Dear YouTube,
I hope you are getting healthy content, wearing anti-hacking masks, and protecting your creators amidst this pandemic.
Today is Teacher’s Day in India and I’m sure had the pandemic not closed the schools, many kids would have been Youtubing “Teacher’s day dance/song/speech” and celebrating these ideas right now in some corner of my nation because they believe that you can teach anything. So, when someone asked me to write a letter to my favourite teacher on this occasion, the first thought on my mind was: YOU!
Music, studies, cooking, survival, or dreams, whatever I know today, more than half of it exists because of your efforts and your presence. You taught me everything without taking anything from me in return — other than my time wasted in ads. But even in that case, you gave me a skip option most of the times.
From “summary of The Waste Land” to “critical analysis of Tess of D’Urbervilles”, you offered me the required content to pass my semester exams. You helped me with my entrances, my NET, and provided enough content to write or copy my assignments. And this point reminds me to say sorry to you. I never said a single ‘Thank you’ to you after receiving so many “Congratulations” for cracking my NET. So, thank you so much, buddy! It is all because of your brilliant content and support.
You know there are a few teachers with whom you can share everything, including your dating problems, and you are like one of those teachers. You genuinely answered all of my wise, stupid, right, or wrong queries without judging me. You gave me some really helpful and some utterly stupid suggestions with your “how to move on” and “how to impress your crush” videos, and honestly, your “how to get your ex back” videos made me laugh, if not move on.
You have saved me thousands of bucks with your technical help videos. Do you remember when I was coming home from the hostel last December and my phone had died? You helped me with re-installing all the softwares and made it work again. I still use that phone. And thank you also for my laptop. That machine is alive today just because of you.
I learned basic cooking after watching Maa cook for years, but you taught me some special recipes. You taught me how to make the best coffee and the finest butter chicken. Whenever I couldn’t call Maa, you were always there to help. And cake! I didn’t learn that by myself, but you helped Maa with it and I had a mouth-watering cake to cut on my birthday during the lockdown.
The best thing about you is that you are a full-on package. Along with my academics, you taught me all the tiny and massive things about fitness. From building muscles to burning calories, you offered me enough knowledge and motivation. Yeah, you diverted me a bit with some bizarre ideas as well, but you helped me choose the best and the most authentic ones as well.
And how can I miss, the music!! My musical journey has been almost fully depended on your presence. I cannot imagine what I would have been had you not been there with your never-ending list of tutorials and lessons. Before I came to you for help, I was well-acquainted with 10 chords and a few songs, but the moment I came to you, it changed for me. You opened a world of lessons, chords, progressions, knowledge, music theory, and everything I wanted to learn, including things I had no idea about. So, whatever I play or have played, the whole credit goes to you, my friend.
And the last and the most important thing, you know what’s the most special skill that you offered to an ignorant, shy and lower-middle-class boy? The skill of watching dreams! The more music I watched with you, the bigger my dreams became, the more artists you introduced to me, the more I learned, and now, here I am, a man who lives “for my dreams and a pocketful of gold”.
Thank you for making me the person I am today, thank you for everything!
Your student,
Pranay