MY PRE-SCHOOL YEARS - 3

‘Formal’ is not right even in the case of Malu teacher as, in the strictest sense, she was not a formal teacher for me. I remember Malu teacher as much as a 4 to 8 year old child can remember, because after she left our household, I had not met her.

She came to our house to impart some elementary learning to my aunts who had not had any chance for school education. My aunts are my father’s sisters and cousins. During those days, girls in the Nambudiri community were not allowed to go to school. In very highly traditional families even boys such as my father did not get formal schooling. Nambudiri boys were supposed to learn only to recite Vedas. Girls - well, they should just be there and grow up and be ready for marriage. Some of my uncles ran away from home to study and they had to undergo lot of difficulties during those years. But that is a story for another occasion. However, it was some of those uncles who persuaded Grandpa to agree for a teacher to be appointed for the aunts.

Malu teacher was from a neighbouring village. She must have been twenty or twenty-one and came with her mother. The mother went away the same evening, telling my Grandma,

'She is all that I have. I am leaving her here with you. Please take care of her.'

'Don't you worry. No harm will come to her. We are all here. Aren't we?' Grandma had told her.

For my aunts, the arrival of Malu teacher was like seeing the light of learning at the end of the dark tunnel of ignorance. It was like opening up the floodgates of knowledge. The life of everybody at home had so totally changed within a couple of weeks. Malu teacher was the angel sent from heaven to instill a purpose for life to my aunts, who otherwise would have remained in darkness, physically within the confines of the big house and mentally within the labyrinths of social customs and traditions.

I was about three when Malu teacher came. She had a pretty, kind face and looking at her, one felt that the best thing to do is to keep on looking at her deep blue eyes. She would allow me to sit in her lap when the classes were going on and would persuade me to read, write and count. My aunts, being of different age groups, were learning at different levels. But most of the time, I was present and had the benefit of listening to all the lessons.

In between teaching grammar, mathematics, history and geography, Malu teacher would talk about the freedom struggle, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and other leaders. She would talk about how India came under the foreign rule and would talk about the struggles led by various small kingdoms. She would tell exciting stories of leaders from South, like Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja, Kunhali Marakkar, Chidambaram Pillai, Subrahmania Bharati and others who resisted a foreign rule.

She would talk in small doses about freedom, individual freedom, social freedom, political freedom etc. I could not understand any of those things, of course. I don't know how much my aunts understood. But it was exciting to listen to her; to watch her eyes glow with pride while talking about an Indian leader; to watch her becoming sad when talking about a loss for the freedom fighters; to share those feelings. I would look at her as I listen to these talks to absorb as much as a four year old could.

After the lessons, we would go up to the second floor and operate the charkhas which my uncles had bought and smuggled into the house, and make threads. It was almost like a factory, with equipments to clean and soften the cotton, thakkilis to make threads by those who are too young to be initiated to charkha, then charkhas themselves.

I was not able to operate the charkha, though, at that time. The span of my hands was not sufficient to reach both ends of the charkha, leave alone spinning a yarn.

'You can do it after a couple of years Omane'. Malu teacher would say.

She would call me Omana, just as the servants would call me. Somehow, I wished teacher would call me by name or at least she would call me by my nickname.

I was 7 when I had my Upanayanam and I was no more allowed to sit in Malu teacher's lap. And I was not getting as much time to spend with teacher either, as I could earlier because there were lot of rituals I had to do. But whenever possible, I would be there sitting along with my aunts during the classes.

Because of the rituals in mornings, I would miss the music lessons and would feel bad. Somehow or other, teacher and I couldn't find another common time for music.

I also started missing my playtime with my playmates – practically all of them the maids’ sons. I was not supposed to touch them. If in the course of play I touch them, I must go and take a bath. And in most cases, those boys will get a scolding from my grandma and beating from their mothers.

Malu teacher was there now for almost four years and suddenly one day, the whole world changed for me. Came crashing down is probably more apt description. Malu teacher's marriage was fixed and she had to leave us and go back to her house. I howled and howled, I don't know for how long. For two days, I remained so upset that I would forget the mantras during the rituals, which would make Grandpa angry. His scolding will upset me more and I felt very miserable when I knew there was no welcoming lap of Malu teacher to go and cry my heart out.

I had started my formal education, or rather formal schooling, in 4th standard because when I was around 8, my Grandpa allowed me to go to school, with a lot of persuasion from my uncle. I didn’t have any problem on the academic front because Malu teacher had prepared me well enough.