Every weekend, for nearly two decades now, hundreds of youngsters, holding on to notebooks and guides for competitive exams, arrange themselves at an open patch of land beneath a sprawling banyan tree near the police station in Old Ayakudi village in Palani taluk. With foliage as its roof, the evergreen tree offers an open learning environment and access to free coaching for these aspirants, unlike the walled-garden training of institutions.
At the pith of the meetings in the fondly dubbed “Ay akudi Marathadi Free Coaching Centre” is 56-year-old P Ramamoorthy, whose failures and learnings germinated a perennial pursuit to offer barrier-free guidance for underprivileged aspirants who could not afford to enrol in a coaching programme. By the age of 34, Ramamoorthy had already made 11 unsuccessful attempts to crack the UPSC examinations.
All through his journey to excel, he did not miss noticing the struggles of his peer aspirants, especially those from underprivileged family backgrounds. “It was not just the exam. A significant number of aspirants also struggled to clear state-level examinations in Tamil Nadu. This realisation prompted me to help them by preparing notes and study materials,” said Ramamoorthy, who is now an administrative officer at the LIC of India.
Heartbroken after his eleventh unsuccessful attempt in 2004, Ramamoorthy returned to his village. He said his family, whose livelihood was dependent on farming, was fortunate enough to support his initial journey, which involved him taking up the free UPSC coaching offered at the TN Civil Service Academy in Chennai in 1992, as there were no coaching centres in Palani or Dindigul at that time. However, it was not the case for many other underprivileged aspirants from his region.
Determined to change the status quo, Ramamoorthy, in 2005, started offering free coaching for TNPSC, Tamil Nadu Teacher Eligibility Test (TNTET), and police recruitment exams. For this purpose, he rented a small room in Old Ayakudi, where he conducted classes every Sunday, while working a full-time job with LIC. He provided the students notes free of charge.
Within a few months, the number of enrolments grew, and by 2006, over 200 aspirants from places like Theni, Madurai, Pudukottai, and Tiruppur joined his coaching class. By 2007, the number of students crossed a thousand, and he subsequently shifted the classes temporarily to a wedding hall in Palani, but the numbers continued to exceed capacity.
The search for a bigger venue led Ramamoorthy right back to his roots, as one of his friends suggested to him the field near the Old Ayakudi police station, where the banyan tree stands. But he hesitated, as the land was filled with domestic waste. When one of the aspirants brought the issue to the notice of the Ayakudi Town Panchayat, the local body’s response to clean the area was swift. To Ramamoorthy’s surprise, the space under the tree accommodated all the aspirants.
Manikandan, one of the students, told TNIE that the free coaching classes guided him in cracking the selection exam for sub-inspector of police in 2023. Manikandan has now received the appointment order and is set to assume charge in the second week of January.
As handling a thousand aspirants singlehandedly turned into a daunting task over the years, Ramamoorthy’s former students, who had successfully cleared the examinations, pitched in as volunteers.
“Aptitude tests and strict time limits pose the greatest challenge for the students,” said Ramamoorthy, while explaining the challenges in the preparation. “A ticking clock only adds to their (students’) nervousness. To address this issue, I introduced bi-monthly mock tests, and to encourage participation, I started distributing cash prizes worth Rs 10,000 for winners,” he said.
The biggest expense incurred in running the free training programme is the cost of printing study materials, he said. “When the number of students exceeds 1,000, it is quite costly to print question papers, answers, and notes. Fortunately, my former students have anchored the expenses,” he said, reminding that they were the ones to coin the “marathadi” nickname for the initiative.
The instructor also recalled the challenges encountered by the people involved, from a snake intruding into the class at one time to repeated disruptions caused by erratic rainfall. Come what may, if it is another Sunday, the shade of the banyan tree will witness the arrival of another batch of hundreds of students, to learn from the failures of a man, whose efforts have penned the success stories of many.
(Edited by Thamizhamudhan Sekar)