January note

First off, I find it strange that I asked in a blogpost about your predictions for general elections 2019, and no one replied. Is it because no one noticed the question, or because most of India is holding its cards very close to its chest? If that is the case, most exit polls will get the results hopelessly wrong.

I managed to watch Thugs of Hindostan, and I cannot figure out where the loud chorus of disappointment around the country is coming from. There’s good cinematography and passable special effects, enough razzmatazz to please the average cinegoer, the storyline is no more ahistorical and silly than the average Bollywood concoction that manages to break all sorts of box office records, and Aamir Khan – I rather liked his Firangi Malla act, by the way, regardless of the unacknowledged debt to Captain Jack Sparrow – has himself got away with far cruder and sillier things before (remember how someone in Three Idiots getting an electric shock by peeing onto to a wired spoon became wildly popular?), so what’s the problem this time around? Don’t tell me the great unwashed masses of India have suddenly matured so much as an audience that they can’t accept such puerile entertainment any more, and are pining for Godard and Truffaut and Kurosawa?! I myself know a moron who found Queen to be a great movie and now thinks Thugs does not make the grade!

Anyone going to the Kumbh mela this year? Do let me know. My father went to the purna kumbh back in 1977 (it happens once in 144 years), when Prayag saw the largest ever gathering of human beings on the planet. I’d like to know how it goes this time, seeing that there is a yogi at the helm in UP this time, and he has reportedly pulled out all the stops to make the event the grandest imaginable spectacle.

By the way, don’t believe the kind of idiots who live away from Delhi and complain about its bad air. Oh, it’s bad enough, of course, but all the breast-beating you hear on facebook and twitter is journalistic nonsense. I wintered in Delhi, and believe me, the air is worse in my Durgapur. On the other hand, I miss Delhi’s greens and wide open spaces terribly.

I came back to Durgapur in 1987 poor and confused. Then God gave me a modest opportunity, and I built patiently and laboriously on it. It’s been 31 years. I am looking forward to (at least semi-) retirement in five years’ time. My material needs have always been modest, and now that I have brought my daughter up to adulthood, they have become even more so. Simultaneously, people’s demands on my time and effort have become more and more insistent over the last decade. Also, my many other attempts to be useful to society have never been much appreciated. Even worse, people make use of my services then by and large forget me at best and badmouth me at worst. So – and current and recently-ex students, do warn all those you know who are planning to get their kids admitted to my tuition this year – I have grown impatient and intolerant. Any parent who tries to throw his weight around at admission time (‘I’m a doctor/engineer/high official’, ‘I’m a very busy man’, ‘I want you to adjust to my convenience’…) will be sent away with a flea in his ear; I’ll simply thump the bell and growl ‘Next!’ Given that the queue is longer than I can handle and lots of people are waiting to hear that there are a few vacancies still, I will not take any lip from people whose contemporaries were my pupils 25 to 30 years ago; people who I know will not be of the slightest use to me after they have paid me my fee for the last time. I would like to take in only those pupils whose parents are absolutely determined to get their kids in here, and will behave politely and accommodate to all my conditions. All those who have problems with that, please don’t turn up at my door. You have been warned.