THE BOY UNDER THE GRIP OF LOVE

 THE BOY UNDER THE GRIP OF LOVE

‘Love is too young to know what conscience is'   Love is a smoke made with fumes of sigh’ are 2 quotes from Shakespeare. They come in handy to my present effort of recalling an interesting experience we have had from our student days in Annamalai University during 1965-67. It was then that I was a student in P G -BOTANY.

As all of you are aware, the place is a residential system except for a handful who hailed from nearby Chidambaram or adjoining villages. Most of our life in A U Campus would be our hostel life, as in a day classes last for 6 hours and 18 hrs are spent in hostels. Being a slightly big village, Chidambaram held no attraction for students who hailed from bigger towns, cities or state capitals. The prospect of acquiring a PG degree was a higher preference compared to mere living in better towns. None should infer that AU Hostels were a bad place to live in. Never; it was the best place to live in for the excellent food, a host of friends drawn from different other departments of learning. It would simply baffle you, when I say the hostel campus housed 10 different Dining facilities [Mess] numbered 1- 10; 5 each were allocated for vegetarians and non -vegetarians. All the 10 systems boasted of brilliant cooks, just to preclude chances of student unrest on account of food.   

At the PG level students are generally from different institutions and so, our I PG was spent in careful silence of understanding the system and members from other departments. The zone referred to as hostels was for just students of Arts, Science and Commerce. Engineering and Agriculture had their own campuses and hostels.   

It was in II PG that our familiarity to things around and persons fructified into a better blend and greater understanding. The hostels for PG boys had rooms for 2 each except the corner rooms big for 5 persons. Most members were from Physics, Botany, Geology, Statistics and a few from Mathematics. The Physics/Botany gang was vibrant with some liberal flow of English, cracking jokes /anecdotes and so on. Most evenings were spent on such items listed above and the corner room became a meeting point for whoever wanted fun. There were 2 persons Sarathy by name. One of them from Physics, the other -Botany. Physics Sarathy had a flair for grammatic English and could clear doubts in English. It is this skill of his that enlivens the episode -- ‘The boy under the grip of love’.   Another Physics boy Kumaresan was in love with a girl relative of his. He had confided this to Sarathy and the two used to speak in whispers when we were around. But, slowly the message leaked and more boys would throng the place for some ‘sensational development’. It nearly became a daily topic; the emboldened Kumaresan sought ideas from friends as to the modalities of carrying out his mission of marrying the girl against stiff opposition from both sides -as the families were at logger-heads due to family feud for years. Some suggested ‘You kidnap her and marry her’ Some suggested you both ‘run away and stay in hiding’. At this suggestion one Samuel said “It would be a runaway success” or a ‘runaway’ hit”.

Kumaresan got confused and said both mean the same ; but Samuel said, ‘No, runaway success means you will marry’; ‘runaway hit’ will mean both your parents will Chase you and hit both of you from behind until you fall unconscious’. There was a huge laughter. A couple days later, endless laughter gripped Sarathy who holding a piece of paper was uncontrollably laughing ending in pain in his waist. Kumartesan brought the then lone panacea ‘Eucalyptus oil’ to help his English guru from pain. 

Kumaresan had scribed a letter in English to his girl friend to sustain his profile  as a  PG student, beginning as Dear XXXX, “ Who who all should not know , now knowing this not able to resist letter writing”…. Etc, etc. 

Sarathy started laughing more when Kumaresan said in tamil “yaar yar ellaam therindhuvidakkoodaadho avargalukku therindhu vittadhu aanalum naan kadidham ezhudhuvadhai niruththa mudiyavillai”. The first 3 words were straight translation [yaar yar ellaam] who who all , beyond which Sarathy could not proceed and he made Kumaresan sheepishly laugh around at his own urge to translate.

‘Love is too young to know what conscience is’ was modified a bit to suggest

‘Love is too young to know what science [of translation] is’ and thereafter, Kumaresan was practically addressed "who who all" by his class friends.

Prof. K. Raman