Summer and old boys

Last year, March was already hot. These days summer is coming early, and the monsoons are setting in late - it rains heavily only from end July. Also, winters are much milder than before. Other than that, I haven't noticed much change in the weather over the last fifty years, no matter how much people all around keep muttering about 'disastrous forms of climate change'. Well, not yet, anyway. It has been blazing since about the second week of April, and now we are heading towards May: every day the celsius climbs to 42-44, and the IMD says this will continue through the next month, but, despite all the talk about heat waves, I can't say I see a very real difference. I mean, when has summer not been horrible hereabouts? We just have to curse and bear it and wait for the rains, as always before. And yes, a lot of people are going to get sunstroke, a few will even die. Not news. As we grow older and more ease-loving, these things irk us more, that's all. I used to wander around town without a care in this kind of heat on a bicycle till I was in my mid-twenties, and I can see the hardier of my little boys still merrily kicking around a football in the nearby park of an afternoon as though they couldn't bother less about the heat. Their numbers have greatly decreased and the number of cotton wool-wrapped, air conditioner-cuddled ninnies has greatly increased - there's the pity. I worry about the health of all those who come to attend classes at three in the afternoon more than they do themselves, though over the last decade they have luxuriated here in cool comfort, whereas I sweltered in the heat along with my hordes of boys and girls for more than twenty five years before that. What surprises me, really, is that the kaalbaishakhi has been playing truant in recent years, and sometimes I hear that there was no snow in north Sikkim and Gulmarg in January, but it  was heavily compensated in mid-March! Also, that sometimes Bankura is becoming hotter than Jaisalmer.

What worries me much more is the fear of power outages growing ever more frequent, and even more than that, the possibility of water famine, of the sort that many parts of the country are already facing - Bangalore, to name the latest city to suffer. And I can't see that remedial measures are being taken along a wide front well within time, long before real disaster strikes. Conservation and reduction of waste must become the name of the game, countrywide, mandated by very strict laws and active governmental involvement, because the 'people' will never do it on their own: they are too ignorant, or too stupid, or too shortsighted, and far more interested in relentlessly increasing consumption levels. People who install more than three air conditioners in a house occupied by just one family must pay a specially heavy tax, for instance; a steeply progressive water tax geared to volume of usage must become mandatory, instead of being filled up to make space for more residential buildings, lakes must be dug and maintained on a very large scale again, and waste water must be recycled everywhere ... that's just four of the twenty essential steps that I can list off the cuff. Imagining the kind of trouble we are going to face if such measures are not undertaken urgently makes me shudder and pity all who are more than twenty years younger than me. And of course, I sigh sadly and fearfully to think that every crisis of this sort could have been greatly ameliorated if not entirely avoided if we hadn't allowed the population to explode over the last 75 years... (see the older post, The population bomb).

Sudipta Sengupta, St. Xavier's Durgapur ICSE 1991 batch, who has been living in Houston, Texas for over 25 years, visited me last evening. It was a good meet-up, and, as with so many others, I was both flattered and delighted to see that he retains so many and such good memories. 'Suvroda taught us to think and to challenge.' Not a bad heartwarmer for an ageing teacher. If you are reading this, Sudipta, thank you, and come again whenever you can, keep in touch, and don't forget to send over those photos of days gone by. Good luck to your son.

[P.S.: there's a new post on the other blog after a long time. Do look. And I am gratified to see that several old and beloved posts, such as Forty five and counting, Growing up in Durgapur, and especially The end of an era, have come back into the most-read list again. Good to see that many readers are taking the trouble to explore old posts. As I keep saying, the best contents are not limited to the home page!]

Edging towards retirement

My new classes have got off to a good start. Once again.

This year, after ages, I have shut off one batch. That's a beginning. As I have been meaning (and threatening) to do over the last few years, I intend gradually to reduce more batches, until by 65 (God willing) I am working only five days a week. After more than forty years non-stop at it, I shall have earned it, surely? Millions of people never work more than five days a week in all their lives, and some of them tell me they are bone weary after earning their living for only five years!

The threat is now beginning to work in earnest. Only minutes ago the mother of a current pupil rang up to say that I absolutely MUST carry on at least until her younger child is through. I have heard this hundreds of times before. So I laughed, trying to mask my irritation. There will be children and children forever ... how long must I continue? how long can I? Who thinks about me? Don't I have a right to retire, like everybody else? And besides, the harsh truth is that within a few years the same people will forget  that I even existed. That is the rule of the world. They will find a substitute, for better or for worse. Who remembers the legendary Father Gilson today, except for a few oddballs like me? Given how 'busy' and distracted people are these days, very few of even my favourite ex students are likely to recall me ten years after I am gone the way my generation and older ones used to recall their old favourite teachers long gone.

Maybe I shall make a rule for the last few years ... that only  kids from families which have sent at least one student earlier to me will be taken in (there are families which have sent me six or seven!), and maybe a few others strictly by lottery while there are still a few vacancies? I should like to see how that works.

I would have liked, in my older years, to have kept in touch with a lot of interested people via the internet, especially through this blog, and maybe through platforms like YouTube. That, I have decided with a sigh, is not to be. It may also be that some old boys and girls, including my daughter, would find me work to do that I can go on doing from home, at my workstation. I have been used to 'work from home' since long, long before that idea came into vogue (it was the norm for aeons before the Industrial Revolution came along, but who cares about history?)

Otherwise, being the kind of private person that I am - many people do not know this - I should prefer to keep my own company and counsel for the most part. That would be vanaprastha enough for me. Only those people should keep visiting who know deep at heart that I am always glad to see them. 

In continuation of something that I wrote in a recent post, our times will probably be remembered as a period when for most people, nothing really happened. What I meant was, I see that events all around us leave so little mark on our memories and psyches that it really seems nothing matters for more than a day or two, maybe a month or two, any more. Even apparently deep, private griefs are forgotten with astonishing, not to say shameful speed. That is the price we are paying for hankering after sensation and spectacle and novelty every waking hour of the day. The more 'exciting' things happen, the more ephemeral they become. 'Humankind cannot bear very much reality', said the poet.

A Rhino's Horn

I read this lovely little book titled A Rhino's Horn, by Farhan Shaikh, a few days ago. A heartwarming story about a little rhinoceros who suffers from great anxiety, self-doubt and humiliation because he lacks the tell-tale sign of machismo - a horn. However, thanks partly to his mother's quiet but unwavering support and greatly through his experience of protecting and caring for a wounded baby deer, he finds confidence, strength of a different sort, and a sense of fulfilment which helps him to forget, or do happily without, what he lacks. 

Living in a world that is dark and depressing for the most part, I found it delightful and redemptive to know that there are young people around, still, who value such things as gentleness, kindness and goodness enough to write about them - and write very well, too.

The text is beautifully illustrated by Asuma Noor.

I cannot pay a richer tribute than to say that the text and illustrations together brought back to mind classics like The Little Prince and Bambi, as well as movies like How to train your dragon.

Amazon says that the book is fit for readers in the 8 to 14 age group. Of course it is, but I found it good reading too, and that, as those who know me will agree, is saying something. If more schoolteachers read such books and learnt to appreciate what they are saying, there would be much less badness in our classrooms.

I am prouder than I can say that my daughter Urbi worked as the editor on this project.