Like any other day, we begin our day after a night of good sleep invariably thinking about the people who have made an impact in our lives. Impact may be too a strong a word. Let me rephrase it. Pedestrians who must have made walked on the footpath of our life.
5th September is a special day. Why? It's Teacher's Day. It is the day we celebrate the people who have transformed our lives for the better through the medium of education. The people who significantly contributed in promising a life of education, erudition and learning. It's our teacher. The custodian of learning who thought us the facts of learning and existence.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. That's exactly what a teacher has done for us and we celebrate this joyous occasion in remembrance of the greatest teachers of India on his birthday - Dr. S. Radhakrishnan.
Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan was born on 5 September, 1888 in Tirutani, a well-known religious center in the Madras State. He was the second son of Veera Samayya, a tehsildar in a Zamindari hailing from a middle-class, respectable Hindu Brahmin family.
Radhakrishnan was married in 1906, at the tender age of 18 and while still a student, to Sivakamamma, and spent a happy married life with her for fifty years before she died in 1956.
Bright and precocious, with a scholarly disposition and a serene demeanor, from the very beginning, Radhakrishnan spent the first eight years of his life happily and fruitfully in his home town with his parents. The tranquil and challenging atmosphere of that famous and well-loved place, as well as the benign influence of his parents who, as was common in the South, were intensely religious in the traditional sense, went far in molding his character and sowing a lively seed of religiousness in him.
The significant fact that Radhakrishnan's parents, though orthodox, thought it fit to send their beloved son to Christian Missionary schools and colleges: Lutheran Mission School, Tirupathi (1896-1900), Vellore College, Vellore (1900-1904), Madras Christian College (1904-1908).
The far-sightedness and broad-mindedness of his revered parents, which enabled them, in those days of blind prejudices and equally blind social taboos, to send their son to well-disciplined Christian educational institutions -held him in good stead throughout, making it possible for him to acquire specially Occidental vices like a sense of duty, punctuality, discipline and the like, together with specially Oriental qualities of religiosity, calmness, patience, faith in God and men.
Radhakrishnan's choice of Philosophy as his main or Honours subject in his B.A. degree course was due to a very fortunate accident. At that time, he was really rather baffled as to what particular Honours subject to choose from amongst the possible five, viz., Mathematics, Physics, Biology, Philosophy and History. Then, purely accidentally, and out of a mere boyish curiosity, he read three well-known works on Philosophy, passed on to him by one of his cousins who had that year obtained the B.A. degree with Philosophy Honours; and that definitely decided his higher course of studies.
He studied Sanskrit and Hindi also and garnered a good deal of interest in the traditional languages of India. He also read the Vedas and the Upanishads with great care and reverence.
In fact, Radhakrishnan was, and is, still today, a reader in the true sense of the word. For, what he read - and he read widely and lovingly all kinds of good books - did not remain an external acquisition, an ornamental decoration, with him; but blossomed forth in him in fullest glory and grandeur.
To Read More : http://living.oneindia.in/celebrity/dr-s-radhakrishnan.html
Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.
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