I wrote my examination for the Indian Administrative Service in the same college where I did my graduation.
We, students of the BA Honours class, were the elite in University College at a time when stalwarts such as Dr. K. Bhaskaran Nair, E.P. Narayana Pillai, G. Kumara Pillai, A. Sreedhara Menon and K. Ayyappa Paniker were faculty members in the college.
I had taken literature against my father’s wishes. My father [N.P. Chellappan Nair] was furious as he wanted me to take up engineering. For three years he never spoke to me. He would come to the University Men’s Hostel, pay the fees for ‘C. Parameswaran Nair’ and leave. I used to be in tears but it made me all the more determined to top the class, which I did. Only then did my father speak to me.
I was a quiet, shy youngster and just 17 years old when I got admission to the BA Honours course in University College. That was possible because I was enrolled in class four at the age of six in a school in Chengannur where my father was posted as magistrate. So I completed my BA Honours when I was 19 and immediately got a job as a lecturer in St. Thomas College, Kozhencherry.
My students were about my age. On the first day, after being appointed a lecturer, I went to class with a copy of Wren and Martin! On one occasion, I was told to take a class when one of the lecturers was on leave. I remember going there and asking them if they were doing Shakespeare. When the reply was in the affirmative, I agreed to teach Macbeth . I had memorised Macbeth’s soliloquy and so without a text or notes I took the class. The students were impressed and one of my students in that batch, P.J. Kurien, now a Member of Parliament, recounts that class even now when we run into each other at some functions.
If I was able to take that class sans any textbook or notes, it was thanks to my teachers in college who were my role models. They commanded respect and even the few unruly ones on campus fell silent in their classes. My hero was Kumara Pillai sir, a staunch Gandhian, poet and teacher par excellence. In fact, I have heard that there are still teachers who teach from his notes on T.S. Eliot. In the days that he taught us, Eliot was still alive and there were just two or three books on him.
But his classes were a class apart on account of his knowledge and wisdom.
It was meritocracy and the five boys and five girls in my class got admission only because we were really good in our subject. Guides were unheard of and there was no spoon feeding.
We were given a list of books and our teachers guided us in our studies.
I used to wear a dhoti and jubba and no chappals. Most of us used to walk to college. It was a difficult course and our focus was all on studies. Sreedhara Menon sir and Kumara Pillai sir began a ‘Rhetoric club’ in the college to encourage students in public speaking and that is where I honed my speaking skills.
My heart was in teaching but my father was keen that I become an IAS officer. He was confident that I would sail through the examination and I did clear it in my first attempt even without anyone to guide me. My subject was history and it was a tall task to study such a subject on my own and that too after my work as a lecturer in Arts College. But I succeeded and I was happy my father was there to see that.
It was pity that the Honours course was discontinued after 1960. It attracted the best of students and many of those who did the course distinguished themselves in different fields as bureaucrats, academics and so on. For instance the photograph of our Association has three future chief secretaries, including me – Achuthan Nambiar (Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu) and R. Ramachandran Nair (Chief Secretary of Kerala). Then there was Krishnan Nair (who was Director General of Police), Leela Subramaniam, (who taught in All Saints’ College) and so on.
It was a golden time of poetry, literature and reading. Now, in the autumn of my life I have turned to reading and writing again.
(C.P. Nair, former Chief Secretary of Kerala, continues to be a student of languages. The prolific author and columnist is now learning the ropes of Sanskrit grammar.)
(A column to commemorate the platinum jubilee of the University of Kerala. Eminent teachers and people from different walks of life talk about their student days in various colleges under the University.)
As told to Saraswathy Nagarajan
