Acharya versus Adhyapak
Acharya versus Adhyapak “I have a confession to make - I teach, but I am not a teacher”, I matter-of-factly asserted to my colleague from Indian Institute of Technology. Adarsh 1 , a professor at an esteemed IIT was visiting IISc for a short lecture. At the end of the lecture, a mutual friend introduced us and Adarsh handed me his visiting card. As I flipped the card, I saw that one side had been printed in Hindi and his designation was printed as प्राध्यापक . In Hindi, the term अध्यापक implies teacher and this translation of Ajay’s profession riled me to that point that I was moved to object. “Don’t worry, I ran it by our Hindi Department and they assured me that this was the correct translation” said Ajay trying to calm me down. I wasn’t convinced and that is when I voiced the statement above. That day my colleagues were perplexed as to why I had fixated a simple, almost trivial, translation rather than the complexities of fluid mechanical simulations that had been pa