Whenever I think of a beautiful smile, I think of the man who sparked in me the passion for literature and shared with me the much needed wisdom that will probably stay with me for life. He was my teacher and nobody had ever introduced literature to me like he did.

Friendliness, cooperation, and understanding are some traits that every student looks for in a teacher. Fortunately, my teacher was more. He was highly appreciative of his students. He acknowledged us for who we are and made us believe that there was gem hidden inside all of us. He made us believe that we were rare stones that needed just a little bit of polishing.

I have graduated his class and I’ll probably never see him again. Everyone promises to stay in touch at the time of departure. It is a beautiful lie. But we don’t always reach out to the people once we part our ways. I have not tried contacting him after college, but I remain forever thankful.

Every time I sit down with a book, old or new, I think of him. I always looked forward to his classes. He taught in a way that made us students want to listen. He made sure that we were listening and that we were also understanding. While, we struggled through other classes and waited for the bell to go off, we couldn’t tell where the time went when he was teaching. The class always ended before we even looked at our watches. The 45 minutes that I spent in his class always passed by so swiftly.

One remarkable thing about him was how he never made a big deal out of the mistakes his students made. Every time I did something I shouldn’t have, he would smile and say, “Well, now you have learnt something the hard way. But the lesson will stay with you.”

He made sure that we didn’t treat a text as just a text. He pushed us to go beyond what met our eyes and to read between the lines. It was in his class that I learnt to find the latent meanings behind a literary text, a skill that has been useful even in real-life.

He always encouraged us to go against the grain and find answers to questions that were not limited to the book. The class was always so interactive where the students would engage in rich discussions that went beyond the curriculum.

In one class, he made us dance with our eyes closed and embrace the emotions that followed. I felt so liberated, I cried a little. I had a little emotional outburst. Perhaps, that was the expected outcome. He didn’t treat us like machines, he treated us as humans.

He also encouraged us to smile a lot and take life easy. He always said, “Smile is what makes earth into a heaven.” And as far as my memory goes, he made it so easy to just smile. 

 There is a quote by Henry Adams that reads, “A teacher affects eternity, he can never tell where his influence stops.” This holds very true for me. He was a good teacher and the impact he has had on me has been tremendous, but he will probably never know. 

It was after his class that I started appreciating literature, but also life in general. 

Shakya is a +2 student at Times College