From: uds@wsu-eng.eng.wayne.edu (Seetamraju Udaybhaskar)
Subject: .......choodaakarNa & veeNakarNa : what they represent....
Reply-To: uds@wsu-eng.eng.wayne.edu (Seetamraju Udaybhaskar)
Organization: Wayne State University, Detroit
Distribution:  world
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 20:49:54 GMT


These two words remind me of the first lesson in samskritam according to
the Kendriya Vidyalaya syllabus.  I remember them so vividly, because, the
first class with the samskritam teacher, started off with him rapidly
reading each line of chooDaakarNa & VeeNaakarNa's activities.  For each word
he would explain the meaining.  and keep going.  We would keep writing.  NOthing
registered in our minds...  The lesson was so impressionable, that we nicjnamed
our teacher chooDaakarNa !!!

Unfortuneately, fate conspired against me.  By rotation, I was the class leader
(also called monitor in sphisticated schools).  Even worse, I was telugu-vaaDu.
And so was the teacher.  Even worse : He knew me well, as my parents knew him
well.  So, that was my position -- tied up.  But the rest of the boys had a
great time teasing him...  FOr three classess, he would go over the lesson hoping
the boys grasped something ( I felt that the girls got it the first time)....

Every now and then, he would say, `chooDaakarNa kim karOti ? & VeeNaakarNa kim karOti ?'

We would just stare (struggling to suppress laughter), while girl after girl would
faithfully reproduce the correct line from the text...

The teacher had a special liking to me (I guess it could be attributed
to common native places etc..  I lived all my life outside andhra).
My parents always advertised to everyone that I could recite so many
lines of bhagavat gita (with the correct pronunciation -- that was the
critical part).  So I got pulled over for samskritam recitation competitions
and some once-in-a-blue-moon samskritam plays (boy! the school used to have
a great time, watched a bunch of kids babble on the stage).  The plays
were simple snapshots of a boy's life, except that everything was said
in samskritam.  The audience would start betting that we were playing the
mahabharata or ramayana or narakaasura-samhaaram etc.. (but all that we the
artistes said, was : I am here : who is here : <my name> : why have you come :
etc.... : such dialogues were the brainchild of my samskritam teacher who
thought such plays would be better than classes.  But it was mela-time for
the audience...

In the middle of an arbitrary class he would pop up and ask the `current'
teacher for persmission to `disturb'.  He would then, loudly, ask me (who else)
whether I was ready for a smaskritam competition in so & so school ( I never
had the guts to say NO, because that evening, I will have to face my parents and
him at my home).  Following my `Yes' answer, he would (as surely as the sun rises)
ask me how to spell my name.  By then, I was slowly getting used to write a
part of my name as SHarma (rather than sarma, as its written in AP), because
that was the rpedominant spelling in all the various places in india, we lived.
So, the moment I said `SHarma' he would CORRECT me and say ``NO!, its sarma  Dont
you remember how to pronounce the aksharam S'' (the first of the three ``S SH s'' in 
ya-ra-la-va...) and then leave... (This has happened innumerable times, I swear.
Each time, my desk partners would pull me down, and ask are you sarma or SHarma ?
What could I say ? I learnt that this samskritam teacher has become a serious
headache (leave aside, that he was right).  That man left, but I would be teased
to no end by the others for `mis-pronunciations'.  Ofcourse, there were a few
guys who cleaned their ears regularly, and they did notice the difference, and
they would ask ``is your name SERMA?'  atleast, they were closer than the rest.
But I cared little.  I decided, I had enough of smaskritam and enough of the
teacher.  (what was worse, was that Sarma, was the name of that samskritam teacher also!)

That man and the chooDaakarNa lesson are permanently etched in my mind...

So are his lessons.  HEre I attended a few samskritam classes at the temple here,
and suddenly, I found all the subhaaSHitaanees, etc.. rolling off my
tongue !! I surprised the teacher in the tempple with the various number of
those suBHaaSHitaani's that I had memorized.  She herself was looking for a good
source of them !!

I may have detested the presense of that teacher, but looks like he managed
to get a whole truck load of stuff into my brain....   All in 3 years !!!


Seetamraju Udaya Bhaskar Sarma
(email : seetam @ ece7 . eng . wayne . edu)