End of August note

I am delighted to see that the fund to save Shyamali Das from cancer has attracted more than Rs. 200,000 so far. Once more, I am deeply grateful to all ex students and friends who responded generously to my plea.

This is the last day of August, so I have been able to conduct offline classes for two months straight. Barring Kerala, Covid infection rates – and much more significantly, mortality rates – have gone down sharply and stayed down everywhere for more than two months now, so I am hoping that all restrictions will be gradually removed countrywide, and even if the third wave comes and goes, it will be mild and of very short duration.

For some reason, August has dragged ever since my daughter went back. I hope September will go faster. One more month, and I shall be able to look forward to a long and pleasant winter once more.

Here is an article in my newspaper today written by a professor of economic law detailing how the present Union government of India has quietly shelved its electoral promises to reduce inequality, corruption and nepotism in the business world, and has in fact made a very sharp and unrepentant about-turn in policy. I hope the ordinary voter will begin to take note and understand what is going on. It is true that over the last forty years economic policy worldwide has chiefly helped the rich to get ever richer, and the best that can be said for India is that it has chosen to be no different. Allowing the ultra rich to get ever richer is the surest and quickest road to all-round development – that is the belief that has come back with a vengeance after nearly a century. A middle class which fattens on the crumbs thrown off the dinner tables of the plutocracy (personified by the engineer or journalist who earns in a month a fraction of what the owner/CEO’s daughter spends in one night’s party) will continue to cheer as long as it is not squeezed too hard, and the poor can go to blazes. Until another revolution comes, I guess. Viscerally against violence and committed to the middle path as I am, I sometimes cannot help feeling that cutting off a few thousand heads might not be too big a price to pay in order to return to some semblance of civilization, as long as they are only the heads of the dirty rich…

Here is another article from the same newspaper which pretends to be amazed to find out that major IT and computer tech companies are recruiting talent from liberal arts backgrounds. I can only go ‘hee hee hee’, and remind you of a post I wrote almost a decade ago, Engineer or bust.

Postscript to urgent appeal

I am writing a postscript to the previous post, and the postscript is being written in a far more sombre mood than the original.

The good news first.  The day I put up that post, the fund had attracted a princely donation of five hundred rupees; within two days of my appeal, it had topped one hundred thousand (the latest figure is about Rs. 142,000+). The great bulk of this amount has been contributed by a relatively small number of my ex students (and some parents of current students): the kindest and most decent of them, needless to say. My grateful thanks to all of them. The husband of the sick woman is ecstatic; he keeps telling me how thankful the family is, and that this amount was beyond their wildest dreams. That is good. The chemotherapy can at least be restarted immediately.

However, they are managing to make me feel deeply inadequate and guilty, because it is only too obvious how small the amount raised so far is, given the size of their need. It is also making me feel very bitter to think about how little success I have had over a lifetime of trying earnestly to persuade thousands of young people to grow up into socially useful, sympathetic, giving human beings, rather than merely ‘successful’. If a few more hundred of my ex students (and the parents of many hundred current students) had contributed generously, the fund would have already grown to ten times what it is, at least. It seems that a family jaunt to MacDonald’s or a cinema which costs them more than a thousand rupees is perfectly par for the course, but donating the same amount or a little more to save a person struggling to fight off untimely death is a horrific excess! May many people learn how important it is to help out others in distress only from going through the same experience with their most dearly loved ones: in this heartless world, I don’t think there is any other way.

I would never ask for monetary help for myself. I have known poverty, I have slogged for four decades to rise above it, and I prefer to put my faith in karma, or God, as you will. What I deserve I shall get no matter how many people try to stop it, and what I don’t deserve I won’t, no matter how much I pray, or how many pray for me. However – call me schizophrenic if you like – I also believe that if we all cared a little more for our fellow human beings, especially those in distress, not necessarily financial – it would go a long way to making a nicer world. One of my lifelong endeavours has been, therefore, to create a network of good, caring people, who make friends with one another, stay in touch regardless of their own troubles and woes, and help one another out in times of dire need. That was one major reason why I started writing this blog. Some old boys had suggested that in this internet age that would be a very good way of staying in touch. It didn’t quite work out that way, but let that go.

I have also been able to help a lot of people, mostly ex students, all through these long years, when they were in trouble, either through direct personal intervention (counselling, giving a patient ear to their laments when no one else was willing to listen, lending money, etc etc) or by putting them in touch with other ex students who were in a position to give a hand. Many of my readers know that they have been beneficiaries, though some of them would like to forget their debts – not to me, but to humanity, to God. (It has never ceased to amaze me how frantic and insistent people become when they are in serious trouble, and how quickly they forget once those troubles are behind them, how indifferent to other people’s troubles they can be). If the network were wider and stronger, I am sure that a lot more people could be similarly benefited. So I was wondering whether I should make one more effort to bring together the best people I know, my most beloved old boys mostly, in the hope that something good will be ignited. A platform where a lot of people will be able to make friends, wide apart in age, education, experience and location, but united by a common desire to make real friends (rather than ‘frenz’ on social media), interact to ward off one of our commonest, most painful problems – to wit loneliness – and help one another with every kind of gesture: attentive time, money, counsel, mentoring, being there when no one else is, I hope you get it. Do you think I should start off a Whatsapp group specifically with that goal in mind? Those of my readers who are interested – adult, earning their own keep, preferably my own ex students – should let me know, here via comments or directly by Whatsapp.

An urgent appeal

I have a student whose mother has been battling cancer for more than a year. The father/husband is in dire straits now, financially as well as mentally, and the doctors say he has to raise a huge sum - Rs. 1.65 million - for immunotherapy. Upon the advice of the hospital he has appealed for help through a crowdfunding website. 

I know that this is just one life in mortal danger, and there are very many who need our help, but you will understand that the closer a person is, the more urgent and insistent his or her need to us. I have contributed my mite, but that is only a drop in the ocean. We need the support of hundreds, or better still, thousands of people. I do not have a very high opinion of our eagerness to do charity (see my old post Charity and other things) but will some of my readers consider that this could be their own mother, wife or daughter, and extend a helping hand? 

If you wish to help, please click on this link. Thank you from the bottom of my heart in advance for doing your bit to save a life. 

For God's sake, open the schools!

I should like to request frequent visitors to look up my other blog occasionally. Believe me, all of you will find something to smile over (thoughtfully) – and to many of you a different, unexpected side of my character will be revealed. That poor blog is neglected, partly because the paucity of visits and comments discourages me from posting too often.

There is, thank God, a (very slow, hesitant) start with reopening schools across the country. Many states, including UP, are apparently going to open up with senior classes from August 16. There is also a still-soft chorus, but daily growing louder, that all the other states follow suit, quickly. I read in today’s paper that a class 12 student (obviously prompted by his parents) in Delhi has filed a petition with the Supreme Court to urge the governments to reopen schools, saying that not only have millions of children suffered enormous academic losses since March 2020 owing to the endless shutdown, but are struggling with very disturbing and maybe irremediable mental health issues (a grim reality I can personally witness among my own pupils). This request is now being echoed everywhere, even from very high places. However, our own state government is still dragging its feet, almost unwilling to deal with the issue at all (‘we’ll think about it after pujo’). For heaven’s sake, why?

Surely one can no longer believe that children’s lives will be put at great risk if they start going to school? They are going everywhere – from crowded shopping malls to tourist spots and wedding feasts, their parents who go out to work are bringing home the infection, and nothing is happening to them, but they will die of Covid if they go to school? Contrary to all the evidence from all corners of the world, seeing that most other countries have kept schools open almost throughout the year? Why on earth can’t schools be opened tentatively but right now, the way I (and tens of thousands of tutors around the country) have done, ready to be closed down at a day’s notice if the infection graph starts soaring again? Can’t the authorities still realize the horrible damage* being done? Does it really need to be spelt out? Why after Durga pujo, still more than a month and a half away?

One thing should be remembered: barring the most benighted, no child in India goes to school any more with the expectation of being ‘educated’. They attend because a fairly old custom says they have to, and because they have to sit for examinations, and, most importantly, because they can socialize with their peers and get some outdoor exercise and extra-curricular activity. Most of their learning, such as it is, happens at home, by themselves and with the help of private tutors. We have been trying to ignore this open secret, this elephant in the room, for far too long. Bring them back to school so that they can get a reasonably healthy childhood, period.

Here is a link to an article suggesting why some other people think, just like me, that the real reason for the indefinitely prolonged shutdown is something very sinister, or at least very sad.

*This article reports a study which has tried to estimate the kind of damage that has already been done. (Alas, the reporter herself cannot spell. I hope the reader is observant enough to find out the howlers. Remember: spelling is the most basic proof of literacy).