were often combinations of these 3 kinds.

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The first guru I had was my HM-Father GRK. One fine morning, when I was in Class 6, I discovered that he knew lots of English. 

And I made him teach me English grammar whenever possible. Sensing my addiction to English, he turned himself into my walking Dictionary, Thesaurus, Encyclopedia, Library, and Literary Cornucopia. 

But he had a streak of violence in him, and used to regularly wallop me for not being good at arithmetic. But as soon as I graduated to algebra in Class 9 he left me alone...he didn't even know the solution of a quadratic equation :)

So he was a combination of a Positive and Negative Guru for me. 

And then I landed up for my pre-university year in the house of our English Lecturer-cum-Principal, Sri GVS (Nellore Shakespeare).

He taught me nuances of English like Figures of Speech, Syntax, Prosody very well.

But he was given to superstitions and pseudo-sciences like Astrology which I could see was bakwas even at that tender age of 13. 

So he was again a combo of Positive and Negative Gurus.

And then I got to live for 2 years in the home of my maternal uncle Dr KKM. He was a wizard in Medicine and the smartest gent I ever saw. And very helpful. But he tended to insult those he considered his inferiors. So I avoided him completely.

He too was for me a mixture of Positive and Negative Gurus.

Strangely I didn't find any guru of any kind among my many teachers of Andhra University. They were all enigmas to me...they kept forbiddingly aloof from us students; and vice versa.

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I then reached IIT KGP as a young teacher, and retired as an old professor a good 40 years later.

Soon after I joined, I discovered that students there were way smarter than me.

https://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2008/01/first-class-encounter.html

So I decided to be free with them so that they could ask me fearlessly questions on physics they couldn't find answers to. Trying to answer them honestly, I learned a lot of undergraduate physics. Most of my scientific articles (including some that have entered into standard text books) have names of my students as co-authors.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c632/6e1786de60b737c69b70e8b39464013c4c26.pdf

So my students there were all Positive Gurus for me.

And then I came into contact with my eventual  PhD Guide. He was the only genius I met with in flesh and blood.

Apart from teaching me physics he removed the fear of mathematics from my soul. And I learned scientific writing from him...concise, precise, and lucid.

30 years after he left KGP and 10 years this world, I wrote a 17-page Homage to him that was truly "inspired":

https://web.archive.org/web/20110721154816/http://www.phy.iitkgp.ernet.in/ansatz3/sdm.html

But he was very secretive and avoided teaching except when compelled.

So he too was a combination of Positive and Negative Gurus for me.

Turning to my physics colleagues at IIT KGP, the less said the better...Bengalis by nature are "intellectuals"; and come with all the concomitant baggage. 

Gurus of the Negative Kind...

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