India, Sept. 6 -- Dear Reader,

I never wanted to be a teacher.

I'd read To Sir, With Love and was touched by this story of a teacher in London's impoverished East End changing lives. Later I read Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire, where author Rafe Esquith teaches low-income kids in Los Angeles, using art and music to inspire children.

I remembered my own debts to my teachers - Teacher Nargis at my convent school who made dry history that was full of dates to be memorised suddenly sound like a story, and later at IIM Calcutta professors like Indivar Kamtekar, who awoke in all of us a sudden burning love for Indian economic and political history.

And yet I didn't want to be a teacher. It wasn't glamorous enough, it didn't pay enough. I ch...