Troubling ruminations

Driving recently through Kolkata, I saw a touching sign right in front of the main gate of Fort William (newly named Vijay Durg): 'Want to do something for a soldier? Be an Indian worth fighting for.' I was reminded of the truly great who have lived and died before us so that our country might be free, prosperous and glorious, and I sadly wondered how many of us today would qualify. How many of you - I am asking all except the most blindly selfish and perverted - could honestly look at yourself in the mirror and say confidently 'I am an Indian worth fighting (and dying) for'? I know I could not ask or expect any Indian to do so much for me...

Which led to another but related train of thought: why, when we even at all bother to tell our children about our great men and women, do we invariably mention only those who are all long dead: why only the Tagores, Vivekanandas, Gandhis, Bagha Jatins and the like? Haven't so many Indians devoted their lives in the post-independence era to improving the lot of their fellow countrymen in myriad important ways? Why do we (the older generations, who are supposed to 'teach' youngsters what matters and what does not) gush endlessly instead about cricketers and film stars and people who, in one way or the other, are busy making fortunes, often contributing very little, if anything at all, to national welfare and progress? Jagdeep Chhokar's recent death stirred these thoughts - and I am sure most 'educated' Indians would have to ask Google who he was and what he did. I could reel off so many such names without having to consult any notebook or encyclopedia: (ICS) Sukumar Sen, Aruna Roy, Ela Bhatt, Sunita Narain, Bindhyeshari Pathak, Kailash Satyarthi, P. Sainath, Harsh Mander, M. C. Mehta, Subhas Dutta, Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Bittu Sahgal, Arunachalam Muruganantham and countless others I have read and heard about, but are not 'famous' enough to be accessed via the internet. I know for a fact that most of my readers would merely gape and secretly admit never having heard of them. If we have failed to instill some ideals, some vision in our young, if we have never told them what sort of people really deserve to be respected, why do we eternally lament that our country is going to the dogs, or boast that it is doing great only because a few people are becoming billionaires every year and we can rub our weak neighbours' noses in the dirt now and then? It is obviously because we have taught our young that there is nothing to life beyond getting a nondescript job and shopping and being idly 'entertained' and preening before friends and relatives for as long as we can! What could be more pathetic for a whole nation?

A little economic gnyaan here for those who are interested, in connection with the lately much tomtommed claim that India is now the 'fastest growing major economy in the world'. 1) It all depends on how much you can trust the source of the figures, and the government, which provides most of the data, is not the most trustworthy source of such things! 2) There was a massive fall of GDP/national income during the COViD-induced decline, so the rebound looks much healthier than it actually is - to a large extent we are merely catching up with the pre-2020 (pre_GST, pre demonetization-) years, and it remains to be seen how long this growth spurt will continue, 3) Mere GDP figures mean very little, because a. increase of production of literally anything adds to GDP, guns, drugs, luxury resorts as much as food and schools and hospitals for the poor, b. how the GDP is shared out matters far more when it is a question of overall welfare: if a tiny minority siphons off most of the benefits of growth, as is currently the case, the average Indian remains in a bad way, even if you completely forget the poorest 300 million, c. the moment you look at per capita income instead of the total, given the gigantic population, India still remains one of the poorest countries in the world, and is likely to remain so for decades to come (so comparing our situation with Japan, population 124 million, or Germany, population 84 million, whom we have just narrowly 'beaten', makes us look very conceited as well as silly), d. on many globally respected and trusted indices, such as the UN HDI, the World Hunger Index, the Corruption index, the gender-equality index and so on, India still ranks among the lowest, as anyone can check for oneself. All this is not to deride or deny whatever India has actually achieved since independence (and that's a lot), but to insist that we should all accept we have a long way to go before we can truly become Viksit Bharat, and along the way we have to correct many defects and make a lot of course corrections if we ever want to reach that goal: merely boasting about certain things and denying certain others and trying to shut up everyone who points out what we really need to do is not the best way ahead.

A status update on my YouTube channel where I am telling a new story every week: it seems I have acquired a loyal and regular following of listeners, but the number is still very small (around 150-200, I should think), considering the number of subscribers, and the number of people who know me (just count the number of ex students along with their family members, and it will come to several tens of thousands, I should think). Maybe it's because I am not spending money on 'buying' listeners, as apparently most YouTubers do? But since I don't plan to do that, this core group of listeners, if they really want me to keep going, should work a little more to spread the word around among their own friends and relatives, especially parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents. If every one of you lets ten people know, and nudge them a bit, at least two or three will start listening, and very soon that will have a cascading effect, and give me a great morale booster. Otherwise, as my daughter has said, the one solid good thing that is happening is that I am building up a repertoire of audio stories that more than one family member will keep listening to years after I am gone! But then, sooner rather than later I am going to lose steam and cry 'enough'...

One other thing, a subject I keep harping on from time to time: I miss the long and absorbing debates I used to have with a lot of people here over things that I had written. There are blogposts which garnered 60-plus comments: now I consider myself lucky if I get five or six (and often those who are keenest and have the most spare time to comment are those who hate me blindly, whatever their reasons are!) Most of my decent, informed, thoughtful readers, whether they are in their twenties or fifties, apparently no longer 'have time'. Now that is a mindless canard if ever there was one, as everyone secretly knows but is ashamed to admit. We lack time a) only for those things which we do not seriously consider to be a priority, or b) because we are perpetually distracted by trivia, whether that be attending parties or quarrelling with the spouse or scrolling endlessly through Instagram. So I am urging the best of my readers, one more time: PLEASE engage. Otherwise, I am nearing twenty years of non-stop writing here, and I might soon decide that it's time to call it a day.

Finally, for those who find this blog 'too serious', do look up my other blog. And those strange few who think I treat my ex students like toilet paper, I should beg them with folded hands to come and meet me and let me know what I ever did to make them feel so bad (because I do have a lot of beloved ex students who think quite the opposite about me), so that I can most sincerely beg forgiveness for having hurt them - provided they can convince me I hurt them absolutely without any valid reason. But to all the rest, who merely burn with helpless anger and jealousy every time they visit my blog (the root cause being, I think, that I have found the kind of freedom and peace with self-respect and financial solvency which they will never get, because they don't deserve it) my request, repeated ad nauseam, is 'Please stop reading!' I am not going to change my ways and views because of folks like you, so you are wasting your time. And calling your betters names doesn't harm them, it merely shows you up for what you are. You hide behind pseudonyms and don't dare deal with me face to face, so you belong to the trash can.

Rain, rain, go away!

This has been one of the longest rainy seasons in living memory. I wish the rains would stop now - and I didn't think I'd ever say that! The surroundings are too hot and damp, and it is affecting everything, from the musty smells all around to veggie prices on fire to people falling ill right and left with fever and allied complications. The only silver lining is the hope of a long and chilly winter. And all the terrible news about cloudbursts and flash floods and landslides from the northwest part of the country - Himachal, Uttarakhand, Punjab - make me doubly thankful that I live in a relatively much safer place. But I couldn't avoid a recent bout of fever myself, and it has left me wobbly with a hacking cough and throbbing head. It's all I can do to tell a story a week on YouTube besides the usual routine of classes and as much sleep as I can get.

Not a single thought-provoking response to my last post. Makes me wonder whether the sort of people who read my blog have lost the capacity or the desire to comment. More and more it seems a thankless chore to continue hacking away at this blog. And yet, wonder of wonders, the blog counter keeps climbing relentlessly...

I have been seeing very interesting dreams lately. I wish I could discuss them with an attentive expert. ...'and in that sleep what dreams may come' indeed.

I have been working non-stop, every single day, since I came back from my daughter's place at the start of June. I am desperate for a break, and taking the next week off. Just eat and sleep is my plan. And who knows whether the railways will confirm my ticket reservation for the North Bengal trip during the pujo week?

Here is a link to a TED talk that I have listened to very carefully: 'Is AI making us dumber?' My own belief is, of course, that the very idea of using AI in education - at least AI as it works right now - is one of the dumbest ideas I have ever come across. But then, it is designed by very dumb and very greedy people! 

My own education via YouTube

Having become a content creator (storyteller) on YouTube, I am using the app much more frequently than before. And it is becoming quite an education, in the sense that I am learning - to my great edification - that lots of people, including young people, are thinking and saying a lot of good and necessary things, and, going by the stats (though number of views, I fear, doesn't say much about whether the viewers actually listen to, or watch, the whole show, let alone being affected by them), many people are being impacted, too. 

For instance, I just watched a nine-minute movie called Delivery Boy. Short as it is, it draws attention to how hard hundreds of thousands of people are working around us for a pittance, and how we hardly notice them, taking them for unthinking, unfeeling drudges, hardly better than pack animals or robots, and yet they are humans just like us, with the same needs, desires, weaknesses, and ability to feel hurt and sympathy - sometimes more so than many of us. The director also draws attention to how many parasites live idle, slothful, irresponsible lives feeding on these unfortunates - notice the wife and son briefly shown halfway through the movie: but such parasites are to be found in every family, not only in those of the badly off. While as a socialist by conviction I believe that no able bodied man or woman should eat without working at least between the ages of twenty and sixty, I also believe every man, even a driver or delivery boy or janitor deserves a modicum of attention, compassion and courtesy - and no man deserves slavish admiration or wide-eyed deference merely because he has made a pile of money. Next time someone delivers a package, don't forget to give him (or her) a tip and a kind word if you consider yourself a civilized human being, and at least stop flattering yourself that you are a vastly superior somebody. It's the same message you will find here.

Meanwhile Akash Banerjee aka Deshbhakt has uploaded his gawaar swag part 2 video. It is people of the sort he has marked out that are giving India a bad name all over the world, and making the more decent among us cringe with shame. I am asking every reader to reflect whether s/he, while travelling abroad, has done something to shame us, imagining that they are being 'cool' and street smart, or simply that they are entitled to being ill-mannered because they have recently made some money. Being loud and aggressive, dishonest and abusive and in-your-face, whether inside India or abroad, only shows you up for what you are, a boor, a bad advertisement for the country. I only wish that our celebrities, including our top political leaders, would hammer this message over and over again through every available channel of public propaganda.

And then there was the video where the speaker was talking about how Japan - materially and socially speaking one of the most advanced nations in the world - is increasingly becoming a 'low desire society', in the sense that people there, even young people, are no longer very ambitious in a worldly sense, they are increasingly indifferent to the consumer culture, they save rather than buy things unless they are essential, many of them are more and more content with living with and by themselves according to minimalist ideals. Many experts, says the presenter, are worrying that this might be a major social disease, and/or harbinger of a great economic crisis (how will business and industry keep running if people in the mass stop buying new things all the time?), but is it really so? Haven't our great spiritual teachers been urging us for thousands of years to control our greed, and to learn to be comfortable with ourselves, inside our (enriched) minds? Aren't the modern environmentalists saying exactly the same thing? And what sort of sick economy is it that enslaves people into working and consuming all the time, not that they might be safe and healthy and happy but so that the economy might keep running (and the fat cat businessmen keep getting fatter still)? Given that Japan has already attained some of the highest living conditions in the world - stable to declining population, very high per capita income, very little extreme poverty, excellent public, security and welfare services, universal education, an orderly and peaceful society and so on, why shouldn't they now say 'Enough... from now on we shall take increased income not in terms of goods to buy but in terms of leisure and freedom to pursue hobbies we really like to engage in'? Shouldn't that be every nation's goal? That is what Dr. Goobie, the bright neurosurgeon who quit his job at the peak of his career decided for himself in America, too - that the whole system is corrupt and rotten, designed to exploit the vast majority of people by making them run the rat race forever, and the only sane option is to step off the treadmill when you have got just enough. And, as I have been repeating over and over, one needs the deepest sort of education to realize that one does not really need much from the material and social world to live a truly good life. It has been well said that the rich man is not he who has much but he who wants little. I hope this post, and all the links I have provided here, would set many people thinking along those lines before it is too late, for them and for the planet.

... alas, this is what, instead, we are currently doing in India. The only correction I would offer the presenter here is that it's not Gen Z which is alone to blame: many of their dads and moms are doing it too. In fact, I am convinced it is the parents who infected them with the disease. I am sorry, readers, that this video is in Bangla, but do listen, even if you don't understand the language very well.

Crore+ salaries, golden eggs and such things

 

The Telegraph reported on July 26 that the director of IIT Kharagpur, addressing a meeting of parents in the context of repeated cases of suicide among students, has requested them not to put unbearable expectational pressure of a material sort on their wards - forget about Rs. 1-crore starting salary packages, he has urged them, face reality. See the above picture.

I am glad that he has pointed out the case of Sundar Pichai, and added that Pichai studied metallurgical engineering at IIT (followed by an MBA, which does NOT call for a prior engineering degree). I should like to stress here that Pichai's case well illustrates the fact that to become the CEO of a giant IT company, you do not need even a degree in IT or computer science. Digest that, ignorant parents and starry-eyed youngsters!

I only wish the learned director had spoken out loudly about how so many colleges (and plus-two level tutors/cram shops) are duping both parents and children with fairy tales about those multi-crore salary packages. They are just pie in the sky, folks, and, even if they exist, your chances of landing one of them are about just as good as winning a major lottery or becoming an IPL team captain. Look at your parents' earnings, kids, even after working for 20 to 30 years. Also ask them how many people they know who get salaries of crores a year (and have your parents actually seen the pay-slips of those who claim they do, or are they gullible enough to believe everyone who claims they do?). Then learn to live with the drab, humble reality. Otherwise, the bodies are simply going to pile up higher, as rosy dreams are shattered by the time you have spent one or two years in college, and you have found out how hard it is to live and work and thrive in the real world, and your  'mental health' cannot bear the terrible shock of the sudden let-down after so many years of fantasizing.

Ironic that I, who have warned thousands of kids merely against such suicidal daydreaming, have managed to earn a reputation in my town as the tutor who is a bad man because he urges his students against such greed and stupidity, whether it is theirs or their parents'! But of course, my karma is being recorded at a far higher level than the public's, and I am content.

Right now, you can find the news item if you click on this link, but I don't know how long they maintain them in their archives.

Recent stimuli for my brain

Thanks to Indranil Panigrahi, one of my favourite old boys who have kept continuously in touch since leaving school nearly three decades ago, I came across a wonderful article in The Statesman about what 'scroll culture' is doing to us. It is so cogent, comprehensive and articulate about the issue, and so accurate about the diagnosis ('we are not addicted to content, we are addicted to not being left alone with ourselves') and agrees so well with all that I have myself observed, felt and concluded that I need not add a single line to it. I shall only urge my readers not to scroll away 'for later', but read it now, attentively, reflectively and to good purpose - perhaps to redirect their own lives a little better, if nothing else. It makes a painful and eerie contrast with what all the gurus (literary, management-, fitness-oriented and religious) are telling us to do: happiness, health, higher performance at work, becoming better people overall, in short, real success in life, demands that you find time for yourself, learn to be comfortable alone, focus, increase your attention span (and retentive capacity), cut out the clutter inside and out, and STOP SCROLLING (or at least slow down)! Please do read: you will be doing yourself a huge favour!

In the same connection and context, I have begun to read a 2021 book called Dopamine Nation by Dr. Anna Lembke about how the entire economy and society have become geared to providing (and consuming) non-stop excitement, and how damaging that can be to all of us. I shall reserve judgment until I have finished the book, but I think the good doctor is saying a lot of things I have been saying myself for donkey's years. See, for example, this blogpost written fourteen years ago. Only recently a grown-up ex student complimented me on having put 'treasures' on this blog. That reminds me to exhort new visitors once more to explore older content here, not just stick to the home page...

On the other hand, there are rather strange visitors here sometimes. Someone who hides behind the sobriquet 'Mirror' has recently commented on one of my posts ('Why have I become so unsocial?') that my writing is 'too serious'. I have not said anything beyond 'thank you' in my reply, but some of my other readers might want to respond at greater length. Also, some organization has left a comment (which I have not put up for obvious reasons) offering to buy customers for my storytelling channel on YouTube. I am sure they themselves have lots of customers. To me, it only shows how desperate and  pathetic people can get! No, I am not taking up their offer. It only makes me thankful that I have lived a good life and made a decent living without having to sink to such depths looking for either paying students or non-paying listeners.

Another passing remark on the passing weather: it has been a low-temperature but horribly muggy July. It is drizzling even as I write. I love the rains (and the greens they bring), but the constant sweating becomes a bother and bore after a while. So also the proliferation of all sort of insects. The only silver lining is the hope that we might have a good winter with so much water underground. 

Oh, and I must mention this: many thanks to young Pratyush Pan (a most unusual sort of engineer) for coaxing me to watch the new movie Heads of State on Amazon Prime. It is a masala movie with a good mix-up of hilarity, 'action', wisecracks and some deep thoughts; childish, really, but wonderfully entertaining even for an old geezer like me. I especially liked the idea of a Black British Prime Minister teaming up with a covert agent whose role is played by an Indian actress (Priyanka Chopra). That's healthy multiculturalism for you. I also liked the PM's constant digs at the American President - who is brash, silly, but brave with a heart of gold, over the gross American penchant for hyperventing (catchy taglines, noisy but brainless slogans, wild exaggerations as part of normal speech) which, alas, through the internet, too dominated by American tech platforms, is spreading rapidly worldwide. I am glad about the pushback. Are you listening, Google and Meta?

I think I have given the serious reader (yes, I love seriousness more and more!) enough food for thought and engagement, so bye for now.

AI brilliance for my YouTube story

Something laughably stupid happened only the other day while I was experimenting with AI (Meta/Llama). I asked it to draw me a cartoon of a monster rising out of the ground to swallow a Russian peasant. This was meant to go with the latest story I was planning to tell on my YouTube channel. I didn't like the first effort, so I asked it to modify the picture: show fertile land, not a desert; make the monster appear as if it is rising up from the land, make the peasant middle-aged, not old, and so on. Every effort was more ridiculous than the previous one. One actually gave the monster the face of an old man, presumably AI's idea of what a Russian peasant looks like - though why it thought that would fit the bill is beyond me. 

Anyway, I gave up trying after that, and decided to use the first one, despite not being happy with it. You can see the result here. While you are at it, don't forget to listen to the story right till the end: it's a good one, and very thought-provoking.

This and that

Good to see that many old posts are coming back into the most-read list again. I wonder, though, why A most frightening prospect, written about the fake and dangerous Anna Hazare-led 'anti-corruption' campaign, written long ago, has been recently occupying the top slot for quite some time at a stretch!

The CBSE's latest brainwave is giving board examination candidates two chances a year instead of one to get the scores they want. Ostensibly to reduce further the 'stress' (chaap, as Bengalis call it)  that the kids find unbearable these days. That too makes me wonder - how did we and our ancestors for several generations cope so quietly (without severe 'mental health issues'), when syllabi were far bigger, questions much tougher, marks given far more stingily, and everybody knew that only a genuinely bright few would do really well (and also that exam scores have very little predictive power about how successful a person would become in later material life)? The situation sits very uncomfortably with the competing idea that everybody 'needs' an education to do well in life, and everybody 'deserves' an education, everybody wants an education, and like all good things in life, it is a difficult attribute to acquire - it was never supposed to be a leisurely fun ride at parental expense for 18 to 20 years. As I remarked once not very long ago, why not drop this farce, this gigantic hypocrisy once and for all, and simply abolish mass education  beyond class 8 - seeing that, as everybody actually knows, 95% of jobs don't need much real education anyway? In any case, we do not respect and admire truly educated people any longer, do we? - it is only people with some sort of low- or high level technical skill (code writers and surgeons, for example) who are now called educated.

A good education, among many other vital things, would have made people more polite, gentle, courteous and considerate towards one another - because they would like to have the same good things in return. Who can deny, then, that we live in an increasingly uncivilized world, where 'educated' people (and that includes people who influence large numbers - politicians, writers, filmmakers and so on) care less and less about such niceties; indeed, have come to believe that crude vulgarity, needless aggression and callousness about other people's legitimate feelings are what makes you 'smart, cool and trendy'? These days I actually marvel at youngsters and their parents who can talk civilly, and still believe that good manners matter. Perhaps, like me, they are a dying breed, and perhaps, soon, things are going to take a turn towards the dark past, when all of us will have to carry weapons again (or bodyguards skilled with weapons) to protect not only our physical safety but dignity too? It pains me that I was born quiet, mild and self-effacing, but I have had to make myself a brash and harsh person on the outside (those who know me well know how different I am at heart), simply to survive in this sick, ugly social environment with head held high: most people give me a wide berth simply because I have painstakingly built a reputation for giving back worse than I get. Most people in this town who think and speak ill of me have learnt to do so carefully behind my back. Says much more about them than about me, if only they had the wits to figure that out!

[A happy coincidence: my daughter just sent me this YouTube video on a very popular channel (Deshbhakt) that talks about the same issue and pulls no punches. I am glad that some 'influencers' are saying exactly the same things that I do, the same way. Interested readers may also look up my 2019 post titled Guttersnipes]

I recently watched a 2023 movie called One Life featuring Sir Nicholas Winton (the elderly Winton played by Anthony Hopkins) who, too, saved a lot of (young) Jewish lives just before the Holocaust began. So actually quite a few people were strongly enough moved by their consciences to do just that, not just Oscar Schindler or Chiune Sugihara or Goering's brother. One lives and learns. I was also excited about the fourth season of the Panchayat series dropping on Amazon Prime, but judging by the first three episodes, I think I am going to be disappointed. And I read The Secret Keeper of Jaipur, a sort of sequel to The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi. A well-written mystery thriller, starring the same central character, but it doesn't tug at the heart strings as the former did.

This has been a rather long-drawn out June. Glad it's ending today. Funny monsoon going on: drizzling every day, but hardly any strong showers, and horribly muggy. I wonder what July has in store for us.

I was musing over how the English language has become impoverished (poor, for readers below forty), desiccated (dried up) and coarse over my lifetime. One of those things that hurt, because I have loved them so deeply. I have written in passing about this before, but it deserves a longer post of its own. So maybe next time. 

An ex student currently preparing for next year's UPSC exams brought me a list of the kind of topics on which they have to write compulsory thousand-word essays. Most of them, I was tickled to find, were right up my street, the kind of essays I have enjoyed writing all my life, the sort I have written again and again here on this blog. Maybe I'll try my hand at penning my thoughts on one or two of them here, just for the fun of it (yes, people have very different ideas of fun. I wouldn't be caught dead at a rock concert, a fashion show or on the galleries at a cricket match).

I also want to write a longish essay about our own Didi, because I admire her so much as a human being, if only I wasn't afraid that, as is people's wont these days, they would immediately brand me a 'sycophant' and a blind TMC supporter, neither of which I am. (Indeed, from a very dispassionate, rational, educated point of view, I actually wish that party to lose power next time round: three successive tenures at the helm of government is quite enough; after that, every party and ideology grows incompetent, smug and corrupt to the core). What a stupid and vulgar world it has become, where praise for the deserving without vested interest has become so suspect, yet shameless flattery flourishes...

Accidents and happier things

My heartfelt condolences for all those families who were bereaved by the catastrophic Air India Dreamliner crash in Ahmedabad on 12th June. May God give them strength to bear up and cope with their tragic loss, and may the souls of the departed rest in peace. This accident hits very close to home, because my older sister, who served with Air India till very recently, flew hundreds of times on the same aeroplane. And as the whole world knows by now, one man walked away from the flaming wreckage virtually unscathed. As we the devout like to say, raakhe Hari maare ke (who can slay the man whom God protects?). Remember the child who came back from the tsunami in Thailand back in 2004? A Jewish rabbi said only the other day in connection with the plane crash that it's not ultimately the technology and the pilots who save and kill, it's an infinitely greater power above. Even atheists should take time to reflect that in that attitude to life one may find a kind of solace and peace that no other philosophy has ever provided. It's the same attitude that helps best to stay calm before a major surgical operation, and every time your beloved child leaves home.

But I have a scientifically curious mind, too, and as some people may know, I have been an aircraft buff all my life: even as a teenager I could identify 'planes by the sound of their engines overhead, and reel off data about engine power and thrust to weight ratio and camber and angle of attack and yawing, rolling, pitching, banking and stalling speed and so on and so forth, so I simply cannot square what happened (unlike the Boeing 737 Max disaster a few years ago) with the fact that the machine was not very old, in good shape, had fairly recently undergone a thorough re-check for serious faults, and the pilot was a very experienced hand. Why were the flaps fully withdrawn while the landing gear had still not retracted, when just about anyone who knows anything about planes would swear that no sane pilot is likely ever to do that even by 'mistake' seconds after takeoff? And all this speculation about simultaneous loss of power in both engines, that is so, so unthinkably improbable that it strains credulity and goads one to start thinking superstitiously again... I am eagerly waiting for the final investigation report, and to know what the experts are going to do about it. And I shall still depend on the knowledge that statistically speaking, air travel remains the safest way to travel (but no, there is no special protective magic attached to seat number 11A, all you idiots).

Alas, instinctive socialist (and rational) man that I am, many disturbing thoughts come to my mind. Why do we make so much more fuss when people die in aircraft accidents than on trains, buses or on the road (more than 15,000 died on state and national highways alone last year); why do 26 terrorist victims manage to grab so much more attention, grief and outrage than, say, the 10,000 (at least) who died in the Odisha super cyclone of 1999? Isn't it only because air accidents involve well-off, well-connected, highly articulate, rich and super rich people? In this connection, remember that governments announce much larger compensation for aircraft-accident victims, too...

Meanwhile, moving on to a less morbid subject, here is a link to a Youtube video that might help lots of people - especially young people who have just begun to earn a living: it's about how to manage your finances wisely. Serious listeners will find that the speaker talks about 'spirituality' (!) in the same vein as I have been writing about the 'life of the spirit'. Paradoxically enough, having a spiritual orientation helps a great deal to make (and keep) money, and it has become increasingly necessary in an age when the whole world is provoking you to go in the opposite direction!

Strange 'monsoon' again: the first few showers gave a bit of relief from the heat, but since then the rain laden winds have moved up northwards, so Assam and North Bengal are already seeing their first floods, while we in the south are sweltering still. Oddly enough, the temperatures are much lower than what usually happens in mid-June, rarely going above 36 Celsius, but the humidity is oppressive (so it 'feels like' we are in the mid-forties), and the nights are too warm for comfort. The Met office says this is going to be a rainy week again: let's see if they get it right.

A Marwari old boy made my day yesterday by asking me to recommend some good fiction. Maybe it's time Bengalis started learning about culture from them!

I am already itching to make up plans for running away from Durga pujo again. I wish I could find a couple of good travel companions: it seems most of my favourites will be busy during that time this year. 

I wish I could get some encouraging and constructive feedback about the stories I am telling on YouTube, there on my channel or here. It would be of great help, believe me.

I am happy to report that the pipe I am smoking with a herbal (non-tobacco) mixture has been a good decision. And I am soon going to buy a pram - after 28 years - for the child of a dear old boy who is expecting a baby. Brings back glowing old memories!

Well, that's enough musing for now. I'll be back soon.

Turning into Sidhu Jyatha

I spent another deliciously restful and deeply satisfying week in Kolkata with my daughter and Swarnava. In a hundred little ways I am growing luckier as I grow older: not only because I am better off and Kolkata is a slightly nicer place to live in than in the 1980s (if you don't have to move about much!), but also because I have far less to worry about, far fewer people I have to pretend to respect and loving people to look after me. God, I can't stop saying how thankful I am. After life's fitful fever I relax well.

The last week, what with the early arrival of the monsoon, was rainy all through, and that was a big bonus, though the spells in between were horribly sultry when the air conditioners were switched off. My daughter says I always bring the rains along with me, whether in Delhi or in Kolkata, and indeed it has happened over and over again!

I was very well fed, and though I do not in general much enjoy eating out, the trip to China Town (Tangra) to dine at Golden Joy was a real treat; so was the Irani food that Pupu ordered in from sodabottleopenerwala, Berry Pulao and something else whose rather exotic name I have, unfortunately, forgotten.

Having found a lot of time to ease back and reflect - my favourite pastime lifelong - I mused over how much was repeating itself, only in a less vexing way. The college kids I looked at while driving past looked so similar to my own contemporaries from more than forty years ago that it seemed time had stopped. The lights are brighter, the streets are leafier, the power cuts almost a thing of the past. Hand-drawn rickshaws have nearly vanished, and even the toto-wallahs are far more likely to wear jeans and T-shirt than lungi and gamchha. A/c buses, autos and Rapido bike services have made hanging from bus doors history, and when all the Metro routes start functioning, travelling around will be as comfortable as it is in Delhi. 

Pupu and Swarnava keep asking anxiously every time whether I enjoyed my stay. Let this be on record: these days I come back only to make some more money while it is still to be made, and because there are a few dogs which are always delighted to see me back. Indeed, loving dogs now wait for me both here and there. More and more I incline to agree with Pupu's views on a lot of things - the girl has tried long and hard -  including the legend on her T-shirt: 'I like dogs more than people', sad though that makes me to admit it. My favourite boys have moved away, the girls have all forgotten me, as I should have expected them to, and Durgapur has given me only two things of long-term value: a livelihood and a low-cost, relatively quiet lifestyle. Any day Pupu migrates to some still-remote hill station and asks me to come along, I shall wind up here for good and move, lock stock and barrel, once and for all. And if I can still be of some practical use to them, whether it be housekeeping or nannying kids or writing stuff, I shall be quite fulfilled. Once my mother passes away, and I pray it is not too long now, I shall be the oldest member of my immediate family, and all I shall demand from God and man is that I be left in peace, until it is time for me too - my fondest dream for a long time has been to go like Don Vito Corleone.

For the young, life is all dreams, for the old, life is all memories. Very true for me. And since the memories are not uniformly good, I choose to dwell more and more on the good ones, shoving aside the rest. I wish readers would hark back to posts like Looking back, and Looking back once more, to find out how I do it. I also evaluate more and more (or 'judge', to use a currently popular buzzword - strictly inside my mind, of course) what has happened to me, what I have done, what I could have avoided and done better and so on. Strangely, I do not find much that I could have changed; I certainly don't think that given the circumstances, there was much that I could have actually avoided or done better. One thing I am not doing at my stage in life is trying to look, feel and act younger, whether that be by frequenting the gym or dressing a la mode or using fashionable slang or riding a heavy, noisy motorbike. I am happy the way I am - even with the no-frills, no nonsense style in which I am telling stories on YouTube - and if that draws people to me or drives them away, I am indifferent. It's people who tell me I don't look old or that I should do things to look and sound young who get my goat. Why can folks never be satisfied with the way they are, and why do they try so hard to impose their dissatisfaction on others?

One of my biggest regrets - one which I shall probably leave the world with - is that though my country has grown materially richer over my lifetime, as visible almost everywhere (see the fourth paragraph), it has definitely grown culturally poorer overall, whether you think in terms of things like congestion and pollution, or the general and huge decline of manners, intelligence, empathy and general knowledge in the sense of 'well stocked minds', helpful friendliness and such. So on the whole, to my mind at least, India remains a very unpleasant country to live in: and for those of us who wanted all along to see that she was 'developing', it is a deeply upsetting thing. You cannot even walk down a street without brushing past people talking about nothing but money, when they take a break from cricket or politics. Tragic, for a country which boasts ad nauseum about how culturally rich we are. Meanwhile, as a teacher, I shall probably retire with a deep sense of regret and failure, because too many of my students have become merely 'successful' (and that too, in a very petty middle class sense: no Ambanis and Dhonis and SRKs or Sundar Pichais among them!), and very few that I can boast about as truly good human beings in whose mental development I was proud to play a part. It is true, of course, that 99% of the parents expected nothing more from me than good exam scores, so I suppose I gave good value for money... but I didn't get much of what I had been looking for beyond making a living, that's for sure. Maybe that's true for every man?

I was exulting over crossing the one million page views milestone just a few months ago, and now, almost unnoticed, another 100,000-plus has been added to that number. Funny. I wonder, for the umpteenth time, which people keep reading, and why I get so little feedback. Some bloggers are much luckier. But anyway, maybe I shall have to stay satisfied with the little conversations I have here with that very small number who do keep commenting, and who are a pleasure to respond to, because they too can think and feel. That is a very vital reason why a liberal arts education is becoming more and more essential with the passage of time, though too few people yet recognize the need... civilization needs more and more people who can think and feel for themselves, not mere specialists who have no life of the mind and have become for all intents and purposes flesh and blood robots blindly following Standard Operating Protocols and 'systems'.

Well, anyway, as Tagore wrote, 'orey bheeru, tore upore nai bhuboner bhaar' (O coward, the world's responsibility has not been placed upon your shoulders)! So I guess as the years pass by, I shall more and more mind my own business. What that 'business' is likely to be hereafter, that is the question.

That's what I look like now, relaxing at home in the evening after classes, perusing the pipe - a habit I have revived after I guess more than two decades. One dear ex student commented that I look like Feluda's Sidhu Jyatha, and I am thrilled to bits. 

On AI again

It so happens that I am getting worried, and I do NOT think I am worrying needlessly.

One thing to remember: mankind invented everything that has really helped in the march of civilization - including language, the wheel, the knife, the light bulb, spectacles and the water closet, built everything from the pyramids to the Taj Mahal to the hydrogen bomb, went to the moon, decoded the DNA code and made possible in vitro fertilization, besides all the most wonderful works of art, music and literature, without AI - so what life changing things is AI likely to do for us hereafter? What sort of people are they who actually believe this nonsense and are helping it to spread?

Without AI but still with computers loaded with grammar- and spelling checkers, book editors and journalists write shoddily, pages filled with typos these days as they wouldn't have dreamt of doing even fifty years ago. Is AI likely to improve on this consequence of universal mental decay? (I read in today's newspaper that the IMD had 'forecasted' an 'anamoly' - I kid you not). These people still have jobs only because 99.99% of their readers are as unmindful or ignorant as they are.

I found out yesterday that the staff at my nearby drugstore in Kolkata (part of a major countrywide chain) cannot locate particular items on their shelves without checking for them on their 'systems' - whereas my old friend the chemist in Durgapur knows exactly where every one of his wares is. How will 'AI' help the former kind in keeping their jobs a little longer? And with or without AI, one of the insurance companies I used to be a customer of has been lately reminding me to update my KYC, oblivious of the fact that I closed my account with them more than a year ago - obviously their 'system' has not been updated because some (human) idiot behind the computers forgot to do his job on time: will AI really help them, and keep them from bothering me for nothing?

I don't understand all the current rage for integrating AI with just about everything: they are advertising AI-empowered TV, air conditioners and fans already; how much longer before we are sold AI-powered cakes and burgers? As for the supposed urgent need for 'integrating' AI in the classroom at all levels from school to university, exactly what does it mean? Think of a boy in high school (and remember I have been a professionally successful teacher for forty odd years): he must use his mind, and that in a disciplined, rigorous, prolonged, attentive fashion whether he wants to learn a language, mathematics or chemistry, right? He can at most be helped or hindered depending on whether his teachers are informed and skilled and wise at their work or duds. If the teacher can't teach well and the student cannot or does not want to learn, there will be no learning. Are there any two ways about it? How exactly will AI help to achieve that goal faster and better? Meanwhile, I can vouch from my own very recent classroom experience that a few of my students - actually, the stupidest of them, meaning those who cannot even understand why they are coming to me in the first place - have already 'integrated' AI into their work long before the bureaucrats and school boards have drawn up their plans. One boy, whom I caught out because he was using words in his answers which were far beyond his ken confessed that he was using the summary of the comprehension passage that ChatGPT had made for him, because the original was 'too much' for him to grasp. And I hear that PhD scholars are doing virtually the same thing simply because they cannot write basic prose any more. Is that a prevision of the near future? Why not shut down this whole thing called education once and for all, then?

And also meanwhile, the head of Google's AI development division is warning today's teenagers in school to prepare to handle AI in order to stay relevant in the job market 10-15 years from now. Others of his ilk are confidently (and apparently gleefully-) predicting job losses by the hundreds of millions, tens of millions of college graduates among them. So what kind of jobs will remain? A few thousand AI geeks, and maybe those whose work cannot be taken away by AI? Cooks and nurses, fish vendors and farmers and washermen, for example, since sufficiently skilled and versatile robots have turned out to be prohibitively expensive, if at all technically feasible? And maybe a few real teachers, serving those who still really want to learn something and know that real learning of anything involves close face to face human interaction, whether that be kung fu or literature?

And do the tech wizards really think that the hundreds of millions who lose their jobs in their youth (or never find any) are going to take it lying down?

Blogs, books and YouTube

 I am jotting down several passing ideas here before they fly away:

Seventeen years ago I wrote a post titled 'Forty five and counting'. I should have written one headed 'Sixty and still counting' in 2023, but I somehow forgot. Maybe I'll make up for it when I am sixty five, if I am still around and capable of thinking and writing!

I just learned that there are still elders in our town who are feeding their teenage children or grandchildren the old chestnut that 'If you work hard through school and college, you will have a good, assured and cushy career ever afterwards.' Who says only kids believe in fairy tales?

That old post called 'Lust Stories' is now beginning to irritate me. It was meant to be a sober review of a four-part movie which dealt - pretty soberly on the whole, can't even be called soft porn - with the issue of contemporary sexuality and related problems in India. It stays perpetually high on the most read list, for an absurd reason, as my Google search history recently informed me: many people stumble upon it while randomly searching for smut! I don't want to delete the post for good, but someone please tell me what else I can do about it.

I do wish that those who are enjoying my weekly storytelling on YouTube would write longer and more articulate comments (somehow just 'Great story Sir!' sounds very flat and unfulfilling), and spread the word among relatives and friends. I am glad to note that a few of my pupils' parents have become regular and appreciative listeners already. I shall be delighted to get advice about how to spread my reach beyond the immediate circle of students and ex students. Viewers are also welcome to suggest what they would like to hear next, as long as they don't repeat books and authors who have been done to death already.

I was going through posts written years ago, and I am beginning to wonder that I have written so much for so long on so many serious subjects. Besides raising a child and teaching for more than four decades, I shall definitely remember writing this blog as the most important thing I did with my life. How much it benefited others I shall leave my readers to decide.

Coming to books, I read something wonderful recently: The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King, which tells about a young female assistant (and gradually friend) that Sherlock Holmes finds in his advancing years, someone who is both his intellectual equal and on his side (unlike Moriarty), and who first trains under him then starts solving cases with him. The book was written in 1994 - strange that I didn't come across it for so long (thanks once again, Pupu)! - and it evolved into a 20-volume series. It was pure delight to read it: find out why for yourself. But maybe I shall not read the succeeding volumes: I don't want to contemplate Holmes growing increasingly rusty and senile. Healthy bit of feminism there, too - though the author has been most ahistorical in ascribing King Henry VIII's inability to have a legitimate son to his alleged syphilis (Henry did actually have more than one son), and it is a trifle rich to hear the girl saying to herself 'What do men know about driving?' while herself driving like a crazy drunk, barely avoiding serious accidents.

Tailpiece: I don't know whether I should be writing this - these days people are being hauled away by the police for less - but I greatly enjoyed listening to Avay Shukla's interview by Karan Thapar on YouTube today. Mr. Shukla, a retired IAS officer and popular blogger, has written in a recently published book that India is turning into a land of duffers. Look him up on Wikipedia, and watch the interview if you care and dare.

I end for now by asking my most favourite old boys and girls a very important question. Suppose I entirely stop giving private tuition to high-school goers at 65, what would be the best thing for me to do next? And how can you help me do it? I am asking very seriously, mind you, because it is about how I can most enjoy the dusk of my life.

AI rising, NI sinking

I still read The Telegraph of Calcutta daily, despite all the fluff and the garbage, and today the same paper carried two very, very thought-provoking, disturbing reports. One is that the new Pope, Leo XIV (a mathematics scholar, too!), in his first public audience, has identified AI as one of the greatest contemporary threats to 'human dignity, justice and labour'. Go back to the post titled The Life of the Spirit (first part), where I quoted Stephen Hawking gloomily forecasting the threat to civilization posed by AI. The very highest, keenest, most informed minds from  the worlds of science and spirituality now agree on this, as do humble I, while schoolteachers, journalists, engineers (at least a section of them) and tech entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley are going gaga over how rapidly technology is advancing, and what a golden age it is about to usher in for humankind. Bears thinking about, doesn't it? Keeps reminding me about Tagore's Muktodhara and Roktokorobi, and movies like Wall-E and the Matrix series.

The other was a recent interview of Shashi Tharoor, who has acquired a cult following as a user of 'sophisticated' English. In reply to a question, he said that more worrying to him than the rapidly diminishing power of communication among people (at least linguistic communication) in the age of Whatsapp and Instagram is the equally rapidly diminishing power of comprehension: people no longer have the intelligence, common sense, knowledge, wisdom or patience to reflect and understand anything that is nuanced, ambivalent, multi-layered in meaning: everything has to be reduced into simple binaries, right or wrong, good or bad, true or false, at the comic book level: whether it is about Gandhi deserving respect or Germany deserving all the blame for World War I or Trump being God or the Devil incarnate. I quote Tharoor: "... there have been studies demonstrating that today's young people are not able to engage with complex texts and in-depth reading. And this is really worrying... because unless one reads in depth, one is not able to gain very complicated ideas. You are then dealing with superficial ideas expressed in simple terms, which are very short... and that can really make you far more susceptible to propaganda... because you simply don't have the background and the complexity to understand that the issue is more complicated than they are describing, that there are actually more nuances and elements in it... that is really worrying".

I can only vouch for how absolutely right he is. I have been giving vocabulary and comprehension exercises to thousands over nearly four decades, and I have seen the precipitous decline in average mental capacity. I can also see, from the contents of syllabi and public examinations, how there is a concerted, global enterprise of deliberately dumbing down people by the hundreds of millions, so that they can grow up to become only drudges and mindless, undiscriminating consumers/publicizers of worthless goods and political propaganda: that alone is science or history which The Great Leader and his billionaire-techie friends say it is. AI  rapidly rising, NI rapidly sinking... I shudder to think of the world in the making.

Nor'wester!

I just want to put this on record: after many, many years, it is actually cold here today, on May the first! After the third kaalbaishakhi of the season (that itself had been playing truant for three successive summers at least), the temperature fell so sharply in the evening that I had to switch off the fans, and some of the kids were shivering as we stood in the squall outside my classroom, waiting for their parents. Well, at 21 degrees celsius right now, it at least feels cold, given that barely a week ago the mercury was nudging 39, and the weather app said it 'felt like' 46! 

Can't remember when the weather gods made me so happy in the recent past. All you who sleep tonight, sleep well, wherever you are. 

What's happening?

Rest assured, readers, I haven't forgotten this blog. Just been coping with summer, and new batches, and enthusiastically recording and uploading stories in the form of podcasts on YouTube (the current playlist is titled Goppoguchchho, with a tip of the hat to the bearded maestro). Also, growing more and more disheartened with writing because of the sad lack of comments and engaging discussions. Saddest of all, people insist on commenting via phone or Whatsapp, but simply won't write on the blog itself.

Besides, I have started cultivating a new hobby - cooking - after living 61 years without ever feeling the need for it. Too many reasons to list: among them, the desire to acquire one more dimension of independence, to stay more engaged with life as I grow old, the fact that I have always greatly admired good cooks, the theory that learning a new skill rejuvenates the brain cells, the need to fill the increasing amount of free time I have started allowing myself lately, etc etc. I have started with the basics - bhaat, daal, posto, dimer dalna - and I do not intend to go much further than saak and a chicken dish or two, because I do not have any lofty notion about my innate ability. But that should be enough to salve my ego. I blame all the women who have lovingly fed me all my life for the culinary illiteracy I have been saddled with, till now.

I have been growing more and more annoyed with an insufferable generation of parents (not all of them, of course, but a most disquieting proportion) who are now sending their children to me - those in the late thirties to late forties age group. Most middle class, middle aged people have always been stupid and coarse, vain and uninformed and fond of talking rot when they should stay quiet, but this generation really takes the cake. I wrote a piece called Juvenilia 16 years ago - do look it up, it will save me the trouble of dreary repetition - and simply nothing has changed, except for the worse. Really, civilization has been replaced by cars and phones and branded clothing. Given enough money in the bank, I'd have run away to my own little chalet in the hills, inviting only such guests as fit my definition of civilized. I am sure I wouldn't be troubled by too many visitors!

These days, I scroll through the phone to find out things that give me hope that there are still people who are doing their own thing, and good things at that, things that keep them happy while healing the planet (or at least harming it a little less than others). There is a web magazine called The Better India which feeds me with stories like that - I recently read about a young lady who has given up her media job and joined hands with her retired dad to open up something called BaapBeti Farm somewhere near Pune, and another housewife in Mumbai who has trained her family to reduce, recycle and reuse waste instead of throwing it all away. There is also a local initiative called Support Elders - the name ought to be self-explanatory - with whom I am planning to get involved. And I have some hopes of those old boys and girls, my own daughter prominently among them, who have stayed close to me: not that they will all become great, but maybe good, socially valuable human beings. Sparks of light in the enveloping darkness...

I have quite a store of stories to tell on YouTube - I have for now decided that I shall upload one every Friday - but there, too, I shall be glad to have ideas and suggestions to keep me going. And likes and subscriptions and comments, which will assure me that I am not hollering down a bottomless abyss. As for new readers, do look up the old posts on my channel too: some of you may find them interesting and useful.

Tailpiece: It tickles my funny bone when some people tell me that they still look up my Facebook page now and then. Funny, because I use it for no other purpose than as a notice board for current and future students and their parents!

Start of new podcast series

I have been urged and prodded to start telling stories anew on the internet. I am using both YouTube and Spotify to post the files. I shall decide after some time whether to keep both or just one of them. I welcome all my readers here to try them as I go along, and let me know their opinions, along with suggestions for further posts.

The Youtube link is 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vyi0l3unlx0&ab_channel=SuvroChatterjee 

while the Spotify link is 

https://open.spotify.com/show/4D4LsEQTuGZ8asubC2OKq5.

Note: You can write comments on Youtube. Also please 'like' the posts if you will. And subscribe... that's how I'll know that my audience is growing. 

As I go along, you can help me by spreading the word in your own respective circles on the Net.

P.S., Friday, April 11th: The second podcast is up there on Spotify. Click on this link. And please let me know whether you are having any problems with accessing it, along with your reactions/comments.

P.P.S., April 16th: The Spotify channel is temporarily suspended. Continue to listen to podcasts on my YouTube channel only (just type in my name) - usually there will be a new one every Friday :). 

End-March diary entry

February and March went off with reasonably balmy weather on the whole this time, thanks to the unseasonal but very welcome drizzles last week. This weekend is predicted to be hot again, but that is only to be expected. If we are lucky, we might have some more rainy spells, as it happens in some years, so that we might be spared long weeks of relentless heat from April to July.

My admission season is practically over, though a few more will probably keep trickling in. From April onwards, it will be full season again, but for the first time in more than a quarter century, the workload will still be much lighter, only four days a week with two classes a day. I will have much more time to get post-lunch naps than ever before. Who says there are no perks to getting old? SRK anxiously declares ‘I’m not old’ and has to jump about monkey-fashion on stage to stay cool and relevant. Poor chap. I am proud and glad that I am old. So who’s winning?

So many things are coming full circle in the fullness of time. Many of my most beloved youngsters are getting married and having children of their own, and helping me to relive wonderful memories. And while I am still working for my keep, I can regard my earnings more and more as a nice pension rather than a huge and frightening responsibility. I can get more quirky and cranky with impunity – my inner circle will indulgently bear with it and forgive, and how many of those outside give me a wide berth will matter less and less with every passing year.

Thanks to Bibhas, I came across a vlog called ‘Goobie and Doobie’ on YouTube recently, made by a ‘loser’, a successful and high-earning Japanese-American neurosurgeon who gave up that life to be, in his own words, an unemployed wanderer, nature blogger, lay philosopher and ‘happy for the first time in his life’. A real life instance of The Monk who sold his Ferrari. I have grown very fond of him very quickly. More power to his elbow. Try it sometime if you have a much bigger attention span than the typical under-40.

I am reading the last of the Maisie Dobbs series, knowing, sadly, that the author has decided never to add to the list. I had grown very fond of Maisie, and immersed in her life. Recently, also, I read a book called Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel, that was truly very interesting – the early part of the Ramayana written from the perspective of someone who has a strongly feminist perspective and is also one of the least remembered or most reviled (a difficult to achieve combination!) characters in the epic. Strongly recommended, though not quite as lyrical and mellifluous as Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Palace of Illusions.

Thanks to Google photos, I recently discovered that a lot of people who broke off the connection with me long ago still keep sneakily looking up my blog. I wonder what keeps bringing them back, when they have ostensibly lost all interest in keeping in touch with me? A guilty conscience, secret admiration, sheer perverseness, or just endless time to kill?

On the government going after ‘comedians’ who mock and provoke the powers that be – because this issue has been much in the news lately – as a moderate conservative with very reasoned and firm views over a lifetime, I am very much in favour of free speech, but I strongly dislike grown up people who confuse freedom with licence: toilet humour is NOT an essential part of freedom of speech, it is actually very unhealthy for the future of society and civilization, especially if it becomes the only kind of humour that people enjoy. Crudeness, loud vulgarity and abuse are no good or essential part of ‘criticism’; never have been. Let the comedians learn a little about what good and effective comedy as well as criticism can be and should be. Their ‘responsibility’ to democracy does not end with making the great unwashed masses titter along.

I am sad to see that despite repeated requests here, so few have ‘found the time’ to leave behind a few fond recollections about their time with me (the link for the relevant Google form is given on the top of the right hand column here – but if you are reading this on a phone, you have to visit the web version). Conversely, I am very happy to see that several old posts have come back into the most-read list – it means that some people, instead of merely visiting the home page, are actively exploring this blog. I am sure they will not be disappointed with things they find; in fact, some of them might wonder that Sir said these things already so many years ago! Especially when it comes to books, videos and movies, I shall be glad to hear some thank you-s from those who enjoyed my recommendations.

Last trip of the season

My travel season started early this time round, with the Ooty-Mudumalai trip in October, and ended with a visit to the Dooars in North Bengal.

End-February is a time I treasure, because it is one of the few occasions when I get a long break from work, and the weather is still decent enough. So off I went to Siliguri on the 28th to see a cousin whom I had been promising to visit since 2014. A one-day halt, then I moved on to a resort in Lataguri, right on the edge of the Gorumara Wildlife Sanctuary, a barely two-hour drive. This was the very first time I was doing Dooars – ironical, since I have travelled to so many other forests around the country – and I discovered that a) Gorumara is seriously underrated, if you love forests with or without sightings of ‘exciting’ animals, b) many of the other now well-known hotspots, such as Chalsa, Murti, Tilapara and Batabari are actually only a few miles down the same highway, c) if you want to make a jungle safari, Lataguri is your best choice, because everybody has to come here to enter the jungle anyway. At this magical time of the year (schools everywhere keeping kids and parents busy with exams) everything was quiet, and it was a very nice two-night stay, with elephants and bison actually coming up to the gates at nightfall.  

Then off via Manbazar and Gorubathan through lush tea gardens into the hills. I stopped for an overnight stay at a lovely little homestay called Alpine Resort in the village of Kashyem near Kalimpong, very close to the better-known Ichchegaon and Sillery Gaon, which had been highly recommended by an elderly lady friend, and Bob Thapa the proprietor did not disappoint. If you want peace and quiet and long walks among the pines and lovely views of distant snow-capped mountain peaks (Kanchenjunga and Nathu-La among others), lungfuls of clean air and delicious hot local cuisine made from mostly home-grown stuff`without too much luxury and at a very modest price, this is the right get-away-from-it-all spot for you: noisy families, please stay away. For those not interested in noise and shopping (but the wi-fi connection is good), Bob's phone number for booking in advance is 8918112692.

Last stop, another two-hour drive to Bhalukhop village on the other side of Kalimpong to stay overnight with a sadhubaba friend (all personal details must be kept private) which had been very long in the planning. I could spend whole afternoons sunbathing on the wind-swept terrace, and spending the chilly evening staring at the lights of Rangpo in the middle distance. Suffice it to say that we enjoyed ourselves so much that we both deeply regretted that we were parting so soon, and I promised to return (this despite the fact that I had survived a rice with fish curry lunch at 5 p.m. Another first in life – I am living dangerously).

Back to Siliguri, and Durgapur on 5th March, after having woken up at the ungodly hour of 3.30 a.m. Again, it seems I am getting into a bad habit, but it couldn’t be helped. By the way, it was the Vande Bharat for the onward journey and Shatabdi on the way back. I can safely report that the former is a con game – in NO way better, yet grossly overpriced. Unless it is purely for matters of time-convenience, I am never going to take a Vande Bharat again – nor, I suspect, will millions of other Indians who have tried it once just for fun.

My mother had accompanied me on the entire trip. I was on tenterhooks all the way for all nine days, but she bore up wonderfully well, the magnificent eighty-year old.

Here the summer is already upon us. Today, says the weather app, is going to be the first time in six months that the mercury is going to reach that horrible tipping point – 37 degrees Celsius, and there are fears that the first of the heat waves is already about to strike. The last two summers were very nasty: God knows what is in store for us this time round.

You will find a few photos here.

The life of the spirit, part four

Now, to answer the questions that I myself raised at the end of the last post on this subject.

Materially speaking, I had a difficult early life, though we were never exactly poor, made harder still because in my mid-teens we abruptly fell on hard times, and then there was a long struggle before I was comfortably off again and reasonably secure in an Indian urban middle class sense. That should be kept in mind if one is to appreciate what I am going to say in the following paragraphs.

Two very helpful things happened to me early on that made it much easier to cope with worldly life than it is for most people of my class. One, I became intensely and empathetically aware of extreme poverty around me, which made bearing my own cross, such as it was, a relative breeze because I had made a habit of counting my blessings constantly, as few people do. Two, I learnt early to define my own real (worldly) needs clearly and definitively. There were things that were essential, things that were nice to have or do but not really necessary for my physical and mental wellbeing, and things that were most definitely unwanted, distasteful, harmful to my health, pocket and peace. Interestingly, that set of values has never altered much, only more and more items have by themselves moved from the second category to the last. I must add a third thing here upon reflection: ever growing contempt and lack of pity for people who waste their lives endlessly chasing the things in the second and third categories. Here is an illustrative though not exhaustive list of things in my three categories.

In the first were things like living in my own house, a fixed and moderate work routine, a bit of regular leisure, occasional holidays to travel in, lots of reading and watching movies and writing, not having to kowtow to society and bosses at the workplace, much ‘quality time’ to give to my daughter (and now mother), money enough to fulfill every basic need of the family, including education, healthcare, insurance and saving for old age, and much scope for adda with likeminded people. Through economy, diligence, persistence and God’s grace I have achieved all that, though some of it took time (so what? Only makes the achievements sweeter).

In the second category came things like swimming round the year, going frequently to beautiful places abroad, savouring haute cuisine now and then, becoming ‘famous’ for my work, living in a much cleaner, quieter, greener, more orderly place with a much more temperate climate and suchlike. I have enjoyed a bit of all that, and I hanker less and less for them with the passage of years, except perhaps for the last.

In the third category come all the things that most people around me run after all through life – everything from high scores in examinations to fancy weddings and regular parties at posh hotels and constantly replaced fashionable clothes, shopping for and flaunting branded goods of all kinds, obsessing over looks, counting ‘likes’ on social media and, above all, doing things simply because ‘everybody’ around them is doing the same, from watching cricket on TV to going on pilgrimages to seeking a job in Bangalore or Umrica. I have tasted most such things, found all of them unnecessary or downright silly and annoying after a bit, so I stopped wanting these things for myself early on, nor do I want them for my daughter. As I said earlier, I feel only contempt and complete lack of pity for the ‘sufferings’ of such people, because they have brought all that suffering – from severe indebtedness to poor health, perpetual frustration, jealousy, discontent and depression – upon themselves. Tagore describes them with these words: ami joto bhaar joraye phelechhi/ sokoli hoyechhe bojha (I have entangled myself with a burden which is hard to carry).

Many sad and bad things have happened to me, and will continue to happen, yet I have walked through my life with on the whole much less angst and misery than most. Tell me, reader, can you see how being ‘spiritual’ has helped me all along the way, or do I have to spell it out even further?

And this was only the passive aspect of being spiritual – not being affected overmuch by the ways of the world. I would not have ventured to write such a long and involved series of essays unless I was sure there was a positive side also – being able to ‘enjoy’ this worldly life (despite always having known that ‘Life is sorrow’) much more than the average individual because I have been spiritual for most of my life: at least since I started praying every night in kindergarten. That is what I shall briefly touch upon next.

To begin with, I have had immense pleasure, while at the same time acquiring knowledge of every kind, from reading all my life (I always say that 90% of all I know came from outside syllabi and textbooks), and listening to music. The same goes for writing, and I have been writing stuff since I was a pre-teen. I have greatly enjoyed the gift of laughter, and thousands of ex-students will vouch that I have shared it with them. I have been a good listener to more people than I can remember or count, and, as I have found out for myself, good listeners are desperately needed and very hard to find. These things in turn have hugely helped in my professional work; even more so the fact that through endless drudgery, disappointment and frustration (so many people simply can’t or won’t learn), I have been able to regard my work as a calling and not just a means of livelihood. I fear I would have burnt out much sooner otherwise: teaching is not everyone’s cup of tea.

I have found time for lots of sleep, which, as the Bard famously wrote, ‘knits up the ravelled sleeve of care’, as also walked tens of thousands of kilometers, and while I am infinitely thankful for it, I congratulate myself that I could do it because I could determinedly cut off all kinds of distractions and silly engagements all along. I have eaten a lot of good food without falling ill, simply because I never overindulged my palate. I have trained myself not to be too unhappy about all the things that I supposedly wanted and did not get in this lifetime – and lo! it turned out by and by that I never really wanted those things very much after all, only imagined for a while that I did, from a particular girl to a particular job (hence the prayer ‘not my will, O Lord, but Thy will be done’ has become ever more profoundly meaningful). I have learned to bear pain and sorrow and loss without making too much fuss, especially in the traditionally prescribed demonstrative way. I no longer expect much by way of lasting love and companionship from human beings. This has been particularly hard to learn and accept, because I was born deeply emotional and expectant with a very long memory, but now it is well learnt: all I have to remind myself whenever I feel bad is that people are weak and confused and changeable, they like to cheat themselves and pretend what they do not feel, so anyone who is looking for true love simply must turn to either fairy tales or to God. I am sure that both for myself and my loved ones, death, if it comes at the end of a decently long life and without too much pain and shame and dragging along, should be welcomed with open arms. And, finally, that life only makes sense if one spends the largest part of it looking for That Which Stands Beyond – see Come to God, the last chapter of my book (and that was written more than twenty years ago, when I was far from being an old man).

All this is what I have tried and found out and benefited from through my pursuit of spirituality as I understand it. Yoga and pranayam, mantras and wondering about God have filled the interstices, in case you haven’t noticed. Though I have not once claimed that they are essential and primary, the reflective reader will perhaps realize that in a very fundamental sense, they are. Also, as some of my best readers have pointed out, I have said most of these things here and there in a scattered way in numerous blogposts, so in a sense I am saying nothing new. Indeed, there is nothing new about the pursuit of spirituality: all that needs to be said has been said countless times over thousands of years. The point is to help people understand how important, necessary and life-changing it can be if they can see its urgent relevance in the here and now. If I get to know that I have helped half a dozen people to see it, my life’s work will have been well done.

By the way, I am delighted that this series of essays has brought back an old favourite post of mine, The worship of the wealthy, into the most-read list. I should have liked many more people to read up the post titled Socialism calling, part two, also.

Beyond this point, I should like to field questions, if there are any. Otherwise, I think I have now written enough on this subject.

Kanha, paradise

(click on photo for larger view)

I made a whistle-stop trip to Kanha Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh last week, flying out from Kolkata to Raipur in Chhattisgarh on Wednesday the 29th and returning on Saturday evening. It was well worth all the money and all the physical strain 😊

The last time I had visited was with my boys from the school, back in December 1991, a few months after returning from America. That, done in youth on a shoestring budget, remains a very rich and happy memory (I hope reading this post will ring a bell with some of the boys who went with us if they are reading this – they are almost fifty now!); this, done in much more luxurious style, will remain another treasured experience lifelong.

My companions this time round were only three (I think the ’91 team was 42 strong): my very good friend-cum-mentor Saibal, his wonderful wife Kulbeer, and young Abhishek, who is on the way to becoming my fellow traveller of choice on future jungle safaris.

The road trip to Kanha Jungle Resort, in Bamhni village, tehsil Baihar, district Balaghat, a couple of kilometers from the Mukki Gate which leads into the forest, took four hours and a half, so we arrived a little before 9. The resort was a delight, very leafy, with plush cottages adorned with hurricane lanterns hung from hooks out on the porches, and auto-dimming lights all around the garden. Even a swimming pool, though it was too early in the year for that. The staff was smart, efficient, and very, very polite. Saibal, being an old Kanha hand, was on friendly terms with everyone, from the proprietor to the drivers and guards and waiters, so we had special treatment all through. A couple of nightcaps before we turned in, knowing that it was going to be a very long day ahead.

On Thursday we woke up at 4:40 a.m., and were in the forest department Gypsy by 5:30. The Mukki Gate opens at 6 sharp, and a long procession of vehicles, each provided with an enthusiastic guide (many of them young and earnest women), trooped into the forest before diverging along different trails. We made four trips in all – one on Thursday morning (five hours and a half), another that afternoon (three hours and a half), and the same again on Friday. It was gruelling, trundling along on rutted kuchcha roads through clouds of dust, but the scenery was breathtaking – everything from vast sal groves and limpid lakes, man-high anthills, long stretches of grassy meadow and trees curling up other trees in out of the world shapes to peacock, langurs and monkeys, jackal and mongoose and cormorant and lapwing and crested eagle, Indian bison (gaur), spotted deer, barking deer, sambar, barasingha, leopard, bear, and, hold your breath: tigers every time we went in, ambling so close by you could reach out and touch their flanks, utterly indifferent to human presence, lords of all they survey. Only real wildlife crazies will know how fortunate that was: we met people, including professional photographers, who had been on the ‘hunt’ for whole days at a stretch without a single sighting. The only major species we missed was the wild hunting dog (dhole). Though it was chilly and foggy at daybreak, it quickly grew hot, the maximum rising to 32 degrees and minimum never going below 12 – most unfortunate, since traditionally it is supposed to be icy cold at this time of the year…

I cried off the third trip, firstly because, being the only senior citizen in the group, I couldn’t miss my beauty sleep four days in succession, and secondly because I needed some quiet, still time to myself for all-round enjoyment of everything that was on offer. So I awoke late, had a very leisurely breakfast, then spent several hours sunbathing outside my cottage, feet up on the wicker table, listening to birdsong and the wind whispering among the trees, watching butterflies, sometimes listening to music and sometimes meditating. It was as close to heaven as one can hope to reach on earth. I must not forget to mention that, to top off everything, every meal was absolutely delicious, leaving me struggling not to overeat.

Setting off on the road back at about ten on Saturday morning, I was back in Durgapur just about twelve hours later, Firoz having picked me up at Kolkata airport as he had dropped me off before. I slept like a log.

Kanha well deserves its reputation as one of the best maintained wildlife reserves in India. There are 100 odd tigers on the prowl right now. I bought a book, Shaping Kanha, which details all the loving and painstaking effort that has gone into it over many successive decades – and, strange to say about government officers (in this case foresters), they sound truly committed and passionate about their work. I also learnt about various NGOs which are giving yeoman service to the cause, including the one which had trained one of our guides; find them at natureguides.in if you have time on your hands and truly want to engage with something fulfilling, something that can change your life. I wish I were not too old for that sort of thing.

Bibhuti Bhushan wrote in Aranyak (I am translating as I quote from memory): ‘A day is coming when this earth will have been laid bare of all flora and fauna. May this forest survive for the material and spiritual sustenance of the unfortunate generations who live in such times’. These words kept haunting me as I travelled, every mile of the way, as well as that ominous prediction by some old Red Indian chief, ‘only when the last tree has died, the last fish has been caught, and the last river poisoned will we realize that we cannot eat money’. Thank God some people have paid heed, and I pray most earnestly that many more of our young will. In sharp contrast, here is a lament from the book I mentioned above: ‘In spite of living in the internet age, with so much progress (sic) in education, specially in urban areas, the state of awareness about nature and wildlife conservation is abysmally low in the young generation. The importance and role of wildlife and protected areas are hardly understood, let alone appreciated’. Will things change for the better before it is too late?

For some more photos, click here. All the best photos were taken by Abhishek.