The Teacher is one of the lovely poems by P. Seshadri telling us about love, bonding and sympathy, and the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom with which a teacher tries his utmost best to develop the personality of the pupil. Just like a candle the teacher goes emitting light. The teacher is like a gardener and the pupils the flowers. To look after them, to make them grow is the job of a teacher. The highest joy is in books.  

Here a teacher speaks, not a disciple and the story moves beyond, takes wings to weave the stories of teacher-student relationship. He talks about what has gone in the making of a teacher. What is it that constitutes the man and his mind? The Teacher’s Day may corroborate it but long after. How does a teacher struggle to store thoughts and ideas for the pupils?

How the poet as a teacher has striven to acquire educational heights? How to acquire more and more knowledge has been the passion of the teacher? To be a teacher is a great thing, to be a giver of light. Knowledge is light. How to nourish the young minds? How to nurture with new ideas? But a teacher likes to groom his students. Knowledge is for to be given; light to be shown. A true teacher likes to illumine the darker realms.

To be a light unto thyself and to be a light for others is the thing of reckoning which the poet tells it about. Trust matters; the bond of connection between teacher and pupil.

And when the same pupil gets highly placed, the teacher feels it happy to see the student. If a teacher can motivate and fashion, what can be more pleasant than this? To see him in a good position is the wish of a teacher. Just the greetings a teacher expects from his pupil as and when they meet him surprisingly.

But as true teachers are rare now-a-days so are difficult it is to find good students. Where that sacred bonding, that sacrosanct relationship? True guru it is difficult to find it today. Obedient, humble pupil too it is hard to find it today.

In halls of learning have I toiled these years
And hourly sought to draw the youthful mind
To love of knowledge, urging it to find
The highest joy in books. No haunting fears
Of fruitless work have chill’d my soul, and sneers
Have not becalmed my endeavours; no kind
Of wavering faith, I trust, will ever blind
My eyes to bliss that in this task appears.
But then, what guerdon do I seek for all
This work? If once, some pupil, toiling hard
Will find the rapture of a Master’s word,
And pausing gratefully my name recall.
Tracing his joy, in part, to what he heard
And learnt from me — it will be rich reward!