Not me — The Story of K
“If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools”
We live in blissful isolation from all but the immediate, but there are instances when that changes. Something, that you know is happening around the world, which feels very distant from your own personal life or your social circle, storms into it and disrupts the fabric of your reality.
It’s been a while since I sat in those classrooms at NID, my alma mater, when I had endless arguments with him. He the near perfect teacher; wise beyond lifetimes, possessed by an air of casual assuredness that comes with elaborate self-awareness. Me the naive, but persevering student; bolstered by what little I’d read and researched, forever challenging, forever contesting what he taught. Bristling up at the dismissal of my research, indignant for feeling like a fool, for not having been more thorough. He was all that I needed him to be, blunt enough to point out I was wrong, but inspiring enough to make me want to try and best him again.
I got a job after college. I left the campus, the classroom and him behind. Only to find myself quoting him in a boardroom. Only to find myself walk comfortably into and out of tricky situations without ever worrying about embarrassing myself. I’d learned to be thorough in my work and I’d also learnt to accept gracious defeat, only to come back stronger. I’d not learnt this in a book. Where my colleagues at work could recite Porter’s forces by heart, I could venture into the unknown, and capture people’s imaginations.
I wrote to him sometimes, to tell him about it all. He seldom wrote back, but always when I needed him to. Then it happened one day.
I heard from a friend of a friend of a friend, that he’d been fired from NID. There had been a complaint against him about inappropriate content in his classrooms. The next day the news was full of #MeToo at NID. It was his name in those articles.
Reading them, I couldn’t help but think this wasn’t the man I knew. This wasn’t the man who’d taught us how to navigate around the gender dynamics at our future workplaces, who’d taught us to be responsible about our conduct, to be gender neutral and respect every individual for what they brought to the table.
Delving deeper, through the network of students, current and former, I discovered that there had been a student in his classroom, who had complained about the content he taught. It was a class not unlike the ones we’d sat in. She’d wanted references, for the claims he made. Not unlike myself. She wanted to learn about human behavior, about how genders interact with each other, about why are there so many crimes against women. Not unlike myself. She apparently wasn’t happy with his answers.
Not unlike myself.
I felt a sense of doom creeping over me. Where I’d chosen to read further, out of my resentment at my beliefs being questioned, she’d stuck to her own understanding and been outraged at his answers. She’d been offended by the same questioning of her beliefs and her world view, that had helped me and countless others grow and expand upon ours.
There are courses around the world that deal with human behaviors like design, management, marketing etc. These are conducted in classrooms that require us to suspend our beliefs, our world view and our biases to make the most of them. When we as students take the proverbial red pill, we know what we are signing up for. We as students share the responsibility for what goes down in the classroom, because we stand to benefit the most from it. Collectively we’ve expanded our understanding of our crafts by pushing the boundaries of relevance, appropriation and conformity. This has been at the heart of all creative education.
At the time this happened, Krishnesh Mehta had been teaching for over 25 years. He was one of the most respected, revered and loved professors at NID Ahmedabad, having taught alongside thought leaders of the Indian design industry like MP Ranjan. It wasn’t new for him to have students question his content, his methodologies or his bluntness. What no one had ever questioned was his intent, his absolute devotion to his discipline and the well-being of his students.
The complaint spun off from an academic disagreement, into something far more nefarious. Charges of sexual harassment were leveled against him by an internal committee at NID, on the basis of one student’s complaint about what he’d said in a class of over a 100 students. The hasty investigation that followed determined his guilt without due process. He wasn’t fired; he resigned. An institute that stands for a discipline where nothing is taboo, no topic is too unimportant, and where no knowledge is withheld, had unwittingly expelled one of the staunchest practitioners of these principles, for doing his job.
The media was quick to tag the whole incident under #MeToo at NID. The clickbait worked and soon it was all over the local and to some extent national news. Few stopped to question how an academic disagreement in a design classroom amounted to sexual harassment. Few stopped to question the blatant disregard and disrespect for the thousands of other genuine #MeToo stories, by using the hashtag as a way to make news.
I don’t know the student who complained. I have no beef against her. She voiced her concerns about what was taught in class. I’m not sure even she could have foreseen how the ripples of her actions would play out.
As for Krishnesh, one can only imagine what he would be going through. The institute that he gave his life to has been slinging mud on his name in national publications. His knowledge and the need to share it with his students seem to have betrayed him.
I’m in a different city, sitting here typing this out, and I can feel the sting of gross injustice in my eyes. I feel bad for the man who’s contributed so much to my life. I feel bad for my alma mater, my NID, that has lost a gem of a teacher. I feel bad that most of us will sooner or later move on with our lives.
What we’ll leave behind is our moment of shame. Our moment of accepting what is wrong, for the fear of being persecuted ourselves. No one questions #MeToo without raising a few eyebrows. So we will all avoid the elephant in the room; we won’t look beyond the hashtag. We won’t ask about the future of scientific discussions of human behavior in design classrooms. Teachers will simply stop talking about some facts, because they might be unacceptable to some students. We’ll choose to not encourage those ideas which will shake the foundations of our intellect. We’ll choose to not expand our world view, if it means accepting some inconvenient truths.
We will however shoot the messenger and condemn the man, because we want to show our solidarity with an unrelated movement. We’ll all know it’s wrong, but we’ll play along.
Not me though.
#notme
#savetheclassroom
Update:
Since the time I wrote this, there has been an outpouring of support from various other current and former students. I’m including links to some of their perspectives herein:
My Journey Driven by K from the neocortex towards the limbic brain — by Vishwanath G Shirodkar
Standing by Krishnesh — by Shruti Prabhu
Design Education — The Story of K — by Tarannum Bano
Knowing Design: Learning to Love — by Swastika Dash
The Lotus Truth by Satya Joshi
The K of Knowledge by Mandrila Biswas
How to Shape Minds and Influence your past — My Experience with Krishnesh Mehta by Saurabh Kabra