I LOVED MALAYALAM YET I WAS FORCED TO RUN AWAY FROM THE LANGUAGE

I LOVED MALAYALAM YET I RAN AWAY FROM THE LANGUAGE

Malayalam is my mother tongue. It is a rich language. It is the language of Kerala.

Malayalam was the medium of instruction while I was in the School. I was able to imbibe everything taught in the School. It was a Government High School located in the heart of Munnar much before its tourism potential came into the focus of the whole world.

Unfortunately many of our teachers had never wanted to stay and work at Munnar. The moment they were posted to Munnar they were moving heaven and earth to obtain a transfer. They would go on leave for weeks together to stay away from Munnar. Naturally the School remained at the bottom every year when the results of the SSLC examination came out.  No one bothered. In the year 1965 when I had written the SSLC examination less than thirty students had come out successful from a total of four hundred and fifty students who had sat for it. Five students alone had managed to secure a First Class that was sixty percent or above out of a total of six hundred marks.   My score – 407/600- was the second in the School.  The topper was a Tamil medium student with marks at 413/600. He became the topper through the high percentage of marks he had scored for Tamil language. I could score only 51/100 for Malayalam and the score had relegated me to the second position despite good scores in all the other subjects.

Those days the examiners were misers when they were valuing the Malayalam answer papers. They refused to award marks to students however well they had performed in the examination.

SSLC was the first hurdle in the academic life of a student.  The next was Pre-degree. It meant I had to leave home and join a College far away. The enquiries on the trend followed by the teachers who were valuing the Malayalam answer papers in the examinations conducted by the University revealed that those who were opting for Malayalam as the Second Language were ruing their decision as the percentage of pass in Malayalam was very low in the University examinations. Further those who were managing a pass were coming out with very low marks. Meanwhile those who were taking up Hindi, French or Syriac were scoring very high marks ensuring a bright future for them.

What could I do? If I did not obtain good marks in the Pre-degree examination it would ruin the scope for higher education. I was forced to run away from Malayalam though I had loved the language very much. I took up Hindi.