As a child I grew up in a village typical of that day and age—the first half of the 20th century. Up to 10 years of age I had little understanding of life around me. I grew up among orthodox people and most of their ways of life failed to impress meeven obliquely. A maternal grandmother, a mother of five daughters, visited only for a purpose, which was usually to help an expecting daughter—my mother. Once a sister or brother of mine was delivered, my grandmother would leave to nurse another of her expecting daughters. She was a widow and so had the freedom to move from one place to another.
Turning to my boyhood life in my village, when I was just three years old, my father sent me to a patasala meant for Vaishnavite boys. Teachers here were tradition-bound but they captured my childhood imagination. Students must sport a tuft with the head periodically tonsured except for a free flow of hair, enough to tie a knot.
I was 10 years old when I was shifted to a town school that was three miles away and put in Class 5. This was a big change in the life of a rustic boy. The principal was a cassock-wearing, all-white and bearded man. He spoke an anglicised Tamil. I looked at the principal in awe as it was something strange to a rural boy.
Teachers were mostly in panchakacham and wore a shirt and coat—commanding a deep respect in school and elsewhere by their very appearance. They had a passion for teaching and were usually kind. But at times they were harsh. This was something that we students could hardly gauge, as we felt that their moods swung to extremes.
Hence we always attended school with an inexplicable fear that perhaps enforced studiousness. It was such a favourable scholastic environment that helped me sail through in academics till I reached SSLC
In the 1940s, passing SSLC was considered one of the final stages of one’s academic life. In the village, some parents sent their wards to a typewriting institute for them to take up clerical jobs which were then up for grabs.
But my father instead wanted me to become a graduate. So I got admitted to Annamalai University. Incidentally, it was the only college then situated between Madras and Tiruchy. I graduated, did B.T. and went on to become a teacher in a family of teachers.