24 Good, Bad and the Ugly in Campus Life

         Life in campuses are quite convenient as residents can get all their requirements met without much trouble. REC Campus was no exception. There was a Bank, a Post Office, a shopping complex with a grocery store, ration shop and  the  most essential one, a hospital. In a place like Chathamangalam, this was essential. Occasionally, some items not available  inside the campus may be available  in Kattangal  or Panchayat. There was no medical shop nearby, so we had to go to Kunnamagalam, 7 KMs away or Mokkam  8 KMs away to purchase  medicines not available  in our health centre. For residents with small children  all these  were a blessing. Going to the town Kozhikode was required only for purchasing some new clothes during festive occasions or for seeing some  latest movies. Very few had their own vehicles and others had to resort to the public conveyances. Fortunately plenty of private  buses and a limited number  of state transport buses  were plying even though most often these  were crowded. Fish used to be brought home by one or two vendors on bicycles before 10AM and our Adraman koya  was always available to bring   mutton, chicken or beef  on Sundays as per individual requirements. There was a person called Kannan  who used to bring raw and ripe banana  in the early morning. He used to shout ‘payam’, ‘payam’ in the morning. There were quite a few   people living on the campus. Maid servants were available on nominal payment and often they used to work in two or three houses in a time-shared manner. In general, life in the campus was peaceful and happy with few hiccups.

One major difficulty was the schooling of the children. There was a government high school in the campus, but there was no English medium division at that time. Therefore, most of the children of the teaching staff were  admitted to English medium schools in the town. Central School (Kendriya  Vidyalaya), Silver Hills School , Providence  High School and St.Joseph’s School for Boys and  Anglo Indian School for Girls were the  destinations for most of them. College bus had a trip in the morning at 8.15AM   to take the school children to the city and this  returned by 10AM with the administrative staff with working time  10AM to 5PM.  Another trip starting from the campus at 335 PM returned with the school children at 530PM. Those who were satisfied with the Malayalam medium studied in the campus school. REC  Nursery school  was  available  only for  LKG and UKG initially.

A not so happy other side of the campus life was the lack of privacy. Very often people were interested in the affairs of others too much. Residential quarters were built too close to each other with one man’s back side facing the front side  of the other (‘back to front’  theory). Most of the residents were young and of age hardly spanning a few years between them. Coupled with this, the tendency of our people to compare one with another often-caused heartburns among neighbours. There were very few who were  genuinely  happy if some thing good happens  to their neighbour. “I should get, but no one else should get’ was the general attitude. Unfortunately, even children’s were not spared from this unnecessary comparison.  

If the children of two neighbours were studying in the  same class, some mothers  used to come to the neighbour’s house  to find how  many marks the  neighbour’s child got before  knowing what their own child got. Comparing the marks obtained by the children is the worst thing to be done instead of finding out how close they are to the full marks and encourage them to close the gap rather than compare the marks with that obtained by the children of the neighbour. In fact, we had a neighbour like that as our son and the neighbour’s son were   studying in the same class. There is nothing wrong in one loving their own child over the others, but the attitude that our children alone is the best is not fair. Mature parents should see not the rank of their children, but how they are close to being perfect. It is very unfair to scold a child simply because he or she is behind the neighbour’s child by one or two marks. By this, the child will only get disheartened.

Nursey school and Staff Club were the two common facilities   run by staff members on their own. I had been involved in the  running of both these on different occasions. While I was the Secretary of the  Nursery School Parent’s Associations, my children were studying in the  LKG and UKG classes. They were not too bad in their studies and had some artistic talents too. All  India Radio Calicut  had a programme   by Nursery School Children  broadcast once in a week on every Saturday mornings  and our campus school was  once selected to present their  one hour programme. As it was not possible to take all the children, some selection and elimination was essential to short list the children. Teachers  used to make a preliminary selection and my  way  was to entrust the final selection with  some  senior student  artists  of the college. Instructions were given strictly to see that no parents  be present  at the  time of selection even for watching the children. I was also not present and the chances of the   selectors knowing  the  parents  of the children  were  unlikely  including   my children. Unfortunately both my children were selected whereas my neighbour’s child was not selected.  The  mother of this child  rebuked  my wife publicly in the staff club telling that our children were selected only because they were  the children of the secretary. Actually my wife had gone to the staff club after a  gap of three weeks as she was down with chicken pox. She came home crying and asked me  “ Why are  you doing  this thankless job of running this school?”.  I told  her : “See  our children are also studying there and as a common facility, someone has to take the responsibility , so I am also  giving my helping hand for one term”. Unfortunately, there are a few people among us  who will do nothing but always try to find fault with those who are volunteering  to do some  service like this. Let us ignore such people. Remember  the saying “ Some dogs will nether  eat  the grass nor allow the  cows to eat it” . People who volunteer to do public service can only ignore such people.  Of course, for people who come in for personal agenda will never be affected by such scandalous behaviour.  

In the staff club, as committee member in charge of children, I used to conduct quiz competitions  for  children  of different  age groups  every week with the  help of  other members of faculty  or boys  or girls  from our hostels  training the children well. Extempore   elocution   competitions were held with the children giving the topic half an hour before the competition after reaching the club. The contestants used to do very well in presenting their own ideas rather than learning something written by their parents by heart and presenting it in the competition. The children enjoyed these as there were no compulsive training  or coaching  the children  for these  competitions, but a few  parents  who wanted their own children to win always were not happy with this type of arrangement.