From my childhood I had been bought up in an atmosphere where the "Sir" was used to refer the teacher's at my school and quiet rightly these people were those for whom we had great admiration for and looked up to as exemplary characters who molded us into what we are today. It’s true that this way of referring to my masters was something that was taught to me or even one could argue that this was a protocol which was forced on to me while I was kid. Whatever the view point the reader may have I still think that while being a kid this should be the way in which the system should continue because as kids its not possible for us to distinguish an ordinary person from a personality to be referred as "Sir" and also else as a kid we would never learn to respect people. Looking from where I presently stand I still call these great teacher’s of mine as “Sir” and with the same or even more amount of admiration and respect for the part they had played in my life. Probably this mentality still is in my mind as I had already done a benchmark of this term “Sir” at a very high level and being a servant in the software industry where the term “Sir” is frowned upon.
The sudden emergence of the practice in the local universities by the “temporary tutors”, who are just a batch or two senior to demand from the rest to refer them as “Sir” or “Madam” seems ironical. It’s an acceptable practice, if it’s a military establishment where you find a culture where people salute the ranks and not the person and as long as I know a university is not a military organization as long as it’s not a military university. I find that these people had been caught up in a “psychological illusion” where they consider them to be lecturers or even in the caliber of professors now it self. The real reason for this being the fact that unfortunately for many and fortunately for some we have a serious scarcity for qualified lecturers and you find that people fresh out from the degree very often doing lectures to degree students. Please note that I am not blaming these fresh graduates for teaching as I myself had been thought by some good teachers who were fresh graduates, but I am actually throwing caution at the people who had got blown out by this new temporary seat they had been assigned to.
The only thing that I can say to them is wait for the turn and at that point people will call you as “Sir” out of respect for the wisdom you posses or the personality you are or for charisma you posses and not to jump the gun to demand or rather in a way beg for respect, remember when you get the respect that you had demanded specially from a university student its just a temporary thing, it does not come from the heart.
No pun indented, no corners spared. Its just some musings from “sayy” so take if something is worth out of what is written or even don’t be hesitative to spit on me(I mean literarily ;) ) by the way of a harsh comment if you really feel that I deserve it for writing this.
