Sundrampedia

Mr Sundram was our literature teacher for a short period of time. He was a big-sized man and had an ungainly gait, he walked like an ape. We nicknamed him Gorilla. Lim Poh Seng remembered that Mr Gorilla was fond on quotes and made us contribute some quotes. We were even sent to the National Library which was within walking distance of the School, to research and provide him with quotations. We promptly compiled a Sundrampedia. Chen Wen and Poh Seng can remember some of them.

1. ‘He who asked a question is a fool for 5 minutes. He who doesn’t ask is a fool for the rest of his life’ attributed to Lim Poh Seng. He said it is a Chinese proverb that he found in the reference section of the National Library on one of these assignments with Logendran

2. ‘The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up’ attributed to Tan Meng Seng. Meng Seng was a prolific writer then and he used to contribute his compositions  to the magazine ‘The Students World’. He won many prizes for those essays.

3. ‘A man without a smiling face cannot open a shop’ attributed to Mr Sundram.

4. ‘Magnificent cannot be cheap, for what is cheap cannot be magnificent’ attributed to Mr Sundram.

5. 'A gorilla cannot have a pretty face' attributed to Quek Seng Yeow.

6. ‘Life is like a midsummer’s night dream with its occasional tempests, winter’s tale, all’s well that ends well and much ado about nothing’ attributed to Lionel Lee by Chen Wen although Lionel has no memory of this at all.

Lionel remembered that Gorilla did teach him in Primary School in 1961. With his size and gait, he struck fear in the small Primary 3 boys and girls. One day Lionel came to class late and was made to stand outside the classroom throughout the lesson. This was a ordinary form of punishment but what was shocking was that Sundram emptied a waste paper basket and put it over Lionel’s head. It was just the thing for monkeys to do according to Chen Wen. So when Sundram surfaced years later in Raffles Institution Lionel made sure he kept a very low profile, kept his head under the radar so as not to have another 'helmet' placed on his head again!

Mr Sundram kept telling the class that we must never use guide books to study literature. This apparently made Poh Seng feel rather guilty but he tried to follow other Sundram's instructions judiciously. One of this was to always bring our textbooks for his lesson but unfortunately Poh Seng forgot one day. Gorilla became so mad that he marched Poh Seng off to see Mr George Sobreilo, the Asst Principal. There he was standing quietly and sheepishly in front of the Principal but to his pleasant surprise, after Sundram walked off, Mr Sobreilo dismissed Poh Seng without exacting any punishment.

Mr. Sundram bragged to the class about a very smug reply he gave to Chow Kong from a different Sec 3 class.  The question asked by Chow Kong was in regard to Mark Anthony’s eulogy to Julius Caesar in our literature book.  Mark Anthony said something like every Roman would want a piece of hair from Caesar’s body in his eulogy.  Chow Kong asked Mr Sundram “What part of the body?”  The answer given by Sundram  was “every part of the body that has hair”.

He also had a knack about ridiculing any classmate for asking questions. This happened in Sec 1, after the lesson was over, Abdul Ghani went to the front of the class and asked Sundram a question. Apparently Ghani was soft and incoherent, Gorilla roared in a loud voice, "What? You want to see my mother?" He said it so seriously that he caught the class' attention and they roared with laughter.

Chen Wen reckoned that Mr Sundram was an eccentric professor and opined that the right kind of student could benefit from such eccentricity. Nevertheless that eccentricity got the better of him and eventually he left teaching, some saying that he was dismissed. A schoolmate, James Foo Khee Fong recalled that years later Gorilla ran for elections under the Workers Party but failed to win any seat, maybe even losing his deposit.

Contributed by Chen Wen, Lionel, Seng Yeow and Poh Seng