Tribute to a legendary teacher

Today, on his 100th birthday, I pay my deep respects to this unforgettable teacher, Mr P.  Subramaniam.  A devoted family man and a faithful friend, he was an inspiring teacher to hundreds of students who had the privilege of being taught by this master of the language; at Trinity College Kandy, Teacher Training college or at the Shakespeare Institute.

I had known uncle Sub, as I used to call him, since my childhood.  Mr Subramanium and my father Mr Zubair were good friends and colleagues at the Teacher Training College Panideniya; where they were both lecturers in the 1960’s and 70’s. They would affectionately call each other ‘Sub’ and ‘Zub’ as their friendship grew over the years. During the school holidays my father would take me along to the Training College and there, I would meet uncle Sub who would bring along his little daughter whom he fondly called ‘Chandrika’. She and I would play together while our fathers would carry on with their work. Almost 40 years on we remain great friends.

Both Mr Subramaniam and my father were scholars of the English language and I would love to listen to their conversations, peppered with the most marvellous sounding language, half of which I did not understand at the time.  Even as a little girl I was in awe of uncle Subs and looked forward to seeing him with his warm, genial smile, crinkling up his kindly eyes.

Several years later my admiration of him only deepened as he became my teacher, or ‘Sir’ as we called him, at the aptly named Shakespeare institute of Kandy where the name ‘Subramanium’ became synonymous with Shakespeare.  His expertise on Shakespeare’s plays and poetry was proverbial and through his masterful delivery of lessons he managed to infuse the magic of Shakespeare in the minds of his students.  We would listen mesmerised as he recited 14-line Shakespearean sonnets from memory with such eloquence and passion that one could not help but fall in love with the beauty of the language of the 16th century poet.   The play ‘Othello’ was brought to life for us by this brilliant teacher as he would enact the characters of the play as a one-man dramatist. 

He would switch seamlessly and with ease from the character of Brabantio, the enraged, impassioned father of beautiful Desdemona, to the dignified portrayal of Othello, the noble black Moor of Venice.   Mr Subramaniam had that rare capacity of making his students empathise with each of the characters and thereby understand the machinations of this incredible play written by the Bard over 400 years ago.

The spark he ignited led me to pursue my higher studies in English Language and for this I am ever grateful to Sir.  Even today as a teacher of English with many years of service in several countries I am yet to come across anyone who has mastered the art of Shakespeare as much as Mr Subramanium.
A student