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!

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 goes incompetent, smug and corrupt to the core). What a stupid and vulgar world it has become...