“Happy Teachers’ Day, Vermajee,” I said, raising my glass to my friend, mentor, marketing consultant Vermajee. And one of my teachers.
“Thank you. You are only the second person to wish me this year.”
“Disappointed?”
“Curious. Teachers’ Day once produced more wishes than mosquitoes after the monsoon. Now, only two. And the second one so late in the day.”
“Maybe people have become selective.” I joked and then sheepishly looked at him.
“Or intelligent,” he said, taking a sip.
I had been on both sides of the Teachers’ Day ritual. I remembered wishing my teachers when a wish required a phone call, a card, or physically chasing them through school corridors. Later, as a teacher, mentor and moderator, I watched social media transform the occasion into an annual flood. One message could reach twenty teachers. Gratitude was scalable.
“At one stage,” I said, “I thought I had become very popular.”
“You had become very forwardable,” Vermajee corrected or maybe you still had value for some.
He had a point. For a while, the wishes multiplied. Then they began to disappear.
“Why?” I asked.
“The teacher has lost his monopoly.”
“On wisdom?”
“Don’t get carried away. On information.”
He started counting. “Google, YouTube, Claude, OpenAI, ChatGPT. Every student now has access to more information than a teacher could possibly provide.”
“Then perhaps the new generation should wish ChatGPT on Teachers’ Day.”
“Why not? It answers at midnight, never checks attendance and does not say, ‘I have already explained this twice.’”
“Though it can give you three pages when you asked for three lines.”
“That,” said Vermajee, “is a teacherly habit.”
We laughed, but the joke brought us to something more serious.
“Guru Govind dono khade, kaake laagoon paay,
Balihari guru aapne, Govind diyo batay.”
The old couplet gives the Guru an extraordinary responsibility: not merely to provide knowledge, but to show the way. Earlier, the teacher was a resource, a reference point and often an authority. You believed what the teacher taught because you trusted the person teaching you.
“Today,” Vermajee said, “the student can challenge the teacher before the teacher has finished the sentence.”
“And that is bad?”
“No. It is progress. But it changes the teacher’s job.”
He paused.
“Earlier, the teacher gave answers. Today, the teacher has to help the student decide which answers deserve to be believed.”
That, perhaps, is where AI and human teachers part company.
AI can present what is already available, rearrange it, explain it and make it accessible. But it does not shape a student in the way a teacher can. It does not watch the face that has suddenly understood something. It does not notice the student who has stopped asking questions. And sometimes we catch AI hallucinating. Earlier, if a teacher had confidently taught invented facts, we would probably have called it incompetence and changed; today, we just fire another prompt.
“Osho had a point about the difference between teaching and transformation,” I said. “The real teacher is the one who transforms you, not merely informs you.”
“Exactly,” said Vermajee. “Information can be generated. Character cannot be downloaded.”
That brought me to brands.
I had also noticed that brands seemed quieter about Teachers’ Day. There was a time when the date was almost guaranteed advertising territory. And when teachers and students are in the news, whether through CPJ protests, paper leaks or student agitation, the societal and cultural relevance was even more obvious. Teachers’ Day offered brands a natural way into conversations about education, aspiration, fairness and the future. However, now there seems to be less urgency to participate.
“Maybe brands have also learnt something,” Vermajee said.
“What?”
“That a calendar date is not a relationship.”
He was warming to his theme.
“A Teachers’ Day greeting does not make a brand care about teachers. A Diwali greeting does not make it festive. A Women’s Day creative does not make it progressive. And posting something because the date is sitting on the marketing calendar is not being relevant.”
“So what is relevance?”
“Having something worth saying when people actually care.”
That sounded suspiciously like a brand strategy lecture.
“The best brands,” he continued, “are like good teachers. They don’t merely fill space with information. They help people see something differently. They earn attention because they have earned a place in the conversation and they are trusted.”
Perhaps that was the larger lesson of Teachers’ Day. Rituals work only when a relationship underlies them. When information is everywhere, attention becomes scarce, and relevance has to be earned.
Earlier, students needed teachers to know. Today, they need teachers to think. And brands face a similar challenge. People do not need another greeting. They need a reason to believe that the brand understands what matters to them.
Then he smiled, raised his glass, and said, “Happy Teachers’ Day.”
I looked surprised.
“These conversations teach me something new every time I try to explain something to you,” he said. “Besides, being a teacher is a huge responsibility. I would rather remain a student.”
He took another sip. “Teachers should never stop learning. Otherwise, one day they may start believing they know everything.”
“Like ChatGPT?”
Vermajee smiled.
“No. ChatGPT has already warned us that it can hallucinate. It always comes with a warning.”
And with that, he raised his glass again. “Happy Teachers’ Day—to all those still learning.”
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You may want to read.
Being a better student – the best way to honour your teachers.
Don’t Look for Gurus in the Age of New Eklavyas
