NOT A BETRAYAL

 

I consider a betrayal is worse than a murder.

Many of my students confide in me and share their life’s darkest secrets with me. I listen to them like a counselor, advice if any but maintain absolute confidentiality. I highly value the trust they bestow on me and I shall never think of breaking that trust even if I have to die for it. Knowingly I never did and will never ever do.

Let me talk of another experience:

In 2019, I accepted a job offer as a part time dean of a start up academy; Aram Centre for Art Design and Environmental studies. I believed in my friends and joined it, not knowing that it would turn out to be a big blunder.

Being in Design education for half a century, I built a little good reputation and 36 students joined Aram Center inspite of the academy having absolutely no credentials, no building, no degree and no infrastructure at all. Just the trust in my name and my ability to give good education! It was a voluntary act. I did not ask any of them to join.

Unfortunately, before the first semester ended, the trustees fought so bitterly that the Aram Center collapsed. My desperate and very best efforts to save it went in vain. My salary for 3 months was not paid. So was the case with many other employees of Aram.

My deepest worry was not my salary but the fate of my students. 70% of the total number of students joined were lateral entry type in their third year who had left a long standing design school. They had joined Aram Center totally believing in me. Where should they go now? They cannot go back. I was shattered.

My friends started another design school and invited me to join. I declined politely. Where is the guarantee that it will not end up like the earlier one? How can I play with the poor students lives? Once bitten, twice shy. I could not join another school started by the same trustees nor could recommend it to the “hanging midway” students and their parents.

I tried to help every student to relocate and get admitted in a well established quality design school. I am not sure if it worked but that was my most sincere effort at damage control and my heartfelt concern.

 I don’t know what else I could have done. I was absolutely helpless.

Believing in my captainship of educational excellence, people walked into my boat and the unexpected storm sunk my boat with me in it.

A betrayal is willful breaking of a trust. This was not it. Yet, I feel very sorry for what happened to the students and my role in it.

Every Saturday, when I fast, I silently pray God for compensating them to offset the damage.