First post of 2021

One of many reasons why I find it increasingly difficult to write new posts on this blog is that I am more aware than ever before that I have serious readers of vastly differing mindsets – from what I know, my youngest reader is a fourteen year old boy in my own town, and the oldest is an eighty two year old woman in the south western part of the United States. How do you write things that might appeal to, or at least not bore, either of them?

I know I am repeating myself, but I cannot restate how delighted I am to be able to hold offline classes every day of the week again. And already, like the pain of a broken leg, the memory of how I survived those seven horrible months has faded into something that I just cannot remember in any detail, try as I might.

I am trying, after a very long time, to socialize again but with a caveat for myself (see last paragraph). And God be thanked, the experiences, few as yet, have been uniformly rewarding. Several old boys have conveyed a desire to look me up too, or done so already, so that’s there. Some of them, like a few favourite kids who are currently my students, have averred that it’s difficult because they find me ‘intimidating’: I wonder, could that really be true, and if so, why on earth?

It’s been freezing cold in Delhi for a while, and then it has been damp and rainy lately, while Durgapur is having rather mild weather, with the sun actually hot at midday. Very disappointing. I hope there will be one last chilly spell before the season turns, and that a few more flowers would bloom in my garden…

Thanks to Nilanjan Halder of the 2007 batch, I have got my hands on Thomas Picketty’s Capital in the twenty first century at last. For someone like me, it promises to be engrossing reading, all 750-odd pages of it. Here is a good, critical review of it already, though it's a bit dated.

My senior batch is likely to be dissolved at the end of January, along with the juniormost. So February and March are going to have a light work schedule again. I am not worrying, because the worst, touch wood, is past, and the vaccine (even if it has only a placebo effect, as is highly likely) is around the corner, so I am looking forward to a normal (fully offline) next session in April, or at most a month later. Before that, a longish sojourn in Delhi with my daughter again, perhaps, and even a little holiday trip thrown in.

Going on 58, I am actually looking forward to becoming a senior citizen with eager anticipation and relish. If only because, as this otherwise ghastly year has taught me, I can now afford to revv down to a lighter workload. From the next session onwards, I am going to shrink the size of my batches. At least I hope I can, if people would let me!

My sole resolution for the New Year is about reviving and maintaining relationships: I shall stop trying so hard and so one-sidedly. That, I have decided finally and at long last, is where I always went wrong – I tried too hard. I shall expect my interlocutors to do most of the trying from now on. Let’s see how that works out.