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MUMBAI: Guruvaram, a series of profiles in teaching excellence, introduces exceptional mentors in various fields of academics, sports, dance and music and gives character close-ups through first person accounts of their experiences as teacher, their approach to coaching and the current state of their specialty.
Amrita TV?s tribute to exemplary Gurus, both celebrated and unsung, Guruvaram is a grateful acknowledgement of their services to society in fashioning entire generations of students. It is telecast every Saturday at 5.30pm as part of Vidyabhyasa Varthagal and repeated Monday mornings at 9.30 am as an independent segment.
Vedic India?s Gurukul tradition is an ancient residential system of learning , notable for the unique spiritual bond between the guru and his disciple. The Guru, literally one who dispels darkness and leads to light, was accorded reverence next only to God and was totally responsible for the pupil?s physical, marital, emotional, philosophical and cultural development while the shishya, had to maintain strict discipline, complete obedience and total commitment to his master. Guruvaram presents a handful of teachers who safeguard this priceless heritage.
Technology ushered in a different learning order as information edged out knowledge and wisdom; i-pads and playbooks became the new agegurus which could summon data at the touch of a finger. But as the young generation surf themselves into a surfeit of sites, it is becoming evident that facts, figures and statistics cannot stand in for knowledge and that Google & Yahoo cannot mould character and shape the personality of a generation who have to be torch bearers of the nation. It?s in this context that Guruvaram assumes significance.
Distinguished teachers such as Jnanpith Award winner, lyricist and poet, Professor O.N.V Kurup, writer and critic Dr. Professor M Leelavathy, Director of Anert, Professor R.V. G Menon, former cricket all-rounder Paliath Ravi Achan, Kendra Sahithya Academy Awardee and winner of this year?s Ezhuthachan Puraskaram Atoor Ravi Varma etc have already been featured in the show. Waiting their turn in the weeks to come are Malayalam?s best known contemporary poet Professor K.G Sankara Pillai, academician, poet and playwright K. Satchidanandan, Kathakali maestro Kalamandalam Gopi who popularized the art form globally, ace football coach T.K Chathunni who coached players like I.M Vijayan, Mohiniyattam artiste Kalmandalam Kshemavathy and so on.
Guruvaram, in which a generation of mentors sketch their self portraits from the palette of their experiences, is a visual documentation of a vanishing tribe of great gurus. In an era of commercialized education, it helps the present generation of teachers to know at close range a line-up of dedicated personages who have imbued the real significance of the term ?Guru? and were role models to their students; introduces students to selfless souls who played a pivotal role in chiseling character and colored the thinking of their shisyas. Guruvaram has recorded for posterity the exponents of a great educational tradition that has no known parallels in the world; it may also help to apply the skids to this hallowed tradition?s slide to slow oblivion.
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