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Triumph of the human spirit: The Hindu
Pookode, Kerala, Mar 07: Nothing can be more painful to a dancer than losing her leg. T. Parukutty Amma, a former teacher at the Matha High School, Mannampetta, went through the ordeal when she was 35.
Pookode, Kerala, Mar 07: Nothing can be more painful to a dancer than losing her leg. T. Parukutty Amma, a former teacher at the Matha High School, Mannampetta, went through the ordeal when she was 35.
An injury to a bone in the left leg had caused severe infection. Amputation, doctors said, was the only solution. "I went through hell,'' she says. "After the amputation, continuing as dance teacher was impossible. Looking after my kids, who were small, was challenging. Unable to carry them when they cried, I looked at them helplessly", she says.
Life came to a standstill. But Parukutty Amma refused to be beaten. Braving pain, she crawled across the floor to do household chores. She persuaded her husband, who was in the services, to take her to a military hospital in Pune, and there she got an artificial limb fitted.
In a saga of extraordinary courage and endurance, she struggled and regained all that she lost.
"I returned to teaching dance and music. My colleagues at the school welcomed me with tears of joy. It was like homecoming. I started teaching dance, sitting on a chair,'' she remembers. Knowing that her career as a dancer was over, she concentrated on music, diligently practising all the compositions she had learnt at the RLV College of Music, Thripunithura, in the early 1940s.
"I had learnt music from V. K. Raghava Menon and Cherthala Sivaraman Nair. In those days, Tamil songs by M. K. Tyagaraja Bhagavathar and S. T. Kittappa were the rage. I knew quite a few of these,'' she says.
She has taught her children music. Her son, T. Unnikrishnan, is a well-known Carnatic and Hindustani singer and the dean of vocal music at the Indirakala Sangeet University, Chhattisgarh.
After 24 years of service, Parukutty Amma retired from the Mannampetta school in 1981.
At 78, she still teaches dance and music. Boys and girls in and around Pookode gather at her house every Sunday. And the compositions of Tyagaraja, Muthuswamy Dikshitar and Swati Tirunal would float across the village in her feeble voice, revealing the triumph of the human spirit.
Life came to a standstill. But Parukutty Amma refused to be beaten. Braving pain, she crawled across the floor to do household chores. She persuaded her husband, who was in the services, to take her to a military hospital in Pune, and there she got an artificial limb fitted.
In a saga of extraordinary courage and endurance, she struggled and regained all that she lost.
"I returned to teaching dance and music. My colleagues at the school welcomed me with tears of joy. It was like homecoming. I started teaching dance, sitting on a chair,'' she remembers. Knowing that her career as a dancer was over, she concentrated on music, diligently practising all the compositions she had learnt at the RLV College of Music, Thripunithura, in the early 1940s.
"I had learnt music from V. K. Raghava Menon and Cherthala Sivaraman Nair. In those days, Tamil songs by M. K. Tyagaraja Bhagavathar and S. T. Kittappa were the rage. I knew quite a few of these,'' she says.
She has taught her children music. Her son, T. Unnikrishnan, is a well-known Carnatic and Hindustani singer and the dean of vocal music at the Indirakala Sangeet University, Chhattisgarh.
After 24 years of service, Parukutty Amma retired from the Mannampetta school in 1981.
At 78, she still teaches dance and music. Boys and girls in and around Pookode gather at her house every Sunday. And the compositions of Tyagaraja, Muthuswamy Dikshitar and Swati Tirunal would float across the village in her feeble voice, revealing the triumph of the human spirit.