Giving back to society.

The year : 1962
The time : Around 7-ish in the morning.
The place : Mavelikara, a small town in Alappuzha district of Kerala state in India.

A young man is at the river bank to have his morning bath. His family is not well-off
to have their own bathroom, with running water and the works. Infact, things are not
exactly hunky-dory at home. His father works at a school and while he draws a regular
monthly salary, the money is only just about enough to make ends meet.

Unlike most families in the neighbourhood, this family has to worry about one additional
expense - college expenses for the son. While children in most families here do go to school,
most of them drop out sooner or later. And for those that stick on (due to providence or
their own interest), reaching Standard X (S.S.L.C.) itself is a big deal, let alone passing it.

So the number of kids here that complete Std. X and then the 1-year Intermediate (today
it is a 2-year period called 10 +1 and +2) and make it to college can be counted on one's
fingers. While it was a matter of pride for the parents that their son was doing well
academically, college also brought with it expenses.

The college was at Pandalam, a town some 20-odd kms away, requiring money daily for
bus fare. His Mom used to raise hens and the money got from selling the eggs used to
support bus fare to college and back. But ofcourse, the hens simply had no idea about the
important role they played in the young man's academic life. So, on days that they didn't
lay eggs, Mom had to find other alternatives to enable her son to get to college.

Anyway, the parents were determined that nothing should come in the way of their son's
higher education and worked to overcome all odds to ensure that he is able to pursue his
studies without having to bother about where the money for supporting it came from.

Coming back to the river bank, while the young man is having his bath, there are other
guys from the neighbourhood, junior to him and in school, who also share his passion for
studies. These guys cannot afford any private tuitions to supplement the little that they
are taught at school and thus look forward to the young man's daily visit to the river in
the morning, so that they can clear their doubts with him in the short time that he spends
there. And the young man, is only eager to help anyone who has any queries or needs any
clarification.

His good grades in Intermediate could have easily got him admission to an Engineering
college. But he had no one to guide him about career choices, and in all probability, he
was not even aware about the options available to him. He takes up Bachelor of Science
(B.Sc.) degree in Chemistry. Not taking up Engineering would be a decision he would rue
later on in life, due to not being able to advance in his career as much as he could have
done had he had an Engineering degree.

He finishes his B.Sc. degree with a First Class and works for a short duration as a teacher
at a school. While there, he gets called by the Employment Exchange for a position in a
premier oil exploration company. He has to go to Gujarat for the interview, which for all
he knows could be in the West Indies, given that the furthest he has gone from home is
like 50-odd kms.

He gets in touch with someone in the neighborhood who happens to be working at Gujarat
and gets his help to get around when he reaches Gujarat. Due to the financial conditions at
home and also because trousers were not so common then, he did not have a trouser to
wear to the interview. And ofcourse you can't go in a mundu (a South Indian attire loosely
translatable as sarong) to an interview.

Again friends help with their trousers, which he gets altered by the tailor to suit his girth
and height and boards the train to Gujarat. He lands the job, and soon is an expert in his
department (Production) of oil exploration. He stays with the organisation till he retires
40 years later at the age of 60 as a manager at a very senior level. His only regret was
that if only he had taken an Engineering degree instead of the B.Sc., he could have moved
much more further in his career.

After having been working and keeping busy for 40 years of his life, he is sort of worried
as to how he will keep himself busy during retirement. But, he is soon to find out that he
will be left with much lesser time than he had when he was working.

He decides to take up farming first, given that he has always been blessed with a green
thumb. Quite some time is spent pottering around the yard growing tapioca and plantains.
Still there is quite some time available. So he decides to be part of an NGO to do his bit for
society. His friends influence him to join the Lions Club, which he believes is doing quite a
bit for society. But the Lions Club meet only so many times a month, which still leaves him
with a lot of time.

And that is when he comes across a kid in the neighborhood, who has a passion for learning,
but cannot afford the tuition centres. He decides to spend some time coaching the kid. From
an average student, the kid soon moves into the top scorers in school. Word spreads about
the person who can coach kids from average performers to top scorers and soon there are
three more kids that come to him for coaching. Now, he has his hands full and time is now at
a premium.

Without knowing it himself, he has come full circle. From coaching his juniors on the river
bank, he is now coaching a new generation. A generation of kids that have the urge to learn,
but do not have the means to pursue the same. Apart from coaching them, he takes care of
the school fees, books, uniforms for the kids that cannot afford them, with the intention that
a kid in the neighborhood should not drop out of school just because of the lack of money.

This person is my Dad. Whatever I am today, is because of him. He never had the luxury of
learning English grammar in school, but he did not hesitate to buy a copy of 'Wren & Martin'
so that he could teach us the nuances of the English language. While growing up, he had never
heard of Cursive writing, but ensured that me and my sisters spent time writing English, the
way it should be written.

He would take the effort and time to read up our textbooks so that he could teach us. Be it
Science or Mathematics or languages, he was there to guide us, if we had a doubt. And all
this, after a hard day's work at the oil-field.

Today, when I see the effort he takes to teach the kids that are not priveleged enough to
afford the kind of education that most kids take for granted today, I feel proud of him.
When I see the interest the kids display in making the most out of the time he can spend
teaching them, I am sure that these kids will go on to do big in life. And knowing that my
Dad would have played a big role in that, makes me feel proud that he is my Dad.