The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : A teacher looks back at a century

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Friday, Jun 13, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

A teacher looks back at a century

Bageshree S.

A disciplined life and lack of bitterness give him a hundred reasons to live

— Photo: Bhagya Prakash K.

A FULL LIFE: Retired teacher S. Krishnaraya Shenoy and his wife Shanta in Bangalore.

Bangalore: “You will have to bear with my poor memory,” says S. Krishnaraya Shenoy, who turns 100 on June 16. “There are times when I forget even the names of my friends and relatives,” he says.

But the memories seem to come rushing back to this school teacher from Mangalore, who taught Kannada for four decades, as he begins to recite verses from the Kumaravyasa Bharata.

He passionately explains Arjuna’s sudden realisation, as he aims his arrow at Karna who is freeing the chariot wheel from the blood-soaked earth in the Kurukshetra battlefield, that his adversary resembles his own self so strikingly.

A maestro’s friend

A great lover of Hindustani music (he is a friend of the maestro Bhimsen Joshi) and a self-taught harmonium player, Mr. Shenoy’s voice is amazingly steady as he sings songs from the play based on the Buddhist story of Kisa Gautami. “I had written many plays for my students and directed them. But I have not kept any script,” he says. Shantha Shenoy, his company for 73 years, adds that an old student recently gave him a dog-eared copy of one of his plays he had preserved.

What is remarkable about the centenarian, who now lives with his son Vasanth Shenoy in Bangalore, is the great sense of contentment he carries about his long teaching career. In fact, he spurned other opportunities to remain a teacher.

“In 1930 I was sent by my school, Canara High School started by Ammembala Subba Rao Pai, for training to Saidapet in Chennai. I was to come back and start a Manual Training Department in the school. Prof. Porret, my teacher there, offered me a job to be a teachers’ trainer. I declined because I did not want to let down my own institution which had sent me there with a stipend,” Mr. Shenoy says.

Packed classes

But he came back to Mangalore to realise that the school did not have the money to start the department. So he had to be content with teaching elementary classes for the next 10 years until he was posted to teach the high school students.

“But no regrets, students loved my classes!” he says with a smile. He was so popular that his was the only packed class when all others were empty during the Quit India movement in 1942.

“The students said they would leave the class to join the movement only if I gave them permission. I could not say ‘go’ as the teacher of an aided school and I felt it was wrong to say ‘don’t go’.” To his great relief someone rang the bell just then, resolving his moral dilemma.

He has as many vivid memories of the big procession in Mangalore on the day of Independence.

What has kept him away from any major illness through all these years are his disciplined life and no regrets. From the days when “42 sers of rice cost three-and-a-half rupees” to now, he has always had his “ganji oota” on time and taken regular walks.

“Eating green vegetables and two fistfuls of sprouted green grams a day has kept me strong,” says Mr. Shenoy, who took long walks till six months ago. “Now the traffic on the roads is heavy and I am not strong enough to handle that,” he says.

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