Mata
Pita
Guru
Devam (1)

Ancient or modern philosophy and spirituality aside, my understanding of what I am has been shaped most enduringly by a simple adage learned early in life: Māta, Pitā, Guru, Deivam. I do not read this in a merely ordinal sense, as a sequence of duties, but in a cardinal sense—as pointing to the fundamental dimensions through which a human being is formed.

 

Māta represents origin and nurture, the first experience of unconditional presence. Pitā represents direction, continuity, and responsibility—the shaping of character through example and expectation. Guru, however, occupies a different space altogether. The Guru does not merely transmit knowledge; he awakens discernment, sustains seriousness, and points beyond himself toward what is ultimately real. In that sense, the Guru is experienced at once as source, sustainer, and threshold—worthy not of allegiance, but of reverence.
 

Read this way, the old adage gestures not toward hierarchy, but toward relationship. Much like Trinitarian intuitions in both Hindu and Christian thought, it suggests that reality—and the self within it—is disclosed through relationship rather than isolation. It is through these human mediations that one first encounters what later traditions name as God—not as doctrine, but as lived reality.
 

Among the many Gurus in my life, I acknowledge with gratitude, two shaped my thinking and being more deeply than most:

- Dr T. Krishnan Nair, educator and social thinker, and former Principal of the Madras School of Social Work, taught me to think rigorously and to take society seriously. From him, I learned that ideas are not innocent; they touch lives and carry consequences. After college, I worked with him as a research associate at the Development Research Centre, where thought was continually tested against social reality.

- Dr Chandran Devanesan, humanist educator, former Principal of the Madras Christian College, and first Vice-Chancellor of the North Eastern Hill University, showed me how to hold learning with grace, breadth, and trust in the human spirit. I later worked with him as a social action volunteer at the Institute for Development Education, where scholarship met service and conviction expressed itself quietly in action.

 

Together, they exemplified for me what it means to be a Guru: not one who supplies answers, but one who enlarges the capacity to see, to question, and to remain humane.
 

What all this has slowly taught me is that what I am cannot be reduced to labels, achievements, or even convictions. I am what has been formed through relationship—through nurture and resistance, guidance and correction, thought tested in the world and learning tempered by humility. If Māta and Pitā give one life and direction, Guru gives one orientation: not toward certainty, but toward responsibility. That, perhaps, is what I am: a work still being clarified. Perhaps this is why an old invocation (2) still rings true—not as doctrine, but as gratitude:

Gurur Brahma, Gurur Vishnu,
Gurur Sākṣhāt Parabrahma;
tasmai śrī gurave namaḥ.