While teaching this book, Thampi sir would randomly pick some student to read a lesson aloud to the whole class. He used to be intolerant to broken reads (with long pauses within sentences) and mistakes in ucharanam; and at the same time would appreciate a good reading.

Harshan, oru introduction aavashyamilla Interesting anecdote. Yes, Thampi Sir in Bus No.1 is one of my memories too.

Let me introduce myself….1990 SSLC…

Indeed a great loss may be for the generations following….My marks for SSLC in Malayalam was 90/100, the great man GTT when I went to show him that told me ” I am not happy with whatever you have got”"

Still remembering the Bus No.1 coming down at 9.05 with Thampi Sir in a side seat at the back……

May the god almighty give all strength for his Family to move forward.

Peter, nice of you to add the view from the 1960s. One of the weaknesses of this blog has been the relative silence on the 1960s. I hope others from that era will follow Peter’s example.

Sureshchetta, thank you for dropping by.

I never knew about his scholarly works. Thanks for the article.

One of my classmates was, for reasons I can’t remember, punished with what we referred to then a ‘imposition writing’. He would have to write an entire poem ten times, but with three constraints. He could use only a pencil, the ten iterations had to be on the same side of a sheet of notebook paper, and the whole thing had to be legible. By forcing him to write in that manner, Thampi sir said, the erring student would face three losses, which in his words were: samaya-nashtam, aarogya-nashtam and dhana-nashtam. In my view, cruelty-free punishments like that would be enough to arouse fear in most eleven year olds.

Thampi sir was feared, that much I recall. Do you know of any incident where he actually punished guys cruelly? Was he really strict? Or was it a misperception?

Based in a place where the pass percentage in the nearest school was a miserable 8%(15 out of 190 students passed their 10th exam), one can only but look back with a lot of gratitude for people like Thampi sir who gave us such a tremendous gift early in our lives.

I joined Loyola in ’97 and needless to say, didn’t get to know Thampi Sir.

The senior Malayalam teachers from our days were Annie Ma’am (has she retired?) and Anil Kumar Sir, both of whom held very engaging classes. And in our batch only two chose Hindi as the second language, only to return to Malayalam in a week or two

There was another teacher, Sadashivan Sir, who with his luxuriant white beard and erudite manners, looked every bit a literary giant. We couldn’t find out more as he taught us only for some weeks before leaving Loyola. Can anyone elaborate a bit on him as well?

I really wonder as to how many teachers of Thampi sir’s stature would be so humble.

I actually came to know that Thampi Sir hailed from Kanyakumari District (where my native place also is) during my school days in the 8th or 9th. At that time, it filled me with wonder wonder that he was proficient in both languages.

I remember the time when cine artist Thikurrishi had been a Chief Guest for the Onal celebrations at Loyola. He said that though he also used to write poetry he was nowhere in the league of either Thampi Sir or Thikkurisshi Sir.

Going into the point where we had to make the decision on choosing the second language – I remember being at or near the top of the class in Hindi, and close to the last in Malayalam. I chose Malayalam because I thought it would be a long term investment – being a malayalee, you ought to be able to pick up a newspaper and read it, which I couldn’t at that point.

Finally, I ended up knowing enough to survive, but not to excel (in either Malayalam or Hindi).

The biggest memory I have of Thampi Sir (apart from being completely scared of him) was an incident in 7th grade (I think). We had to do an essay on how Onam is celebrated. I had a description of how the pookkalam is created. He called me over because he was puzzled by the sequence of steps I described. The fact is that I was wrong, but I stood fast and claimed that’s how it’s done in Kottayam (where I used to spend Onam holidays).

Thinking back, the cool thing about Thampi sir was his intellectual curiosity. He could have been dismissive and called me out, but he probably figured it’s something he needs to go research. There aren’t a lot of teachers who would admit to a 7th grader that their knowledge is not limitless

Sandeep raised the issue of interest in Malayalam and its literature. The number of Loyolites who went on to do BA Malayalam would be a single digit. A few more would have read (by now) a good number of classics. But the vast majority, I suspect, would have celebrated the last Malayalam exam in school, only to rue the neglect later in life. Though Loyola’s Malayalam teachers were not really exam oriented (in the 1980s), I think student energies were focused on clearing the exams. Many of us found the subject tough, if I recall rightly. So, to love the language and its literature was not a central concern.

Deepak, thank you very much for adding to the post with your observations of Thampi sir, and anecdotes from his classes. The Gandhian simplicity, I believe, also prevented him from boasting about his academic and literary adventures.

Matt, thank you. An article on each teacher is a good suggestion. Many are still alive and might not want an unvarnished portrait on the Web So, I try to present facets of teachers, or approach their life-story from an unusual angle, with a post now and then. Teachers of Thampi sir’s stature are rare, in any case.

Although there are contact id’s of old teachers in the website, It would be nice if an article can be written about each one of them (but I cant figure out how!), so that the current batches would come to know such great teachers once taught in Loyola..

Nice article!. Your blog makes me very nostalgic!
Matt

Thampi sir was my class’s Malayalam teacher in the fifth and sixth standards – so his first class with us must have been in May 1988, more than twenty-one years ago. In that class, Thampi sir explained to us the origin of the word ‘Malayalam’. “Mala”, we knew meant hills or mountains. “Aalam”, he explained to us, is Tamil for “Aazham” or depth, the root of the word “Aazhi” which means ocean. Even after twenty-one years, I still remember that lecture. He got our class’s undivided attention and my lifelong respect in those 40 minutes.

A teacher’s greatest challenge is to develop excitement about his subject among his students. He did that with great effect.

In the two years that I was in his class, I have observed many facets of the man’s personality. He was a no nonsense disciplinarian and did not tolerate any behavior in poor taste from the boys. There was no fooling around with him.

He was humorous and quick witted. Once when in his class, after he was done with the lesson, I asked him how many minutes remained for the lunch break, he stared at me bemusedly, and exclaimed “Eda Shaappaattu Raama!”, sending the whole class into a laughing fit.

He was a great motivator. In one of his papers in the fifth standard, there was an essay about the topic ‘Keralam’. He singled out one of our classmates for praise after the evaluation. The object of his praise was a person known to be proficient in English, but like many of us, a little linguistically challenged in his mother tongue. What impressed Thampi sir the most about his essay was that he had begun it with the sentence: “Njaan Keralathil jeevikkunnu.” He asked the rest of the class to reflect on the beauty and depth of that simple sentence. He made us see what he saw in that sentence. We were inspired.

There was a Gandhian simplicity about him. He always wore white shirts with rolled up sleeves and plain white mundus. As far as I can remember he was always barefooted. He wore an old wind-up watch with a yellowing dial. He was a literary scholar, but did not try to intimidate us with bombast. He spoke in a clear and simple manner. Whether it was Vallathol, Pala Narayanan Nair, ONV or Bodheshwaran, his parsing of their poems made the experience of understanding poetry enjoyable.

He was one of my favorite and most admired teachers in Loyola. I am profoundly saddened by his passing. I hope he remains forever in the memories of his students.

This is sad news… I have been fortunate to have attended malayalam classes taken by Thampi sir. We used to be quite scared of him since he had a serious air about him. It was near impossible to be distracted in his classes since he was a strict disciplinarian too… I would say that he falls into that category of teachers who are equally respected and feared. But overall he was a scholar who maintained a simple lifestyle.

On a related note, dont you feel that Loyola of the 1980s-90s was very fortunate to have an excellent contingent of Malayalam teachers, each one unique in his style of teaching – Thankappan Nair sir, Thikkurissi sir, Thampi sir and P K Sebastian sir ? However, did that really result in a generation of students with even a marginal interest in the language or its literature?

Really sorry to hear the news. Its quite unfortunate that many of us were not aware of his body of work. I knew about Sthalanama Padana Pravesika and actually consulted it at some point for the history of some names. Don’t recall now if I got a copy from him or bought one from the store. I also remember being fascinated by his knowledge of the history behind the Padmanabhapuram Palace in a conversation I had with him – did we all do a trip there? Don’t recall now the reason for that conversation, but I remember being amazed at what all he knew about it.

One of the problems of “English Medium” education was that the mother tongue never really enjoyed the place of prominence that it rightly should have. I often wonder how one can reconcile the two – getting folks to learn in their mother tongue and also making them proficient in English. Probably schooling could be exclusively in the mother tongue until Junior school.

Irrespective of all that, I do miss the fact that I did not get to learn from him since I took Hindi as my “second language” elective. Like many other things in life, your options choose you sometimes, not vice versa.

My thoughts are with his near and dear ones – hope He gives them the strength to see this through.