TWO TEACHERS WHO MOTIVATED ME VERY EARLY FOR LATER DAYS

22 Nov. 2024. Today morning, out of almost nothing, I remembered two of my teachers. One, Mr. Baishnab Raul and the other Major D. K. Nanda. Mr. Raul was my biology teacher for high school standards at Central School, Puri and Major Nanda was my Zoology Honours classes Head of the Department at S.C.S. College, Puri. Both of them certainly had given me orientation and the kick starts for research, and to become a speaker/author, respectively. 

At school, I was asked to do a science project on water imbibition by gram seeds. I did the experiment at home, with seeds, petri dishes, measuring jars, and so on, including some friendly onlookers to encourage me and see the scientist in me. I did produce the results before my teacher Mr. Raul. He liked it. Much later I understood that the subject related to micro irrigation. I never knew that after a few years I will be opting for a research project at my Master's stage at Utkal University. The project got into my mind and within a very short time, I stepped towards the life-long career of a researcher in wildlife.

At the College, to meet an assignment to speak on a topic at the Zoology Seminar Hall, I was asked a topic related to Lamarckism. I thought, I prepared and I presented it well. That was also a stimulation to become an author for popular science articles, which started materialising when I joined the crocodile conservation project as a research scholar at the Gharial Research and Conservation Unit, Tikarpada in 1975. Dr. H. R. Bustard, the FAO Consultant to Indian Crocodile project had asked us that we should write at least two to three popular science articles every year, besides making the usual out puts of research notes and reports,

When I recall these, I feel so elated that small orientations in our early life do create unspoken desire for the future.