A Collaborative autoethnography about mentor-menteeship (Re)imagined: Redefining the guru and the shishyaa in the 21st century

Oftentimes mentorship in (traditional) academia is equated with 'old-timer' mentors sharing valuable lessons and insights from their own journey with their 'newcomer' mentees to show the latter how to succeed meaningfully in their field. Occasionally, however, mentorship requires the mentor -- often the paradigmatic insider in one or more communities of practice -- to support the mentee's journey as she finds her own path across such communities, creates her own unique trajectories, and reimagines new intersectional hybrid identities, and thereby formulates her own complex and nuanced sense of leadership and service across the communities that she participates in. It is indeed such a unique mentor-menteeship relationship as fellow transnational immigrants in the US that we report here through our collaborative autoethnography, where Rashi, as a 'non-traditional' shishyaa (mentee) created her own 'unconventional' trajectory, and received continual and consistent support from her guru (mentor), Suresh, at critical points along that journey across a transnational landscape of practices. Thus, while traditional approaches to mentor-menteeship may work towards conformity, maintaining status quo, or acquiring the disciplinary norms for success, ours strives towards critical appropriation, reconfiguration of established conventions, and mutual learning - with significant implications for a rapidly changing global (pr)academic landscape.