Sunday, December 3, 2000		Article

"ONE of India’s deadliest killers, Koose Muniswamy Veerappan", has been so much in the news, now for quite some time, that of late he has acquired a hero’s stature. Thanks are due to the "artistic" governments of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, which have been painting a pretty portrait of this hardened criminal.

Frankly speaking, we the North Indians know very little about the kidnapped, by Veerappan, South Indian matinee idol Rajkumar. Perhaps because we do have our own Rajkumar Jaani. However, we certainly know, (thanks to the media’s meticulous and regular reporting) the entire biography of this 50-year-old South Indian criminal.

However, the Veerappan episode seems to have been blown beyond proportions. For, Veerappan, in our country, is not a new phenomenon. We encounter, quite often, the likes of Veerappan in almost every, private, public and political, Indian organisation, though of somewhat smaller scale than the giant ‘original’ one! One just has to look, a bit intently, around ones close environment and one immediately would locate a Veerappan, though without his macho moustaches!

And here goes one such example!

Many years ago, a saddened Professor Parshotam was sitting in the staff-room of his college. It was an abnormal sight. Because an ever-engrossed, in his academic pursuits, Professor Parshotam rarely sat there. Either he would meet his classes, rather faithfully, or sit in the library, browsing through books or periodicals.

He was saddened because he was holding an official note that was served on him by his bureaucratic-boss, who had joined only recently. The newly appointed boss had raided the institution, as is customary with almost every new such appointee to announce, rather loudly, his or her arrival. The professor was charged for abstaining himself from one of his classes. It was another matter that it was not he who had left the class but the class had mass bunked, a normal practice with students, in order to go to an English movie’s morning show. (In those good old days English movies were shown only in the ‘early’, morning-shows at 11).

Respected by all and sundry, popular (particularly among his students) and conscientious Professor Parshotam was wondering about the irritatingly unbridled powers that these non-academician babus, having little knowledge of the pedagogic problems and academic freedom, had attained, over the years, over the academic masters.

And lo! even his most intelligent and logically concluded explanation could not save him from getting a so-called minor punishment that caused him a monetary loss of one annual increment from his pay. This was a big financial blow in those hard days when the pay of a college professor did not touch even the then respected four-figure status.

But the saddest part of the story was the fact that Professor Parshotam was resolving to become the like of Professor Peerappan who was well known or say notorious, for the past many years, for rarely attending the institution. However, to emulate Professor Peerappan, who was concurrently running a printing press as his whole-time business, was both a tough and unachievable preposition for a sensitive teacher like Professor Parshotam. Because it needed not only enough courage but also right connections at the top!

Professor Peerappan, If ever present in the institution, on some exceptional days, would ‘kill’ his time in the canteen, sipping innumerable cups of tea and eating hot samosas in the company of many an admirer, called chamchas (but only behind their back). And many a time, Professor Peerappan would also manage to procure some or the other sponsored foreign jaunts, for improving, so to say, his educational skills, sometimes without even getting his leave properly sanctioned. And still he had got, due to not so inexplicable reasons, an unannounced amnesty from any rebuke or punishment!

Though Professor Parshotam could not turn into a Peerappan, his breed of committed teachers, in the coming years, did decline considerably. And it did give a big boost to the rise of teachers, if they could be said so, of Peerappan’s progeny.