She won the first rank for MA Economics in the first batch of Calicut University. Nearly 50 years and a college professor’s career later, she won the first rank for MA Folklore Studies offered by the same university this year.
At 69, T.P. Visalakshi says she is still young. “I will be a student on the campus when Calicut University celebrates its golden jubilee in three years,” she said. She was acknowledging a reception she got at the School of Folklore Studies, Calicut University, on Monday.
The first rank she won in folklore studies, 14 years after her retirement from Zamorin’s Guruvayurappan College, Kozhikode, as head of the Department of Economics, has wowed many on the campus. Her teachers, most of them her children’s age, showered her with praise.
“We were blessed to have a student our mother’s age,” said faculty members Soman Katalur and Aravindakshan. Head of the School of Folklore Studies E.K. Govinda Varma Raja was quick to join the paean: “Her arrival brought lots of positive changes to the department. She was an ideal student showing the way for today’s generation,” he said. Dr. Soman said that Ms. Visalakshi, who came from a non-semester age, stood as a smooth link between the old and the modern student regimes. She respected her teachers, though all of them were much younger to her.
Ms. Visalakshi was arguably the first student to join a regular programme at Calicut University in her late sixties. “I chose folklore because that gives me the answer to the problems posed by today’s globalisation,” she said. After retiring in 2001, she learned clinical psychology and counselling, among other things. “I love to keep myself busy always,” she said. She is learning astrology as well. But she has a purpose. “I am studying astrology to learn why I chose folklore much late in my life,” she said.
