My daughter and Brigadier Gerard

Storytelling has been a strong tradition over generations in our family, and I have carried it forward both as a teacher and a father. Now I have always been a man of many interests, so naturally my stories have covered a very wide swathe of life, but history has always figured rather largely, not only because it lends itself so well to storytelling (imagine doing it with chemistry!) but because it helps so much to know the ways of mankind, and yes, because I have always loved it dearly.

That perhaps goes some way to explain why my daughter developed an early and abiding interest in history and, unlike most middle-class Indian kids, not encumbered with desperate parental obsession with medical or engineering careers, she chose to read it in college. As she tells me, in her final year, she might not go on to become a professional historian, but she has definitely enjoyed reading her course. I have hugely enjoyed myself discussing her course material with her too: that has been a bonus; not too many parents can relish such a pastime. I have often egged her on to write about things she has read and thought about. Very recently, she wrote a term paper about the connection between formal history and literature, focusing on one particular classic work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. She loved writing it, got the highest marks in class for it, and I managed to persuade her to put it up on her blog, if only so that she can look back on it decades later and smile. Here it is.

I am glad indeed that I could not only persuade my own daughter at least that education is meant for enlightenment and enjoyment, not merely a means to a job, but could afford to let her take her time to realize it. She is going on 21, and I know she will not regret it, and neither will I. At the same time, I still do not worry about her finding a good career for herself. From all I have seen of life, with the blessing of Providence, any intelligent person who is willing to work hard for a long stretch can find a reasonably decent career. When most parents worry about how their kids can be ‘established’ in life (a very popular word in Indian English) unless they restrict themselves to chasing just one or two well-worn professions, their real worry is how their kids can ‘afford’ to be different from the herd. It is a sickness by which far too many young lives have been blighted: both as a father and a teacher I hope that my daughter’s generation will not fall prey to it as parents in their turn…   

Obituary

The newspaper that my father put on its feet in Sikkim published this obituary on 17th September.

The full first page can be seen at the Sikkim Express website. Look up the Sept. 17 issue in the archives (search box in the top right hand corner). 

To My Daughter redux

I first announced that To My Daughter was in print back in March 2014.

It's been more than three years since then. And surprise, surprise... the book has been selling slowly but steadily, which is far more than I had expected, seeing it is self-declaredly not an entertainer, and demands close and intelligent attention of any reader. The publishers had made a deal that I shall start earning royalties only after a certain number of copies had been sold, and this month they have remitted the first payment to my bank account. A very small amount, but it is the symbolic significance that counts. If you write a book, and it keeps selling, you will get paid for it as long as you live, and your offspring will continue to be paid long after you are gone. Besides, in a country like ours, it is rare for any author to get paid for writing, unless he writes textbooks or penny dreadfuls. I am being paid for nearly a decade and a half for my Oxford Tagore translations, and now here is this addition. I guess my daughter can take a bit of pride: not many of her friends can claim that their dads earn book royalties!

To all those who have not only bought the book but read it, here is a reminder request: please write reviews on any of the websites which advertise my book (see the previous post, linked above), or on goodreads. It will help to spread the word around, and that is the best kind of advertisement. This was not a commercial enterprise, so I am spending no money on publicity; the only publicity it will get is by word of mouth. And thank you all in advance. 

To those who haven't read the book yet, a gentle nudge: unless your attention span is no bigger than what it takes to read a tweet, try it. It will not be a waste of time and money. I have already been thanked by quite a number of people for writing the book.

In passing, I note that a 2011 post I wrote, titled A most frightening prospect, about Anna Hazare's anti-corruption campaign, which had then become all the rage countrywide and is now quite forgotten, has reached the most-read list today. Do take a look, and go through all the comments on it too. Doesn't it sound very quaint today? What does it teach you about the public character, and about sudden wild enthusiasms? To all my current and ex-students, this is what I mean by saying that I am always teaching, and this blog is an extension of my classroom. Whether you learn anything of value or not is, of course, entirely up to you...