I Am That.

Today, my sister walks into Rashtrapati Bhavan to receive the National Award for Best Teacher from the President of India.

And I find myself thinking about a question that has followed our family for generations:

Who is your teacher?

For me, the answer begins at home.

My grandfather was a teacher.

My father was a teacher.

My aunt was a teacher.

And now my sister.

So, yes, I sometimes say that teaching is in my blood.

But I don’t mean biology.

I mean mindset.

A way of looking at the world.

The instinct to ask questions, to learn, to understand, and then to share what you have understood with someone else.

From homemaker to teacher

My sister’s journey is what makes today’s moment particularly special.

She began as a homemaker.

Then she got an opportunity to teach biology in her son’s school.

It could have remained just another chapter in life.

Instead, she kept going.

She studied.

She experimented.

She learned how to teach better.

She made biology something children could see rather than simply memorise.

And the teacher kept learning.

That may be the most important characteristic of a great teacher.

They never stop being a student.

The woman who entered a classroom as a homemaker eventually stood among the country’s finest teachers.

And today, she receives the recognition of the nation.

But I don’t think the medal created the teacher.

The teacher was already there.

The medal simply gave the journey a moment of recognition.

Then came the elephant in the room

There is another teacher in the room today.

Perhaps the most unexpected one.

AI.

We built machines that can now explain, translate, calculate, write, reason and teach.

The extraordinary part is that we taught them.

Generations of human beings accumulated knowledge, questioned the world, recorded discoveries, built languages, developed mathematics and science, created literature and philosophy, and passed their understanding from one generation to another.

And eventually, we used that inheritance to build machines that can teach us back.

We programmed the programmer.

The student became the teacher.

And perhaps that is not as strange as it first appears.

Because the teacher was always carrying the student within them.

My sister is proof of that.

She became a better teacher because she remained a learner.

Humanity became capable of creating AI because humanity never stopped learning.

And then the question turns inward

But if we keep asking who taught whom, the question eventually becomes much older than AI.

Who taught the teacher?

Who taught the first human being who wanted to know?

And beyond all the knowledge we accumulate, there is a more fundamental question:

Who is the one who knows?

This is where the journey that began with a biology teacher in a school classroom eventually reaches Vedanta.

Śaṅkara’s Daśaśloki takes the enquiry inward by stripping away everything we normally identify as ourselves.

Not the earth.

Not water.

Not fire.

Not air.

Not space.

Not even the senses and their collection.

Then what remains?

The enquiry is no longer about acquiring another piece of knowledge.

It is about the knower itself.

The teacher has led the student through knowledge, only for the student to discover that the deepest question was never merely What do I know?

It was:

Who am I?

And suddenly, the title takes on another meaning.

Who is your teacher?

I am That.

Not the individual ego claiming to be the teacher.

But that deeper That toward which the enquiry ultimately points.

For my sister

Today, as you receive the National Award from the President at Rashtrapati Bhavan, I want to celebrate more than the medal.

I celebrate the journey behind it.

The homemaker who became a teacher.

The teacher who remained a student.

The biology teacher who taught children to look at life.

The daughter of a family where teaching was a tradition, who carried that tradition forward not as a profession inherited, but as a mindset inherited.

And perhaps there is something beautifully circular about it.

Our grandfather taught.

Our father taught.

Our aunt taught.

You teach.

And through you, the learning continues.

One day, perhaps your students will teach someone else.

And that person will teach another.

Knowledge will keep moving.

Teacher will become student.

Student will become teacher.

Human will create machine.

Machine will teach human.

And still, beneath all these changing forms, the oldest question will remain.

Who is the teacher?

Today, the answer is easy.

It is you.

Tomorrow, the question becomes harder.

Who is the one who learns?

And eventually, as the great Vedantic enquiry asks:

Who am I?

Perhaps every true teacher, whether in a classroom, a family, a book, or even a machine, is ultimately taking us toward that question.

Today a family of teachers stands proud. Your honour is ours.

Congratulations, Sister.

From our family classroom to Rashtrapati Bhavan.

From a homemaker to a National Award-winning teacher. Special mention to the pillar behind the scene my Aunt, BIL and Nephew.

And from teacher to eternal student.

Happy Teachers’ Day.

Who is your teacher?

I am That.