I was fortunate to be taught by many wonderful English teachers in school and college. What's now Plus Two as part of the school itself, was Pre Degree in college in my time, hence I had two years of college before doing engineering. At St. Joseph's school I was tutored English by M.M John (also in-charge of Science Club) and M.A. George (in-charge of Air Wing of NCC), both of whom went on to be Headmasters several years later when the school's management changed hands from the Jesuits to the Diocese.
Two of my high school teachers included the then Headmaster Fr. George Murickan S.J and the school Superior Fr. Ephrem Thomas S.J. The latter taught us the supplementary reader, Oliver Twist. He was the one who did my fifth standard admission interview in the absence of the Headmaster Fr. Varkey Cheruvallil S.J. I was part of the editorial team of a souvenir that the school brought out when I was in the ninth. Once after a few of us had helped with the evaluation of 5th std entrance exam papers, Fr Ephrem took us out for lunch and a movie at Sree Visakh. I even remember the name of the movie - Piranha the Flying Killer.
[caption id="attachment_1265" align="alignnone" width="720"]
Fr. George Murickan S.J[/caption]
These were remarkable teachers, full of passion for the subject and more importantly, brimming with affection for the students. They really groomed us without resorting much to the rod. Fr. Dominic Gomez who taught Social Studies and Malayalam teacher M.S. Dany were two other mentors who encouraged me in my literary pursuits. Fr. Ephrem became HM soon after we left school and had a reign of ten years. One of the most keenly competed school sporting events in Thiruvananthapuram is the Fr. Ephrem Trophy Basketball tournament. The father is now based in Kochi and leads a quiet life, occupying himself with seminars and counseling sessions.
While I was in the 6th we moved home to Sreekariyam which was far away from the city. The place did have Loyola school which was of the same Jesuit management. However, I had developed such a strong bond with St. Joseph's school that I turned down my parent's offer to put me in Loyola and continued to commute daily by bus to school. Fr. Murickan taught us in the 10th. He would bring supplementary information on the lessons to class and really add color to the proceedings. While teaching about Abraham Lincoln, he would read out the Gettysburg address as well. He did not rest content with teaching us Oscar Wilde's short story The Selfish Giant but would also enlighten us about the tribulations of Wilde's life, about the book De Profundis, etc. He was so full of zest for life. The class would be boisterous when Murickan father pumped energy into us even in the afternoons. One time he checked himself and said, you guys just think about the freedom I give you. Imagine if this was the convent (referring to neighboring Holy Angels' Convent, a girls' high school)... <and raising his baritone voice conspiratorially> Sister Brenda would have sent their skirts flying with lashes!'
Something curious happened during the second term of our tenth. Murickan father decided to personally go to all the classes from the 5th through 10th to distribute the progress reports. And he took Drill and Scoutmaster Vincent sir with him as his aide. The idea was this. If a guy did not show progress from the first term in the second, he was entitled to a beating from the cane of Vincent sir. The severity of the cut depended on the extent of the deterioration. Luckily I was spared of this indignation, as I managed to show improvement. The Monday assemblies were made memorable by his rousing speeches. Fr. Murickan once accompanied a bunch of us students to a major quizzing event and came back doubly delighted as we bagged the first and second prizes. Fr. Murickan passed away a couple of years after we left the school.
[caption id="attachment_1266" align="alignnone" width="827"]
Fr. Ephrem Thomas S.J[/caption]
I did my Pre Degree at Arts College. The year was 1986. This was again, boys only. Now, colleges were supposed to be places where students and teachers considered one another as strangers to not be attached to. We had 'shifts' in that college, afternoon only for the first year and forenoon for the second year. Professors and lecturers would come with attendance books and mark them. Many boys attended many classes for this sole reason. 'Study' could anyway be done through private tuitions, for the main subjects of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. The language teachers carried on drably, and both teacher and taught went through the motions day in day out. But there was an exception and it was P. Vijayakumar sir.
Sir was 32 when we first encountered him. A handsome man in a check shirt who came riding an 80cc bike, he always had a pleasant disposition and was soft-spoken. He never cared to take any attendance. But the charisma was such that out of the class of 90 plus students, at least some 60 used to attend his lectures regularly. Many of them came from rural areas and Malayalam medium schools and were trying to cope with the challenge of switching to the new medium. They were there just to be awed by his erudition more than anything.
Vijayakumar sir was the grandson of one of the greatest poets of Malayalam, Mahakavi Kumaran Asan (1873 - 1924). His dad Prabhakaran was Asan's second son. I suppose such an overwhelming legacy can cast a looming shadow on a person and that could probably be why he chose English for himself. In fact, in one entire year of interaction, I heard just one Malayalam word escape his mouth and that was when he described laterite as വെട്ടുകല്ല് (vettukallu). He had married his MA classmate Khyrunissa who taught English at All Saints' College. They had an infant son, Amar whom sir would take along with him on frequent visits to the (now-defunct) British Library near the YMCA.
I sometimes had brief discussions with sir soon after class. I told him about my interest in English poetry, showed him my jottings and wanted to know how I could write like Nissim Ezekiel. He said, well, there is such a thing as maturing, one cannot be 15 and write like 45. It was at his suggestion that I visited the Institute of English to listen to the visiting Nobel Laureate Wiliam Golding. I had bought a book from a fair in VJT Hall at that time, The Golden Treasury of Indo-Anglian poetry edited by V. K. Gokak, the Kannadiga poet who went on to win Jnanapith award. It was comprehensive alright, tracing poets from Henry Derozio and Toru Dutt of the 19th century to younger, late twentieth century ones. However, sir pointed out that it is a lousy selection. He lent me 'Contemporary Indian Poetry in English,' a slimmer volume edited by Saleem Peeradina, to read.
One major lesson that sir inculcated in me is to write short and less complicated sentences. He would cite Ernest Hemingway as a good example worth emulating. In order to develop the reading taste, he said, it was important to read something, anything that was engaging. He said even Perry Mason's whodunits were good enough. Sir made a great gesture one time, an encouragement like no other for a student. He made me take a class! I took 'Santiniketan' from the textbook 'Profiles' (essays on great personalities) while he went and sat in a backmost bench, nodding his approval, and silently cheering on from there whenever my body language showed a sag in confidence. My classmate and sir's cousin Pavithran (who later graduated from NDA and became an army officer) was another chap who got the honor, as he 'taught' us about Charlie Chaplin. The most hilarious lesson was Harindranath Chattopadhyaya's (Sarojini Naidu's brother) memoir of his lawyer father.
One thing many students of that college remember sir by is a club he formed called ACERS (Arts College English Rhetoric Society). The club would meet on Friday afternoons when we had a long break and engage in quizzing, debating, and declamation. Prof Sadasivan who taught in the same department and who was Vijayakumar's teacher for MA, was also a great patron of the club. After our first year, Vijayakumar sir was transferred to the nearby Women's College. He was to have a long stint there, eventually retiring as Head of the Department. I did make a trip to the college during my 2nd Pre Degree year, to take part in a quiz which sir was anchoring. Our college team did not win any prize but that was my first experience of him as a quizmaster. Later he became one of the prominent QMs in the city, along with Prof. Abraham Joseph from Mar Ivanious College.
[caption id="attachment_1262" align="alignnone" width="814"]
with Shri P. Vijayakumar in 2015[/caption]
Vijayakumar sir's wife Khyrunnisa is the creator of a popular character called Butterfingers in the Amar Chitra Katha comic book Tinkle. The character became so popular that she started writing books centered on it, coincident with her retirement. As of now, six books have come out in the series, all of them released by Thiruvananthapuram's longtime Member of Parliament and internationally known man of letters, Dr. Shashi Tharoor. I have been to half to them and these are happy occasions when I catch up with my teacher from three decades back. Khyrunnisa (popular as Rosy ma'am among her disciples) is also a columnist (sir figures prominently in those witty articles about daily life) and enthusiastic patron of reading activities for schoolchildren. The son Amar, the original inspiration for Butterfingers, is an engineer settled in the US.
At Arts College, our English HoD was the famous Malayalam poet Vishnu Narayanan Namputhiri. He was then 48. Clad in juba, mundu and angavastram and with silver hair, the fair-skinned professor aroused curiosity in that he came to college riding a Raliegh bicycle. Soon after we left college, he took a sabbatical and went and became the head priest of the Sri Vallabha temple in his native Thiruvalla. Now 80, the venerable poet has won every major honor in Malayalam literature including Ezhuthachan award, Vayalar award, Odakkuzhal award, Asan Prize, Kendra and Kerala Sahitya Akademi awards, etc. Charulatha and Ujjayiniyile Raappakalukal are his major works. Critic Dr. Leelavathi's latest work, a study of his complete poetry called 'Kavithayude Vishnulokam' is itself a voluminous tome. My first meeting with him was when he came to my school as a guest for a literary camp that we conducted there.
Every time I aspire to write anything in English, I cannot do so without paying a mental tribute to all these gurus who instilled a love for the language in me!
(2019)
Two of my high school teachers included the then Headmaster Fr. George Murickan S.J and the school Superior Fr. Ephrem Thomas S.J. The latter taught us the supplementary reader, Oliver Twist. He was the one who did my fifth standard admission interview in the absence of the Headmaster Fr. Varkey Cheruvallil S.J. I was part of the editorial team of a souvenir that the school brought out when I was in the ninth. Once after a few of us had helped with the evaluation of 5th std entrance exam papers, Fr Ephrem took us out for lunch and a movie at Sree Visakh. I even remember the name of the movie - Piranha the Flying Killer.
[caption id="attachment_1265" align="alignnone" width="720"]
Fr. George Murickan S.J[/caption]These were remarkable teachers, full of passion for the subject and more importantly, brimming with affection for the students. They really groomed us without resorting much to the rod. Fr. Dominic Gomez who taught Social Studies and Malayalam teacher M.S. Dany were two other mentors who encouraged me in my literary pursuits. Fr. Ephrem became HM soon after we left school and had a reign of ten years. One of the most keenly competed school sporting events in Thiruvananthapuram is the Fr. Ephrem Trophy Basketball tournament. The father is now based in Kochi and leads a quiet life, occupying himself with seminars and counseling sessions.
While I was in the 6th we moved home to Sreekariyam which was far away from the city. The place did have Loyola school which was of the same Jesuit management. However, I had developed such a strong bond with St. Joseph's school that I turned down my parent's offer to put me in Loyola and continued to commute daily by bus to school. Fr. Murickan taught us in the 10th. He would bring supplementary information on the lessons to class and really add color to the proceedings. While teaching about Abraham Lincoln, he would read out the Gettysburg address as well. He did not rest content with teaching us Oscar Wilde's short story The Selfish Giant but would also enlighten us about the tribulations of Wilde's life, about the book De Profundis, etc. He was so full of zest for life. The class would be boisterous when Murickan father pumped energy into us even in the afternoons. One time he checked himself and said, you guys just think about the freedom I give you. Imagine if this was the convent (referring to neighboring Holy Angels' Convent, a girls' high school)... <and raising his baritone voice conspiratorially> Sister Brenda would have sent their skirts flying with lashes!'
Something curious happened during the second term of our tenth. Murickan father decided to personally go to all the classes from the 5th through 10th to distribute the progress reports. And he took Drill and Scoutmaster Vincent sir with him as his aide. The idea was this. If a guy did not show progress from the first term in the second, he was entitled to a beating from the cane of Vincent sir. The severity of the cut depended on the extent of the deterioration. Luckily I was spared of this indignation, as I managed to show improvement. The Monday assemblies were made memorable by his rousing speeches. Fr. Murickan once accompanied a bunch of us students to a major quizzing event and came back doubly delighted as we bagged the first and second prizes. Fr. Murickan passed away a couple of years after we left the school.
[caption id="attachment_1266" align="alignnone" width="827"]
Fr. Ephrem Thomas S.J[/caption]I did my Pre Degree at Arts College. The year was 1986. This was again, boys only. Now, colleges were supposed to be places where students and teachers considered one another as strangers to not be attached to. We had 'shifts' in that college, afternoon only for the first year and forenoon for the second year. Professors and lecturers would come with attendance books and mark them. Many boys attended many classes for this sole reason. 'Study' could anyway be done through private tuitions, for the main subjects of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. The language teachers carried on drably, and both teacher and taught went through the motions day in day out. But there was an exception and it was P. Vijayakumar sir.
Sir was 32 when we first encountered him. A handsome man in a check shirt who came riding an 80cc bike, he always had a pleasant disposition and was soft-spoken. He never cared to take any attendance. But the charisma was such that out of the class of 90 plus students, at least some 60 used to attend his lectures regularly. Many of them came from rural areas and Malayalam medium schools and were trying to cope with the challenge of switching to the new medium. They were there just to be awed by his erudition more than anything.
Vijayakumar sir was the grandson of one of the greatest poets of Malayalam, Mahakavi Kumaran Asan (1873 - 1924). His dad Prabhakaran was Asan's second son. I suppose such an overwhelming legacy can cast a looming shadow on a person and that could probably be why he chose English for himself. In fact, in one entire year of interaction, I heard just one Malayalam word escape his mouth and that was when he described laterite as വെട്ടുകല്ല് (vettukallu). He had married his MA classmate Khyrunissa who taught English at All Saints' College. They had an infant son, Amar whom sir would take along with him on frequent visits to the (now-defunct) British Library near the YMCA.
I sometimes had brief discussions with sir soon after class. I told him about my interest in English poetry, showed him my jottings and wanted to know how I could write like Nissim Ezekiel. He said, well, there is such a thing as maturing, one cannot be 15 and write like 45. It was at his suggestion that I visited the Institute of English to listen to the visiting Nobel Laureate Wiliam Golding. I had bought a book from a fair in VJT Hall at that time, The Golden Treasury of Indo-Anglian poetry edited by V. K. Gokak, the Kannadiga poet who went on to win Jnanapith award. It was comprehensive alright, tracing poets from Henry Derozio and Toru Dutt of the 19th century to younger, late twentieth century ones. However, sir pointed out that it is a lousy selection. He lent me 'Contemporary Indian Poetry in English,' a slimmer volume edited by Saleem Peeradina, to read.
One thing many students of that college remember sir by is a club he formed called ACERS (Arts College English Rhetoric Society). The club would meet on Friday afternoons when we had a long break and engage in quizzing, debating, and declamation. Prof Sadasivan who taught in the same department and who was Vijayakumar's teacher for MA, was also a great patron of the club. After our first year, Vijayakumar sir was transferred to the nearby Women's College. He was to have a long stint there, eventually retiring as Head of the Department. I did make a trip to the college during my 2nd Pre Degree year, to take part in a quiz which sir was anchoring. Our college team did not win any prize but that was my first experience of him as a quizmaster. Later he became one of the prominent QMs in the city, along with Prof. Abraham Joseph from Mar Ivanious College.
[caption id="attachment_1262" align="alignnone" width="814"]
with Shri P. Vijayakumar in 2015[/caption]Vijayakumar sir's wife Khyrunnisa is the creator of a popular character called Butterfingers in the Amar Chitra Katha comic book Tinkle. The character became so popular that she started writing books centered on it, coincident with her retirement. As of now, six books have come out in the series, all of them released by Thiruvananthapuram's longtime Member of Parliament and internationally known man of letters, Dr. Shashi Tharoor. I have been to half to them and these are happy occasions when I catch up with my teacher from three decades back. Khyrunnisa (popular as Rosy ma'am among her disciples) is also a columnist (sir figures prominently in those witty articles about daily life) and enthusiastic patron of reading activities for schoolchildren. The son Amar, the original inspiration for Butterfingers, is an engineer settled in the US.
At Arts College, our English HoD was the famous Malayalam poet Vishnu Narayanan Namputhiri. He was then 48. Clad in juba, mundu and angavastram and with silver hair, the fair-skinned professor aroused curiosity in that he came to college riding a Raliegh bicycle. Soon after we left college, he took a sabbatical and went and became the head priest of the Sri Vallabha temple in his native Thiruvalla. Now 80, the venerable poet has won every major honor in Malayalam literature including Ezhuthachan award, Vayalar award, Odakkuzhal award, Asan Prize, Kendra and Kerala Sahitya Akademi awards, etc. Charulatha and Ujjayiniyile Raappakalukal are his major works. Critic Dr. Leelavathi's latest work, a study of his complete poetry called 'Kavithayude Vishnulokam' is itself a voluminous tome. My first meeting with him was when he came to my school as a guest for a literary camp that we conducted there.
Every time I aspire to write anything in English, I cannot do so without paying a mental tribute to all these gurus who instilled a love for the language in me!
(2019)
Comments
Post a Comment