Student-Teacher

This is the first one about some of my students of who have been inspirational and needed to be celebrated. This was not done adequately by the college and I would like to correct it by the story of one of the early starters in this field being a woman, a chef and a teacher. My choice of person would depend on information gathered and known, of communication through the years and uniqueness, so please don’t judge me on that!

She joined the first batch pretty late in the year, December 1993 from a small town down South, Trichy, I think and came from a middle class well-read family. Her father was a Doctor, if my memory serves me right and she had to break a lot of stereotypes to join a hotel management course.

But she took to the course like a duck to water and soon she was acing the exams. She completed the course with a high first class and was on the Bangalore University top 10 list. She had to prove it to her folks I guess. Soon after she passed out, she evinced an interest in teaching and that was when Jaya was teaching full time at the other college, the Maurya College of Hotel Management. Her specialty was in the kitchen and so she took up the challenge to teach Food and Beverage Production and some allied subjects while she was there.

When Jaya moved full time to my college in 97, she brought her along and she was in the college F & B Department for one year. She found out soon that even if she was a colleague, some of the faculty was treating her still as a student and that was not acceptable to her and she quit. The hurt must have been strong because I haven’t seen her or spoken to her since.

She was fortunate to find her partner for life in the college and they have been together ever since and also parents to two lovely children. Her husband later worked for a batch-mate of mine in a Media house as he had changed tack by then. That was when I reconnected with him and found out some details.

But she was our first student who turned faculty and their marriage was also the first among classmates which lead to several in the following years.

She is remembered fondly by us, her calm demeanor, her dimpled cheeks whenever she broke into a smile and her good handwriting will be stored away in a memory chip. And there are students who were benefited from her teaching in the early years both at Maurya and at the college.

Thank you, Suchitra Rajan (1993–97), for being the pioneer in a way and to Jibu Issac for being by her side. It was their anniversary on April 24 so here’s to a belated anniversary present. The later day student teacher examples of Malini Singh(1996–99) and Pratisha Baruah (2000–04)would have been inspired to take up a teaching job in our college and there are numerous ones in other colleges, even some of her classmates in Biju Mathew and Nagaraj Naik.

There has been quite a few firsts from your batch including one of the first Doctorates, a Movie Script writer and a two-hotel property entrepreneur.

129 of 366