Diamond Harbour and Bakkhali

Last Thursday the 21st I drove to Kolkata with Swarnava and my mother in tow, dropped ma off at her brother's place, picked up Pupu and Pratyush and went on to Diamond Harbour, followed by a trip to Bakkhali the next day, back to DH on Saturday, then back via Kolkata, dropping off Pupu and Pratyush, picking up ma, and home to Durgapur on Sunday. 600-plus km in all. 

The highway to Kolkata is being massively reconstructed, with umpteen new flyovers coming up: it will be a very smooth and fast ride once more soon, but for now it was rather slow and difficult going; the passage through Kolkata was interminable as usual because of the dense crawling traffic, and we couldn't go too fast along Diamond Harbour Road either, it being narrow and choc a bloc - though in excellent condition - so the trip took at least an hour and a half longer than it could have. But it was well worth it. At DH the Tourist Lodge called Sagorika was a dream haven, as we had found it twice before, in 2011 and 2017, what with its beautiful panoramic view of the river, its swank rooms, the delectable food and the very friendly and obliging staff. The gusty wind, though warm and damp, and squalls of rain now and then were a bonus. The drive to Bakkhali was short and nice (now that they have built a bridge at Namkhana), and the Tourist Lodge (Balutot) was lovely. We lunched at a very homely streetside bangali eatery where the ambience, along with the owner-cum-waiter clad in a gamchha, his torso bare, reminded me strongly of Bibhutibhushan's Adorsho Hindu Hotel. The Lodge staff there, however, was very cold and uninviting, and we couldn't get rooms for another day, so it was back to Sagorika, where I got a suite which was, in one word, luxurious: all of us spent most of the day and half the night lounging in it. During the drive back to Durgapur, we were caught in very heavy rain for a bit, but spent that time lunching. No mishaps, except that I caught a bad cold. Firoz got a room to himself each night, and Swarnava was thrilled that he didn't have to put up with that awful snoring. Yes, it was a splurge, but these days I live for this sort of thing, and only wish I had the time and wherewithal to take along a much larger group of intimates, which would greatly multiply the fun.

Much of my fun came from quietly looking at, and listening to, the children's chatter. (I call them children, though they are in their twenties, and they spent a considerable amount of time attending to scholarly and professional work - but they grew up before my eyes, and I had a hand in the way they have grown up, so the pleasure is beyond words, mixed with wonder. Besides, they also relentlessly pulled one another's legs, guffawed over silly jokes and built a sand castle on the beach...). We sat on the sand in wet clothes watching the waves until the sun went down and the wind began to make our teeth chatter. I sang a succession of songs to myself, and communed with my Maker, giving up thanks for the myriad blessings I have been granted. For young Pratyush, it was the first overnight trip with us: I hope he will have lasting and fond memories. That, above all, is what I have tried to give to all whom I have loved.

Three-quarters of the year is over already! Now Durga pujo is coming. I hope I can run away somewhere outside Bengal - unless Pupu comes over to stay with me.

A few photos can be seen here. More on Google if you just type "Tourist Lodge" Diamond Harbour or Bakkhali.

Becoming 'creative' in school!

I was laughing and grimacing over the so-called New Education Policy recently with some of my more intelligent and well-informed old boys. There is nothing really 'new' about the policy: it is just a mish-mash of ill-coordinated, incoherent, rehashed ideas which have been suggested by numerous policy declarations before, and either never worked, or worked poorly, or proved to be self-defeating (such as the 'new' emphasis on vocational courses and replacing English with vernaculars as medium of teaching). What I have found truly laughable is the apparently new stress on encouragement of independent, critical, original thinking in the classroom. Let me lay out what I have learnt about the whole teaching-learning process over a lifetime in this context (our policy makers never consult dedicated, competent, well-grounded teachers when they throw out their brilliant brainwaves! so I have always wondered where they get their ideas from)...

Independent, original, critical thinking is not even relevant to many subjects which are taught at school. How can you be independent and original and creative when you are learning chemistry and history? Basically you have to memorize a lot of hard facts (such as dates and names) and techniques (such as balancing equations): there's never been any way around it. If you can't do that, and retain what you have memorized beyond examinations, you just don't know chemistry and history, period. And your mathematics teacher might occasionally challenge you by asking you to solve riders or work out a new way to prove a theorem, but try to be too creative and start writing three squared equals six, and you will flunk. 

Nowhere does school-level education offer greater scope of creativity than while learning a language (explain in your own words... write an original story ... what in your opinion was this character like as a human being?...), but what do we actually see happening in thousands of even so-called 'elite' schools? Let us face it: they stopped even trying to teach how to write long ago (that is why they now take 'creative writing' classes at college- and university level) - truth is, most schoolteachers themselves cannot write a decent essay impromptu to save their lives! -  and where literature is concerned, thousands of my readers will concur that their schoolteachers used to insist that while answering questions, it was imperative that they regurgitate lines crammed from their texts, word by word; nothing else was required of them, and 'don't you dare say the same thing in your own way'. All examinees should write identical answers in literature exactly as they would in chemistry. It is these creatures, these 'teachers', who will now be told to 'teach' their wards to be independent-minded, original, and creative in the way they think. Can anyone describe the situation better than with words like 'farce' or 'black comedy'?

One last thing. Which genius came up with the notion that everybody can be independent and original and creative? That we can 'produce' Newtons and Tagores and Beethovens by the million by schooling them? I should like to meet him alone in a dark alley some day...

Tech companies, CEOs and liberal arts

After my daughter got her BA in history, she decided to attend a one-year post graduate course in liberal studies, to which I gladly concurred, and we are both very happy about the experience she had.

This recent article in The Telegraph says why liberal studies are increasingly important in today's world, and you should read the whole thing closely. But I especially draw attention to the list provided by the authors of CEOs of giant modern high-technology companies who have degrees in the liberal arts (not engineering, mind you), including, prominently, history and English (see the third paragraph). I do NOT think, given everything I have written on matters educational before, that I need to add any comment of my own here. Do read.

I wish the parents who are still pushing their kids mindlessly into 'signs' studies so that they might somehow land low-level IT jobs could read and understand this article. There would be an instant revolution in India!  

Teachers' Day 2023

Teachers' Day in India. Since last midnight I have been inundated with goodwill messages, pronaam, cakes, sweetmeats and gifts. This would have been my last 'Teachers' Day' if I had been a school employee, so thank God I quit long, long ago. It is a season for reflection, though...

Every year something memorable happens on this day. This time round I think the prize goes to Prodipto Mukherjee, St. Xavier's Durgapur, ICSE 1996 batch, who called after a gap of 27 years to tell me how well he remembers my classes, and how thankful he is, and how much he has benefited and is trying to pass on to his son, now in class 8. That is the only way teachers can feel good about themselves, and truth to tell, I have had plenty to be happy about. I only wish it was plentifuller! and that people did not take that long to get back. Shivapriya from the 2004 batch visited a few months ago, husband and pooch in tow, and I told her the same thing. It is also a pleasing thing to note that the Whatsapp group I started with a few of my old boys and girls turned two today, and is going strong: I have managed to nudge friendships among several young and not-so-young people, which has always been one of the things I have wanted to do.

I wrote a post titled vanaprastha here very recently (though I find that too is already two years old!), and I am going to become a senior citizen next month. It seems to me that I have been teaching all along, and what haven't I taught, from helping one of my own teachers to write out her B.Ed. notes to summarizing the paper on jurisprudence for a judge who was trying for the third time to get his LlM degree to French and Economics and History and the Indian Constitution, and English, English, English all through the last 36 years. Yet over and above this subject and that, preparing students for this examination and that, I have always tried to inculcate certain values, for my ideals have never been mere instructors but men like Socrates and Confucius and the Buddha and Vidyasagar and Russell. I wonder if I have had much success with many people.

What values, you may ask? Well, those which I instinctively found to be  important for both individual and collective civilization, for making this world a better place to live in, and were later confirmed from personal experience as well as the testaments of the thinkers I most came to respect. Many of these values were concretized through the literature course work that I covered with my students ... so I was always learning and thinking even as I worked for a living (not too many men have the good fortune to do that)! Values like punctuality, hard work, meticulous attention to details, keeping promises, courtesy, consideration, kindness of the tough-love sort, despising the merely rich, caring for the needy, healthy and polished humour rather than the toilet-sort, a certain contempt for 'what people are saying' and so never justifying one's actions and opinions with reference to the herd, the right kind of humility (as distinct from servility to people in power - from parents to political leaders and celebrities), self-discipline, respect and love for things of the spirit (knowledge rather than marks and livelihood, justice, music, poetry, art, charity, imagination)... and I have all along tried to teach by example, my own and (knowing full well that I am far from my own ideal) those of others vastly better than me. 

I shall go on insisting till my last breath that without the wide spread of such values, no amount of advanced technology and material wealth will spell real 'progress' for humankind; indeed, they might well spell our doom.

As I realized early in life, I was not fit for many things. I don't think I could have made a good politician, or business manager, or doctor or policeman or judge. So I thank Providence every day that it allowed me to do just what I could do best for so long, and also to make a decent living out of it. On Teachers' Day, therefore, I have reason to be pleased with the way my life has turned out. As for the rest, kyun hua, kab hua, kaise hua... woh chhoro, woh na socho. From that attitude alone can come peace. And what can one in my position in life want more than peace?