Panduranga Setty: A man for all seasons

Right in the middle

Ours was a weird relationship. He was my student at Central College in the general English classes. He drove to college in a plush limousine, accompanied by a liveried chauffeur. Both spoke of his social status. Yet, for all that affluence, he was modest and unpretentious.

He spoke courteously to teachers and was friendly with classmates. He met me on my way home one day to “clear some doubts.” He could not understand the poem The Hound of Heaven, he said. I asked him to meet me in the staff room after college hours, where he became a regular visitor thereafter. We read poems beyond the syllabus to make him fall in love with English literature. At the end of two years, he graduated and joined his father’s business. I never saw him again until 1974, when we met under totally different circumstances.

A retinal accident had cut short my teaching career. At the end of four years of jobless wandering, I was finally appointed as the principal of a private women’s college. After a formal interview, I had to meet the president of the RSS Trust in his private office. To my surprise, he sent a car to fetch me. The liveried chauffeur and sleek limousine had shades of déjà vu when I saw them. We drove through the gates of a sprawling flour mill factory, where I was escorted to the director’s office—a plush red carpeted room. The man who walked towards me with folded hands took me back to Central College, where a nattily dressed student asked me to explain The Hound of Heaven.

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“I am happy you are joining the RV family,” smiled Panduranga Setty. “I am sure our women’s college will flourish under your stewardship,” he added. Kind words from a new employer He talked about his 14 institutions over tea and snacks. But I was not listening. “This will not work,” my brain kept hammering, while the tea turned cold and the snacks remained untouched. Unfortunately, my fears came true.

I did not fit into his private aided college, where, among other humiliations, the principal was a mere pawn in the hands of 15 “trustees” who called the shots. My only solution was to turn to the president. But my old student—now boss—was trapped in a net of his own making.

He continued to support me in an institution, which smacked of power games that he could not control. Nor could he ignore his former teacher’s ordeals with the thousand and one transgressions practised there. This must have been Panduranga Setty’s harshest experience as an educationist. And I, his favourite teacher, was caught in the midst of it all. His graciousness, however, never deserted him. He invited me to “share a cup of coffee” with him in his red-carpeted office, where I visited him for the last time. It was a tearful farewell for both of us.

Four decades have passed since. When I read about his passing in this newspaper the other day, I felt proud and happy that I had known and worked closely as his teacher and employee. He was the ideal student and a magnanimous employer. Truly, a man for all seasons.