Prof Aprameya - A Tribute

I heard that Professor Aprameya of NIE, Mysore, passed away on 5 January, 2009.

He was a legend. I had heard of him even before I started studying in NIE.

The sheer influence of his personality was such that while other teachers struggled to establish some kind of authority over the students, Prof. Aprameya, well, just had it.

Since I was a student of electronics engineering, under normal circumstances, I would not have had the good fortune of being taught by him. But, thanks to an unusual set of circumstances, I did attend one of his classes. We had a greenhorn teacher who enraged us by his behaviour. When he came in to our next class, a roof high tower made out of stools used in the drawing classes confronted him. He promptly made a hasty about turn and went to the staff room and complained to Prof. Aprameya. He came into the class and in a very casual manner, without even looking at the offending tower, asked us to bring it down. It was, pronto. We thought he would chastise us. He gave affectionate advice instead. He told us how we should treat the new teacher like a friend and get along happily. He cited how "Prasanna" (The inimitable E A S Prasanna, who was an alumnus of NIE) played cricket, enjoyed college life and went on to achieve great fame, etc.

He took the day's class himself and taught us some engineering drawing. The way he could draw lines on the black board was unbelievable. The drawings came to life.

It is difficult to write about such a man as he. In lieu of it here is what the others have said about him. Sri Bapu Satyanarayana, one of the writers to be found in this site, kindly sent me the link, so that I could add it here.