Empathetic educators offer lessons on ideal leadership in thought and deed
A school expedition to reach the Chanderkhani Pass had gone wrong. A severe snowstorm overnight had exacerbated the exhaustion of a group of boys and girls, prompting the headmaster leading the trek in Kullu to turn back. Decades on, one of the students on the trek recalls there were no lectures on perseverance or the need to toughen up.
Instead, the headmaster used humour to rally their spirits. The headmaster was Shomie Das, then at The Lawrence School, Sanawar. During an Independence Day celebration this year at one of the Parikrma Humanity Foundation schools for underprivileged children in Bengaluru, a boy in his mid-teens suffered stage fright.
As the children came off the stage, he looked crushed. The founder of the school, Shukla Bose, walked up to him and enveloped him in a huge hug. As a society, we lionize businesspeople, politicians and sport stars, and overlook great educators who navigate leadership roles and pastoral care simultaneously.
They are often more relevant examples for today’s workforce, which requires different management styles than the command-and-control hierarchies of yesteryear. Shomie Das has the unique distinction of having been headmaster at Mayo College, The Lawrence School and The Doon School and then successfully setting up Oakridge International School when most people would have been contemplating retirement. Shukla Bose worked at the Oberoi Hotels and then headed Resort Condominiums India (RCI) before sitting at a small table in a slum in Bengaluru to enlist children to study at a small school she had started.
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