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MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Celebrating life

Photo: Soma Basu

Bold An inspiring personality

Her mind is packed with ideas, heart filled with love and there is magic in her fingers too. But right now, it is her body that is fight a raging war against cancer cells.

Yet Jagada Kesavalu is unstoppable. She has scaled down her activities but is not the ones who allows herself idle.

For this former Mahatma School arts teacher, life has undergone several twists and turns. Today at 60 when she introspects, she herself is surprised how ‘an ordinary daughter of a uneducated mill mazdoor packed in so much without any degree or formal training.’

Undoubtedly, she is God’s gifted child as one quality that always held her through is her ability to imagine vividly and creatively translate those ideas into beautiful pieces of art work.

After finishing High School, Jagada was interested in joining college but lack of money prevented her from doing so. It was her commendable performance in school in arts and crafts, painting and drawing that caught the attention of the management of Bangalore-based Binny Textiles Mills, where her father worked.

At 17, she was in, as one of the 13 members appointed as the first-ever women batch in the sari design unit. After seven years of work, came the choice between marriage and job.

“I was from a poor family but got a good proposal from a family of doctors based in Madurai. Also my husband promised that he would let me pursue my interests,” she recalls with a smile. And the soft-spoken paediatrician, who mostly works in rural areas, did keep his word and encouraged his life-partner to take up courses in textile printing, batik, tie-and-dye, chocolate making and bakery from the day she stepped into his large joint family. With every course, Jagada refined her skills and the desire to impart the knowledge to others also grew in her. As a mother of two daughters, she operated mostly from home in her initial years taking batches of students and teaching them various creative skills.

Then came the opportunity to train the inmates of M.S.Chellamuthu Trust and she helped them in setting up a bakery unit. “Initially I was scared thinking the mentally challenged individuals would be unmanageable and difficult to train. But gradually I befriended them all and developed my own method of teaching them. They picked up fast and even now ask me for new recipes for cakes and cookies,” she shares.

However, 1990 was a turning point when Mrs.Premalatha, Correspondent of Mahatma School, contacted her for taking classes in cookery, nutritional recipes, preservation of food items, baking cakes, making juices. Soon she was into giving demos for parents too, besides digressing from the syllabus and teaching Class VI to IX students from crafts to social behaviour, general etiquettes and moral values, dining display and table decoration, flower arrangements and vegetable carving.

“I used to be extremely shy and nervous talking to a group of people, but Mrs.Premalatha always assuaged my feeling and gave me confidence. My husband started teaching me English. But still I feel I am not so highly educated and always need to do that extra more,” she says humbly.

“She is very courageous and hard working with an unquenchable thirst for knowing and learning more things,” fondly chips in Dr.Kesavalu, who has over the years built her collection of books to a 1000-plus.

Today, Jagada’s reputation reaches before she does and she is one of the sought after speakers in schools, clubs and corporate offices articulating her thoughts and knowledge on a wide range of topics related to lifestyle and healthy eating and living.

She has not sidelined her first love either, and in fact, even at this age is a keen student of clay art, modelling and animation. She is also the president of the Kalamilan Art Club, Madurai unit, an initiative of Pidlite industries, which conducts summer classes to give an opportunity to skilled women to earn by teaching arts and crafts to the young and the old.

Jagada’s days are packed with students who come to learn various arts or desperate phone calls from housewives who want to rectify a dish that has gone wrong while cooking. There is also a constant stream of visitors who come to invite her for various functions.

All was going perfectly fine for the unassuming Jagada till she noticed a peanut-sized growth in her breast and a biopsy confirmed the family’s worst fears two winters ago. “She is very bold and an extremely cooperative patient,” says her husband.

“Cancer means dying only. But I want to and am determined to live. Initially when the news broke, I went numb. But later I placed full faith in the doctors in Chennai and handed over myself to them. I was very sceptical about losing my breast to surgery, losing hair but the team of doctors was very supportive and they changed my fears and mental scars to a positive outlook,” says Jagada with much gratitude.

Today, sitting in her home, when she flashes a smile narrating the story of her life, one cannot miss the sparkle of her victory over the cancerous cells.

She knows how to live and lead fructuously. And is our inspiration.

(Making a Difference is a fortnightly column about ordinary people and events that leave an extraordinary impact on us. Email to somabasu@thehindu.co.in to tell about someone you know who is making a difference).

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