Malaolan College of arts & Sciences, Maduranthakam

My first day teaching in a college

The Malolan college of Arts and Science, Maduranthakam, made it possible for me to volunteer to teach there.

The Background to the story goes thus…..

I had for the past couple of years noticed that the students here in this college were from the rural areas from in and around Madurantakam. Well,  Madurantakam is very well known for its huge lake called the YERI. The  Ramar temple here is very famous and Madurantakam is also known  as Dwayam vilaintha Tirupathi…as it offered its venue to the Great Seer Ramanujar to have his pancha samaskaram here at the Yeri kaatha perumaal koil ( Karunakaran temple) . The great Acharyan Periya Nambi here initiated Ramanujar to the Vaishnavite stream thereby giving the world one of its most recognized social reformers.

The Ahobila Mutt runs the very structured Sanskrit college here, and has of late started a college for Arts and Science which is unique because it charges the lowest fee in and around Chennai. The students who come here to do an undergraduate degree   hail from the neighboring villages of Madurantakam, all of them, well almost all of them,  being first generation learners . It is indeed a great service that the Mutt is doing to society at large.  This college was started in the year 2010 with about 20+ students and has grown to 1100+ students in this year 2015!. There are already 4 to 5 university toppers in this college. This college is affiliated to University of Madras.

 The college has the distinction of producing State rank holders in Maths , computer science subjects.

The preamble to the entire exercise of mine is thus established. Service to the society   according to me has been giving them some basic form of education   ,helping them come up in life. My understanding of Lord Krishna’s   divine message has been:  give back to the society what you will  in good measure.  Thus began my search to do something to return to society.

It so happened that I visited the college a couple of times and found the students lacking in Communications skills and soft skills. I felt the urge to do something for the students here. As irrelevant as it may seem I found no socio discrimination of any sort here, meaning students from all walks of life,  all castes are admitted here and I found a very dedicated band of people serving this college . These people,  devote a rather heavy portion of their busy lives to the progress of this college doing every thing in their command to serve these students.

Well, in this scenario I came upon Mrs Nirmala Prasad who recently has taken a position as an advisor on this board. She is a dynamic lady who left to herself will , I am sure ,will bring up this college to great heights. I appealed to her and in no time I found myself going to the college to teach the final years on how to talk  English, How to present oneself for a campus interview and how to groom one self.

 In this context I would like to appeal to many persons who feel they can teach the students a thing or two and give them tips on how to conduct themselves. It is only the language that stands a barrier and if it is true that language is but, only a means of communication. Then I still don’t understand why this insistence on the language.  Nevertheless  since most companies , big or small insist on  spoken English I would like to ask more people to come forward to teach these students spoken   form of the very funny language that we all insist on.