Mami's Collegium

Narayanan Mama had retired from service in the Indian Armed Forces and had taken up reemployment in ACC. He was in the technical services in the Armed Forces, and hence he joined the Electrical Department in ACC. They came to Wadi several years after the ‘Pilgrim Fathers’ like us. Mrs.Narayanan was Bhuvana Mami. They were Kerala Iyers like us, and stayed in STRT 31/2. Though their daughter Gomathy was around our age she wasn’t born in Wadi. We also knew that they had an elder daughter, much elder to us, but I don’t remember having seen her. She turns out to be the mother of Deepa, one of the persons who keeps this blog going. We remember Gomathy as a jolly young girl – more boy than girl. She wasn’t coy or aloof and we weren’t uncomfortable when she was around, unlike in the presence of some other girls. I think Gomathy inherited her no nonsense attitude from Mami.While Narayanan Mama was a quiet presence in the background, Mami was a versatile person. She had quite a grasp of mathematics and religious matters and was an astrologer to boot – the first serious rival to Seshadri Mama, Santhanam’s father, whom you may remember from my earlier posts. While Seshadri Mama mostly gave very positive readings, Mami foresaw problems and suggested remedies. I remember her diagnosing some problem in my horoscope (I think it was the Swadasa swaapahaaram of Mars) for which she prescribed that my mother read the Venkatesa Suprabhatam every Saturday morning. The religious duties in my house were mostly looked after by Thangi, my grandmother and sometimes my father (by the way, when I started this Blog, I didn’t think THIS was the direction it would take. I thought it would be a personal reminder to myself, so I didn’t introduce my parents. My father is Narayana Iyer and mother Radhammal. I will, in view of the direction this blog is taking, write a post about them and others in my family later, because I need to be introduced to the readers in the proper perspective), and my mother mostly looked after the secular aspects – what the Iyers call ‘Loukikam’ in the house, like cooking, cleaning etc. Her philosophy is that keep the lamp burning in your house, and the Lord will look after himself in the temple. I haven’t seen her indulge in religious rituals except when they were mandatory, but Narayanan Mami made her take up ritual chanting of Venkatesa Suprabhatam.We were sent to Mami’s house mainly for maths tuitions, but we learnt everything. To be frank, it wasn’t anything like a class at all. We would – 5 or 6 of us sit wherever we wanted, one on the cot in the front room, one in the kitchen, two people near the main door on the floor, someone in the balcony, many times Mami, cooking in the kitchen or nowhere to be seen, Mama gone out. It was somewhat like a collegium in ancient Greece during the time of Socrates. We used to indulge in intellectual arguments amongst ourselves, one would be seen memorizing the names of the members of the Morarji Desai’s Cabinet (I even now remember most ministers in that cabinet though I would strain to remember the names of today’s ministers). Some would be working out mathematical problems and suddenly Mami would materialize where any mistake occurred. Having corrected it, she would disappear into the kitchen. More than a maths tuition teacher, mami acted as a facilitator of learning, creating the proper ambience. We learnt what we wanted, the way we wanted. Every single day we came out feeling fulfilled. And we were as eager to proceed to Mami’s place for the tuition as we were to go out to play, because learning in STRT 31/2 was a novel experience. Those were not the times when tuition teachers charged huge fees like today. It was all for free. Mami’s method of teaching left a deep, subconscious influence on me. When I became a teacher in later days, (I am even now a teacher – a non formal science educator), I adopted Mami’s style of teaching, letting the student learn, rather than teach the student. Latest theories in Education also tell us that this is the best for of teaching. Throw a problem in the midst of your students and stand back, leaving them to solve it. If you see them proceeding in a wrong direction, make a course correction and stand back again. Mami therefore not only influenced my learning but also my teaching.Another sphere where Mami influenced me (I must give equal credit to Seshadri Mama too here) was in Astrology. I subsequently learnt astrology and practiced it for a long time, and was a very successful practitioner of the art too. I have since given up Astrology as I now feel it is a fraud.