AFTER ARTS, IT'S AERONAUTICS

WHEN I COMPLETED MY BA DEGREE COURSE IN 1971, I WAS completely lacking in direction as to where my life would take me. In a way, that summed up the plight of most graduates in Kerala at that time, except those who had chosen professional courses, one could say.

A statement of fact, no doubt, but one that would not give me any solace, unless I took it upon myself to take some bold decisions and ventured on a voyage of adventure crossing many continents.

Such notions were not a part of my life, either in 1965 as I passed out of Noel Memorial High School, Kumbanad, nurturing high hopes of pursuing Mathematics as my career choice or in 1968 when I joined St. Thomas College, Kozhencherry, for my Bachelor of Arts course in Economics, History and Political Science.

Let us be frank. It all started going bad for me academically, the moment I enrolled for my two-year pre-degree course in Zoology, Botany and Chemistry at the Mar Thoma College, Thiruvalla.
It would be an understatement to say that I was not fond of these subjects and had to study them under sufferance, on account of intervention from authorities who convinced my father that I was destined to pursue medical studies and become a famous doctor. Suffice it to say that my indifference to studies soon became a hot topic of discussion among the teachers, especially the professor who was instrumental in derailing my career dreams then. And soon enough, my father was apprised of these developments.

Therefore, when the pre-degree course was finally completed and I decided to embrace Economics, History and Political Science for my degree, my father was clear that he would not interfere in my matters in any manner.

No doubt, his previous intervention to make a doctor out of me was still fresh in his mind and there was no way he was going to tell me what to study a second time.
Sure, the pursuit of liberal arts was a kind of pulling further away from Mathematics and Physics, the subjects I liked only two years ago. In that sense, it could be argued that I never made a serious attempt to follow the subjects of my choice.

To understand my decision, one must appreciate the kind of rigidity that was part and parcel of the higher education system in Kerala those days, one which prevails to a fair extent even now. It never really allows a student to correct a wrong decision he or she makes at the tender age of 15 or 16!

It was by no means an easy task to clear the pre-degree prac-tical examinations in Science, especially for students like me who barely attended any classes and depended on others to get their record books drawn. Quite a few us managed to flunk the mid-term examinations which was but a step from failing the final examinations.

What effectively put paid to our hopes of somehow getting through was the abject disconnect with the laboratory. Our ama-teur attempts to bribe laboratory peons into arranging cooked-up results backfired. Result: a bunch of us were forced to drop a year. Thereafter, I made an all-out effort to clear this seemingly insur-mountable hurdle.

Most of the professional tutorial colleges nearby for failed students only offered a combination of theory and practical classes. This did not help my cause as I had scored pretty well in the writ-ten examinations. One of my cousins advised me to mug up the procedure of the laboratory tests as prescribed for the course. I had no option but to follow his advice.
Thus, when I appeared for the repeat laboratory tests, I went through the process as one would assemble a kit after reading a do-it-yourself manual. After the initial discomfort, I got pretty good at doing the laboratory tests too during the university examinations.

I had so much spare time that I went around helping four other students who were in the same boat. I remember each one of them even today as all four eventually joined St Thomas College, Kozhencherry for our BA degree course.

Truth be told, I enjoyed the three years before I graduated in 1971. I immersed myself in college union and other extra-curricular activities. In short, I ticked almost all boxes in the must-do list of an average student with no big academic ambitions.

There was even a brief period when I dabbled with the notion of grooming myself as a professional politician. For that to happen, I would have had to study law, a path followed by many others. To be honest, I am not sure if I would have made it as a successful politician.

The wheels of change had begun churning and the path to my future was being laid, even as I was busy writing my final year degree examination in liberal arts in Kozhencherry.
I did not know it then, but in a few weeks, I would get busy with my passport and US visa applications. My cousin Tom who was 10 years my elder, was the sole reason I made my way to the US and whatever happened in my life thereafter that changed my entire life story needs to be attributed to Thomas Philip.

Tom was a trendsetter in his own right, being among the earliest Malayalis to move to the US, and pursue higher studies, way back in 1962. He first came to Seattle where he spent the initial couple of years before moving on to Oregon where he enrolled in the University of Oregon.

But it was in 1968 that he started taking an interest in what I was doing. That was the year he returned to Kerala to get married and had some spare time to talk to me. But then I had already got burnt with my forced entry into the Biological Science stream and was not ready to look at anything but liberal arts.

He never criticized my decision to study liberal arts. All he said was that I needed to take up some technical course that would fetch me an assured job and told me to consider doing what he did - by studying in the US. I was all of 17 years old then and it took me another three years to get down to do what Tom had then asked me to do.
Honestly, I did not harbor much hope about going to the US at any point in time. My family's financial condition was so much under strain with three of us studying in college at the same time that it did not warrant undertaking any such extravagant higher study plans. Money was tight at home, which Tom very well knew.

I still remember what he told me then. "Babu, it does not matter what course you are studying now. When you feel you are ready
to come to the US, let me know and I will send you the money for the visa and ticket."

So, three years later, I sent him a telegram, asking him for the promised money. He promptly sent me $600 via money order.
Undoubtedly, it was as much this financial support as it was the courage he instilled in me to think that getting trained in a greenfield academic area like Aeronautical Technology was within the grasp of a student of Economics, History and Political Science that got me to consider moving to the US!

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