In my thoughts he had never aged. He was always the short stout moustachioed man, with a peculiar knack for discipline. When someone shared a recent photo of his, I was shocked to see shades of grey on his ever dark crop and whiskers - it was like a childhood memory of mine was being erased! His peculiar knack for discipline gave him a habit of introducing a twist on our every free hand drawings of rivers and mountains of india/world map. Whatever Geography we know and remember is all thanks to Sir. World was just a map for him - Kamchatka peninsula being his favourite, lying ignored in one corner of the world map but Sir had an eye for such hidden treasures and bringing out the best from ignored entities.
His three books full of almirahs, may have been a gaffe from his colloquial collection but for us it became common parlance - so much so that I still have to correct myself while using a similar idiom. In his effort to familiarise us with vernacular phrases, he introduced us to man grazing in the field - common knowledge/sense in his terms - who could answer all questions that we so embarrasingly failed to do! His other favourite the boulders, cobbles and pebbles which were present from Savannas to the arid waste land of Rajasthan, though an instance of mirth now in our nostalgic trips, gave us enough substance to fill in our answer books!
Survey map was made interesting by him and if he had his way he would have introduced broad, broader and broadest gauges in the legends, all owing to his knack of discipline. Though I (and all my classmates and the generations who studied Geography and the dreaded Survey map from him) would remember him mostly for his faux pas, he made the subjects interesting for us. A change in one degree of longitude introduces a delay of 4 minutes - which he so casually proved with a smirk on his face, probably indicating that mathematics is just a tool for subjects like Geography, is a trivia I remember to this day, all thanks to Sir.
There was a short duration when Sir was on break and Geography was taught by a substitute and it was then that I realised his worth. Sir for a person who loves nuances, may you find peace in your heavenly abode and for a man of Geography I am pretty sure you would be enjoying your top view of the world - introducing a twist here and a turn there in the rivers and mountains of the universe.
