“Teaching is all I have ever known.”

I precisely remember, Arun Sir, telling us that he may not be able to take our classes in the next semester and the whole class suddenly went silent. Somebody asked, who'd teach us then Sir? Because in our mind there was no other, no better teacher than Arun Sir to take those classes. He's not just a teacher; he was the kind of man who would be in the classroom before any of us had even reached the gate, and if the semester was ending before the syllabus was complete, he would say — you can come to my home if you have any doubts.

On the last day of our final semester I went to his room and asked him the story of his life. I was always fascinated by his background but I never had the courage until I realized that it's probably the last time I'll see him because college was officially over, so I decided and gathered the courage to ask him this unusual question about his life.

He looked at me for a moment, then leaned back in his chair and smiled.

“I started teaching in the 9th standard. Not because I had a calling. Because we needed the money.

My father ran a small business in Purusottampur, in Ganjam. There were eight of us, four brothers and four sisters and he worked as hard as any man could, but a small business can only stretch so far when it has to cover nine lives. He never complained. But I could see what it cost him.

So one evening I knocked on a neighbor's door and asked if their son needed help with his studies. He did. That became two families. Then three. The money I made from tutoring covered my own school expenses so I did not have to ask my father for them. What was left, I used to teach my younger siblings at home.

I do not think I realized at the time that I had already found my life's work. I was just trying to help.

By the time I finished my 12th standard at K.C. Higher Secondary School in Berhampur, I had been teaching for years. I went on to Khallikote College for my B.Sc. in Mathematics, then to Utkal University for my postgraduate degree in Statistics. Throughout all of it, I kept giving tuitions. The teaching paid for the studying, and the studying made me a better teacher.

At Utkal University, two men changed my life without fully knowing it. Professor Gopabandhu Mishra and Professor A.K.P.C. Swain from the Statistics Department. I was going through a difficult period — the kind that makes a person question whether continuing is worth it. They gave me their time, their encouragement, and something I could not have asked for myself. I have carried that debt my entire life. Every student I have ever stayed back for, every extra explanation I have given without being asked — some part of that came from what those two men gave me.

I joined St. Vincent School first, then SMIT as a Lecturer in 1980. After some time at IFFCO in New Delhi and RIMS in Rourkela, I came back to Odisha. In 1985, by what I can only call God's grace and my parents' blessings, I joined the MBA Department at Berhampur University as a Lecturer.

I stayed for 37 years.

Lecturer, then Reader, then Professor. Batch after batch of students. Some I still hear from. Some went on to build remarkable things. Some just send a message on a festival day, which I have always considered the best kind of success a teacher can have — to be remembered when there is nothing to gain from remembering. I retired in December 2018. My colleagues organized a small function. There were speeches. There was a garland. Someone took photographs. And then it was over, and I was supposed to go home and rest.

I lasted about as long as anyone expected. Which is to say, not very long at all.

The students kept asking me to come back. The department was kind enough to let me. So I go. Not every day, but most days. I sit in the same classroom I have sat in for decades, with students who were not yet born when I first walked in, and I teach.

People sometimes ask me what I plan to do with my retirement. I find the question genuinely difficult to answer. Teaching is not what I do. It is what I am. I started before I knew what a career was, kept going through every chapter of my life, and continued after the chapter everyone calls retirement had officially begun.

My father used to say that the only honest work is the work you would do even if no one paid you for it and I guess its very evident at this point that I love what I do. Just like I said, teaching is all I've ever known and all that I've ever done. I don't know what else to do.”