Boat races of Kerala, known as vallamkali is a thrilling experience for both rowers and spectators. Mainly conducted during Onam, the harvest festival in September, these races featuring the chundan vallams or snake boats are iconic. As the oarsmen dressed in white mundu and turban sing aloud the vanchipaattu (boat song), the snake boats move in pairs to the rhythm of their full-throated singing and cheering.
A mixed bag of students including professionals, retired teachers, and authors, college students, and homemakers who speak Marathi, Konkani, Telugu, Kannada, and Urdu are all ears at an online class as they learn the nuances of the Malayalam word vallam. Helmed by the award-winning Malayalam teacher EC Sabu, the classes introduce students to the joys of learning a new language, giving a peek into Kerala’s culture and traditions. “Whenever I introduce a new word in Malayalam, I give them a few examples on how the word is intertwined with culture,” says Sabu, vice-principal of CMS Higher Secondary School, an award-winning teacher with three decades of experience teaching Malayalam.
“While learning vallam they also learn about vallamkali and vanchipaatu. Another word kaayal takes them to the beauty of backwaters in Kerala,” he explains.
E C Sabu | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Along with the Coimbatore Malayali Samajam, Sabu has has been conducting the certificate course in Malayalam for thirty batches of students, a mix of native and non-native speakers. As the third batch of the online course Amirtham Malayalam offered by the World Malayalee Council(Coimbatore Province) begins on October 12, Sabu enters his 33rd year of teaching Malayalam. “ The course has become a melting pot of cultures giving rise to new friendships,” he says.
Some of the passed-out students have formed WhatsApp groups where they share PDFs of Malayalam newspapers to keep the interest in the language alive. “Be it Onam, farming or some of the old sayings, there is so much in common in all the South Indian languages,” observes Sabu adding that along with Malayalam alphabets he draws commonalities, myths, and festivals that are intertwined with other cultures and traditions. “For example, Onam and Pongal are harvest festivals. When everyone shares their culture, great learning happens in the classroom,” he adds.
Sabu begins with easy letters, moving on to forms, sentences, grammar and translation, and spoken language. Every year, a number of non-native speakers attend to understand Kerala’s art and culture, its landscape, people and literature. “Doctors enrol for professional requirements, as they attend to a lot of patients from Kerala. We have retired professors who want to use their time to learn a new skill. Then, there are Tamil authors and poets who are drawn to the course out of sheer love for the language. They want to learn Malayalam works of well-known authors like Madhavikutty, Vaikom Mohammed Basheer, and MT Vasudevan Nair,” explains Sabu adding that another chunk of people are piqued by Malayalam cinema.
The online classes open for anyone, he says, have made it easy for people to connect from Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi to Mumbai and Chennai. “Such opportunities for regional languages brings a real sense of celebration of unity in diversity.”
Online classes will be held every Sunday from 11am to 12.30pm. Call 9486477891/ 6380701846/ 9994531441
Published - October 03, 2024 04:30 pm IST
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