Road not taken: Kalams former driver becomes college lecturer

Born in Sankarapandiyapuram village in Virudhunagar,Kathiresan lost his father Vellaisamy when he was a child. For the poor farmers family,education was not a priority. My mother wanted me to work in the fields. I cant blame her,though. We were too poor to afford losing my labour, he recalled.

In 1979,Kathiresan did what many teenagers desperate for a job did in those times: he joined the Army in the under-18 rolls. The tenth-fail candidate was appointed as trainee driver-cum-clerk,and was soon off to Bhopal,for training,and later deployed in the Northeast.

It was in 1984 that he was posted at the Defence Research Complex at Kanchanbagh,near Old Hyderabad,and met Kalam who was the director of DRDL. By then,Kathiresan had cleared his Class X English paper,in which he had scored only 29 as a teenager. This time,however,he studied during his spare time during work and also after returning home.

When I was a school student,I didnt know why or what I was studying. But later on,I started missing education,knowledge. I started learning,unlike earlier. It was not easy,but I passed with 41 marks. Then I met sir Kalam.

For the young man who had just discovered his passion for learning,Kalams urgings were the right catalyst. He asked us to learn new things. Like computers about which not many knew anything in those times. It made me go further. I passed Plus Two in the next few years and all the other degrees followed one after the other.

Kathiresan acquired an MA in Political Science,and BA,MA,MPhil,BEd and MEd in History through distance education courses. That is when he switched careers from the services to education,as a trainee supervisor in the office of the district Chief Education Officer,Tirunelveli in 1996. In two years,he took voluntary retirement and enrolled full-time for PhD at Manonmaniam Sundaranar University,Tirunelveli.

Losing my income was difficult,but not impossible like in my childhood. I got my PhD in 2001 from the then Governor. It was around that time Kathiresan became popular after the local media reported about him and his connection with the then president.

After I started acquiring the degrees,I wanted to become a teacher. It became my dream. For the next one-and-a-half years,he worked as a teacher and NCC officer at the Kovilpatti Government School,also helping out local applicants for the post of VAOs. Soon,Kathiresan started taking weekend classes for many distance-education institutes including the Tamil Nadu Open University and Annamalai University.

I attended the state eligibility test to become a government lecturer last year but failed by one mark. But it was easy this time. He collected his appointment order as a lecturer in the History Department at Araignar Anna Government Arts College,Attur,earlier this month.

He last met Kalam in 2002,but often talks about him and other great Indian scientists to the third-year students of his class history of science and technology. When I teach,I tell them about our scientists like Kalam,Sivathanupillai,late CV Sundaram and many others I saw while I was a driver at the defence complex. The stories about these top intellectuals get them interested in the subject and are inspirational.

What this humble lecturer does not admit is the inspiration he provides to the youth in rural TN,much like his own idol did for him.