After twenty years

I started writing this blog on July 08, 2006. Which means that I have been writing continuously here for twenty years now, and this is my 825th post. Twenty whole years of writing! The contents would certainly make a fairly fat book. I am the sort of man who doesn't quickly give up what he starts doing, but even I had not imagined that I would keep at it for twenty years. That's half or more of a man's entire working life. Those who had just passed school in 2006 are family men and women in their late thirties now; those in their twenties who started reading this blog then must be pushing fifty! My little girl was ten years old then, now she is thirty, and busy living her own life. Is there anybody who has been reading this blog continuously right from the beginning and still visits it now and then? I would certainly like to say congratulations and thank you...

I have had a lot of interesting debates and conversations here, too, so thanks to all who participated. I have revealed a great deal of my mind and life here as I have passed through the prime of life into old age. Of course, do not imagine that you know everything about me even if you have been a regular long-time reader. As Tagore said, you will not find the poet in his poems. I have by preference shown the happier side of my life and the sunnier part of my mind here, if only to avoid burdening my reader with the weight and gloom of my own sorrows, fears, losses and disillusionments, of which, like every other human being, I have had aplenty. That is because it has been my lifelong desire to ease the travails of living for a few people if I can through my work, and not to make it more irksome by inflicting my own complaints on them. At worst, maybe a hint of melancholy and tiredness may have crept into some of my writing, for which I sincerely apologize: I wish I could have sounded cheerier without pretending to be what I am not. Also, despite talking and writing so much, I have always been at heart a very private sort of person - unlike most young denizens of the age of social media, I keep very personal (and usually painful) things for the most intimate circle, to which few belong, many have dropped out from, and thousands never came into.

I don't know how much longer I shall keep going. Without specific requests, I often feel at a loss for things to write these days. Also, as I frequently say myself, I am growing old, and weary, and no longer quite sure whether my writing matters to people. Why do people work at all? As I have always believed, unless it is under some sort of external compulsion, it is either for love or money. This was never a money making proposition, so obviously I did it for love: love of the written word, love of many things that I have seen, felt and enjoyed, love of the idea that perhaps I was influencing some people's lives in a good way. Now, I am not so sure that that love endures, or will endure much longer. Other than working as a teacher in my own house, I have, unsocial being that I am, have led a withdrawn life for ages, and perhaps a time is coming when I shall withdraw some more, limiting my human interactions to face to face conversations with those who keep visiting me at home. Maybe I have shared enough with the vast faceless public already? 

One good thing that I have just noticed: even when I am not attending to the blog, the number of pageviews keeps on climbing, and more and more older stuff has been coming into the most-read list (right now, the post titled Ingratitude and Karma is on the top of the list. Interesting). Unless I am much mistaken, that means a lot of people still remember the blog and are still curious to explore beyond the home page. Cheers to them, but also a lament: why can't you write in comments that will energize me to engage? Hundreds and hundreds of posts on such a huge diversity of subjects, and nobody finds anything to say?

Browsing through several dozen posts written over these last twenty years, I felt a sense of unreality. I was running a family then, working seven days a week non-stop for months at a stretch, reading so much, frequently going travelling, counselling so many people outside of my classes, dealing with all kinds of emergencies... where did I find the time in between all that to keep writing so much? And I hear so many people saying that they 'have no time' for any kind of serious (mental) work, not even reading, let alone writing! I myself have lost a lot of readers to two things: jobs and marriage. Of course, I never married and never worked for a living. Isn't it a really funny world? 

They say every grown man has a story - is a story. Well, I have told a large part of my story here. Not earthshaking, not maybe very educative or moving, but perhaps it will have significantly affected, even touched, a few people. That should be enough. In my own life, I have met many 'ordinary' people who have deeply instructive and memorable stories to tell, if only they are encouraged a bit (remember I once wrote the memoir of a roadside phuchkawallah). Mine may not be the most trivial of them. Some may remember. Otherwise, like everybody else, I shall soon pass, not only from this world but from everyone's minds. So what? And what would be unique about it? I just learnt in class two days ago that teenagers of today haven't heard of Sir Don Bradman!

Lately I have been enjoying myself enjoying old TV series now available for free on YouTube: specifically Mind your language and Blandings (yes, the Wodehouse creation). Try them sometime. Wonderful things for those who admire wit and genuine humour of the educated and civilized sort rather than what passes for comedy today. Also, regaling myself watching the 'vlogs' of young bike riders who go gallivanting across the length and breadth of India: so relaxing and interesting if you can do it from the safety and comfort of your bedroom, ten or twenty minutes at a time, spending virtually no money at all, and they give you drone's-eye view scenery, too! Science ka kya marvel!

A gentle nudge: do listen to my story collection on YouTube and the growing series of poetry podcasts on Spotify (in both cases you need to search only for 'Suvro Sir') and tell me what you think about them, here if you like. And if you do, please write more than a one-liner. 

So much for now.

So that June may not stay empty...

Yes, I know, I haven't written for ages. Fact is, looking back on the immense amount and variety of things I have written, I can't think of much to write any more. Not, at least, for now. I am too tired. Maybe someday the blocked stream will break free again. 

I watched Sir Richard Attenborough's Gandhi again earlier this month, after I guess a gap of nearly forty years. Two things occurred to me: a) such a beautiful movie, and yet so ahistorical - a story about Gandhi's life and times with no Subhas, no Ambedkar, no mention of Tagore though the Rev. C. F. Andrews features notably, and Jinnah barely a shadowy figure on the margins?! and b) how did Gandhi do it - returned to India in 1915 little known, and by far the most prominent and influential leader of the country as no one has been before and after, hypnotizing and holding the worshipful attention, affection and obedience of millions of both high and low, without fakery, without violence, and with no more modern tools of mass communication technology except radio and newspapers in a largely illiterate country? I have been wondering all my life, and I am as far away from the answer as I have always been...

New government in the state, of an entirely new type, as I have noted before. Not been in office for two months yet. As I said, I am watching. I am not a man who draws conclusions quickly.

I don't know whether many people are listening to my poetry-reading podcasts on Spotify, but making the successive episodes has been giving me a particular sort of gentle pleasure. I shall be glad to have suggestions from listeners about what they would like to hear next. Till then, it remains entirely a matter of my personal taste and choice. Meanwhile, it is good to see that my stories on YouTube continue to attract new listeners, however slowly (both can be accessed by typing in 'Suvro Sir'.) Something that I heard today and loved: a senior ex student of mine reported that her daughter recently exclaimed 'I know... you are going to visit your Spotify Sir'. Newest nickname... made my day.

Speaking of YouTube, I loved this speech of Chandril Bhattacharya's. After a long time, he's said something that I agree with in toto. (In a democracy) people get the kind of government they deserve.

Over the last few weeks, the rains have been playing truant hereabouts, making us swelter in the muggy heat day after inexorable day. What makes it especially galling is that we keep hearing how Kolkata and north Bengal are being inundated.

That's all for now. As of June 25, my daughter is a married woman. May God bless both her and Swarnava. I am looking forward more and more eagerly to vanaprastha. Just think: even that post is nearly four years old!

Diary entry

Weather-wise, this is the most extraordinary summer in living memory. All through April and May, till the day of writing, it has been raining on and off - sometimes even on successive days, along with classic nor'wester storms and otherwise, so that the maximum temperature has not risen above 32/33 celsius for nearly a fortnight, falling abruptly sometimes to 25-26 even in the afternoons, so that, forget the airconditioners, we are having to use warm water for baths, turning off the fans and pulling rugs over ourselves when going to sleep! I could easily believe, if I were not looking at the calendar, that it was not summer at all. I would rather call this climate erratics than secular climate change. Anyway, even if it becomes very hot in June and July, we shall have to be thankful for a short summer.

I have lately become obsessed with Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay. Just 'revised' the novel Dhatri Devata (we had it in our ICSE syllabus, and it seemed so familiar and well-remembered that I might have read it only a month ago, rather than 47 years), moved on to Ganadevata, will deal with Hansulibaanker Upokotha next; then maybe revise Gurudakshina too. I have paid Tarashankar too little attention, considering his stature as a litterateur: but better late than never. My mind has wandered too far and wide for ages: it is good to be back closer to home in the dusk of my life. I might be writing more about his works in a later post.

Just watched an animation movie called Wild Robot on Netflix. Quite a heartwarmer, a robot eager to please and complete assigned tasks to perfection getting briefly lost and falling in love with a host of wild animals, a stunted baby goose in particular, changing their lives greatly for the better despite much misunderstanding and resistance, and herself learning the meaning of loving and caring beyond the scope of any kind of programming. Food for thought too - brought back to mind all the countless different scenarios about human-robot conflict and coexistence that Isaac Asimov conceived half a century ago (as I have discussed in one of my YouTube podcasts), many of which are going to come true within a generation or two. It will be a brave new world indeed.

My podcasts on poetry have got going. Three episodes are already up there; several more are mentally lined up. I don't need to put up links here, it seems: you can simply type in 'Suvro Sir' in the Spotify app, or Google 'Suvro Sir Spotify' and it will take you there. Some listeners are already commenting, but unluckily there is a glitch on my side, so I cannot see them on my app; have patience until someone fixes things for me, and meanwhile do please cheer me on by commenting here on this blog. And don't forget the 52 stories that are waiting for you on the YouTube channel (again, just typing 'Suvro Sir' in YouTube will take you there). 

Meanwhile I am wondering why, suddenly, so many people are reading this blog on all continents (see map on the right-hand sidebar). If a lot of them were commenting (politely and sensibly, it goes without saying) I'd have been a famous author by now!

Also, approaching 63 (as I keep reminding myself, if I had held a salaried job I would have been compulsorily retired on a paltry pension three years ago), I am greatly enjoying the ease and leisure my careful plans for gradually reducing my workload have earned me, and also the fact that I have been able to decide I don't really need to care and worry about family responsibilities as intensely as I have done for four continuous decades - nor can they expect it from me any more - so I can live out the remaining years of my life 'for myself'. Whatever that means. I shall be most deeply indebted to anyone who can give me some pleasurable engagement that can help to fill in the yawning hours of emptiness, until I have become senile and decrepit (which I mightn't, if God is kind to me. Three score years and ten, I made a deal with Him thirty years ago, and I am just seven years away from that deadline. Believe me, far from being scared, I look forward to it more eagerly with every passing year).

The new BJP government of West Bengal is going to be inaugurated tomorrow, Ponchisey Boishakh. First time ever that we shall have an avowedly right wing government in power. I shall keenly follow their progress over the next year, and try to write up a report card of my own at about this time in 2027. What I am hoping and praying for can be best stated in the ruling party's own slogan: sabka saath, sabka vishwas, sabka vikas -- everyone's progress with everyone's faith and everyone's participation. 

P.S., May 13: The fourth poetry episode has been uploaded tonight on Spotify.

Start of poetry podcast

This is just to announce that I have tentatively begun to recite and discuss poems on Spotify. The first podcast, unimaginatively titled 'The Beginning', is already up there. I am still learning how to use the app, so I am likely to go about ham-handedly for a while: please bear with me. For now, I think clicking on this link will take you to where I want you to go. Alternatively you can search for Suvro Sir's beloved poetry on the app (yes, it seems you need to download the app first, unless you already have it - but it is free, and would take you less than five minutes).  Give me fifteen minutes of your time: listen and tell me about it.

P.S., April 27: The second episode has been uploaded. The link is here.

P.P.S.: May 07: The third episode has been uploaded: here.

Time and wonder

Nineteen years ago I wrote a post here with the title 'The sense of wonder'. I am a much older man now, and would have been bored to tears with life if something of that sense didn't still linger deep inside me. 

One of the greatest wonders, of course, is the fact that I have lived all those years since that last post, and so much has happened, and the days dragged while the years whizzed by, until now I sometimes feel like laughing and crying at the same time to think that I am quickly becoming an old man, and 85%+ of the living human population, or so says Google, is younger than I am!

Some forms of wonder never seem to pall. I first watched my work being transformed into money with which I could buy things when I was in mid-teenage, and I have been working continuously for more than four decades now, and bought so many things with the money I have made, and yet it still makes me wonder like a child to watch people paying me so that I can pay others for their wares and services - imagine, me, pushing 63, and having a formal training in economics! So also the way the young keep being born and growing up into self-sufficient, self-important adults (or so they think) before my eyes, and I keep watching and cannot always remember that I am growing ever older along with them, with 'Time, which makes memories of everything'...

কাল ছিল ডাল খালি / আজ ফুলে যায় ভরে,

বল দেখি তুই মালি /হয় সে কেমন করে?

There are more bitter kinds of wonder too, like the all too common human folly of putting off the most important things for a later time (like telling your loved ones how much you care for them and miss them) until it is just too late, and the kind of stupidity that persuades people that they can somehow try the bad things that their forerunners did and the results will, this time round, turn out to be good. When shall we learn, for instance, that nothing truly good comes from going to war, for either side, that could not be negotiated in peace, over time, with much less horror and devastation?

And now there's a different kind of wonder. In his Ode to a Nightingale, Keats concludes with the line 'fled is that music/do I wake or sleep'? Having thought and read so much along those lines for much longer than most of my students have yet lived, I begin to wonder: what does 'real' mean? Was this life real by any universally acceptable definition, or was it a long, vast, bewildering dream which is soon to end? And will that truly be the end, or just a final waking up? I shall refer the interested reader to the chapter titled On Dreams and Daydreams in the only book I have ever written, To My Daughter.

One last item for now: I cannot stop wondering how the computer/smartphone/internet era has made the general run of humankind so ahistorical minded. From infant to 40-year old, they all seem to believe that the world was created maybe just about half a century ago, the way they talk, the way they are surprised to hear that we have been living with lots of things, from epidemics to spectacles, for hundreds, or even thousands of years. And also how very different things people mean when they say 'it happened a long time ago'. The ordinary man means maybe twenty years, a historian means thousands, a biologist or geologist means millions or tens of millions, and an astronomer glibly talks of supernovae exploding billions of years ago, as if that makes perfect sense to him, as if he really grasps what that kind of timespan means...

So here's as much time as makes sense to me, a very ordinary man:

Jenny kiss'd me when we met

Jumping from the chair she sat in, 

Time, you thief, who loves to get sweets into your list,

Put that in. 

Say that I am weary, say I am sad,

Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,

Say that I am growing old, but add -

Jenny kiss'd me.

Hey Madhav!

 মাধব, বহুত মিনতি করি তোয়ে   

দেই  তুলসী তিল দেহ সমর্পিলু ,

দয়া জনি ছোড়বি মোয়ে। 

গনইতে দোষ গুণলেশ না পাইবি 

জব  তুঁহুঁ করবি বিচার ,

জগতের নাথ জগতে কহায়সি,

জগ বাহির নই মুই ছার। 

Probably Govindadas. More than 500 years ago. (I wrote this from memory, bits and pieces of which are fading now); read around 1981, in class 11 or 12. A rough translation would go as follows:

My Lord, I beg you fervently

Supplicating you with the ritual offerings (tulsi and til, basil leaf and sesame seed)

Please have mercy on me.

When the time comes for You to judge me, you will not find a trace of virtue, but

They call You the Lord of the world, 

Do remember, I, insignificant though I am

I do not exist outside this world.

The hour of judgment is approaching. Today, I can only supplicate: 'Lead, kindly light, for the night is dark, and I am far from home', or 

আরো কতদূরে সে আনন্দধাম ? 

And, as another Bengali adage goes,

বিশ্বাসে মিলায় কৃষ্ণ, তর্কে বহুদূর। 

The Fifteen: book review

Thanks to Swarnava and Pupu, I am engrossed in and being edified by a recently published book titled The Fifteen, which offers short, well-researched biographical sketches of the fifteen extraordinary women who played highly significant roles in framing the Indian Constitution between 1946 and '49. Remember, they were only 15 in a Constituent Assembly of 299 members (ultimately only 11 of them remained, and 284 in total signed the final Document) - all the others were males. Moreover, six of these fifteen were Bengalis, and all were deeply influenced by Tagore and Gandhi. Says a lot about many things, doesn't it? In a desperately poor, mostly illiterate and superstitious, rigidly orthodox, ferociously patriarchal society torn apart by civil war and massive two-way migration, it was a miracle that fifteen such could at all be found, though: highly educated, intelligent, self-confident, self-assertive, idealistic and patriotic women who looked many generations into the future while imagining the India of their dreams and left their own indelible stamp on the new nation state on the basis of which so many others both female and male have been building, with varying degrees of success, over the last eight decades. While paying my deepest respects to these women, I frankly admit that their stories take my breath away, especially when I compare their characters and achievements with those of the three latest generations of women I have lived alongside: a huge number of whom have no idea and don't care two hoots about how much they owe to these fiery pioneers for the often lazy, wasteful, dissolute, entitled and pointless, if not utterly selfish and vicious lives they are allowed to live today.

Among these, I already knew something of the works of Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Sarojini Naidu (nee Chatterjee) and Vijay Lakshmi Pandit. It is a pity I knew hardly anything about Ammu Swaminathan, mother extraordinaire of Dr. Captain Lakshmi Sehgal of INA fame and sister of the redoubtable Mrinalini Sarabhai (as I become surer and surer with age, it's genes plus the first five years of upbringing that determine virtually everything, apart from who holds your hand in your youth!), or about Annie Mascarene, Begum Qudsia Rasul and Dakshayani Velayadhun (the only Christian, Muslim and Dalit woman members respectively), and too little about the likes of Renuka Ray and Sucheta Kripalani. I could wax eloquent and write reams in praise of each of these, ruing my unforgiveable ignorance of details for so long - but I choose here to write about one who has impressed me most: the following paragraphs should elucidate why.

All these women, by the way, were born to some kind of privilege: either they were born to rich and/or progressive parents, or married to highly supportive men, or they were high caste, or at least they had the benefit of a good education, which 99.9% of women in those days were denied. At the same time,  the point is that they worked to make better lives for the common woman and man, not just for themselves or their own little elite circles, and every one of them had to fight almost lifelong against all kinds of unfair obstacles and prejudices, often of the meanest sort which make me cringe in shame (like women cannot be doctors, poets or lawyers) yet they never soured up or gave up - I wish I myself could have remained so positive minded, so hopeful at my age. Anyway, as I was saying, my heroine of choice from this book happens to be Durgabai Deshmukh (1909-1981). What I find fascinating, nay, incredible, is that a girl born in those days, with all her social and familial handicaps, could know her mind so well even before she had outgrown childhood, rejecting her 'arranged' marriage at age eight (and persuading her in-laws' family at 15 that the marriage was impossible, so the man could and should marry someone else), setting up a girls' school at age 12, working for the the Congress party and refusing no less a personage than Jawaharlal Nehru himself at age 14 because he did not have a valid ticket for entry to an important meeting, and she had been tasked to refuse entry to all such arrivals (the modern 'advanced generation' child would not dream of dealing with even someone as trivial as her school headmistress that way, and recently two parents informed me that their girl children, of exactly the same age, cannot come to my class any more, because in the afternoons, they, the parents, would be at work, and such 'infants' cannot possibly dream of coming over on their own - though the fact remains that literally thousands like them have done so for close to four decades now!) My God, she even outstrips Abigail Adams and Rani Rashmoni, about whom I have written gushingly in this same blog long ago...

Still a child, she became a translator for Gandhiji whenever he visited the South. She quickly picked up some Tamil and a lot of Hindi, and actually became a Hindi teacher to hundreds (she was then all of 13). She learned English only in her early twenties. She refused all donations from tycoons of the stature of Jamnalal Bajaj except for books. She was jailed again and again, and actually asked to be housed with the lowest grade of prisoners, just to find out how badly they were treated. She graduated in political science, and then became a qualified lawyer at age 22. At 37, she was elected to the Constituent Assembly - if not the likes of her, then who? She argued forcefully on countless burning issues (read the book), and moved more than 750 amendments. Born into Telugu, coached excellently in Hindi, she fought for Hindusthani to be made the national language, considering the propagation of Hindi 'a serious obstacle to the growth of the provincial languages and a provincial culture', and that 'the narrative to turn Hindi above all other languages was embittering the feelings of the non-Hindi speaking people': Amit Shah, will you please note? She fought for Constitutional protection of the Fundamental Rights of citizens,  for lowering the age criterion for qualifying for a seat in the Rajya Sabha, arguing that being older doesn't necessarily mean wiser, and for a reformed Hindu Code Bill which would guarantee shares of daughters in their fathers' property. In the early days of free India, she served in very high and responsible positions in the Planning Commission and the Central Social Welfare Board, and also won numerous national and international awards, including the Padma Bibhushan. She prepared the first report of the National Education Policy for Women. Her marriage to C.D. Deshmukh, the first Indian Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, was a huge success. She died in his arms, as she had always longed to, and the loving and respectful tribute he paid to her in the book My Durgabai, is something that could be the dream of millions of smart, cool, modern-day women.

And this was just one of those fifteen stars. The rest I leave to the reader who buys and devours the book because I recommended it. I end with a sigh: why haven't I met such women in such a long and inquisitive life? I wish someone would write a book about 15 women who have worked wonders to improve India since 1947... and I shall still lament that I haven't had the good fortune to sit at the feet of any of them. Some females asked with reference to this blog many years ago about me... 'Does he respect only strong and determined and socially beneficent women'? Yes, guilty as accused. It's the same way I think about men, you see... all the rest, just making a living, raising families, thinking of nothing beyond the animal appetites of themselves and their families, I have always sneered at as polluters of the world... they eat, shit, breathe out carbon dioxide, preen over their cars, phones and kids' marks in school, grow old, sick, die and are quickly forgotten even by their own families within twenty years at most. What do they matter? And why should I 'respect' them... just because they look human? Since when did respect become so cheap?

[The Fifteen, by Angelica Aribam and Akash Satyawali, Hachette India 2024, pp. 310, Rs. 371 on Amazon]

Sundarban Safari

Last week, I finally toured the Sundarbans after having wished to do it for more than four decades. Much of my to-do list has now been checked. And, owing to the delightfully congenial company, this was one of the best vacations I have ever had, which is saying something, because I have travelled so much for so long with so many people to so many beautiful and interesting places. 

Having first gone off to Calcutta, we set off for the jungle on the morning of Wednesday, 25th February. There was my friend Saibal the wildlife enthusiast and his wife Kulbir ji, with whom I had travelled to Kanha a year ago. They had made all the arrangements, so I didn't have to lift a finger. Pupu and Swarnava went along without having to be persuaded too hard: I was thrilled, for this was the first time I was travelling with them since they became an 'item' (I hope I am using the word in the correct Gen Y/Z sense). There was Pratyush, who revels in our company. And there was Shoumo the actor (to me, who has actually seen him growing up before my eyes, he will always remain my beloved nitbor). It was a three-hour drive along the Basanti Highway to Gadkhali, across the water from the much better known Gosaba, where we parked our cars and boarded the launch Delta Queen, which could at a pinch seat 40 plus, at a quarter to twelve. The afternoon was already warm to hot, but balmy. The boat was very well-appointed, with clean little washroom and beds, though we, it goes without saying, spent almost all the time lounging on the deck as we manoeuvred between the mangroves along the distributaries with pretty names (like Vidyadhari), some of which were bigger and deeper than many rivers I have seen inland (and so green, so green), keeping our eyes skinned in the hope of catching fleeting glimpses of all sorts of wildlife, and knowing that tigers in hiding were very likely keeping an eye on us. 

No, we didn't see any tigers. Which certainly didn't disappoint me, firstly because I have seen enough in the wild already, secondly because the locals say only half in joke that it is best not to see one, the first sight being quite likely to be your last, since virtually all Sundarban tigers are maneaters, and essentially because I love the forest and the water for their own sake, and don't belong to that class of tourists who go around the Himalayas for days and lament that they 'saw nothing' if they couldn't catch a glimpse of Everest or Kanchenjungha. Lunch was delectable and sumptuous; we were dropped off at evenfall at a nice little riverside resort with large rooms and ample beds. We found a lot of friendly to ecstatic canine company, which, for the likes of us (Shoumo is an animal rights activist among other things) is always a welcome bonus. The evening was spent the way we like best, drinks and snacks and a lot of adda and laughter, slowly dozing off, somehow dealing with dinner (no slight to the cook), then off early to bed and sound sleep.

Swarnava, Pupu and Pratyush hate waking up at daybreak even more than I do, so we were all groggy and grumpy when boarding the boat (this one was named Sher Khan!) at 6.30 next morning. But the beauty of the sunrise through the mist and the chilly wind quickly stirred up everyone's spirits, aided by a hearty breakfast. I don't know how, but everyone had already become garrulous friends with everyone else (I believe I was the quietest of all), and it is unbelievable how fast eleven hours passed, with lunch in the middle and some of us dozing off for short spells now and then. The cameras were worked like crazy: we eventually figured that more than a thousand photos had been taken, making me sigh to remember the days when we took along film rolls in modest quantity, and worried about making every shot, every frame count. We saw all kinds of things, from myriad species of birds (including a rare sort of eagle, besides egrets, kingfishers, adjutant storks) to huge crocodiles, monitors big and small, swamp deer, wild boar, otter, mud skippers, monkeys, snakes ... and miles and miles of dense, unspoilt jungle. What dismayed was the factoid that the sea is encroaching ever deeper inland, so the waters have become brackish, and as a result the sundari tree, after which the forest is named, is becoming scarce - most of the flora is of the garjan and hental variety. Oh, and in the early morning we had stopped at a site which offered a watchtower, a shrine to Bonbibi and Dakshin Rai, a large freshwater watering hole and a botanical garden designed to educate us about the local vegetation.

Next morning, Swarnava, Pupu and I cried off the boat trip, I because I was exhausted after waking up so early three days in succession, and S and P because they had work to do online (the internet connection, weak to non-existent, had been quickly restored the first day itself). Pupu and I have done this more than once - we need time to unwind very slowly; that is essential to full enjoyment of any trip. Shoumo and Pratyush went off with Saibal and Kulbir for another eleven hour sail. Frankly, I enjoyed the day quite as much as all the other days, doing absolutely nothing: a bit of reading, playing with the dogs, delicious lunch of lobsters, and Pupu came to sleep beside me while Swarnava was working through the afternoon. Late in the evening, we went for a walk up to the edge of the jungle to catch sight of spotted owls across a rutted path over an embankment in deep darkness. A few of the doggies accompanied us, heaven knows why. Pupu walked with her arm entangled with mine. Bliss.

On Saturday we boarded the boat for the last time at about 8.30, and, after another five hour cruise and a hearty lunch, we were dropped off at Gadkhali. By that time, the boat manager and guide had become friends: 'Do come again', they urged. We set off at around 1.15, took the road through Baruipur and Kamalgaji, and were back at home at around 3.40. I heard later that Shoumo, who dropped off Pratyush later, was discussing how lonely they would feel after four days of such jolly and close camaraderie. All of them have since thanked me for coaxing them into making the trip, despite all their work and engagements, so that's a small victory I think I can be proud of. I want to make loved ones happy, and cannot have enough of their thanks when I succeed. I missed Sunandini and Koushik and Aveek badly. God bless you all.

To all readers, I shall urge: make this trip, but do ensure that you do it with true loved ones.

Finally, two things that impressed me: the authorities were very strict about not carrying disposable plastic water bottles on the boat, and not one of the numerous boats we saw, some crowded with passengers, was playing earsplitting 'music' on so-called DJ boxes. More power to the elbow of the Forest Department, and may the tigers live in peace.

Back in Calcutta, I went to renew my passport. The hassle was absolutely hateful, especially the coldness or downright bad manners of everyone except the final clearing officer. Then imagine queuing up for visas every time like a beggar, then the expense, then long layovers and not being able to smoke for hours and sitting cramped inside a tin tube for 7, 10, 15 hours at a stretch and often not even being able to talk much with the locals because of the language barrier... so much for the 'joys' of travelling abroad, and I thank my lucky stars for YouTube: I can do all the foreign travel I want from my bedroom, at virtually no expense and trouble at all. If I cannot travel abroad like a VVIP, to whom no rules apply, I am better off without trying. I do hope, however, that I can see more of my vast and still in places charming country before I die.

For photos, click here.

How time flies!

I am reading a book written by my great grandfather on my mother's side, the doctor (the others of my male ancestors of that generation I have never seen, not even my father's father. There was a self-made tycoon among them, my mother's maternal grandfather, but that's a story for another day). It is a novel based on his hospital days. I have mentioned him at least twice before (here's one). More and more he sounds to me like a Bengali A.J. Cronin. But that was not what I set out to write here.

It is mid-February. The laziest time of the year for me, because all classes have shut down prior to the annual examinations. This is when I have the most free time, and this is when I let it wander most guiltlessly. So it has been for a long time now. Lately I have been thinking about my lineage: all the generations I have seen. It is my belief that we are all very complicated and unique admixtures of the genes of many generations of ancestors; there is hardly anything about the 'me' in me that is completely new. I am sure, for example, that if you take my father and my dadu out of me, there will be virtually nothing left (oh, tiny bits and pieces of some much older ancestors, maybe). Anyway, the thing that I am musing over is that I have seen six successive generations of living people now. The oldest were my dadu's parents, then my grandparents, then there were my parents' generation, then mine, then my daughter's and now their children are being born: you can see me cradling the newest arrival in the vast extended family I have created; he is all of three months. Today's parents are being very late about it, so they will be lucky if they live long enough to see five generations. It has also been a very communicative family, so, besides everything I have read and seen about the world, I have witnessed living history for close to a hundred and fifty years. 

The most remarkable thing about this lived experience is that, unlike most people around me - especially those of my own generation and those up to twenty years younger - I do not believe that either the world or the people in it have really changed very much within the last two or three decades. Technology hoopla?  That doctor was using anesthesia and watching movies a century ago, and they had already invented the telephone, the aeroplane, radio and TV,  atomic bombs and computers before my grandpa was middle aged. Wars? They lived through two world wars; today we see firecrackers and skirmishes in Gaza and Ukraine. Women plying their wiles and men cheating or swooning over them? That sort of thing was old hat millennia ago. So was 'corruption' in politics and dirty tricks in business, so was mass unemployment and pathetic pay packets for the vast majority (brush up on your Chander Pahar and Jana Aranya). They survived horrible famines and epidemics; these days we are traumatized by CoVid, which, when the madness was all over, confirmed that the mortality rate stayed at no more than one per cent, regardless of what we did or didn't to 'contain' it. We have vastly more people and motor vehicles around; that's one big thing that has changed, certainly, but even around 1900 so many writers were talking about India's teeming millions, and today, even the 'poor', at least in cities, are on the whole better clothed and fed than when I was a child. 

That is one big reason, coupled with my own jadedness, why I find the world so increasingly tiresome and boring. Two things have definitely changed for the worse: people on the whole have become far weaker both in body and mind, far more easily dissatisfied and frustrated, far less willing and able to fight adversity despite having much more than their ancestors dreamt of  (some important lesson to be learnt here?), and good manners in public have almost vanished, at least in this country, at least in urban areas. Maybe folks are much more honest in expressing what they truly think and feel, which is a good thing, but couldn't that be done less loudly, less hurtfully, less crudely?

It is nearly two decades since I wrote a post here titled 'The world we are making for our children'. I have been reminded forcefully of it since this child was born. What a world he has been born in, sadly; how much he must struggle to find some peace and joy in it! I am also reminded of the terrible poem 'Prayer before birth' by Louis MacNeice. May this child and his generation therefore carry my blessings, and may those blessings be of some slight worth. People like me tried in very tiny ways to make the world a little better: I think most of us failed, and in any case, we are now too tired and timid and weak to do more.

Heads up about that YouTube channel

I have been telling stories on my own channel on a playlist titled Goppoguchchho (which can be accessed by simply typing in 'Suvro Sir'). 46 episodes have been uploaded so far, one put up unfailingly every week. Another six, and I shall stop. I had planned to do 52 episodes - one full year - to see how it worked out, how many listeners and appreciative comments I got. It has been rather disappointing (especially the fact that those who said they liked it very much and want me to go on didn't, I think, do much to spread the word around). Anyway, that experiment will be over soon - another six weeks, actually - and I shall switch over to Spotify, where I shall be reciting poems, and telling stories exclusively for children. This last will be done essentially for family, so I wouldn't have to care how many or how few others listened in or bothered to draw in more listeners. 

I have said over and over again for nearly forty years that I work only for love or money. Where neither seems to be forthcoming, let us end our thankless labour.

This is for everybody's information only.

Not a happy ending

We are having an unusually cold winter this time round after several years. Last night, the weather app said the celsius had sunk to 8 degrees, but it felt definitely colder. Anyway, I love the winter less than before, because my bones ache, and the horrible pollution keeps giving me coughs and colds. 

So, alas, I am writing the last post of the year on a rather bitter note, especially because, though by nature strongly against extreme views of any kind, I am getting politically angry against the ruling dispensation after a long, long time. Maybe I shall grow vocal in the coming year.

Let there be a just peace on earth, and may God deliver His judgment on those who believe, and tell others to believe, in hating other human beings on the basis of race, religion, language, colour, gender, nationality and so on. That breed is proliferating everywhere, and all history stands testimony that it bodes ill for all of us, except perhaps the very rich and the very powerful. As the poet asked, tumi ki taader kshoma koriyachho, tumi ki besechho bhalo (have you forgiven them and loved them)?

One good thing I just did and which makes me happy is putting in this link to the blog of a dear young man, Aditya Mishra, friend of Swarnava, and one of those increasingly few who have things to write about and can write.

Bye bye to 2025

It is 24th December. Just a week left of the year. Time again to look back... and ahead. This has been on the whole a good year for me: sort of quiet, no big bad news, travelling around quite a bit, welcoming a newborn into my extended family of old boys, watching my daughter become a well-rounded working cum family woman, blessed with the companionship of old favourites who have stayed by my side for years, slowly learning to relax in the sunset of my life. This has also been my storytelling year. I have been posting a story a week on YouTube (now linked to my Instagram and Facebook accounts) since April, and I shall continue for at least a full year: that will be a repertoire worth leaving behind. Also, within a few months this blog will be twenty years old, and I am proud, because I know for a fact that few people in this age stick to writing as a non-commercial activity for that long; indeed, most bloggers give up after a year, because they have nothing more to say. Other than teaching for a living and bringing up my daughter, this has been the longest single project of my life. Someday, Pupu says, parts of this blog can be culled to make a traditional book. It has truly been a labour of love.

2026 is going to be a busy and difficult year for lots of people. There will be the Assembly polls in West Bengal, with the BJP getting more and more desperate to throw out the current regime. Globally, the AI bubble is likely to burst, sending shockwaves through stock markets all over the world, and the climate crisis is going to grow steadily worse, along with the worldwide reaction against immigrants - Americans against Indians as much as Indians against 'Bangladeshis' (I am not going into the right and wrong of it here, but I have been predicting this for three decades and more). So also technology mania and the onward march of elected autocracies wedded to the most short-sighted kinds of populism (the Roman emperors kept the masses happy with bread and circuses - just read plentiful junk food, non-stop festivals and social media feeds: no substantial difference). Low level white collar jobs will continue to become ever scarcer, more ill paid and less secure. Economic inequality of the worst kind will keep becoming ever more acute. Language will continue to be debased until people are hardly able to figure out what others are saying, creating problems everywhere from workplace to family place and funplace. Nutcases of all sorts, from vegans to those who insist on unisex toilets, will become ever more strident. But also, countless people will go on quietly doing useful things they do because they love doing them, from nursing patients to teaching kids to gardening and making music, and all kinds of pushback against nutters will also build up steam. If my health and finances permit, it will be an interesting scenario to sit back and watch from the sidelines, sometimes to laugh at and sometimes to grimace over. It has been a fairly tough life, and if God gives me a fairly comfortable retirement for a few years (not too many, please!) I shall be quite content.

Thinking about all the old boys and girls who have taken a lot of my time, attention and love and at some point vanished completely from my life with not so much as a by your leave, I was suddenly reminded of something that an economics professor remarked in class while talking about Nehruvian socialism: 'He loved humanity but hated people'. Supposing that were true, at my time of life I see nothing wrong or cynical about that attitude; rather, I deeply understand. If you know enough of the best things in human beings, you cannot help loving humanity, but individual people are most usually so flawed (to put it very nicely) that, even if you don't hate them, you cannot bring yourself to love them: unless you are the kind of divine fool who would forgive even those who crucify you.

I have become fascinated with a website titled History.com - visit it and you will find out why, in case you have any interest in the past. Also, a most interesting fledgling venture that an old boy has been talking about and is involved with: see the website truecompanion.co (not dot com). Right now, I am almost through a six part web series titled Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on trial on Netflix. And over the next three days I am going to have my fill of feel-good Christmas movies. Merry Christmas, all: God give you peace, rest and warmth.

Madhupur

Those who have been listening to the stories on my YouTube channel (just write Suvro Chatterjee or Goppoguchchho) will have noticed that I read out excerpts from a new book titled Memories of Madhupur not long ago. Now I have driven before through Madhupur, now in Jharkhand, about a four-hour drive from Durgapur, but never stayed. I have heard lots of stories from family elders about the days when the moneyed Calcutta elite invariably had little palaces or large bungalows there, and went over frequently for a health cure: the doctors highly recommended the 'change' from city life, because the weather was cool and balmy for most part of the year, there were vast open spaces and greenery all around, so virtually no pollution, the mineral charged water was supposed to be very good for health, and local labour was cheap, obedient, dutiful and generally harmless. With the great socio-economic and political changes post independence, most of this old Bengali elite lost their stranglehold and many even their properties, though some held on doggedly. Lately some have renovated their old villas and turned them into resorts - weekend getaways - for the newly moneyed middle class tourists from the cities. One of those caught my attention.

On the way I stopped at Karmatanr, where one of my most revered heroes of yesteryear, Pandit Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, spent many of his last years, still teaching, still treating with cheap homeopathy the poorest of the poor, the local Santhals, the sort of people for whom he had cared most and done most all his life (gnyaner sagar, doyar sagar, birchuramoni Bidyasagar). The railway station has been renamed after him, and his walled compound with some trees he planted with his own hands still remain: one or two rooms, including his bedroom, have been lovingly restored, but most of the houses are going to seed and the site is located beside an obscure, dingy, narrow alley with open drains, and sandwiched between ugly, jerry-built, newly constructed houses and shops of insignificant and uncaring locals simply making do. A very sad contrast with the ways the houses, memorials and museums dedicated to Tagore and Vivekananda have been restored or preserved. Shameful and pitiable. I got a book about the great man's life there, and learnt that a small trust is still protecting the place from dissolution and decay, but there was no way I could connect with the trust, the writer or the publisher, no phone number, email, postal address, nothing, to ask if I could help, in whatever little way I can afford. I wish the two state governments involved would get into the act with gusto and do something before it is too late.

Arriving at the resort (Sett Heritage Guest House) at just after 12 immediately lifted my spirits. The property was not too big,  but beautifully preserved, everything from rooms to the Victorian era babuder boithokkhana, complete with old paintings tastefully placed on the walls, old books inviting the connoisseur on the shelves, period furniture of cane and wood, ceiling fans of century old design, even switches from a bygone era and canopied four-poster bedsteads, low doors and curtained French windows, albeit grilled, because sneak thieves have been a problem for ages. I like this kind of holiday stay far more than any chrome and steel and wood-laminated five star hotel tower frequented by the crass newly rich any day. We got the lawnside room, which was the best, because it was isolated from the main building and so very quiet, with a little private garden in front and the kitchen right across, so that you didn't even have to holler for tea, coffee and snacks, and you could lunch and dine right there in the mellow sunshine or under a canopy at night. The staff was  promptness, courtesy and helpfulness personified. In India you cannot get closer to heaven, just sun bathe, listen to soft music, read, chat (my mother and driver/friend had gone along), eat (very nice, homely, filling food) and sleep.

But there was a bonus waiting still for me. The proprietor, Mr. Anjan Sett, 75, from Kolkata (Theatre Road) and his wife came over and struck up a warm and friendly conversation right away. Within minutes we had discovered common acquaintances from the days of yore. He begged me to browse through his collection of books and take away whatever, as many as I pleased - 'I can't cope with the dreary task of preserving them any more, and finding true bookworms to share with is such a rare pleasure!' So courteous,  so humble, so self-effacing: talk about the civilizing effects of old money! My mother shared many of her childhood experiences, and he drank it all up, because they were, after all, contemporaries who have lived through a nearly forgotten, far more cultured age. We were earnestly invited to visit their much bigger property a furlong away.

So next morning we went, and saw a palace. They occupy the much smaller wing, which they have transformed into another guest house ('You can come over right now if you wish!'). I suggested they hand over the palace itself to some giant corporate chain like the Taj or ITC, which they will transform into a haven for the dirty rich in no time at all. But of course, the olde-worlde charm will be lost forever, because their clients will come only to make raucous noise, lech after each other's wives, and drink themselves silly... Then we did a little bit of local sightseeing, taking in the tiny Bakulia Falls (must be a spectacle at the height of the monsoons), the bahanno bigha neighbourhood of humbler Bengalis who settled down generations ago, the Kapil Math (I thought the ancient sage's den was on Sagar Island, but okay, maybe he spent some time here), and enjoyed the aarati and vandana at the Vivekananda Math. Next morning, we set off after a leisurely breakfast and were back in good time for a regular lunch. A most satisfactory getaway, and a very good use of the Monday and Tuesday break I have now assigned to myself every week. If you have enjoyed reading this, let me know.

For photos, click here.

Saibal Biswas

I mentioned Saibal in my January 2025 post titled Kanha, Paradise. I am proud to call Saibal my friend. That is not an expression I use lightly.

When he first came to see me, more than two decades ago (I am ashamed I cannot remember the exact year), he came as the representative of a multinational bank, on a business tour aimed at finding new customers upcountry. He was introduced by his junior, Sayan, who was a good friend of a then-beloved ex student, and had grown close to me. I was attracted by Saibal's manner of starting the conversation - so warm, so amiable, yet so professional. I was listening so closely to him, and he was behaving so much like a regular person, that it took me some time to notice that his right hand was missing. No one discussed or even mentioned the fact, and of course I am too reserved a person to put such questions to an almost-stranger.

Gradually our friendship deepened. There came a time when he came over again, to announce that he had quit his bank job and started up an investment company of his own, specializing in mutual funds (this was a time when MFs had just begun to catch the public attention), and I became, I think, one of his early clients. I remember him asking me 'Suvroda, do you want to get rich quick?' I was a little taken aback, then said smilingly that I had no such dream. He said, 'Good, then you will be the kind of customer I am looking for. If you can invest slowly but regularly, I promise to give you a good nest egg to retire comfortably on in two decades' time, give or take a few years'. And he seems to have kept his promise. Besides my own sustained hard work and saving habit, it is thanks to Saibal alone, outside my family that is, that I am today as safe financially as any middle class man in India can be.

His company has grown apace, just as have my savings. Last I checked, they have 7000 plus clients and are managing assets close to a thousand crore rupees (may that grow to 5000 in my lifetime!). Two decades are a long time, and lots of things, good and bad, happen to everybody within that kind of time span. I have been no exception. I have needed substantial sums of money urgently at least three times, and I have got literally perfect within-the-day service every time. Saibal's good friend and colleague Samrat has become the kind of 'relationship manager' that you can usually only dream of in this day and age. I only wonder how they can instantly and so satisfactorily respond to a relatively small-time client like me day in, day out, for years and years without fail. Talk about responsibility, efficiency and commitment...

Over the years, I got to know more and more about Saibal, in little bits and pieces at a time, and the more I learnt, the stronger my admiration for him became. He had had a decent urban educated middle class upbringing, albeit with the usual difficulties and disappointments. Then disaster struck. Shortly after he had settled down in that bank job and started courting a colleague, there was a freak road accident while he was travelling with some friends to a picnic spot in a bus, and his right hand was nearly severed. It was a miracle that he survived the journey back to a hospital in the city. The hand was amputated. 

There followed trauma, shock, deep, prolonged depression and disorientation. Then there came climbing back the long road to recovery and reconstruction of life. As he himself says, he had to re-learn everything from scratch, everything from how to write with his left hand to tying his shoelaces with a single hand. He freely acknowledges that for all his zest for life, his strength of mind, his fixity of purpose, that rehabilitation would have been very difficult if not impossible without the steadfast, patient, uncomplaining, deeply empathetic support of his gem of a wife (my pronaam, Kulbeer ma'am) and a few true friends and supportive, enthusiastic colleagues. Then came the worst part of the story: his job turned sour, not only because of the demands of profit-hungry, customer-indifferent bosses but because too many decision makers were hesitant about entrusting a 'handicapped' man with the kind of bigger responsibilities that he craved and knew he could handle. So, approaching his mid-thirties, he crossed the second giant challenge of his life: to quit his salaried job and plunge into the maelstrom of the business world. His team worked long and hard, intelligently and determinedly. The rest is history.

Now at long last Saibal has told his own story in a little book titled Hand of God: one hand, infinite dreams. For anyone teenaged or older, it is truly inspirational without the slightest exaggeration. As Saibal says (read the book), he has now made all the money he really needed, his son is doing very well and is the pride and joy of his life, he knows peace and rest. And yet, he is still crazy about wildlife and travelling and football, and is still running his business hands-on, though for him now money making is most firmly secondary to the satisfaction that comes from knowing that he has earned the trust of so many customers, and he is, as we speak, being of enormous help to many of them in their hour of need, whether they need money or sympathy or expert advice. He also has some ambition to join politics, because he believes we need activists in the ring, so to speak, who want to work hard in order to make life in India much more congenial for people with disabilities than he has found it to be for most of his working life. I wish him Godspeed, and though my remaining aims in life are far more private and humble, so that I could never be someone like him, I have no hesitation is declaring that he ranks very high among my living heroes. Thank you for having become so much more than my money manager, Saibal.

P.S.: Saibal also speaks on TV (I last heard him on CNBC) and writes financial advisory columns for newspapers like ABP. He has always been telling me 'Dada, it is not how much you invest but how long and how regularly you do so that matters more, so tell your grown up students to start young; put them in touch with me'. You can contact him at his company website.

A big landmark reached

Last weekend of November approaching. As in every year for almost a quarter century, I am closing off the outgoing batches of students. Today was the last time I took two successive classes: for the next four months I shall no longer have to do an afternoon class, so I can sleep or sometimes watch movies every day, and go travelling much oftener, because from next week, I shall have two successive days off every week: something deliciously anticipated for a very, very long time, because I have never had a single day off every week for as long as I can remember! This was the last time I did four simultaneous class 10 batches. The number of batches has been halved. I shall now well and truly be at least half-retired. Oh my goodness; now that I am finally high and dry, I cannot imagine how I stuck to this work routine for so long. And I am infinitely thankful to a very high power that gave me the health, the energy, the determination and the opportunity to do it. It has been hard, but I shall be most dishonest if I did not admit that there have been many compensations - being my own master, teaching my own style, fixing my own holidays, working from home since long before WFH became a thing.

Tanmoy in faraway New Zealand, ICSE 1994 batch, one of the very few old boys who have  kept continuously in touch, will be happy to know that I have been playing his 'Suvro-da' podcast on YouTube to all the outgoing batches, just to tell them, 'This is how some students still remember me', and wondering aloud how many of them will do the same, if any. Of course, by the time they are Tanmoy's age, I shall have been long gone. I am already telling my currently-juniormost (class 8) batch that theirs might just be the very last batch that I teach. Let us see.

No man can see very far into the future, not his own, not his family's, not his country's, not the world's. At 16, I had wondered in writing what things might look like at the turn of the century, when I would be 37 (year 2000 CE); twenty five years have passed after that landmark, and I am still carrying on. My oldest student is 63; the first one who came to study with me here in Durgapur will be 54 this year. One of the greatest sources of pride for me is that I can vibe so easily and well with teenagers still: one student, now 52, whose daughter never wants to miss one of my classes, recently asked me 'How do you do it?' But yes, for numerous reasons, many of which I have written about before, I am getting a trifle tired and bored and less hopeful for them, so it is indeed high time that I slowed down and reduced the workload with the aim of going entirely post-economic within a few more years, God willing. Then I can sit back and watch the fun of a new generation being 'educated' by AI! And maybe turning most of my attention to raising my own grandchildren in the time that is left to me.

Those who have just left, click this link to find out what I wrote to the students who left in 2009: imagine - they are 31/32 years old now!

It goes without saying that any ex student, however young or old, who happens to read this post and feels nostalgic, is most welcome to write down his or her own thoughts as a comment on this.

The hills once again

Beginning 1971, when I was all of eight years old, I have been visiting north Bengal continually but after long intervals. This year I did it twice. I went visiting the Dooars in late February, and I have just spent a week in the hills again. 

As always, I begin to grumble three months before the pujo that I am having difficulty deciding where I should go to escape Bengal's annual madness, and which of my favourites I can take along for enjoyable company. This time round I couldn't confirm with anybody other than Arka Choudhury (who had accompanied my family on a day's road trip along with his batchmate Saikat back in 2010), and though I made all the bookings in late July to be on the safe side, the outgoing tickets on the Vande Bharat Express were put on the wait list, and I had to hold my breath till ten days before the journey to learn that they had been confirmed. Then, after sending off my mother to stay with her brother and some friends in Kolkata (more and more I hate to leave her alone for any length of time, though there are a lot of people around to keep an eye on her), I set off at dawn on Sunday the 28th September (shoshthi), and took the train from Bolpur, arriving on time at New Jalpaiguri. The station, being reconstructed, is a mess right now, and the sun was blazing. The pre-arranged driver dropped us off at the oldest homestay (large and lavish enough to be called a hotel, actually) in Teenchuley just after sunset. 

The room was big and cosy, with a sun lounge looking down on the twinkling lights of Kalimpong; the surroundings were quiet, clean and lush green, with the forest beginning within a hundred yards from the gate, the sky alternated between overcast and azure, the food was mouth watering, the service was excellent, so I would have been in seventh heaven had it not been for all the chatter from the adjoining rooms, clearly audible through the paper thin wooden walls. But there was some compensation: my next door boarder complimented me unasked about the quality of my voice that he had overheard, and, a little taken aback, I couldn't think of a better way to thank him than to send him a link to my YouTube storytelling channel via Whatsapp. The host - probably my age, but cheery and sprightly - treated us to beer and a few songs one evening, and I made friends with two young locals of my daughter's generation whose courtesy, English and general knowledge of the world won my admiration. We spent the days eating, sleeping late, chatting and wandering about the very steep roads or getting our breath back sitting on tree stumps inside the pine forest. It was as relaxing and enchanting as could be.

Around eight on Wednesday morning we drove off to Tukvar. We had to pass through teeming and hyper-congested Darjeeling on the way, and it was a nightmare: of the three-hour journey, just crossing the town took an hour and a half. All our old and classic hill stations are now bursting at the seams; I have heard it's the same in Nainital and Mussoorie and Shimla, and I had exactly the same experience at Ooty last year. Anyway, Tukvar is a steep climb down from Darjeeling, and it was beautifully unspoilt and quiet and clean again, nestled among tea gardens offering fleeting views of mighty Kanchanjungha when the clouds cleared. This time the homestay was a humble affair, but the host was most decent and friendly, and the hospitality was earnest and very good, so the two-day stay was once again very pleasant, especially every time I recalled the crowds and traffic and noise that I had escaped. On Friday we rose and left early to avoid the Darjeeling jams and drove off to Bhalukhop on the other side of Kalimpong, which I had liked very much the last time, and spent another peaceful day among the clouds, though there was a bit of unpleasantry over dinner, which I shall gloss over.

On Saturday we left early again, because it was very foggy and overcast, and drizzling all the way. The weather app predicted heavy thunderstorms. Our luck held, and we arrived early at NJP, which was already waterlogged. A plain and leisurely lunch at a streetside eatery, squelching through the mud and slush, then we were on the train. It arrived at Bolpur only a few minutes late, and Firoz brought us safely home, though ugly and cacophonous bhasaan jatras held us up on the way and even late at night. But we were very, very lucky: that same night the hills and roads we had traversed were flooded, and as everybody has heard by now, landslides have claimed many lives and injured far more. Evidently Ma Durga was looking after me, or I have accumulated a lot of good karma!

I must thank young Arka for being a very good travelling companion. I only pray that his snoring problem goes away! And also many, many thanks to my old friend Subir Dubey for suggesting such lovely places to visit. I only so wish he could have come along with his magical flute and harmonica.

These breaks are vital to my well-being, but travelling during holiday times is becoming more and more irksome every year. I wonder what I am going to do as I grow older. Perhaps taking refuge in the rural homes of people who care for me, with no amenities whatsoever beyond the peace and solitude they offer, would be the best option. Meanwhile, one thing is certain - excessive 'development' is ruining this country and bringing us closer to danger and disaster. I have read about locals in old and scenic towns all over Europe beginning to protest loudly against the tourism 'invasion', and I won't be surprised if the people of the hills in India join them in the not too distant future.

For photos, click here.

Troubling ruminations

Driving recently through Kolkata, I saw a touching sign right in front of the main gate of Fort William (newly named Vijay Durg): 'Want to do something for a soldier? Be an Indian worth fighting for.' I was reminded of the truly great who have lived and died before us so that our country might be free, prosperous and glorious, and I sadly wondered how many of us today would qualify. How many of you - I am asking all except the most blindly selfish and perverted - could honestly look at yourself in the mirror and say confidently 'I am an Indian worth fighting (and dying) for'? I know I could not ask or expect any Indian to do so much for me...

Which led to another but related train of thought: why, when we even at all bother to tell our children about our great men and women, do we invariably mention only those who are all long dead: why only the Tagores, Vivekanandas, Gandhis, Bagha Jatins and the like? Haven't so many Indians devoted their lives in the post-independence era to improving the lot of their fellow countrymen in myriad important ways? Why do we (the older generations, who are supposed to 'teach' youngsters what matters and what does not) gush endlessly instead about cricketers and film stars and people who, in one way or the other, are busy making fortunes, often contributing very little, if anything at all, to national welfare and progress? Jagdeep Chhokar's recent death stirred these thoughts - and I am sure most 'educated' Indians would have to ask Google who he was and what he did. I could reel off so many such names without having to consult any notebook or encyclopedia: (ICS) Sukumar Sen, Aruna Roy, Ela Bhatt, Sunita Narain, Bindhyeshwari Pathak, Kailash Satyarthi, P. Sainath, Harsh Mander, M. C. Mehta, Subhas Dutta, Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Bittu Sahgal, Arunachalam Muruganantham and countless others I have read and heard about, but are not 'famous' enough to be accessed via the internet. I know for a fact that most of my readers would merely gape and secretly admit never having heard of them. If we have failed to instill some ideals, some vision in our young, if we have never told them what sort of people really deserve to be respected, why do we eternally lament that our country is going to the dogs, or boast that it is doing great only because a few people are becoming billionaires every year and we can rub our weak neighbours' noses in the dirt now and then? It is obviously because we have taught our young that there is nothing to life beyond getting a nondescript job and shopping and being idly 'entertained' and preening before friends and relatives for as long as we can! What could be more pathetic for a whole nation?

A little economic gnyaan here for those who are interested, in connection with the lately much tomtommed claim that India is now the 'fastest growing major economy', which has recently become the fourth (or fifth) largest in the world. 1) It all depends on how much you can trust the source of the figures, and the government, which provides most of the data, is not the most trustworthy source of such things! 2) There was a massive fall of GDP/national income during the COViD-induced decline, so the rebound looks much healthier than it actually is - to a large extent we are merely catching up with the pre-2020 (pre-GST, pre demonetization-) years, and it remains to be seen how long this growth spurt will continue, 3) Mere GDP figures mean very little, because a. increase of production of literally anything adds to GDP, guns, drugs, luxury resorts as much as food and schools and hospitals for the poor, b. how the GDP is shared out matters far more when it is a question of overall welfare: if a tiny minority siphons off most of the benefits of growth, as is currently the case, the average Indian remains in a bad way, even if you completely forget the poorest 300 million, c. the moment you look at per capita income instead of the total, given the gigantic population, India still remains one of the poorest countries in the world, and is likely to remain so for decades to come (so comparing our situation with Japan, population 124 million, or Germany, population 84 million, whom we have just narrowly 'beaten', makes us look very conceited as well as silly), d. on many globally respected and trusted indices, such as the UN HDI, the World Hunger Index, the Corruption index, the gender-equality index and so on, India still ranks among the lowest, as anyone can check for oneself. All this is not to deride or deny whatever India has actually achieved since independence (and that's a lot), but to insist that we should all accept we have a long way to go before we can truly become Viksit Bharat, and along the way we have to correct many defects and make a lot of course corrections if we ever want to reach that goal: merely boasting about certain things and denying certain others and trying to shut up everyone who points out what we really need to do is not the best way ahead.

A status update on my YouTube channel where I am telling a new story every week: it seems I have acquired a loyal and regular following of listeners, but the number is still very small (around 150-200, I should think), considering the number of subscribers, and the number of people who know me (just count the number of ex students along with their family members, and it will come to several tens of thousands, I should think). Maybe it's because I am not spending money on 'buying' listeners, as apparently most YouTubers do? But since I don't plan to do that, this core group of listeners, if they really want me to keep going, should work a little more to spread the word around among their own friends and relatives, especially parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents. If every one of you lets ten people know, and nudge them a bit, at least two or three will start listening, and very soon that will have a cascading effect, and give me a great morale booster. Otherwise, as my daughter has said, the one solid good thing that is happening is that I am building up a repertoire of audio stories that more than one family member will keep listening to years after I am gone! But then, sooner rather than later I am going to lose steam and cry 'enough'...

One other thing, a subject I keep harping on from time to time: I miss the long and absorbing debates I used to have with a lot of people here over things that I had written. There are blogposts which garnered 60-plus comments: now I consider myself lucky if I get five or six (and often those who are keenest and have the most spare time to comment are those who hate me blindly, whatever their reasons are!) Most of my decent, informed, thoughtful readers, whether they are in their twenties or fifties, apparently no longer 'have time'. Now that is a mindless canard if ever there was one, as everyone secretly knows but is ashamed to admit. We lack time a) only for those things which we do not seriously consider to be a priority, or b) because we are perpetually distracted by trivia, whether that be attending parties or quarrelling with the spouse or scrolling endlessly through Instagram. So I am urging the best of my readers, one more time: PLEASE engage. Otherwise, I am nearing twenty years of non-stop writing here, and I might soon decide that it's time to call it a day.

Finally, for those who find this blog 'too serious', do look up my other blog. And those strange few who think I treat my ex students like toilet paper, I should beg them with folded hands to come and meet me and let me know what I ever did to make them feel so bad (because I do have a lot of beloved ex students who think quite the opposite about me), so that I can most sincerely beg forgiveness for having hurt them - provided they can convince me I hurt them absolutely without any valid reason. But to all the rest, who merely burn with helpless anger and jealousy every time they visit my blog (the root cause being, I think, that I have found the kind of freedom and peace with self-respect and financial solvency which they will never get, because they don't deserve it) my request, repeated ad nauseam, is 'Please stop reading!' I am not going to change my ways and views because of folks like you, so you are wasting your time. And calling your betters names doesn't harm them, it merely shows you up for what you are. You hide behind pseudonyms and don't dare deal with me face to face, so you belong to the trash can.

Rain, rain, go away!

This has been one of the longest rainy seasons in living memory. I wish the rains would stop now - and I didn't think I'd ever say that! The surroundings are too hot and damp, and it is affecting everything, from the musty smells all around to veggie prices on fire to people falling ill right and left with fever and allied complications. The only silver lining is the hope of a long and chilly winter. And all the terrible news about cloudbursts and flash floods and landslides from the northwest part of the country - Himachal, Uttarakhand, Punjab - make me doubly thankful that I live in a relatively much safer place. But I couldn't avoid a recent bout of fever myself, and it has left me wobbly with a hacking cough and throbbing head. It's all I can do to tell a story a week on YouTube besides the usual routine of classes and as much sleep as I can get.

Not a single thought-provoking response to my last post. Makes me wonder whether the sort of people who read my blog have lost the capacity or the desire to comment. More and more it seems a thankless chore to continue hacking away at this blog. And yet, wonder of wonders, the blog counter keeps climbing relentlessly...

I have been seeing very interesting dreams lately. I wish I could discuss them with an attentive expert. ...'and in that sleep what dreams may come' indeed.

I have been working non-stop, every single day, since I came back from my daughter's place at the start of June. I am desperate for a break, and taking the next week off. Just eat and sleep is my plan. And who knows whether the railways will confirm my ticket reservation for the North Bengal trip during the pujo week?

Here is a link to a TED talk that I have listened to very carefully: 'Is AI making us dumber?' My own belief is, of course, that the very idea of using AI in education - at least AI as it works right now - is one of the dumbest ideas I have ever come across. But then, it is designed by very dumb and very greedy people! 

My own education via YouTube

Having become a content creator (storyteller) on YouTube, I am using the app much more frequently than before. And it is becoming quite an education, in the sense that I am learning - to my great edification - that lots of people, including young people, are thinking and saying a lot of good and necessary things, and, going by the stats (though number of views, I fear, doesn't say much about whether the viewers actually listen to, or watch, the whole show, let alone being affected by them), many people are being impacted, too. 

For instance, I just watched a nine-minute movie called Delivery Boy. Short as it is, it draws attention to how hard hundreds of thousands of people are working around us for a pittance, and how we hardly notice them, taking them for unthinking, unfeeling drudges, hardly better than pack animals or robots, and yet they are humans just like us, with the same needs, desires, weaknesses, and ability to feel hurt and sympathy - sometimes more so than many of us. The director also draws attention to how many parasites live idle, slothful, irresponsible lives feeding on these unfortunates - notice the wife and son briefly shown halfway through the movie: but such parasites are to be found in every family, not only in those of the badly off. While as a socialist by conviction I believe that no able bodied man or woman should eat without working at least between the ages of twenty and sixty, I also believe every man, even a driver or delivery boy or janitor deserves a modicum of attention, compassion and courtesy - and no man deserves slavish admiration or wide-eyed deference merely because he has made a pile of money. Next time someone delivers a package, don't forget to give him (or her) a tip and a kind word if you consider yourself a civilized human being, and at least stop flattering yourself that you are a vastly superior somebody. It's the same message you will find here.

Meanwhile Akash Banerjee aka Deshbhakt has uploaded his gawaar swag part 2 video. It is people of the sort he has marked out that are giving India a bad name all over the world, and making the more decent among us cringe with shame. I am asking every reader to reflect whether s/he, while travelling abroad, has done something to shame us, imagining that they are being 'cool' and street smart, or simply that they are entitled to being ill-mannered because they have recently made some money. Being loud and aggressive, dishonest and abusive and in-your-face, whether inside India or abroad, only shows you up for what you are, a boor, a bad advertisement for the country. I only wish that our celebrities, including our top political leaders, would hammer this message over and over again through every available channel of public propaganda.

And then there was the video where the speaker was talking about how Japan - materially and socially speaking one of the most advanced nations in the world - is increasingly becoming a 'low desire society', in the sense that people there, even young people, are no longer very ambitious in a worldly sense, they are increasingly indifferent to the consumer culture, they save rather than buy things unless they are essential, many of them are more and more content with living with and by themselves according to minimalist ideals. Many experts, says the presenter, are worrying that this might be a major social disease, and/or harbinger of a great economic crisis (how will business and industry keep running if people in the mass stop buying new things all the time?), but is it really so? Haven't our great spiritual teachers been urging us for thousands of years to control our greed, and to learn to be comfortable with ourselves, inside our (enriched) minds? Aren't the modern environmentalists saying exactly the same thing? And what sort of sick economy is it that enslaves people into working and consuming all the time, not that they might be safe and healthy and happy but so that the economy might keep running (and the fat cat businessmen keep getting fatter still)? Given that Japan has already attained some of the highest living conditions in the world - stable to declining population, very high per capita income, very little extreme poverty, excellent public, security and welfare services, universal education, an orderly and peaceful society and so on, why shouldn't they now say 'Enough... from now on we shall take increased income not in terms of goods to buy but in terms of leisure and freedom to pursue hobbies we really like to engage in'? Shouldn't that be every nation's goal? That is what Dr. Goobie, the bright neurosurgeon who quit his job at the peak of his career decided for himself in America, too - that the whole system is corrupt and rotten, designed to exploit the vast majority of people by making them run the rat race forever, and the only sane option is to step off the treadmill when you have got just enough. And, as I have been repeating over and over, one needs the deepest sort of education to realize that one does not really need much from the material and social world to live a truly good life. It has been well said that the rich man is not he who has much but he who wants little. I hope this post, and all the links I have provided here, would set many people thinking along those lines before it is too late, for them and for the planet.

... alas, this is what, instead, we are currently doing in India. The only correction I would offer the presenter here is that it's not Gen Z which is alone to blame: many of their dads and moms are doing it too. In fact, I am convinced it is the parents who infected them with the disease. I am sorry, readers, that this video is in Bangla, but do listen, even if you don't understand the language very well.

Recent stimuli for my brain

Thanks to Indranil Panigrahi, one of my favourite old boys who have kept continuously in touch since leaving school nearly three decades ago, I came across a wonderful article in The Statesman about what 'scroll culture' is doing to us. It is so cogent, comprehensive and articulate about the issue, and so accurate about the diagnosis ('we are not addicted to content, we are addicted to not being left alone with ourselves') and agrees so well with all that I have myself observed, felt and concluded that I need not add a single line to it. I shall only urge my readers not to scroll away 'for later', but read it now, attentively, reflectively and to good purpose - perhaps to redirect their own lives a little better, if nothing else. It makes a painful and eerie contrast with what all the gurus (literary, management-, fitness-oriented and religious) are telling us to do: happiness, health, higher performance at work, becoming better people overall, in short, real success in life, demands that you find time for yourself, learn to be comfortable alone, focus, increase your attention span (and retentive capacity), cut out the clutter inside and out, and STOP SCROLLING (or at least slow down)! Please do read: you will be doing yourself a huge favour!

In the same connection and context, I have begun to read a 2021 book called Dopamine Nation by Dr. Anna Lembke about how the entire economy and society have become geared to providing (and consuming) non-stop excitement, and how damaging that can be to all of us. I shall reserve judgment until I have finished the book, but I think the good doctor is saying a lot of things I have been saying myself for donkey's years. See, for example, this blogpost written fourteen years ago. Only recently a grown-up ex student complimented me on having put 'treasures' on this blog. That reminds me to exhort new visitors once more to explore older content here, not just stick to the home page...

On the other hand, there are rather strange visitors here sometimes. Someone who hides behind the sobriquet 'Mirror' has recently commented on one of my posts ('Why have I become so unsocial?') that my writing is 'too serious'. I have not said anything beyond 'thank you' in my reply, but some of my other readers might want to respond at greater length. Also, some organization has left a comment (which I have not put up for obvious reasons) offering to buy customers for my storytelling channel on YouTube. I am sure they themselves have lots of customers. To me, it only shows how desperate and  pathetic people can get! No, I am not taking up their offer. It only makes me thankful that I have lived a good life and made a decent living without having to sink to such depths looking for either paying students or non-paying listeners.

Another passing remark on the passing weather: it has been a low-temperature but horribly muggy July. It is drizzling even as I write. I love the rains (and the greens they bring), but the constant sweating becomes a bother and bore after a while. So also the proliferation of all sort of insects. The only silver lining is the hope that we might have a good winter with so much water underground. 

Oh, and I must mention this: many thanks to young Pratyush Pan (a most unusual sort of engineer) for coaxing me to watch the new movie Heads of State on Amazon Prime. It is a masala movie with a good mix-up of hilarity, 'action', wisecracks and some deep thoughts; childish, really, but wonderfully entertaining even for an old geezer like me. I especially liked the idea of a Black British Prime Minister teaming up with a covert agent whose role is played by an Indian actress (Priyanka Chopra). That's healthy multiculturalism for you. I also liked the PM's constant digs at the American President - who is brash, silly, but brave with a heart of gold, over the gross American penchant for hyperventing (catchy taglines, noisy but brainless slogans, wild exaggerations as part of normal speech) which, alas, through the internet, too dominated by American tech platforms, is spreading rapidly worldwide. I am glad about the pushback. Are you listening, Google and Meta?

I think I have given the serious reader (yes, I love seriousness more and more!) enough food for thought and engagement, so bye for now.