Yadavalli Krishnamurthy:A Tribute to our Teacher

School:Sri Rama Krishna Vidayalaya,New Palvancha.
Period:1979-1986



One sultry afternoon a rugged person entered our class(3rd I think) and the next 45 minutes we areoverwhelmed by his way of teaching and his wittyanecdotes though some of them are crude. The one, Iparticularly remember is about Samuel Johnson and howhe attacked a layman, while the latter enquired aboutTime. For the first time words;‘Rustic’,’Nocturanal’.. etc,entered into my memory.(Even though I didn’t know what is the exact meaningof those words).
He is Yedavalli Krishnamurthy migrated from Vijayawada.

His way of teaching, is always fascinating and attentive and he made them practical by asking us to bring the leaves eaten by Caterpillars and models of Caterpillar cocoons and many more.

Once he told our super seniors to collectButterfiles, it started a great Butterfly rush and yielded a mass Butterfly execution, very gloomy indeed.
But he encouraged many of us to participate in science fairs and various competitons, and he is an inherent teacher who left a secured govt warden job, and simply followed his heart by returning to the teacher job.
On the flip side his moods are very erratic, and that reflected on the severe punishment he has to give us.
One of batch mate is the last victim from our batch to his attitude and after that he had untimely demise,and we are here, left with his memories and his spell towards science.

Hindi(How it bothered me in My School days(1981-1987)

School:Sri Rama Krishna Vidayalaya. New Palvancha ,Khammam Dist.
Period:1983-1984 Before Doordharshan/T.V Onslaught.


Hindi is the most dreadful language, which I am compelled to choke into my head, and adding to complexity it uses the same word for ‘Today’ and ‘Tomorrow’ (kal). My happy times with Hindi are only confined to Action/Amithab’s movies in Shanti theatre now and then.
My problems with Hindi started from 5th class, incidentally all our Hindi teachers are not known for their compassion (Sparing Laxmi Madam who taught us in 9th and 10th classes.) so I am the guaranteed prey to their showering punishments like many of us in the School.

Surdas, Premchand and Kabir Das contributed a lot to Hindi literature, and unknowingly they played their part in my Hindi Learning curve too.

‘Paudi Pad Pad Jag Muva, Pandit ..’ Remember this Surdas verse. Even hard to read and remember at this age, and you can imagine how difficult it would to be in 1983-84.Hindi Teacher used shunt out who can’t read this verses, you guessed right, very few creamy heads remained in the class room (few remained in the class room who appeared the Hindi Prachar Sabha Exams by that time) and rest of the mob in shade of ‘Sarugudu Chetla Needalo'. Accompanying their crisp serene Hindi textbooks.

As the days are passing like this, while some of our buddies trying to bypass this huge hurdle. (Like writing it in Telugu and reading aloud, but none got successful) The parent’s committee president came to school one fine sunny day and enquired about our plight and why we are having a great time under the Tree shade. Truly embarrassing isn’t it.

This treatment is not common to our only batch, but to our super seniors too, but they have turned the punishment into opportunity by making it into their games period.

Coming to 10th class, Laxmi Madam came punishments become non-entity but my quest for getting pass marks in Hindi language is still bothering, by the time of final exams I have resorted to writing Telugu words in Hindi letters for the words which I cannot get.

We got a question about Premchand,in the final exam (1987,Summer)this is how I written the answer: ‘Premchand ko Jvaar ( still today I don’t know what Fever is called in Hindi) aya kethe ko jake ….’

By grace of almighty God I managed to get 60 marks in Hindi and I still remember Surdas’s another verse: ‘Kal Kar se Aaj Kar, Aaj Kare se Abh Kaar’.

This word reminds me to do many mundane things to do for rest of the day.