Sunday, October 24th, 2004
Educating Prabha
Up until last Thursday, Prabha was just another class VII student at St Joseph’s Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Cuddalore. If the school has parent-teacher meetings at all, Prabha’s father never attended any of them. It is doubtful if Prabha had even seen her father, the dreaded criminal, Veerappan, except on television and in the newspapers.
Prabha and her sister, Vijayarani, were raised by their mother, Muthulaxmi. A single-parent family would be something of an exception in small town South India. There must have been whispers but it is to the credit of the mother that she chose to take the hard way out and choose an education for her children rather than live off the fat (and the ivory) of the land plundered by the man who the world knew as a smuggler, terrorist, killer and brigand but who she knew only as a husband. Presuming she knew him at all.
Veerappan has been a hunted man for over a decade now. Which means, at some point, man and wife sat down and decided that their children would take the path of right. It must have been one of the saner moments in a life marked by lunacy and anger. Maybe fatherhood does change the most hardened among us.
There must have been some wistfulness in that moment. The family would be separated. It would leave the man unencumbered to unleash a reign of terror. Carrying his family with him would slow him down considerably. At the same time, he would draw comfort from the fact that his daughters would have a normal upbringing and hopefully a life of respect rather than one spent on the run.
Which is why, in all the jubilation and political rhetoric surrounding Veerappan’s death, the one recurring and disturbing image was that of a sobbing child. Was she sobbing at the loss of the father she never knew? Or, more likely, was she lost at being rudely uprooted and evicted from her school and finding her sheltered world suddenly invaded by a billion prying eyes and news cameras.
The school principal retracted almost immediately and said that no transfer order had been issued but she threw in a caveat that there are authorities higher than her in the school. The media’s focus on this issue is a bit of a mixed blessing. It violates the privacy of the family but it also prevents the school authorities from behaving in an entirely arbitrary fashion.
The State must ensure that the girls continue to get the best education money can buy. In a country where the girl child is routinely denied an education, this will set a very important precedent.
For if the children are now cast away from society, there is a very real risk that they will take to the jungles. They have their father’s blood and their survival instincts will take them onwards from there. Ironically, they will inherit a legacy that even their own father had not willed for them.
Some day in the foreseeable future, Prabha, by then a hardened criminal, may even give herself up in exchange for a seat in parliament. That will be a supreme irony. It has happened before in India. It should not happen again.
Even her father chose education over easy money for his children. It meant that, in his mind, the father had accepted the error of his ways long years ago. It also means that in this one regard, Koose Munniswamy Veeerappan demonstrated a more progressive streak than the Governments of two states put together.