: Tom Alter wears many hats besides being an actor.
On Saturday morning, as a select group of principals and school administrators from the city listened, Mr. Alter revealed his brush with teaching with witty anecdotes drawn from his school days in Mussoorie to his time with silver screen legends like Dilip Kumar, Satyajit Ray and Peter O’ Toole.
Titled ‘Memorable Moments with Tom Alter’, the event turned into a fanboy moment for the many teachers and principals who were brought together by Ratna Sagar, a publishing house.
Mr. Alter took the teachers and principals on a journey of his life and the lessons he learnt.
He showed the breadth of learning required to be a good teacher as he recited lines of Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot and then immediately compared them to lines from Ghalib: “Dubaya mujh ko honey ne; Na hota mein to kya hota?” before evoking the mood created by Gulzar with “Woh shaam kuch ajeeb thi”.
“To be a good actor one has to be a shayar (poet)...Only a poet can create a thirst for learning,” he said. When one school Principal asked him about the speciality of Mussoorie, Mr. Alter spelled out his impressions: “Mussoorie is like any other place. There are goondas, there are politicians and there are poets. Perhaps it has got to do with open spaces that were there before all this development happened. We used to have laali (the red treeline ) in winter but now it is a dirty brown colour. I think open spaces allow people to think freely.”
