As one gets along in years, why is it that some memories are so clear and vivid as if they'd happened just yesterday, that a few others come resurfacing after some concentrated mental effort, yet many others lie hidden forever in the nethermost recesses of the brain? Strange thing that! Whatever memories I have of my younger years are nothing but special and extra pleasant, colored by that characteristic magic of childhood. Oh, if only there were a time machine that could transport me back into the past, I'd jump onto it in a heart beat, and willingly savor the ride as I regress into those good old days! As cliched as that sounds, it is my fervent desire to do so, only my sane, practical self tells me at the same time that since that's next to impossible, all I can do is delve deep into my well of memories and see what I can come up with.
In the last few months, I have been reclaiming bits and pieces of my childhood by unearthing old friends and acquaintances on Facebook and reconnecting with them. As we grow up and get caught in the vicissitudes of life, we tend to drift away from people, forget either their faces or names or sometimes both, move to other cities and at times other continents, lose phone numbers, fail to update changed email IDs, and generally speaking, somehow lose complete contact with them. We are so preoccupied with the task of living and tackling the problems of home and careers that people from the past fade into nothingness, but boy, what a joy it is to rekindle old associations again! It was by sheer coincidence that I came upon the Jayabarathans, my beloved teachers from my elementary school days, the dynamic power couple who left an indelible impression on my young mind. I happened to find Mrs. Florence Jayabarathan's brother, Dr. Collet Masillamoni, now a dentist in Yuma, Arizona, on Facebook. The name rang a bell from my childhood and I wrote to him asking if he were the same person I had heard so often about as a child, and lo and behold, there I was, in touch with my teachers after ages!
Mrs. Florence Jayabarathan (also known as Kasthuri to those who knew her personally) was my Grade 6 Science teacher, and happened to live on campus at the time. Next to Mrs. Kamala Jagadeesan and Mr. Daniel Thomas, Mrs. Florence Jayabarathan (FJ in this post) occupies a special place on that influence meter I so love to talk about. She and her husband were newly-weds, and lived in the house across from the main building, the one to the right, close to the compound wall as you entered the school. As I'd mentioned in my earlier posts, there were plenty of guava trees and a huge tamarind tree outside that home, so it was a given that children would swarm that place at recess and lunch break on any given day. A few of us privileged ones had access to her home as well, and so it was that my friend Priya and I would always hang out there, wide-eyed and star-struck, full of admiration and hero worship that only a nine-year-old was capable of. In my eyes, she was the epitome of beauty and grace, with a lilt to her voice and gentle, lady-like ways that I so wanted to emulate. She may not have realized how I felt then, and I'm happy to reveal it now, almost 40 years later!
Her skills as a teacher were not inferior in any way to her personable self, and she wielded a lot of control and power in the classroom, not in an authoritarian manner, but in her own gentle, inimitable way, needless to say! As knowledgeable as she was and conscientious in imparting that knowledge to her impressionable students who soaked it all up like a sponge, she was a very strict teacher as well. Let me recount one particular incident here to prove just that. I was one of those nerdy students who had this obsession/compulsion about getting the first rank in class all the time, and it so happened that Mrs. Jegadeesan had announced that month that all the first rank holders would be taken on a picnic to the Gandhi Museum in a specially arranged bus.
The tests were done and FJ distributed the test notebooks to be taken home, with the warning that they had to be brought back the next day or else she would deduct 5 marks from our final score. As can be expected, yours truly promptly forgot to take it back to school the next day, and true to her word, she took 5 marks off my score. Now my classmate Harish and I had tied for the first rank that month, and now with 5 marks off, I fell to the second place, which left my dreams about that trip to Gandhi Museum wallowing in the dust. Oh boy, what a tragedy that was to my young soul! I cried and cried my heart out till she relented, and finally got to go on that picnic with my first rank restored, but it was a lesson I learnt in life! Never again did I forget my teachers' words in subsequent years!
FJ was a young bride in those days and many a time I would hang out at her home on campus and watch her cook. She had a pressure cooker called "Killicks" in those days, and with childish fascination I noted what a strange name that was, to which she promptly replied, " Yes, if you're not careful, it will kill you and lick you up!" Strange how I remember her reply after nearly 4 decades! I also remember going on a church trip to Thekkadi with the Jayabarathans in a special bus. FJ's sister Kala was my classmate for a short while, and she accompanied us on that trip as well, and so did my classmate Jeba. I had a small black and white picture of all of us that I clung on to down the years, but gradually, as time passed, our figures faded into nothingness. The photograph might have gone, but the memories are still vivid in my mind!
Another memory of mine is of FJ's relative visiting her, probably an aunt of hers, with a cute baby called Parimala. Priya and I would go early to school just to carry around and cuddle that baby before classes started, and then would rush to their home at recess to do the same. Sometimes the baby would be sleeping and I remember being disappointed that she wasn't awake. After a while, FJ had a son and moved out of campus to Ellis Nagar, which was when Kala came to live with her sister and became my classmate. I remember my warm friendship with Kala with great fondness, and how we both used to beg FJ to let her come to my house in Vilangudi for a sleepover. I can vividly recall one such occasion, when I was 10, when my Aunt was visiting us from Bangalore, and Kala had come for a sleepover. The house was crowded and we were giggling late into the night over the symphony of snores coming from each part of the house, the adults deep in slumber, and us wide-eyed, awake and alert!
Mr. Jayabarathan seemed very big and tall from my perspective as a child. He was a very warm-hearted, genial gentleman who showed nothing but kindness to us. He came across as a well-spoken, knowledgeable, debonair person, quite sophisticated in his ways in the Madurai of those days. He rode a motorbike, which seemed huge to me then, and was so cool in the early seventies. Kala and I were like his kids, and we basked in his affection and that of his young wife. In 1984, while I was writing my M.Phil. dissertation, I took up a temporary teaching position in the Faculty of English at Holy Cross College, Trichy. The Jayabarathans were in charge of the SDA School in Trichy at that time, and I had the unique privilege of visiting them then. Boy, were they proud of me and overjoyed to see what I had become! Subsequently, I moved to Madurai to join the Faculty at Lady Doak College, and as I stated in Paragraph 2 above, fell out of touch with this wonderful couple. Thanks to Facebook and Collet Annan, I have reconnected with them now, and am grateful for all the myriad ways in which they influenced me as child! Life has come full circle now, and what a treasure trove of memories it has brought to the surface!!!
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