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V Gangadhar

To Sir, With Love

Times have certainly changed. My 17-year-old daughter, now in her 12^th standard, does not even know the names of her college teachers, let alone any other details. Her generation pays more attention to what is taught in coaching classes. Perhaps, the fault may lie with college teachers. But then, can all of them be so bad as to be ignored by their own students?

Teachers are now graded on the performances of their students in the exams. Coaching classes advertise the talents of their teachers who manage to push the maximum number of their students into professional courses.

It was not so in our days. The teacher was a heroic figure to us and we respected him as much as we did our fathers. Be it school or college, the teacher was put on a pedestal. Mind you, not all our teachers were good, but we seldom passed judgement on them. Good, bad or indifferent, we respected them.

At the Santa Cruz High School in Fort Cochin, headmaster Krishna Mallaya who taught us English was handicapped by filariasis in both the legs. They were swollen enormously and there was no cure. The headmaster walked slowly, the white dhoti only partly covering the huge legs. But once he began to teach, we forgot his physical disabilities. In simple, lucid English, he taught us the complexities of Julius Ceasar and why Leo Tolstoy dwelt on themes like how much land a man needed.

I was very good in English and that, perhaps, was why Mallaya liked me. In one of the exams, we were asked to describe a football match. Being familiar with the descriptions of football matches on the sports pages of newspapers, I wrote a detailed account of a match, using words and phrases which normally appeared in news reports.

One of the words I used was 'sitter'. Now, Mallaya, I am sure, did not scan the sports pages and was not familiar with the word. "What do you mean by 'sitter'?" he asked me. "An easy chance, sir," I replied. "The word is often found in sports coverages." My stock immediately went up among my classmates. After all, I was the one who had used a word even the headmaster could not understand!

Kashinathan, our math teacher, is another person I remember to this day. He dressed in the unusual combination of dhoti, shirt and a western style coat. He constantly chewed paan. And had the unique talent of making even algebra and geometry interesting to his students. I can never forget how he drilled into us the intricacies of quadratic equations.

The teacher-student relationship was slightly different in college. For instance, college teachers seldom bothered with homework and did not keep track of the progress of individual students. Madhukar Rao, who taught English at Maharaja's College, Ernakulam, was very popular. He was extremely well-dressed and we were impressed with his well-creased trousers, his choice of shirts and ties. Rao taught us Julius Ceasar, and if I can quote most of the play verbatim today, it is due to his efforts.

Rao called for active student participation. Once a week, he made the students enact scenes from the play. He did not stress the obvious, but let us into the intricacies of Shakespeare. Though Brutus and Mark Antony' orations were impressive, what fascinated me was Rao's handling of the quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius prior to the all important battle against Antony. This was a tragic, suspenseful scene where Brutus, for the first time, realises how wrong he has been in joining hands with Cassius and assassinating Caesar. At the same time, he acknowledges the great qualities in Cassius. To date, this scene has a tremendous impact on me.

English teachers continued to hold their sway over me. Prof K R Neelakantan, head of the department of English, Government Victoria College, Palghat, taught us Milton's Comus. Unlike Rao, Neelakantan was not flamboyant. He always dressed in simple, plain trousers, shirts and coat. There was a kind of intensity in his teaching which appealed to me. Neelakantan seldom made the students laugh by cracking jokes. Nor did he smile in the class. Yet, there was never a dull moment, even the normal mischief 0makers and backbenchers kept absolutely quiet. He was stingy in his evaluation and it was regarded impossible to secure 50 per cent in his paper.

Yet, the serious attitude was only a facade. I realised it on the last day in college, after the annual tea party was over. My class had presented him with a bouquet of flowers. Once the party was over, he sought me out and handed me the bouquet. "Here, take this," he said. "And I wish you a very bright future." I could not believe what was happening and stammered my thanks. The serious-looking Neelakantan, who was never known for his proximity to students, handing over a bouquet to me! It was the most wonderful moment of my student life.

Victoria College had other professors whom I admired. Take TRS, for instance. A math teacher with eccentric habits, his intellect simply frightened us. He had the knack of solving the most difficult problems in just two steps, leaving the entire class puzzled. When we complained, he would dismiss our protests with a shrug of his shoulders and do the sums again on the blackboard, this time in four steps! "Such easy problems and you are raising such a fuss," he would snap at us.

Had T R Subramanian and worked in a more congenial environment, he would have gone much further! I regarded him as Nobel Prize material, but he had the misfortune of spending his entire career teaching in small colleges in small towns in Kerala, far way from the centres of power and influence. If only he had been associated with an institution like the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier