‘Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre’.

#memoriesfromdiaries 💕

02 July 1999

Prof. R. Duvarakan’s [RD’s] classes with us always doubled up as classes in Practical Philosophy.

Not a day could we afford to miss out on his classes for those invaluable life lessons that were offered to us in such delectable packaging!

Of such great merit were the pearls of wisdom that he gave us all through his lectures that were of the ‘Practical philosophy’ variety!

He gave us - his students - the leeway that we always longed for!

Added, it was not at all mandatory for any student to sit through his classes anytime. If a student felt the need to have a cup of coffee midway through his lecture, he gladly gave them a smiling go-ahead!

At the same time, he was firm on one particular expectation – have a copy of the ‘text on you’, by all means!

Without the text, you may be sent out, quite politely, giving you ample time to take photocopies of the text and come back again!

That’s because he’d be so involved and immersed in a whole new world – the world that the ‘text’ offers on a platter to its readers!

In short, he’d have you hitch a ride with him on a ‘time machine’ of his own sweet making, and gently transport you to the distant past, and help you feel the beauty of the daffodils firsthand with a Wordsworth, or enjoy the solemn song of the nightingale LiVE, with a Keats, ‘in some melodious plot of beechen green’, or make you admire a Tiger in all its fearful symmetry, with a Blake, and thereby through his words, would create worlds for you!

Every single student of Prof. R.D, who has had the blessedness of having sat through Prof. Duvarakan’s lectures, would sure recite from memory, the entire first paragraph of Charles Lamb’s ‘Poor Relations’!

Here goes the opening paragraph –

A poor relation – is the most irrelevant thing in nature, – a piece of impertinent correspondency, – an odious approximation, – a haunting conscience, – a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of your prosperity, – an unwelcome remembrancer, – a perpetually recurring mortification, – a drain on your purse, – a more intolerable dun upon your pride, – a drawback upon success, – a rebuke to your rising, – a stain in your blood, – a blot on your scutcheon, – a rent in your garment, – a death’s head at your banquet, – Agathocles’ pot, – a Mordecai in your gate, – a Lazarus at your door, – a lion in your path, – a frog in your chamber, – a fly in your ointment, – a mote in your eye, – a triumph to your enemy, an apology to your friends, – the one thing not needful, – the hail in harvest, – the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet.

The myriad ways he ably assisted you in deciphering and decoding the meaning for yourself, through such simple contextualizations, made you ask for more, like Oliver Twist once attempted in those best-of-times-worst-of-times ‘Dickens’ian days of yore!

Also, in between his lectures, there would be those flashes of philosophy, those intermittent philosophical ruminations that made you sit up, and listen with added attention to his philosophical gems mostly in humorous fashion, exclusively for your class, for that particular day!

As eminent American novelist Gail Godwin once said,

‘Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre’.

Prof. Duvarakan was, to all of us his students, the highest practitioner to this credo!