From Kalivaradhan’s gallery
An emotional Re-union with our New RS! (Part-I)
It was exactly 50 years ago that I had the privilege of being a student of Tiruvavaduturai Aadheenam High School, Tiruvidaimarudur, and amongst the galaxy of veteran teachers was this English teacher that every school boy those days used to call affectionately as ‘New R.S. Sir’!
And after a long 50 year spell did I have the opportunity of seeing him again!
Call it cruelty of fate or my misfortune that although we were living in adjacent neighbourhoods in Chennai, I never came to realize until recently the fact that our beloved New R.S. Sir was living at arms throw, thanks to timely mail communication from Shri ‘Individual’ Subramaniam.
The moment I came to know his address, I was itching to go and see him immediately. However, domestic preoccupations and my health problems have been playing the villains, added to the very frequent and heavy spells of the seasonal rains that were quite late this year.
A fortnight later, this Monday, 28th of November, 2011, did I manage to pay him a visit which turned out to be one of the most memorable and exhilarating moments of my life!
It was an emotionally surcharged encounter bereft of words which would seem fanciful and mere bombastic declamations bordering on empty and noisy rhetoric, if I try and camouflage my inner feelings for redefining a successful teacher-student attachment and relationship that was extremely natural those days which is belligerently absent and nowhere to be seen and felt in the current socially diverse, diffident and self-defeating student community that abounds in psychosomatic complexes and conundrums. I would like to share my thoughts and feelings here about this surprise reunion which may not otherwise make much sense to an outsider. I beseech your forgiveness for sneaking your time and patience!
The rainy season was about to retire this late November, but It was raining incessantly, though not the ‘cats and dogs’ type! Still I ventured out bravely, conscious that an old umbrella tucked behind my shoulder-bag will play hide and seek when the outpour starts. I didn’t bother about the weather forecast either, which remains Joke of the Season always! My inner voice was very loud and protective ‘Hey Man, you are going to see your favorite English Teacher after decades and what the heck this rain or thunder could do to stop you from visiting him?’ It was late evening and dark already, what with frequent power drains and electrical apathy that all Chennaiites are now used to!
Although I live in the same area for more than three decades now, I am yet to familiarize myself with the topographic detour. The drizzles have started displaying a devilish smile to scourge me with noisy downpour. Undeterred, did I roam about freely without any countering traffic from either direction. I spotted the street alright, since our ‘Individual’ was kind enough to mail me the address a fortnight ago. However, locating the building was a herculean task since the area was engulfed in darkness as no street light was there and no soul could be seen even peeping out curiously through the wafer-thin drapery adorning the Westminster type window panes of the adjacent buildings boasting a ‘what you know’ sense of pride and pelf symptomatic of the newly acquired riches and rag-tags! Not even the street dogs that are used to bark and chase menacingly at the sight of any stranger to the area could be seen anywhere around.
Handy came the mobile phone to rattle a few wacky noises and there it was, the phone at the other end was ringing like sweet rhythmic music to my ears, my pulse rate jumped on a horse trail, and uncontrollable was my anxiety and suspense to hear the mellifluous My Masters Voice! I was destined to hold back my jumping heart for a few more moments when the better half of New RS Sir guided me to their first floor flat over the phone.
There he was, reclining on a wooden chair dressed in his usual and immaculate white dhoti and shirt, sporting his favourite and flamboyant cross-jaw smile, and facing the open doorway! I couldn’t believe my eyes, my heart stopped for a while! I instantly recognized him, the same majestic and marvelous Julius Caesar Octavianus like profile that we were used to during our school days! With the same friendly smile swirling his lips, he accosted me inside with a warm hand-shake and warmer hug! The ground appeared slipping under my feet already until he signalled me to take the seat opposite to him. For a few moments I was speechless! His sweet and steady voice brought me back to this world when he said “I am sorry sir, will you say your name again please?” My goodness! In my nervousness I forgot the basic manners of introducing myself and a little of my background tales. I felt like an idiot and muttered out few syllables echoing my name as an old student of his. That same affectionate smile he was known for helped me recover my nerves in a moment and after that there was no stopping of my mono dramatic mouthings of ‘swayapuranam’ for a while! There I go rattling about my schooldays in TDR when along with china Ramani and Ramji (Engineer Kittu house) and other boys of our class I used to look at him with eyes and mouth wide open with every English word flowing out of his mellifluous but rustic gutturals mesmerising the entire class!
The instant metamorphosis without any excogitation dressing me down to an entirely different world of reminiscences is finding it difficult to manifest any aesthetic pretensions that could postulate a delirious but sensuous literary piece!
After a brief introductory episode lasting few minutes, there he was exchanging his usual charming anecdotes of his own masters in school like the reverential Shri Sivasambha Iyer, his Headmaster and guide, his Kumbakonam college professor T.Balakrishna Nair and Shri S V Chittibabu, the VC at Madurai Kamaraj university and Annamalai University, who were his Role Models! What a pleasant moment it was to hear about his Role Models from one’s own Role Model in life!
I still remember his advice and teaching that one should perfect his punctuations of comma and full-stop to sharpen one’s own literary sheen. I am afraid that this piece is going to be lengthier and bound to exhaust your patience at this moment. So, with the resonance of my Master’s Voice still reverberating my eardrums and the golden memory of the recent emotional encounter being still fresh in my memory, I seek your permission to place a COMMA to my spiritless harangues at this stage and retire temporarily for a while, only to be banging louder and stronger, testing the tenacity of your eardrums the next week!
to be continued……..
(1961-1962 VIII standard batch at TDR)
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