Overcoming the odds
S. MUTHIAH
It was at the recent release of a leading Tamil publisher’s newest
title that he suggested that I should meet someone who was now helping
them with their publications and had an extraordinary story to tell.
When he mentioned Dr. N. Sreedharan’s name, it immediately rang a bell.
He was a reader who added another name to my list of Wranglers
(Miscellany, January 28) and of whose story I had heard and promised
readers retailing of in this column. This then is the story of a person
who overcame tremendous odds and went on to earn significant recognition
in more than one field.
It was a normal student’s life for Sreedharan till he was 16. Then
his hearing began to deteriorate, but with minimal hearing, he learnt to
cope with lectures and got his Madras University Degree in English
Literature. By now, his hearing had begun to get worse. There were also
financial constraints that prevented him from proceeding further with
his studies. But spotting a Central Government scholarship on offer for
non-Hindi speakers to take a higher degree in Hindi, he applied for it,
even though he knew little of the language. Wanting to do better in life
was what made him look for every opportunity, no matter how unreal it
seemed.
The scholarship took him to the Agra University where his hearing
disability made learning in the classroom difficult. To overcome the
challenge, he concentrated on self-study and successfully obtained his
Master’s. A job teaching Hindi in a Kendriya Vidyalaya in Ernakulam made
life easier for him, but then his hearing began to further diminish.
Three surgeries later, he was totally deaf - unable to even benefit
minimally from hearing aids. He had to quit his job - but once again, he
began to look for an opportunity to do better in life.
When he came across an article titled ‘Man is not eyes or ears alone’
by Dr. Dev Raj Upadhyaya, head of the Department of Hindi, Udaipur
University, Sreedharan wrote to him asking whether he’d live up to his
words by accepting a totally deaf student for his Ph.D. programme. This
is where Vice Chancellor Dr. G.S. Mahajani, the Wrangler who linked me
to Sreedharan, came in and, endorsing Sreedharan’s application with the
words “Deafness is no disqualification for academic pursuits,” helped
him to enrol for and earn a Ph.D. in Hindi.
But this is not the end of the story. Sreedharan was unable to cash
in on his academic qualifications due to his handicap that enabled him
to communicate in the written word alone.
Work as an editorial assistant and then as a clerk kept the home
fires burning till Government policy on reservations in Government
service for the physically challenged helped him to join as a Professor
of Hindi at Rajah's College, Pudukkottai, in 1975. Then there was a
transfer to Presidency College where he headed the Hindi Department from
1997 to 2000 when he retired after teaching for 22 years at the college
level. A remarkable achievement for a man who is unable to use even a
telephone and responds only to the written word!d
The ‘love affair’ with the written word has led him to write 45
books, prepare the Learn Hindi series, and compile dictionaries in three
languages. Encouraging him through this facet of his life has been
Vanathi Thirunavakkarasu of Vanathi Pathippakkam whose son Ramanathan
drew my attention to the fact that there was more to Prof. N. Sreedharan
than the letter he wrote to me about his benefactor, Dr. Mahajani.
Indeed, there is more to come from Sreedharan’s pen.
******
The Murdoch connection
Following the genealogical trail of some of the British who served in
Old Madras has become a fascination for one of my regular suppliers of
tidbits, Bharath Yeshwanth. This time, he has sent me information about
a connection with Madras that media mogul Rupert Murdoch has.
Murdoch may be an American now, but his roots are in Australia. It
was Patrick Murdoch, the son of the Rev. James Murdoch, a Minister of
the Free Church of Scotland, who first emigrated from Scotland to
Victoria in 1884. Patrick’s son Keith Arthur Murdoch, later to be
knighted, went into journalism and in time, became a newspaper
proprietor whose business his son Rupert developed into a worldwide
empire. Keith Murdoch married Elizabeth Joy Greene. Rupert was their son
and it was his mother who introduced an Indian connection into the
Murdoch family.
Elizabeth Joy Greene was the great great grand-daughter of Robert
Sherson, who arrived in Madras in the late 18th Century to serve the
East India Company and rose to become Post Master General in 1793. In
May 1798, he married Catherine Taylor in St. Mary’s in the Fort. Their
daughter Catherine Jemima married Frederick Forth who was to become Lt.
Governor of the West Indies and a member of the Legislative Council of
Hong Kong before retiring to, and settling in, Tasmania. The Forths’ son
was the father of a daughter who married a Greene and it was the Greenes
who were the parents of Elizabeth Joy who married Keith Arthur Murdoch,
one day to become a newspaper magnate.
Less smooth was the career of Robert Sherson in Madras. After a
steady climb to a senior position, Sherson was appointed in 1807 by
Governor William Bentinck as co-charge with a fellow official, Cooke, to
receive and disburse grain imported for famine relief.
When a cyclone struck Madras in December 1807, the granaries were
badly damaged. A committee formed to assess the loss included two
persons who had been overlooked when Bentinck had appointed Sherson and
Cooke and they alleged that grain had been fraudulently sold and that
Sherson had appropriated the proceeds amounting to nearly 30,000
pagodas.
George Barlow, who succeeded Bentinck as Governor, accepted the
findings - quite possibly because of his close friendship with one of
the complainants - and dismissed Sherson, a person of “excellent
character,” according to all those in the settlement who felt that he
had been ‘framed.’ Seven years after he had been suspended, a Member of
Parliament in the U.K., Alexander Novell, who had waged a sustained
campaign to have Sherson’s name cleared, succeeded in having him
acquitted; it was also recommended that he be re-employed by the
Company. A grateful Sherson in 1816 named his son Alexander Novell.
Sherson, it would appear, did not re-enter the Company’s service but
became a merchant. In 1816, he is recorded as having bought a house next
to the Exchange that is now the Fort Museum, possibly what is a Naval
office today, for 3000 pagodas. In 1818, he sold it for 4000 pagodas.
And, then, did he leave India?
*****
When the postman knocked…
The postman has once again been kept busy by readers. And that's what
I enjoy about this column, the interest readers take in it.
The Roja Muthiah Research Library tells me that U.V. Swaminatha
Iyer's autobiography (Miscellany, February 18) was indeed translated
into English and that it holds a copy of the two-part translation by
Kamil Zvelebil. The translation was published by the Institute of Asian
Studies, G.Sundar of the Library adds.
And reader K.R.A. Narasiah supplies a fascinating footnote to the
U.Ve.Sa. story with this picture of a page from the scholar’s diary. The
page dated March 6, 1906 acknowledges the receipt of an honorary D.Litt.
degree from the University of Madras and the title ‘Mahamahopathiyaya’
in just two words: Sannadhu kidaithathu (awards received)!
Reader M.J. Gopalan who first mentioned that A.T. Rajan was a Senior
Wrangler (Miscellany, February 11), writes to set the record straight.
Expressing his regret that he erred on dates, he states that Rajan
was named the Senior Wrangler in 1906; Paranjpye was honoured in 1899.
And reader P.R. Krishna Narayanan sheds a little more light on A.T.
Rajan. He was a Justice of the Rangoon High Court before Burma and India
parted ways. He was a golfing enthusiast who played almost every evening
and he was almost as enthusiastic a swimmer, adds reader Narayanan, who
goes on to add another little nugget.
ATR’s son, Balachandra Rajan of the Indian Foreign Service, was an
Economics and English Literature Tripos from Cambridge who was
considered an international authority on the great English poet Milton.
He taught at the University of Western Ontario from 1966 to 1985, and
was associated with its English Department till his death in 2009. He
had earlier taught at the University of Delhi from 1961, after he
prematurely retired from the IFS.
A meteorologist, reader S. Raghavan, writes in not about matters
meteorological but on linguistics. Commenting on a contribution the
postman had delivered for Miscellany, February 11, he writes - and I
think it best to quote him in full: “Thamizh words like karri amuthu are
not confined to the 18th Century, or earlier. They are still in use in
Iyengar homes. (I use karri with a double ‘r’ to indicate the hard ra in
Thamizh. The soft ra will make it mean carbon or charcoal, instead of
vegetable.) Besides karri amuthu we use the word sattramuthu for rasam.
The latter is a Samskrit word for juice. The Thamizh word for juice is
saru (or charu) which with the addition of amuthu becomes sattramuthu.
Amuthu is from the Samskrit amrutam. For sambaar, which seems to be a
non-Thamizh word, we use the Thamizh word kuzhambu. For cooking we use
thaligai instead of samaiyal…For curry leaves, the word I think should
be karuveppilai and not kariveppilai; karu means dark.”
- The Hindu
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