During the sixties, I was studying in Mysore when I visited my uncle’s famous restaurant called ‘Fountain View’. At that point of time, a person visited my uncle, wished him, bought something and moved out.

My uncle told me that he was the new Principal of Maharaja Junior College. A six-footer, upright, looking trim and spoke very little. He was Anjaparavanda M. Ponnappa. I was also informed that after his graduation, he wished to join the Indian Air Force but somehow he did not qualify. Thus he joined the Department of Education as a teacher which was a blessing in disguise to the student community.

To start with, he worked as a teacher at Madikeri. He was even selected as an exchange teacher to work in the United States of America. After his return, he did his Master’s degree in Mathematics from Bangalore University.

At that point of time, the Maharaja Junior College was in a rotten state. Why students, even lecturers used to visit the institution as per their wish and time.

The results were at the nadir and did not even touch double digits. On day one, Ponnappa arranged a meeting of students and the faculty and passed on a message that he would be at the college at prescribed time and expected everyone to be on time.

The next day, after the prescribed hour, the main gate was closed and Ponnappa stood there. The faculty and students, who were accustomed to coming late, saw the Principal standing upright, staring at the late-comers. 

They were aghast and ran helter-skelter. All those faculty were marked absent along with the students and notices were issued to each of them. From the next day, everyone made it a point to be inside the institution well before the appointed hour.

That came as the turning point and the results rose to 56 percent next year. Such was the transformation introduced by Ponnappa. He was the embodiment of discipline and a workaholic.

Later, Ponnappa was transferred and made the Joint Director of the Education Department. Here too, there was an incident. A person’s son was studying in one of the colleges. No one had any hopes that he would get through, not even his father.

To favour his son, the father was contemplating tampering with his marks card and decided to pull the strings. However, Ponnappa was the stumbling block. He would keep the keys of the almirah where the marks cards were stored with himself and did not allow anyone else to open them.

However, some of the staff decided to tamper with the marks cards when Ponnappa was not at office and they prepared a duplicate key to open the almirah in his absence. They were successful in tampering with the student’s marks card.

Dirty politics at his office had a telling effect on his career. At one stage, he even tendered his resignation but the Director, who had known his worth, prevailed upon Ponnappa to withdraw his resignation.

After retirement, Ponnappa settled down in Kodagu at Guhya near Siddapur. His wife Radha is alive and living all by herself amidst grief. One of his sons, Mohan, after a glorious career in education, became an ascetic and joined the Ramakrishna Mission at Belur Mutt, Kolkata.

His daughter Sharada is a housewife. The other son Naren’s ability was recognised by an American, who took him to the United States of America where at present he is a professor and director of a well-known Institution in Los Angeles, California.

Ponnappa passed away on 12.1.2023 at the age of 96 at his daughter’s residence in Guhya.

Such disciplinarians are a rarity. May his tribe increase.

– P.D. Medappa, Advocate, Mysuru