Waiting

The father of a little girl who has very recently been admitted to my class was saying this evening that one my ex-students, who later became his student at a local engineering college and is now working in Germany, has said, and not once, that he owes everything good in his life to me. I have heard such paeans again and again over a long life of teaching, but the pleasure never palls, especially because Providence has so arranged things that every now and then – once in a few years, at least – I will also hear about vulgar ingrates who remember me only to vilify me with fantastical accusations of neglect and worse, and every time that happens, it sours up a lot of good memories.

A few girls who went to Carmel School and have become my ex-students recently came over to see me, and pointedly said, ‘Look, Sir, you said Carmelites never visit, but we have!’ I smiled, though I know they’ll fall permanently out of touch soon enough. ‘Take the cash, and let the credit go’.

‘Some are born to endless night’, wrote Agatha Christie, quoting William Blake, and I know exactly how it feels. You know what fate has been like to me? Only yesterday I stepped out of my house to find a little boy waiting after my class for his father to come and pick him up, so I gave him company and shared a bit of jhaalmuri with him from the streetside vendor who whips up a very tasty snack. Ten minutes later I felt that I wanted a bit more, having had only a fistful, so I stepped  out again to ask the same vendor to make another packet for me: and he was winding up for the night! I only thank God over and over again that He in His infinite wisdom has let me off with myriad such minor irititants, and allowed me to avoid a lot of far worse things that happen to a lot of people…

My old boy Swarnava, who is reading Physics because he loves it, has written a blogpost on Richard Feynman. I hope a lot of people will read it and write encouraging comments.

The election results will come out in two weeks’ time, and whatever kind of government is cobbled up in Delhi, I believe the outlook for the India that our Founding Fathers dreamed of is grim. Are we eventually going to become a Hindu version of Pakistan, and mired in everything that was bad about the middle ages, because that is what we democratically desire?

At around this time every year, I wonder in a very crabby mood why hundreds of millions of people made this God-forsaken country their home and then bred into a billion. Does muggy heat attract humans as much as it does lizards and roaches? To love India is hard, and nobody understands that better than someone who has quietly tried to do it all his life.

I last went to Delhi for three days on April 01, and I’m going again this Friday. Can’t wait.