“I have always believed that the best way to teach literature is to make people feel it.

For more than fifteen years, I taught English at DAV Public School in Khagaul, Patna. I would act out scenes, sing lines and draw on the board, anything that could take a poem or a story beyond the pages of a textbook. I loved seeing students connect with literature instead of simply studying it for a lesson.

Perhaps that came from the home I grew up in. I was born in Chhapra, Bihar, and raised in Patna, where books and music were always around me. Both my parents were government school English teachers and seasoned musicians. At home, language was spoken, read and sung.

I grew up reading in English, Bengali, Hindi and my native Bhojpuri. Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Tennyson, W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot were among the writers I read early on. Their work stayed with me and deepened my interest in literature.

That love for literature eventually found its way into my own writing. I contributed to several anthologies and wrote for Yukiyoto Publishing, exploring culture, mythology and history through characters such as Duryodhana, Eklavya and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.

My books include the thriller Euphoric Vendetta, the poetry collection Poetry Defined, and Pink, Pip, and Rick…The Scuba Divers, a three-volume series for children that received an International Children’s Book Award. One of my stories was also adapted into an animated film.

Music has always been part of my life too. I play the sitar and compose music, and I enjoy bringing together words, stories and sound.

Today, on Teachers’ Day, I think about what those years in the classroom gave me. I went there to teach, but my students taught me too — to stay curious, to look at familiar things differently and to keep learning.

Even now, that curiosity remains at the heart of everything I do.”

— Kajari Guha,
Author and Teacher