The Malayalee who taught Kannada to a Gujarati

MANISHA MODHA-PATEL writes from Ahmedabad: It was in the year 1980 that I first met her.

I was 12 years old.

Our family had just moved from Bombay to Mysore. Besides the lovely weather, the new place offered new friends, a new house, and a new school with new classmates and new teachers.

Moving to a new place always has its moments, apart from the difficulties of finding your way and melding in. The language barrier makes it even more so.

In namma Mysooru, Kannada posed countless troubles to me: from the emotional trauma of not being able to converse with many of my classmates to the physical pain of manoeuvering the finger to write it.

Enter Miss Ponnamma George.

My class-teacher at Nirmala School who introduced me to the nuances of the new language; my writing coach who taught me the way to hold the pencil to etch its letters on paper; the language guide who taught me how to make sense of the what I heard and how to start speaking it myself.

The fact that my parents, who were as new to the City as I, were of little or no help in managing this new language, compelled me to put in extra time in learning it all on my own.

It  meant the agony of an extra one hour of class every day after school. The charge? Ten rupees—yes, Rs 10—per month!

It meant the agony of watching all your classmates happily go home and play, while you sat at the desk learning the alphabet by rote, writing the same new words and new sentences countless number of times.

Homework and more homework.

If, over time, Kannada became something I could handle, it was entirely because or Miss Ponnamma.

The ever-smiling lady had the patience and sensitivity to make the extra class delightful. She taught to me to converse in Kannada and didn’t laugh when I did and tripped. Over time, Kannada seemed easier and my equation with her grew stronger.

It was Miss Ponnamma who explained to me that kencha or kenchi was not a foul-word but an adjective meaning fair, although it sounded like one when the K-word was yelled at us while we were having lunch. It was Miss Ponnamma who explained who a halli guggu or a goobe or an emmay was.

It was Miss Ponnamma who revealed to me that besi bele hulli anna and puliyogere were not words belonging to some botanical species but rice dishes; that mosuru anna was curd- rice and not to be pronounced as Mysore anna. That illa kan’e and illa kanó were equivalent to “No, yaar” in English.

It wasn’t quite high literature, but it was useful for a young girl finding her feet.

What endeared me to Miss Ponnamma was her infinite patience with me. It was reassuring to hear her say “paravagilla” (ït’s OK) whenever I made a mistake, and it was often enough, believe me.

When she announced me to be the monitor of the class, I was shocked but realised that Miss Ponnamma did like me a wee bit more. Was I now one among us (nammavaru?), not an “outsider” (bere-avaru)? If it wasn’t for this little action by Miss Ponnamma, I would never have been the person I was in school!

Doing all the little tasks for her, getting her bag from the teachers’ room to those charts we prepared for the school exhibitions, to just being around her whenever she needed me. School was definitely the place to be in. And once a student is made monitor,  life becomes somehow easier. (Ask all monitors.)

I remember her inviting me and a classmate Preeti Attavar to her marriaju when we were in our seventh standard.  This made me feel even more special. The whole class collected money to buy a gift (including a purple lipstick from Mohan Bhandar!), and Preeti and I went to Saint Bartholomew Church to hand them over.

I knew that my presence would mean a lot to her. It certainly did to me.  A glimpse of a Christian wedding and my first one at that. She looked lovely in a white saree. And I had thought all Christian brides wore those lovely gowns that made them look like a fairy. She indeed was one for me!

Life, was easy in 7th standard, courtesy Miss Ponamma, and the subsequent years were even better. After going to the high school, meeting her sometime, just made my day.

A chance conversation with another classmate two years ago revealed she was still teaching in the same school after 30 years and was in charge of the school alumni. I made a phone call and told her that I was her student and would she remember me?

“This is Manisha,” I said.

“Manisha Modha?” came the prompt response from the other end of the line. “What is Preeti doing? They don’t make students like you any more.”

To which I just have to say, this Teacher’s Day: “They don’t make teachers like you any more, Miss Ponnamma!”

Today, when I want my school-going children to meet at least one Miss Ponamma in life, so that they have good memories of school in later years, a small voice in me tells me, partly out of nostalgia, partly out of experience, “Miss Ponnamma, nimma taraha teachers innu mundhe baralla.”

Thank you, m’am.

***

Which teacher/s do you most remember most from which school? Name them—and ‘fame’ them.

***

Also read: Once upon a time, shortly after the lunch break

Once upon a time, when the gari didn’t put mari

Once upon a time, in Ramakrishna Vidyashala

Once upon a time, in Maharani’s college. (Yes!)

From Guruswamypalya, a lesson for all shishyas

The Times of India and Commonwealth Games

PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from New Delhi: The year of the lord 2010 has seen the The Times of India in uber-aggressive mode.

The nation’s largest English daily that rarely ever wants to “afflict the comfortable” despite its size, reach, reputation, resources and influence, has pulled out all stops in exposing the murky IPL dealings of Lalit Modi, Union minister Sharad Pawar and his MP-daughter Supriya Sule, and their NCP partyman Praful Patel.

In all those four IPL-related stories, Times provided blanket coverage and then let matters rest after a while. But if there is one story on which it has been relentless in the last couple of months, it is its attack on the Commonwealth Games (CWG)—and Pawar’s former factotum, Suresh Kalmadi.

Day after day, Times has employed reporters, editors, columnists, authors, even commissioned industrialists, to rip the games and the chairman of its organising committee apart, with the kind of first-rate journalism that ToI has condemned to play second fiddle over the last decade.

A cursory count shows that between 1 August and 2 September 2010, The Times of India (Delhi market) has published no less than 107 negative headlines on the Commonwealth Games (sample them here) with the author Chetan Bhagat just short of advocating a boycott of the CWG on the pages of The Sunday Times of India (in image, above).

Given how rarely ToI wants to rock the boat, the question that is naturally being asked in Delhi and Bombay is, why. What’s behind the Times‘ new-found aggro?

Legitimate journalism, is of course the easiest explanation for ToI‘s proactivism. The fact that the CWG is in a mess—inflated bills, corrupt deals, leaky stadiums, incomplete facilities, etc—is beyond doubt, and Suresh Kalmadi’s own culpability in this (and other) dubious deals is also beyond question.

After all, if politicians like Mani Shankar Aiyar can ask searching questions on the CWG, why shouldn’t a newspaper?

Yet, it is unnatural for a “feel-good” newspaper like The Times of India, whose advertised credo is to wake up the reader with a good feeling in his head, to rub in the bad news in the all-important Delhi market, day in and day out. Moreover, bigger scams involving more important people have been allowed to rest.

So, what gives?

There are no answers, just whispers.

But for over a fortnight now, journalists have been hissing about a four-page document that reportedly suggests that the Times‘ interest in the story may be more than just journalistic.

Now, it is up on Flickr (and Scribd).

The first page of it is a signed November 2009 letter from a director of Times of India group (C.R. Srinivasan) on a ToI letterhead to Suresh Kalmadi, outlining the “costumer connect initiatives” the group proposes to undertake.

“Kindly let us know of your decision to grant ‘official newspaper’ status to The Times of India at your earliest convenience,” concludes Srinivasan’s letter.

The second page is a signed note from Times Group general manager Gautam Sen to the additional director-general, communications, of the CWG organising committee, presenting a “comprehensive print proposal” (for Times of India, Navbharat Times, Maharashtra Times, Mirror and Sandhya Times) along with a rate-card.

For 2-page reports on five key milestone days (carrying a half-page ad of CWG at DAVP (department of audio visual publicity) rates and a half-page ad at commercial days); for six one-page reports (where in 65% of the page will have edit and 35% will be paid-for); and 12 full pages of advertorial at DAVP rates, Times proposes a Rs 12.19 crore package.

For a claimed combined nationwide circulation of 51.84 lakh copies for the five dailies, the breakdown is Rs 4.61 crore + Rs 3.31 crore + Rs 4.27 crore = Rs 12.19 crore.

The last-two pages doing the rounds—an unsigned note from a bureaucrat to a senior bureaucrat or to Kalmadi himself, explaining the fineprint of the proposed Times package—leave little to the imagination.

In summary, the ToI proposal has the following benefits:

# OC [organising committee] in totality pays for 16.6 pages and in return gets the leverage for 28 pages.

# It [ToI group] has the potential to form opinions of the public at large. It is also expected that with the influence that the ‘Response’ department has over editorial, the OC can get neutral and positive coverage from now to the Games.

# We can consider and extended and beneficial deals with ToI‘s other properties viz, TV, radio, internet, etc, including Economic Times (all editions) may be requested of ToI.

While on the face of it, the sum of Rs 12.19 crore may seem large, the benefits offered on a national basis are considerable and the proposal should be considered favourably.

Obviously, these notes and letters do not represent the full story and there is nothing—repeat, nothing—in them to suggest that the Times‘ coverage of CWG and Kalmadi has a connection with this and/or other correspondence.

But judging from the CWG coverage so far, it is fair to assume that ToI did not get the “official newspaper” status. (The buzz is that Hindustan Times has received that status with a lower than Rs 12.19 crore bid. At what terms HT secured the ‘My Delhi, My Games’ tag is not known, but Delhi’s two biggest English dailies do not come out smelling of roses.)

Judging from the hyper-ballistic coverage of CWG and Kalmadi on Times Now, it is also reasonably safe to assume that the plan to extend the deal to Times‘ other properties came to nought. (CNN-IBN swung the baton rights’ deal, unlike Times Now and the other aggrieved bidder, NDTV.)

Nevertheless, at a time when other Indian media specialities like “medianet, paid news” and “private treaties” have become the flavour of the season, the four-page ToI-CWG note lays bare the alarming interplay between editorial and advertising in Indian media houses like never before.

The two-page note appended to the Times‘ managers’ notes also shows how advertisers are confident of buying “neutral and positive coverage” if they can throw a few crores.

Conversely, the bottomline is clear: if an advertiser doesn’t play along, there is hell in store.

Also read: Why Delhi shouldn’t host Commonwealth Games

CHURUMURI POLL: Is Mani Shankar Aiyar ‘anti-national’?

Why Ram Pyari couldn’t take her daughter home

Why the ace opener ‘pulled down the shutters’

The Indian media—print, electronic and digital—have approached the spot-fixing scam involving the Pakistan cricket team with the same jingoistic insouciance with which they greeted the match-fixing scandal 13 years ago. Which is, what did you expect from the damned Pakis? Of course not, our players are brought up well, they are clean.

Result: five days into the scandal, there is no sign of the Indian link except for a hapless photographer (Dheeraj Dixit) whom Mohammad Asif‘s ex-squeeze, Veena Malik, loquaciously accuses of being in link with her beau. No mention of an Indian hand in shady deals. No mention of IPL’s stunning potential for sex-drugs-scams.

It takes India’s #1 cricket writer, Prem Panicker, managing editor of Yahoo! India, to point out that spot-fixing, like match-fixing, isn’t quite a 21st century phenomenon but a 20th century one.

“There was once an opening batsman known as much for his impeccable technique as for his preternatural sense of the ebbs and flows, the rhythms, of Test cricket.

“The way he constructed an innings was both masterclass and template: the early watchfulness, the constant use of the well-placed single to get away from strike and go to the other end, from where he could observe the behaviour of pitch and bowler, the imperceptible change of gears and then, as the lunch interval loomed, the gradual down-shifting of gears as commentators marveled: ‘He is pulling down the shutters… he knows it is important not to give away his wicket just before the break… the onus is on him to return after the break and build his innings all over again… the man is a master of focus…’

“I followed along, on radio first and later, on television, and I marvelled along with the commentators, the experts. And then, years later, I heard a story — of how, when the toss went the way of his team and this opener went out to bat on the first day of a Test, a close relative would bet with not one, but several, bookies, about whether the batsman would get to 50 before lunch.

“Or not.

“‘So he would get to 45 or so, and there would be 20 minutes to go before lunch, and he would defend like hell, and all these experts would talk about how he is downing shutters for lunch when the fact was, there was a lot of money riding on his not getting 50 before the break,’ is a paraphrase of what one of the bookies who suffered from such well-placed bets said.”

Read the full article: We know it’s so, Joe

Also read: CHURUMURI POLL: Indians in spot fixing too?

CHURUMURI POLL: Blackberry, Google, Skype?

After extending the deadline to Blackberry™ to open up its servers to security agencies to monitor data flowing through it (or else), the Indian government is now threatening Google™ and Skype™. Orwellian home ministry officials have demanded “access to everything” from “any company with a telecoms network”.

Such insecurity passes in the name of security. Having access to “encrypted data”, the mandarins believe, will thwart terrorism through the telephone and internet, as if the terror-mongers cannot find newer ways. That fear is being happily used to write off privacy and personal liberty, as if they no longer matter in a democracy.

Although the moves will affect millions, there has been little opposition or aggression from the people’s representatives, media or industry bodies, even as Blackberry’s competitors like Nokia™ have used the Chidambaram-sent opportunity to tout their new security-compliant systems.

Questions: Should Blackberry, Google and Skype open up? Are you willing to open up every facet of life in the name of security? Will these measures stop terrorism? Just because other countries have allowed similar monitoring, should we too? Or is this just another figleaf that the Union home ministry is using to pry into out lives?