I wanted to write an article about you and post it on www.dharwad.com. Instead of an impersonal article, I thought I would write you a letter and post it (I mean on the web). This way, a bit of personal touch from one of your old students.

Sir, you may ask why you of all the teachers who taught me and are still teaching me? Sir, you remain in mind as the funniest teacher I ever had just as Deve Gowda remains in our mind as India’s funniest prime minister. You and our ex-PM share a lot of qualities. Both of you are too innocent (at least look so). Both of you did not intend to be funny but people anyway found you funny. Both of you seem to enjoy a nap after lunch. Both of you can walk for miles. Both of you came from remote villages thus ‘sons of soil’. There may be many more similarities.

Sir, you taught me the divine (or dead depending upon who you tell this to) language Sanskrit in 9th and 10th standards. You were too good at that. I really enjoyed being schooled by one of the best Sanskrit teachers of our time. Although Sanskrit was not one of my big interests, your humor and opportunities to pull your leg a bit here and there made it really worthwhile. You were our class teacher in 9th and probably in 10th too.

Sir, you came to our school in 1986 through intra-school transfer. We were kind of easy going as far Sanskrit was concerned in 8th standard. The teacher who taught Sanskrit in 8th was not as rigorous as you were. It was like the difference between Kingfisher beer and 48% proof Scotch whisky. Your Sanskrit was like Scotch whisky but only thing is that it did not give any ‘nasha’ (kick) at all. Dear Sir, but we still found some relationship between Sanskrit and alcohol. Sir, instead of saying ‘No talk’, ‘No talk’ or ‘Silence’ or in plain Kannada ‘Dhandle haak byadri’, you used to try to quiet the noisy class by saying ‘Maastu Kolahala Ha’ in chaste Sanskrit meaning ‘no cacophony’. Sir, we had to change it to ‘Mast Alcohol Ha’ meaning (great alcohol) in Kannada. So, then on even before you said ‘Masstu Kolahala Ha’ some one or the other would have said ‘Mast Alcohol Ha’ and raised a wave of laughter among all of us. Sir, we have been guilty of mangling several of your beautiful Sanskrit words like ‘Kalyani’ to ‘Kalle-NNi’ (kerosene) or ‘Olle-NNi’ (edible oil). Similarly, ‘Shara-Nya’ to ‘BasavaNNya’ etc. Sir, did you use to come up with these words so that we could have fun? When someone said, ‘BasavaNNya’ soon after you said ‘SharaNNya’ there was a huge laughter as there was this other comedian teacher then nicknamed as ‘BasvaNNyappa’. Too good it was. I forget what ‘Shara-Nya’ means. Is it something like one who has sought refuge or shelter?

Sir, you loved and revered Sanskrit so much so that you used to ‘speak’ in it without realizing that most of us were studying it for high marks to boost our SSLC percentage. So, once you started in Sanskrit as you always did but instead of switching over to ‘Kannada’ soon, you went on and on even exceeding the normally allotted 5 minuets for ‘Sanskrit Vartha’ on AIR. So, some naughty fellow from the back had to give a catcall saying ‘Ithi Vartha Ha’ (as they say at the end of Sanskrit news). You were little upset but the one who gave the cat call was your weakness for reasons best known to you. Otherwise you would have pulled his ear apart, a novel punishment which we were introduced only after you came on board. One nick name for you after that incident was “Baladevananda Sagara” daily morning Sanskrit news reader on AIR. But, it did not last too long and we switched back to old nickname ‘Hegde heggaTT sir”. I do not think it was offensive at all. But, “heggaTT’ was kinda cool. If some rapper comes to know about it, he would call himself “Old Hegde HeggaTT” as there is this rapper called “Old dirty bastard”. He! He!

Yes, I must explain your new punishment. Sir, many of us had not seen anyone twisting or squeezing ears as punishment. You were the first one to do that and I can very well understand where you picked it. You, being ‘Havyak Brahmin’, were trying your propriety punishment on kids who had not seen anything like it. Having been to several Havyak households, I have realized that it is the most common way of disciplining kids that Havyaks used. They call it ‘kimigende tippadu’ in their own Kannada dialect. It does seem certainly less harmful than slapping (KapaLakka Bigiyudu in Kannada) that was the most common punishment used by many teachers. Every year we went to Swadhi math near Sirsi and stayed at a family friend’s house amidst beautiful forest and areca plantations. That’s where I had seen your clansmen (other Hegdes, Bhats etc.) practicing this ‘Havyak torture’ on kids. Sir, you had great mastery over the art of squeezing the ears. Proof used to be that even ears of many ‘Karap’ (or even Karrr-Ludd) people used to turn red after your ear squeeze torture. No wonder most of the Havyaks have long ears probably only next Masai tribal probably due to extensive ear squeezing activity during their childhood. So it was a paradigm shift for us to cover our ears as you neared instead of covering our ‘kapaLa’ for other teachers. So, in a hurry many times people used to cover ‘kapaLa’ when you came by to screw and ears when people like MA came, thus giving complete control of the areas of your respective interests. Too bad whenever that happened.

This punishment of yours was so effective that a poor Muslim boy who could not really understand the basics of Sanskrit grammar started screaming STP STP in his sleep. STP stands for “Shashti Tat Purusha”. His parents were so concerned about this phenomenon that they even took him to Darga to get rid of possible wicked spirits. They just did not know that it was your ear-lobe-ripper punishment that was responsible. This Muslim guy could not pronounce STP in full. So, he used to get by mumbling something close to STP. But, you never tolerated anything like that. You wanted everything to be pronounced very clearly. So, after much persuasion and out of fear of your punishment, he blurted out “Shetty avra Samasa”. It was hilarious. The whole class was roaring in laughter. You even made fun of him by asking which Shetty’s samasa? Yallki shetty’s or Kori Shetty’s or Kottra Shetty’s ? Needless to mention that his ear lobes were gone case that day. He must not have felt that pain even when he underwent his Muslim ‘munjvi’(i.e. sunnathi). During two years you did so many equivalents or worse Muslim munjvis to him that he learnt the correct pronunciation of STP but also started mumbling in sleep. So, then on any ‘samasa’ for him was STP.

There was another incidence where you were lecturing on different kinds of donations and which was the most valuable among all donations. Your expected answer was ‘vidya daana’ meaning donation of education. You kept asking people who had raised their hands but none said ‘vidya daana’. You kinda teased us for not knowing the answer. Came a naughty answer from the back – ‘Kanya daana’ (donation of the girl in marriage). We whole heartedly laughed and laughed. You gave a small talk explaining the concept of ‘Kanya daana’ and how important it is for the parents of girl to be done with that etc. etc. But, still you had not gotten the answer you wanted. You teased us again. Then came the most hilarious answer. Spontaneity of the answer made it even funnier. Some one from the back coldly told –‘GarBha daana’ (donation of pregnancy). Every time I remember that I burst into laughter. But, there was a good learning opportunity. You shared the joke very sportily because you were like Lord Indra in terms of appreciating this kind healthy adult humor. You explained that although ‘Garbha daana’ sounds like another ‘danaa’ it is resolved as Garbha+Aaadana meaning placing the pregnancy and not donating the pregnancy. Wow! We were impressed. So, "garbha daana" is not a donation at all. It is good that you corrected us at the right time because we were just reaching the age to be very interested to indulge in this donation if this was the best donation one could make. Hey! If you can have fun and donate at the same time, who does not want it? It was good that you taught us that ‘Garbha Daana’ was not a donation at all and one should do that responsibly and not charitably.

Sir, you were also a trendsetter. No other teacher may have made a girl to stand up on the bench in 9th class. Anything like that was only before 5-6th class for girls. Boys did not have that privilege. But, you were like our filmy hero shouting ‘PraaN jaaye par vachan na jaaye’. You had once given an assignment to memorize a poem or a stanza and had warned in advance that anyone (irrespective of sex) who could not recite it on demand would be made to stand up on the bench for the entire period. Sir, you were great and won the admiration of all boys when you asked a girl to stand up on the bench. Sir, we were little unhappy that it took half an hour for you to get her on the bench. So, she just spent only 15-20 minutes on the bench at the most. First she did not believe that you asked her to get on top of the bench. But you were like relentless warrior on the fields of Kurukshetra, you continued to insist, then she tried crying, you did not care for that also. After half an hour of ‘rona dhona’ (crying), she finally got on top of the bench. Sir, I still feel it would have been easier to get the elephant into a refrigerator than getting her on top of the bench. Good thing is that we did not have to get your Sanskrit overloading over brains at least on that day, as you were busy in getting the elephant err…the girl on top of the bench. But sir, would you have asked influential girls to do the same? ‘PraaN jaaye par vachan na jaaye’ is fine but ‘Naukri jaaye par chokri bhi bench ke oopar jaye’ (Hell with the job but girl must go up on the bench) is too hard right? That’s what could have been the implication to meddle with some of the influential girls, I suppose.

If previous incidence made us feel that you were not biased towards girls like most of the other teachers, there was another incidence that really made us feel that you were a big ‘viGhna santoshi’ (meaning, in Sanskrit, person who enjoys creating troubles. Not related to movie maker Raj Kumar Santoshi). Sir, do you remember we had gone to YaNa on annual picnic early 1988? Sir, there were several things going on in the bus. After enough rounds of ‘antakshari’, one particular girl who claimed to be Bharatnatyam danseuse volunteered to dance. Sir, we were all ready to enjoy the ‘asset allocation and reallocation’ as part of her dance but you doused water on our hopes resulting in KLPD. Sir, why did you have to come from the back of the bus, stop the music, aske the girl to stop the dance, ask her wear ‘sweater’ and only then continue the dance? Couldn’t you have just continued to doze as you were doing after ‘idli-vada’ breakfast? Sir, you balanced the balance sheet by hiding the ‘assets’ under the liability called sweater. But, did you realize how badly you hit our "bottom line" which was fully inflated expecting full “asset allocation and reallocation”? She continued the dance with ‘assets’ balanced by ‘liability’; our net income which had ‘expanded’ by many folds had to come down. With that kind of ‘capital structure’ neither she enjoyed dancing nor we enjoyed viewing. Sir you seemed to me like one of those dot.com executives who did not get their assets and liabilities right. You will make a very poor CFO. Anyway, assets are assets and liabilities are liabilities.

Sir, you were also quite funny sometimes. In 9th there was an excerpt from one of Kalidasa’s works, which contained an incidence where Lord Shiva visits his beloved Parvathi in disguise to check how deeply she loved him. He tries to belittle her beloved by describing in detail how poor and simple Shiva is and if she ever married Shiva all she would get would be ashes from the burnt corpses in the crematorium smeared over her lovely bosoms. Sir, you were in your true color that day. Unlike the other teacher who had skipped this chapter previous year, you went on and on to explain the details of ash over bosoms. You also could not hide your I-do-not-know-how-to-describe feeling when explaining ashes, bosoms and smearing. We enjoyed it sir. I believe girls did too but they all had buried their heads down. Next year they did the same in the Biology class when RA had to do explain even more fundamental thing – reproductive biology. But, RA explained it so coldly and blandly that it was like dissecting a cold ‘heNa’ (corpse). May be we should have asked you to teach us reproductive biology instead of RA. Ashes for ashes and bosoms for bosoms.

Sir, I can go on and on. You were too good. You made our lives those two years bearable especially under the strict regimen of ‘bhattra saali’. Apologies if we ever had fun at your expense. I admit we had and it is part of the deal. Right, Sir?

I met you once after I left the school. You were busy with other stuff. I believe you also were transferred.

It is great to remember you and our times together. I hope you are shaping the future generation of students as well as you shaped us. However, if you ever get an urge to balance the assets of a dancer, please do not increase the liabilities. Instead, increase owners equity, that way balance sheet is also balanced and owner of the asset is also happy. Bottom line will continue to expand. If you want to know how to increase the owner’s equity, ask for more paid in capital from the people interested to watch the assets, they will be more than happy to provide you with that. If you were to ask us, we would have gladly given any additional paid in capital to ensure “assets’ were not obscured by liabilities on our YaNa trip.

Thanks and best regards.

Yours obedient ex-student,

By