September 9, 2011
Divakaran Sir passed away yesterday. I had visited his home nearby twice last month in an effort to meet him, but I was told that he was living with his daughter temporarily. This morning, I saw his lifeless body draped in silk with a 'kasavu' turban, resting on his living room floor in a boundary of turmeric powder with oil lamps at his head and his feet.
From 1992-1994, I used to be in this room almost every day. Mathematics tuition. Weekdays in the evenings. Weekends, which I preferred, early in the morning. Dressed in pristine, wrinkleless, white khadi shirt and mundu, Sir would pace up and down the room and verandah while the students tackled Mathematics. He appeared like a watchman warding off any fear of the subject likely to approach the young minds at work. He was a grandfather figure who led a lot of us by hand into the wonderful world of Geometry, Trigonometry, Algebra and Arthmetic. Geometry was his favorite. I remember borrowing a copy of Euclid from him. "Read from the originals, " he used to say. As I learnt today, he was 65 then.
Hari.D.Pillai and I were his first students from the ICSE syllabus. Till then he had had over 45 years of experiencing teaching the state syllabus of mathematics. Sir is present as a Sir already in my Achan's school final year class photo. He had retired from the state department of education and had been responsible for many years in setting the question paper for the state public class 10 exam. The three year experience with us drew him to the ICSE syllabus which he felt went deeper into the fundamentals and encouraged a first principles approach rather than rot learning. Juniors from our school like Deepak Rajeevan followed us to his classes.
Students of a wide age group came to him, from class 5 to class 10. Essentially, he taught everyone the same thing: the excitement of mathematics!
Whenever a new topic was to be tackled, he would walk in silence for a few minutes. There was no need for this man with such huge experience to do this. Like majority of other teachers, he could have used yellowed, dog-eared, ancient notes to spew out bullet points and cliches. But perhaps, it was the experience that made him insist that he introduce each topic in a customized way to each set of students.
The entire effort was to ensure that we felt that we had discovered the concepts. When that flash of intuition finally arrived, when randomly floating numbers, signs and figures in the young brains snapped together into razor sharp concepts, unbreakable equations and that language-less depth of mathematical meaning, that was the moment he lived for every day. And when that moment arrived, he would greet it with a characteristic parting of the lips and raising of the eyebrows above the black rims of his spectacles. A gesture that would mirror on the students faces. Slapping the wooden armrests of the settee, he would say "Athre ullu!" (That's all!).
Years later, I encountered a similarly beautiful expression at A&M in the legendary Dr. John L. Junkins catchphrase "You own it!" about the techniques of dynamics that he would have led us into in the lecture.
Divakaran Sir taught me that mathematics was not about "problems" that needed "solutions". It was a field of information from which more useful information was to be extracted. What more can we know from what we already know? That is the question! He managed to unalterably link mathematics into the intrinsic curiosity of the human mind. "Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man." said Swami Vivekananda. Divakaran Sir practiced it as long as his health allowed him to. The perfect scores I landed in Mathematics exams through out 1992-94 are but a weak indicator of how he fundamentally altered my approach to learning.
He had a special affection for Tara. Back in 2004 from Achan had written to Sir about a possible marriage alliance with a bachelor in his neighborhood, Sir immediately went to the young man's house to discuss the matter. Last April, when Achan and Tara went to invite him, he told them that his health wouldn't allow him to come for the wedding but Tara and Ajith should definitely visit him after the marriage. Like me, they also couldn't meet him this time around.
Sir's younger son, Kannan, an energetic and humorous young man 20 years ago when I first met him; a mature, sober, grieved son today, talked to us this morning. Sir had gone to his home for Onam day. "Ravile achan kaapi kudichu. Uchakku chorunnan pattiyila. shwasam muttu undayirunnu. mixiyil adichu koduthu. athu kazhinju urangi. vykuneeram ennittu kurachu paalu kudichu. athinte glass njan kondu poyi thirike vachu vannappo poyi." (Father had breakfast in the morning. He couldn't eat rice for lunch. He had some wheezing. So we mashed it in the mixer for him. After that he slept. Evening, he woke up and had some milk. Before I kept the milk cup in the kitchen and came back, he was gone)
Reflections of the oil lamp's flame danced on both the lenses of the spectacles on Sir's motionless face this morning. Hovering above his closed eyes, these virtual flames were a reminder of the lively sparkle of those eyes. The light that he generously gifted to the younger generations.
"Saar illennu vachu varathirikaruth. Veendum varanam," (Don't stop visiting because Sir isn't there anymore.You must come again) Kannan said to me as I got up leave.
When he said that, I remembered Divakaran Sir's trademark good-bye phrase without which he never parted company of his students and others:"Poyittu varu" (leave now but come back). He had told me that last in 2002.
Kannan must have remembered this phrase too.
It looked like he was fighting back tears.
I left with a heavy lump in my throat.
Sir will not come back.
In his sad demise, at the end of my rather giddy first Onam back home after 15 years, Divakaran Sir has left a final lesson on the gloriously balanced equation of life.
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