When most people run into their college professors from two zillion years ago, they either say ‘hi’ and hurriedly move on, or swap notes on who’s married whom and who’s moved to America, before, well, moving on. Practically nobody asks their prof to write a book about their time in college. That would be downright weird, right?
Not for M S Neelakantan. One of those men who kept in touch with “quite a few” of his students from his rather short teaching stint (1989-1994), he was quite taken aback when they told him to write a book about the good old days and even offered to bankroll it. “I think it all started because people would ask me ‘do you remember when we did that’ or ‘do you remember the time when..’ and I would remember it perfectly. Finally, four of my students told me that I should write a memoir of those days at Institute of Hotel Management, Pusa and kept pushing me,” reveals the peppy author, who has self-published his book Love, Affection and Respect, “I kept thinking that they were not serious until they deposited the amount for the first print run in my account,” he adds. And that was that. His students were officially publishers and he had to officially become an author.
And then began a six-year journey for Neel, who had quit teaching and consulted for every sector imaginable, till his book was sent off to the press, “I spent a lot of time getting all the old stories. Facebook was a game changer because I realised I could find so many old students and colleagues and pick their brains for details, without having to stress out,” he says, with a short laugh.
And there were a lot of laughs along the way, as he went about reliving what his wife called “the best years of his life”. “It really was a lot of fun recalling small things that happened to students years ago. I’d like to think I was a relatable enough guy, until it came to doing their dissertations. I would fling the sub par ones over my head an make them stay late till it was perfect,” he chuckles, explaining that the book is a chronological sequence of his experiences in college – packed with detail, names, embarrassing incidents and Neel’s sardonic humour. When push came to shove though, there was only one way for him to actually finish the book and trim it down to a printable length, “I finally went through this phase when I didn’t read the papers, didn’t watch TV, nothing... Till it was done,” he reveals. What was the first thing he did after? “I heaved a sigh of relief,” he says with a laugh, “Fact is, I spent too much time reading it before printing and so after it was printed I haven’t read it even once!”
Reach out: msneelakantan@gmail.com