In
the last week of November I went over to Delhi again. It was after a gap of
nine whole months, but it felt as if I had never left! Everything has become so
pleasantly familiar and comfortable, comforting even – not only my daughter’s
digs but the folks all around, including the landlord’s family and petty
roadside vegetable vendors (‘haan ji
madam, papa aa gaye na?’), the nearby park, the dense but orderly traffic,
the profusion of trees, the view of the Qutb Minar from the rooftop, faintly
through the fog. It’s almost as if it is as long as I am in Durgapur that I
feel I am in exile – imagine, after thirty four straight years of living and
working here! If anything, the new puppy has added to the warmth and vivacity.
I did very little besides eat, sleep, chat, walk and read … with Pupu, books
are never in short supply, new books included. I devoured Shashi Tharoor’s
latest, The Battle of Belonging (when
will the BJP come up with someone who can present their case in an equally
rational, informed, civilized manner?),
and Sujata Massey’s new Pervin Mistry title, The Bombay Prince (she’s improving with every book, and I have
become a fan), and came back with Madhulika Liddle’s newest oeuvre, The Garden of Heaven, which seems to
promise a delectable dish of historical fiction, besides several e-books on
Kindle, including Amitav Ghosh’s The
Nutmeg’s Curse. What sad little
lives they live who don’t read books! Naturally, as always, six days passed by
all too soon, and I am back in Durgapur to my regular work routine once more.
It seems I have been doing this for ages, although in fact it began only in
2018.
Two
little boys in my class, both 15, passed away this year, one by suicide and the
other very recently of a massive heart attack. As they say in Bengali, life is
like a drop of water trembling on a lotus leaf, liable to drop off any moment,
regardless of how young or old you are… and yet we plan, and dream, and draw up
grandiose schemes for the future, because that is the only thing that keeps us
going, the most human thing about human beings. At my stage in life, I look
forward to very little, though. That I may have ever less conflict and discord
in my life, that I can continue to feed myself for some more years, that my
daughter can take good care of herself, that we can share slightly better
living facilities in Delhi (or some place even better), that we might perhaps
be allowed to do something enjoyable as well as gainful together for a while,
that I can relax and sleep and tell stories to eager audiences with ever
diminishing guilt and worry, that I can doze in the sun and go as quietly and
peacefully as Don Vito Corleone did… is that asking too much of the universe?
Who can tell?
One
of the big things that the world is just beginning to take notice of is the
fact that population growth rates have been falling everywhere (except in
Africa), so in many countries the old are gradually going to outnumber the
young. To me this gives a strong sense of déjà vu, because I became aware of
the phenomenon in the late 1980s, when Italy, I seem to remember, became the
first country in the world where the old became more numerous than the very
young – a time when the Indian population was still ‘exploding’. Now the
reactions only make me smile, or grimace. China is becoming desperate for its
people to have more children again, Elon Musk says he is having more and more
babies to ‘save mankind from extinction’ (God knows what his wife thinks about
it, in this supposedly very gender-rights-conscious age), some countries have
already seen fit to start veterans’ Olympic style games and seniors-only
shopping malls, this article says a time is coming in the not-too-distant
future when schools will have to be merged because there will not be enough
children around, many economists see a huge opportunity for overpopulated
countries like ours to send vast numbers of young people abroad to rich nations
which will suffer from a huge shortage of labour, government policies will have
to be drastically redesigned to cater to the special needs of the elderly, who
will be a very sizeable fraction of the population everywhere by 2050 – when my
current pupils will reach middle age – and gerontology will become one of the
most sought after branches of medicine. In a country where we are still
bursting at the seams because of having too many people around, whether in
search of jobs or swarming the roads and hospitals, all this sounds like a pipe
dream as of now. I shall probably not live long enough to see all of it come
true, but in some ways it will be nice if I do: more peace and quiet and
cleanliness all around, and far less public violence and lawlessness, much more
decency and courtesy and consideration for others, perhaps, simply because the
number of young, brash, crass, hormone-driven idiots has dwindled, to name just
one good thing that might come about!
That
is the sort of thing I keep thinking about.
We
had another picnic at home today, Sunday, I with four of my old boys, and
hugely enjoyed it, all of us, while some others let me know in the Whatsapp
group that they missed it. This is growing on me! And I badly wish to go on
one, if possible two more trips with some or the other old boy(s) before this
winter leaves…
