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| Ramdas Menon, Adarsh Institute of English, Palakkad |
Ramdas Menon had acted many roles of life before he came to his life’s true calling – being a teacher imparting knowledge and love to his students. And the most inspiring part of his teaching was after he came back to his native land of Palakkad and started the single-room single-teacher English tuition centre in 1983.
Over the years he must have taught about 20000 students – those who had failed in the subject and those who wanted to have a grasp of the language. Recently they organized a get-together to honour their teacher. Many of them recounted their life’s journeys. And most of them were from failure to success.
One of them, Prof.Balasubrahmaniyam, is now the head of the Philosophy Department at Government College, Chittur. He had once failed in English in Pre Degree but had surmounted the difficulty with Menon’s help. Another ward, M.R.Anil Kumar is now a faculty at the Government Sanskrit College, Pattambi.
While his students’ graph had stretched from failure to success, Menon’s life journey wasn’t any less dramatic. By the age of 14, he had written a novel as well as an article on Karma in Bhagavad Gita. He was the best student in class academically and had collected prizes in Elocution. And yet when the SSLC results came, he had failed in Maths.
Turmoil in the home-front propelled Menon outside the State. If the first one was for his failed suicide-attempt as a teenager, the next one was as an employee in a mine in North India. During this time, he passed Intermediate.
His next foray was to Gujarat where he became the stenographer in a firm. Here he managed to secure M.A and B.Ed. and started teaching at the Gujarat University. It was then his land again called him and Menon came back to Palakkad.
At the age of 75, Ramdas Menon continues to engage in his favourite passion: to pour the nectar of knowledge into the eager hearts in front of him.
Courtesy: Deepesh Karimbunkara (text), Satheesh Kumar.M. (photo), Mathrubhumi, April 19, 2015
