Going Bangalore way

I was chatting with a visiting old boy who has got an IT job in Bangalore a year ago, lives in a ‘PG’, and has been pressing me, as do so many others, to come over for a short holiday. We were thinking aloud together about where I could go this February – it being almost holiday season for me – when the penny dropped. Why not Bangalore? I rang up a couple of other old boys, and they all cheerily urged me to make up my mind at once, so it was done.

The decision brought back memories of the last time I’d been there. It was another time and place. I had read Kenneth Anderson about Bangalore in the 1950s, when it was a sleepy garden town just beginning to grow, and tigers still prowled in the jungles a hundred miles away. Then I visited it in the autumn of 1992. I was still poor then, as was India, so travelling by air was unthinkable for the likes of me, but my sister, who was working with Indian Airlines, got me heavily discounted tickets (for the first and last time), and I flew off to Bangalore in one of the then-almost brand new Airbus A320s. I have always been slightly crazy about aeroplanes, and being invited over to the cockpit was a big bonus. I don’t think such invitations are extended to passengers in the post 9/11 age.

I was actually going to Pune to visit the family of an old friend, and there was a half-day layover at Bangalore. I didn’t know my way around town, and couldn’t speak a word of Kannada, which, as I believe is still the case, handicaps you pretty seriously there. They wouldn’t exchange a word of Hindi, and I’d rather not comment on the kind of English the man on the street spoke. So anyway, having several hours to kill, I negotiated with an autorickshaw driver to show me around the town a bit, but I remember getting tired pretty quickly, so after a lunch of local cuisine at the equivalent of a dhaba, I parked myself for the afternoon at Lal Bagh, and I remember spending several gently-dreamy hours there among the flowers, rather like Lord Emsworth in his garden at Blandings. In the evening I flew off to Pune.  

The trip back a few days later was much more harrowing. The flight from Pune dropped me off at Bangalore rather late in the evening, I had to catch an early morning flight to Kolkata, and for some weird reason the security staff wouldn’t let me stay in the lounge overnight. Shooed out, I had no choice but to accept the terms of a cutthroat cabbie who drove me to a modest hotel less than half an hour’s drive away for two hundred and fifty rupees – the equivalent of about 2500 today, I should guess – and the hotel reception desk flatly refused to intervene, so I was summarily fleeced. You can guess how I felt when I made the same trip back next morning by auto for all of Rs. 11. But the nightmare was far from ending. The flight to Kolkata was full, so they wouldn’t take on any discounted-ticket holders (which is why I have never used such ‘amenities’ again): they told me to come back the next day only to try my luck. Quite unsure about that, and being under compulsion to get back home and resume classes as promised, I dashed off to the railway station and made the trip to Chennai, followed by a 30-plus hour journey in a dirty, stinking, maddeningly overcrowded second class coach on the Madras Mail which I have been trying very hard to forget these last 27 years, followed by another train trip  to Durgapur, a quick bath and shave and change of clothes to appear halfway human again, then dashing off to the house of the girl where I was supposed to take a class that evening, nearly asleep on my feet, miraculously arriving exactly on time, only to find that the house was locked, because the family had gone away on vacation without telling anybody (in their defence, there were no smartphones nor social media in those days).

Frankly, the ‘south’ so turned me off that, despite travelling far and wide, I gave it a miss till early 2017, when I took my parents on a trip to Pondicherry. It’s been a long time for both me and the country since 1992. Most importantly, my daughter was born, and grew up into a woman with her own life in the intervening period, my father passed away, while I went from vigorous youth to lazy – and considerably better off, God be thanked – middle age. And Bangalore, I hear, has not only become Bengaluru but grown into a noisy, polluted, overcrowded city of pubs and shopping malls and software ‘parks’, or so every long time resident avers. Also, swarming with Bengalis.  NIMHANS is still going strong, as is the IISc, but HAL and HMT are just limping along. I guess I’ll give the city proper a miss, unless it were to visit Tipu's old palace. My would-be hosts had not been born last time I was there, or were tiny tots. The boys have promised to take me travelling beyond city limits; otherwise I’d prefer to chat at home with their parents.  Nishant, Kaustav, Subhadip, Aritra and whoever else might be reading this, I hope I come back with better memories this time round!

Way to go, Rudra and Tanmoy

My old boy Tanmoy, living in faraway New Zealand, has recently revived his blog, this time powered by his bright young son Rudra. They have also launched a storytelling channel on Youtube - a venture that has always been close to my heart. Do encourage them by visiting, reading and subscribing, folks. 

More power to your elbow, dad and son!  

Thank you, Sir

Mr. A. R. Parameswaran, revered mathematics teacher to three generations, including mine at St. Xavier’s Durgapur, passed away on the 26th of December. He must have been close to ninety.

He was one of those teachers to whom I personally owe a lifelong debt. I was his pupil in class 5, all the way back in 1974. From him I learnt how a stern disciplinarian of the old school can also be great fun. I am sure some of the best attributes I have acquired, used and benefited from as a teacher I learnt from him. He cured me forever, with a single tongue-lashing, of the bad habit of misspelling common words, and it was thanks to him that I can still, at my age, do mental arithmetic much faster than most smart kids I deal with. He had a mild heart attack and quit the school job early. His older son, Ramchandra, was one of my gang of close friends in school and junior college (what they call plus-two), and we stayed in touch off and on through the decades. Sir settled down with Madam in his house half a kilometer from mine, and happily continued to coach hordes of young pupils in his idiosyncratic style.

Ages later, when he was an old man and my daughter went up to class five, I sent her to his tuition – this despite my being strongly against sending children to tutors as a rule, and despite my very low opinion of most tutors I know. I was not mistaken. Sir took her under his wing, and she spent four very happy years with him; though she never grew to like math, he managed to cure her fear of it. He had been an instructor in the Air Force once upon a time, and often and again he urged her to become a doctor and join the military: we are sorry that we couldn’t make him happy that way. It was he, too, who told her about why he smeared his forehead with ash every day; he, too, was probably one of those who gave her an abiding love of dogs. 

My daughter outgrew her nest and flew away, but Sir and I remained in touch off and on. He was an incredibly proud, self-reliant and active man far into his old age. He toyed with the idea of going back to his home state Kerala, but eventually decided against it. I was saddened to hear that Madam was becoming increasingly bedridden, and that there was nothing I could do to help. Also, that Sir had finally given up tutoring and wasn’t too happy about it. I shall remember that lesson long after I have stopped needing to teach for a living, in case I survive that long.

On Sunday the 22nd December I met ’Chandra on the street. He had flown over in a hurry from the US upon hearing that Sir was in critical care, following almost total kidney failure. It was good to see, however, that Madam was up and about, and taking things stoically. It was while I was away in Delhi that an ex student rang me up to tell me that Sir was no more, and this evening ’Chandra called me with an invitation to the sraddh ceremony.

I do not, of course, attend such things as a matter of principle, but, Sir, my thoughts will be with you. Thank you for everything, and may your soul rest in peace. They don’t make teachers like you any more. Maybe they don’t even want such teachers any more. But some of us will remain eternally thankful and grateful.