Kids in Public Schools of Indian Urbania and Kaddu's Jawa Bike

It was also during the time when we reached 7th Standard, where we had to appear for the Board examinations, that our parents thought that we should study a little harder and more systematically. I, as a Delhi parent of a Public school student – more than me, my wife – am so seriously involved in the education of my son that more often than not, one gets confused as to who is the student and who is the parent. Like during summer holidays, little kids who need help washing their ass, are given projects like “The differences between a platypus and a pangolin”, Different adaptation methods of plants in arid climates” etc. And the parents who know little more than the kids (I know, thanks to people like Ms.Lakshmi Pathy, Sr.Leonie, Mr.N.R.Beloor, Mr. M.S.Devraj etc.), burn the midnight oil creating these project reports which are then proudly displayed and evaluated by teacher who again know little more than the parents.. And the next morning the child wakes up and asks us whether we have completed the report. This is not confined to parents in Delhi alone. During my days in Kolkata, I learnt that parents take several days leave and accompany their 15 and 16 year olds to school during their class tests, sit around under the trees till the tests are over, and bring the boys and girls back home. It happens in every city these days. The parents know their child’s curricula more thoroughly than the kids. Well, things in Wadi during the seventies weren’t quite like that. Kids of today may be shocked to learn that it was the other way round. It was the kid who did the homework and it was the parent who asked whether it was completed. And that too only conscientious parents. Most parents assumed that all work that needs to be done has been done, and if there were indications from the school to the contrary, necessary corrective actions, often physical, (or corporeal, as they say these days) were taken. That was what parents were for. Child psychologists these days say that such upbringing, damages the child’s psyche irreversibly. Well, I and the other kids in Wadi were brought up precisely that way, and frankly I don’t see irreversibly damaged psyches within any of us. Be that as it may, as I mentioned, our parents thought that we should study a little harder and more systematically pending our Boards. Looking around, they found in Narayanan Mami (technically Bhuvana Narayanan but we called her Narayanan Mami or simply Mami for all practical purposes) an ideal teacher, so most of us were sent under her tutelage during 1976-77. Narayanan Mami wasn’t really my first tuition teacher though. I learnt Kannada, which was a strange tongue to me, first from Prabha Auntie or Mrs. Nuggehalli Srinivasan, whose son Kiran was a good friend, and my junior by two years. Kiran’s sister Kanchu also studied from SACS and MCC. They being Kannadigas from the Mysore-Mandya area, also spoke Tamil, though their accent was much like that of Rajnikanth. My next tution teacher was a girl who was the sister in law of Mr.Kaddu, who was the Rural Development Officer. (ACC, Wadi, even in those days, took seriously what Samsung. LG, Intel, Microsoft etc. call their ‘corporate responsibility to the society’ today). They developed acres of land in the outskirts of each ACC colony, growing crops and vegetables, training local farmers and artisans, providing free fertilizers and seeds to them, advising them on scientific farming techniques etc. This stretch of land was called the Farm. Part of the produce of the Farm was sold to ACC employees in a subsidized rate. The person who was in charge of such programmes was called the Rural Development Officer. During the period of discussion, one Mr. M.R.Kaddu was the RDO. He had a Jawa Motorcycle which he used to ride to the Farm. Now we boys of Wadi were no angels. We would sometimes fill the keyhole of Kaddu’s Motorcyle with fine sand. Now anybody who has had that done to his ignition lock will know what a pain it is to start the vehicle thereafter. This Kaddu stayed below our house. He had a sister in law called Gulabi. This girl was my second Kannada tuition teacher. I learnt the alphabets and phrases like “Idu Mane”, “Idu Basavana Mane”, Eeta Ganapa”, “Eeshana Maga Ganapa” and things like that from my first two tuition teachers. Real life Kannada like “Sariyo nimmayee, yakk benn hathlakathee” etc. - a far cry from “Basavana tande Badava” - were learnt on the streets later. (Mrs. Srinivasan, a devout Madhwa Brahmin from the South of Karnataka will kindly ignore and excuse this kind of Kannada that I later substituted, for what I had learnt from her early in my life. Frankly I am not even sure she will understand what I am saying when I say “Sariyo nimmayee, yakk benn hathlakathee”).

Having acknowledged the contributions of Mrs. Nuggehalli Prabha Srinivasan and Gulabi I come back to Narayanan Mami and her influence on me, but this post already having exceeded its word limit, and Narayanan Mami needing a full post for herself, I will come back to her in the next post.