Ode to my sir

Bhatt sir - and family - had a special place in the hearts of many students who took up English Literature. The kind of personal relationship a quiet, unassuming professor like him shared with most of his students was one of its kind - I mean we did not feel as close to any other prof in the department, however fun their classes were. (I guess Prof. Rajani had a fan following too, but of a different kind.)

Often after class, in the afternoons, we trudged the mud path to his campus house set in a pristine and remote corner of the 300-acre campus - he was like a sage living in an ashram with deers, peacocks and monkeys in the campus popping up at their backyard for a sip of water... I envied them for their little piece of heaven in the midst of a crowded and dusty city.
We walked past the water tank near the Princi's house, picked a couple of ripe tamarinds that lay on the ground or cried in excitement as we sighted a buck in the dense undergrowth en route. It was a long trek, but we loved the walk. For at the end of that lonely stretch was Bhatt's Paradise, as some jockingly referred to it. The other Bhatt's paradise was a hotel that catered to the college students looking for some diversion from the staple fare at the hall mess.
Once there, we sat on the floor as sir smiled benignly at us or threw a question at one of us while chewing his favorite betel leaf and arecanut, which he stored in a quaint small box. I drank in the beauty of the artefacts in his house meanwhile - beautiful sculptures and carvings in wood, not to mention the many framed works of art of his wife and kids.
Mrs. Bhatt always cycled in - from the railway station - at around 3.o0 p.m. She taught at the English dept of Meenakshi college in Trustpuram, she still does I think. She always had a radiant smile for all of us. She would go in and cook rice and rasam or sambar in a jiffy. Then the whole family would settle on the floor and have their lunch. We were made to eat too, especially me, a half-starved hostelite. She always insisted that I eat.
Other class students also trooped in, some like the Tibetan monks to improve their English and some to take Vedic lessons etc. Sir was very interested in the arts; a first-class scholar he was though much of his lectures in class went over my head.
It was sir who suggested that one of us work on Chemmeen for the Mphil thesis. Since I had a basic grounding in Malayalam literature, I took up the challenge. I did a comparative study of Man's relationship with Nature in Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea and Thakazhi's Chemmeen. Sir was my unofficial guide (since he didnt have a university accreditation to guide a Research Fellow as he hadnt taken his doctorate then), while Prof. Stephen was my official guide (who commented that he was the only guide whose ward didnt report to him the progress of the dissertation!).
I collected the material, wrote it from the comfort of my home back in Kerala and took it to Sir, on my way to Delhi to enrol for my journalism course. He was happy with it and told ma'am that she should read the Chapter 4 where I did the comparison.
However, he was angry with me later when I did not submit it upon hearing the disparaging remarks of my proofreader (an old MCCian who was my journalism classmate) and sent back the manuscript to Sir to check how I could improve on it. I did not hear from him until I came via Madras on a vacation from Delhi some six months later. He told me I shouldnt have listened to anyone (that too someone who had trouble writing his own thesis without help from Sir, ma'am confided) when he had given me the go-ahead. Anyway, with all that behind me, I got my dissertation cleared by the university and with it my MPhil degree.
I used to visit the Bhatts when I joined Frontline and lived in a hostel. But after marriage, I never got round to visiting them even once. I am filled with remorse...
Writing this, I badly want to trudge down that winding road to Sir's old campus house once again. I must do it some day soon...