The SSence of Maths

If you get off your vehicle on Ulsoor main road – a busy arterial way where pedestrians are uncooked meat, buses are uncrowned emperors and vendors of flowers, footballs and filters the unnamed nobility – and turn into a sidelane into which the market overflows, you will see a higher level of chaos, if indeed that is possible. There are carts, two wheelers, cycles and shoppers, a noisy mass, an agglomeration of diligent humanity that has little room to stop, think or look around.  The movement, the smells, the colours and the diversity represent old Bangalore, once detested, now captured with evocative eloquence in an occasional coffee table book. 

Continue to walk a bit down this lane and do the unthinkable: stop for a moment (after looking around you to avoid moving objects, such as shopping bags).  Look to your left and you see the tiniest of houses with a narrow staircase in front leading to the little room upstairs.  If this was the 1970s or the 80s and you were a student, you would turn in, take the stairs that led to the room and then join the melee of young students standing in the short, narrow corridor, speaking in whispers. 

For, in the room, was the finest Maths teacher that I (and a thousand other students) have ever known.   

SS – which is how S Srinivasan was called by everyone – wasn’t just a teacher; he was an institution into himself, far above the prosaic identity of St Josephs College of Arts and Science where he taught and where the men-in-frock ordered allegiance but got none.  SS asked for nothing – he charged no tuition fees, was perfectly fine with your neglect of homework or indeed your absence from class (it perhaps did not even register) and was happy to admit a late entrant.   What he did get in ample measure was respect and awe, and a reputation that preceded him by miles.

   

SS was devoted to the science of mathematics; indeed, the word ‘devotion’ hardly does justice to his approach which was absolute, whole-hearted, involved, considerate commitment for its own sake and nothing else.  The sweetest words to his ears were when a pupil-to-be said, “Sir, I want to study maths.”

He would then reply, “Why-uh? Are you writing an entrance exam-uh?”

“No Sir.  Actually, I only want to study maths to learn more” (though most who said it didn’t mean it; they had been tutored by the more experienced).

A beam would then appear on his face. 

“Ok-uh.  Come from tomorrow.  You can join the 4 pm batch.”

And that was that.   

The door upstairs would open early in the morning every day of the week (including Sunday, when he’d often work through the day).  The queue of students – those in their under-grad or studying for CA, ICWA, engineering, post-grad or anything else – would have formed by then.  SS – a small, fair, rotund man with a triple chin, white hair and a stubble, wearing a veshti and shirt – would enter the room, after his morning coffee and take his seat behind an old table, as the students shuffled in and occupied every inch of the room.  He would then take the notebook of the nearest student, pull out a pen that was a fixture in his shirt pocket, spend a few seconds flipping the pages to get an idea of what had been covered (he taught so many groups that it was a miracle he could pick the threads up this quickly) and then continue.   

After years of experience, he needed no textbook to look up problems from, for even these were embedded in that razor-sharp brain.  If a student fished out a textbook and asked deferentially, “Sir, could you please look at this problem?”, he would take the book, narrow his eyes, examine the problem in question and then begin writing out the solution, speaking more to himself that to the student. 

“Yes-suh,” he would intone, “this-uh is a simultaneous equation-uh.  Now, let me see……” and, in a low-toned monologue that was accompanied by lucid steps, the problem would be laid to rest.  

The retinue of students around him would write furiously, trying to keep up with him, or watch with fascination.  A few who had given up hope would stare and wonder if their parents could be persuaded to let them study fine art or music – with these students, he’d spend extra time most often to no avail, for the battle had been lost in their minds years earlier, under teachers who were trained to damage learning, not foster it.  SS saw his task as getting the subject to be loved, just as he did.  And he loved solving problems, a logicist par excellence.

There is no doubt that SS was a genius.  It may have been the curd rice that he had for lunch or the genes or perhaps both.  As an aside, while the second factor – genes – has been much researched,  the the impact of the first – curd rice – on intelligence must be the final frontier of brain research, as the empirical evidence is compelling.   

At about 8 am, he would wind up, go downstairs for breakfast, change from the veshti to a pair of trousers and, in a slow, deliberate way, pedal his way on an old cycle to college that was twenty minutes away,  steel tiffin carrier with curd rice securely held in the carrier at the back.  He’d return in time for an afternoon coffee and then get back into the room upstairs again, tutoring batch after batch till it was time for dinner. 

During his sessions, everyone had a purpose and there was little room – forgive the pun - for banter, humour or, indeed, harangue and his eyes rarely left the notebook in front of him.  When the results of various exams were announced, there would be sweets all around and a student would deferentially place an envelope with some cash in front of SS, which would then be gracefully accepted with a brief ‘Thank you’.    

There was just the one thing he was allergic to: the IIT entrance exam.  If a student fetched up and said that he wanted maths coaching for the IIT entrance, the fair face with the triple chin would morph into a frown, the eyes would narrow and his plump body would draw itself to its full height (about five feet five inches at best).  An icy voice would then reply, “I do not prepare students for IIT-uh.”  And that, too, was that.

So, obviously, those who did prepare for the IIT entrance were creative.  In those days, one prepared for IIT in one’s 11^th standard, not when one fell off the pram as happens now, so some quick thinking was easily done with inputs from other students and creative answers such as, “I want to learn maths because it’s my special subject” emerged.  

In St Josephs, he was part of a vanishing breed of old-school teachers, each an expert at his subject with a devoted fan following and larger than life, yet humble personality. Yet, it was the tuitions that made him the rockstar – for two years, while studying for ICWA, I was in that little room three hours a week, as notebook after notebook filled up with his prose and mine (which wasn’t a patch on his, of course). 

For thirty five years, I have carried these precious notebooks around in the hope that I will go back to Permutations and Combinations on one dark, monsoon day.  A hope that, as I read those now-indecipherable pages with puzzlement,  the odd smell of that room will come back along with images of the devoted bunch in front of that small man, who lived for his craft, expecting nothing, yet generous with the astonishing knowledge that was stored in those special grey cells.  

Perhaps then, caught up in that imagery, I will look at my son and say, “Why-uh are you not doing maths now?”