Almost there...

I just found this article in The Guardian. It’s about how people feel these days when they turn fifty. Since I am one of those myself, I was interested.

There are a lot of things said there that fit me completely, so read the article, it will save me much repetition. I am ‘creaking’ much less than most people do, though. I could have creaked much less too if God had allowed me to live a more vigorous lifestyle, but I count my blessings, and try not to crib. However, I don’t like people who joke about getting old, for a number of reasons: firstly, it’s not a crime; secondly, though I have been referring to myself as ‘the old man’ in my classes for a decade now, fifty is not that old, when there are so many busy people around in their late seventies and even eighties; thirdly, one grows old only because one has lived long and worked hard and done a lot of things for a lot of people, which is something to be proud of, not ashamed about, especially if they have done good things for people outside the family; fourthly because even in this day and age one does usually acquire qualities of a non-trivial nature, such as poise, self-possession, clarity of thought and equanimity, which youth is not distinguished for; fifthly because, as I have said before, I was in a sense forever ‘old’, sixthly because only those who are mentally teenagers think they are going to stay that way forever, and therefore cannot feel any empathy. I wish them luck with the botox injections, anti-depressants, tummy tucks and late night orgies which are going to become increasingly indispensable as they try to cling on in vain to passing youth for a little longer. So many like that are already in their forties and fifties!

About this blog – which I have called an extension of my classroom – the pageviews figure bothers me. No non-celebrity in as ‘boring’ a profession as teaching gets that kind of score. And so I wonder: who are those who are listening to me, who have learnt things that matter from me, whose lives have become better in a lasting sense because of me? Too many people assure me I should count them in, but then all too soon they seem to forget, and revert to saying silly things, or contradicting themselves, or irritating me, or actually hurting me after promising not to, and I get back to wondering ‘Have I ever taught anybody anything at all, or has this whole life gone in vain? Has it just been a bit of money in the bank after all? Have I even been able to teach anybody how essential it is to give basic courtesy to people I claim to like and respect, not just expect it from them?’

I have been going through parts of the incredible amount of correspondence I have had with an enormous number of people over the last decades. So many of them told me ‘You matter to me… I shall always want you to be around’, and talked so much with me so intensely for a time – which sometimes stretched for years – and then vanished completely from my life. Do people really have anything called memory? Do they ever listen to themselves? Do they ever feel bad about how they have treated someone who tried to care so much for them once upon a time? Do they have any idea of the weariness and futility that weighs me down after all these years? Is it really very difficult for those who say they love me to figure out why I feel this way? 

For newcomers as well as old timers, it might be well to look up the post titled 'What sort of person am I? ', the link to which is fixtured on the top of this blog. Nothing written therein has changed, nor do I have any intention of changing anything. Read especially carefully the very last paragraph. Maybe it will help some people to understand better why I am writing in this vein now. 

As someone was telling me, this year almost all my blogposts have been connected by a common thread. It’s called pain. I wonder how many others have noticed it, and to how many of them it mattered, as in making a mark on their minds. It has been a tumultuous year, a year of great changes, and now it is rapidly drawing to a close. Is there a little happiness in store for me somewhere? Do I dare hope?

Make up your own mind, part two

I was reading my 15-month old blogpost, 'Make up your own mind'. Read or re-read it, it won't hurt you. In the course of two days I have had to goad one person to get her tooth cavities filled before things get worse, another to decide upon which of several flats available to rent, another not to stay the night with me if he was unsure, another on whether he should make a job change right now or not, another to admit that it would be indeed much more convenient to have a car available for her work all the time... these are all reasonably intelligent and grown-up people, too, and while they sometimes clamour for me to decide things for them, they also sometimes resent my 'imposing' my decisions on them, despite knowing from long experience that I am most likely to be proved right (in their own interest, too, not mine!). Also, as a teacher/husband/father/mentor I have always insisted that people need to be able to make up their minds, and not after too much dilly-dallying, and it is my job to show them how, and persuade them why - not to make up their minds for them: not something I relish, really, even if some people believe to the contrary.

Are our lives guided more by circumstance/destiny or character? I have always said the two work together: as with the two hands of a pair of scissors, you can't say this one does the cutting or that. Of course, I am willing to grant you that one or the other plays the bigger role in different people's lives. Also this much I know - circumstances I cannot as a rule control, nor will they always be to my liking, but it definitely rests with me how I deal with them, and that says something about my character. I must be able to tell myself, at the end of the day, that I did all I could under the circumstances, decisively, diligently, sanely, farsightedly, and, if I am advising somebody, with her best interests in mind. Being decisive also has a vital time dimension - you hesitate too long and opportunity passes you by. It hurts and costs more if you delay going to the dentist, and starting to save when you are fifty isn't going to ensure a comfortable retirement! 'There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune/ omitted, all the voyage of life is bound in shallows and in miseries...' It is sad if not pathetic to see people in their late 20s and early 30s still looking for meaning and purpose in their lives. For heaven's sake, get a move on!

It has been well said that not taking a decision is itself a decision. In India, not only people as individuals but people as society and government, when they are not being guided by entrenched habit or custom, prefer to procrastinate endlessly instead of bearing the pain of having to take decisions and acting upon them, especially when the consequences are in some doubt (will the next job be 'better' in every sense? Will he love me back 'sufficiently' if I love him?  Will the public really appreciate the new law we are going to make?...) And so essential things never get done, or what is done is too little, too late: the filling is no good so you have to go for much costlier root-canal treatment or extraction, someone else gets that job or flat, love withers away, the new road takes ages to be built, the population explodes unchecked. All because people will not take wise and timely decisions on their own, and will always try to keep scapegoats available just in case their own decisions go wrong. I see little difference in this respect between teenagers and people in their fifties, for all the talk of 'maturing' with age. And from older people, all I hear is about regret, that most futile of all emotions: 'I wish I had done this, I wish I had done that... when there was still time'! May God spare me that, at least.

Making up your own mind also means having the resolution to stick to what you have decided, and not wonder endlessly about whether you are doing the right thing every once in a while after the decision is taken. People change their minds far too easily, I think. And it doesn't help that people have so many utterly contradictory desires. I have seen mothers who goaded their sons all through childhood to get into engineering college at any cost lamenting heartbrokenly, even to the kid's own extreme discomfiture, when it's time for the successful kid to go far away. I have seen ardent sweethearts vanish without a trace and without so much as a by your leave. I have seen marriages break up over trivial quarrels. I have seen 'dream jobs' souring up after just a setback or two. I have seen in my own professional life how people gush over you and how fast they forget - out of sight, out of mind. I keep dealing with people of both sexes who talk to me one day as though they adore me and another day as though they hardly know me at all... and blame it either on their being busy or distracted or my being moody, being offended because I express strong displeasure at such cantankerousness: me, 'moody', me, from whom so many have learnt to cultivate calm and steady self-possession in the face of all trials and tribulations!

One thing that often occurs to me is how greatly beneficial it is to have just a few strong and abiding desires. Socrates struck the keynote for me when I was hardly out of boyhood: 'The world is filled with so many wonderful things that I have absolutely no need for'. I know they are wonderful, I know they are without number, and I know I just don't have any real need for them. Be they rave parties or smartphones, fine hotels or closeness to celebrities, be it whether people are being impressed by my looks or 'exotic' locales which I have not yet visited. On the other hand, I have always been sure of things I need and want, regardless of what other people have to say about such things (and in this matter the opinions of parents and spouse and child are as immaterial as those of the most distant stranger). I have always hated to call someone boss; life has allowed me to do almost entirely without them (my father tried to boss me around, and the loss was his; two bosses I had I adored; one was an uncouth clown, I quit). I have always hated to get up early, and I have been able to survive and prosper without having to. Since my daughter was born, I was determined that no one will have higher priority when  she wants me, and I have  been able to convey her to the threshold of adulthood without having to break that promise to myself. I tried on a pair of jeans when I was ten and decided I didn't want to wear them: I have reached fifty without another pair. And so it goes...

People who are congenitally incapable of focusing on fulfilling a few clear, strong, permanent desires, people who cannot take firm decisions and stick firmly to them no matter what, can neither be real friends with me nor gain much from such a friendship. The sooner they accept that, the better. If it helps them to persuade themselves that I am not really worth knowing and keeping in their lives, so be it. I don't really lose much if I lose people to whom I am not indispensable. As I often say, I can die my own death, thank you very much. As far as I am concerned, I give people very long ropes, but if all they want with them is to hang themselves, there is little I can or want to do for them!

Calling in the debts

All ex students of mine who are currently located in Kolkata and have sometimes thought they'd like to be of some use to me, I need your help. Please do get in touch with me via email at suvrochatterjee.dgp@gmail.com

Draupadi... and Krishna!

I said in my last post on the other blog ‘Ask if you want to know what I have been thinking’, and nobody has done so yet. So I shall go ahead and write about it anyway, for my own pleasure, and the few who I know actually love to read what I write.

Lately my mind has been full of Krishna – in spite of the fact that I have been just as busy and preoccupied as always: if not more.

In one sense it has always been, at least since I first read vaishnav padavali in teenage, around the time I wrote Natalie. Much the most important thing I read during that time, I still feel sure, though I also learnt enough science and math to qualify for engineering and medical college – passing and trifling details, much more so now, this far removed. And how interested I have been in Krishna, as distinct from things like wars and aeroplanes and money and fashion and stuff should be apparent to anyone who has read my post on the Mahabharata. My recent heightening of interest  has been fired by two absolutely wonderful books, Kiran Nagarkar’s Cuckold (the story of Meerabai’s ‘affair of the soul’ with Krishna as told by her earthly husband) and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions, the story of the Mahabharata in English, told in 360 pages by Draupadi. The first I shall not discuss here. The second I have just finished reading, at my daughter’s and Nivedita’s behest, and I shall try not to repeat anything that my daughter has written on her own blog about the book. Just read it. I am a proud father when I say I have taught thousands, both boys and girls, and I can say with total conviction that I know of only one other who could have written that essay at age 17.

To start with, the book is magnificently written. The prose is radiant and mellifluous – I can definitely say about it that ‘the music in my heart I bore/long after it was heard no more’. The imagination, too is Olympian: with a book as daunting as the Mahabharat, Chitra Banerjee has still managed to make her own oeuvre a permanently valuable re-telling of the eternal classic – I wouldn’t have thought that was possible in this day and age (I am ashamed to say I have heard it has been done by a few others, but I haven’t read Shivaji Sawant’s Mrityunjay yet. Sayantika has promised to help me rectify the defect). The book really takes you there, and I cannot think of higher praise. I also regret that though the book was written in 2008, it took me so long to read it. I believe and hope that it should be read by millions, Indians and non-Indians alike, who are too little acquainted with the glory and wonder and horror that India has been, but would like to know. And with Amitav Ghosh and Vikram Seth and Divakaruni alive and working, I can now confidently say that current Indian writing in English is as good as the best in the world, embarrassments like Chetan Bhagat notwithstanding.

Being narrated by one – almost wholly human – character (unlike, say, Vyas or Krishna), the book covers only a small part of the vast epic, but certainly it is the central part. It goes from Draupadi’s fiery mythic birth through her childhood, education, marriage, exaltation, dishonour, exile and the great war to her death on the mountain in the course of the Pandavas’ mahaprasthaan. Now she is one of the most powerful and absorbingly interesting women in the whole world’s literature, and even in the real world I haven’t heard of anyone quite like her. Not just because it was foretold that she was born to change history, or that she lived simultaneously with five husbands, either, though that too in no small measure. So this certainly gives the book a powerful appeal, just how Draupadi saw her own life and times, tumultuously eventful and epoch-making (or –ending) as they were. When the writer interpolates things born of her own imagination, she makes them sound not only highly plausible but most appealing. Also, even though you the reader may be a male, you deeply empathize with Draupadi, even when she is being (sometimes consciously) naughty or contrary or even perverse: and that is no mean feat. A woman in a man’s world, and what a woman! A woman who had to live so intensely, yet under the crushing grip of so many (and often so unfair) rules, and what a life she lived…

I developed a new respect and profound pity for Bheem, for he of all the Pandavas really and unabashedly loved her though she didn’t love him back the way he wanted, as much as he wanted, and he taught himself to find pleasure in being and remaining till the end her most eager helpmate. In some things the author has altered, as in turning Bheeshma into much more of a grandfather than all the other things he was, son, politician, warrior, protector, mentor and sage, she is charmingly persuasive; and in making Drona fanatical enough to be almost evil, she has my wholehearted support. In other things, she makes you think hard, and wonder. Did Draupadi, for example, really yearn like that for Karna all her life since she first set eyes on him, and did he yearn back so keenly, silently, hopelessly till the very end? – by the way, my conviction is reconfirmed that no Greek tragic hero has ever come close to Karna.

Well, I shouldn’t be any more of a spoiler: read the book yourself, and tell me about it. Besides, I really only wanted to talk about Krishna, didn’t I?

The way my daughter has ended her blogpost, it seems she, at such an early age, has already accepted him wholly as the God of all our longings, and is content with it. I wish her luck and give her my blessings. Me, at my age, I still only wonder, most of all. I think there was an oddly-dark skinned prince who grew up among commoners somewhere once long ago, and he was uncommonly bright and pesky and loveable and strong as a child, who had a way with the birds and beasts and the flute, and was a wonderful lover as a youth (in a way that Casanova or even Don Juan wouldn’t even begin to understand) to quite a lot of girls – and not all of them giggly teenagers either – who grew up into a very astute politician and leader of men and laughing sage for all seasons. The legends started growing and spreading even while he was alive, until some people were telling each other that he was a god, as Indians will when they see a great man, and some perhaps started whispering to themselves that he was no less than God himself, born human to correct our ways, to show us the way to the Life Eternal. Heaven knows there are countless signs, along with the miracles, and notwithstanding the Geeta, in Vyasa’s Mahabharat itself, that often he was very much ‘just’ a man: but yes, a man in a billion. Then there came all the stories that people made up and told one another over two millennia, along with the huge literature from the Bhagavat Purana to the Geeta Govindam and the charitamritas, and the lives of Meera and Chaitanya, and the legend was complete. Titans like Tagore were being fascinated right into the middle of the 20th century, as the likes of CBD and I are being today…who and what was Krishna? tnuhu kaise Madhav, kaho tnuhu moye…"We ask and ask, thou smil'st, and art still". adi anadi ka nath kahayasi/ jaga taaran bhaar tohara…

Now, despite those five exceptional husbands, despite her (alleged-) longing for Karna, it seems – CBD’s book only underlines it lyrically and movingly – she really always counted on Krishna to give her the best kind of company and advice and fish her out of the worst kind of trouble, although she doesn’t hesitate to call him ‘my exasperation’. And he was ‘always there’ for her, no matter how preoccupied he was elsewhere, no matter how many wives he had at home, no matter how godly or mundane he was being. In this passage from the episode of the quarrel among kings during the Rajasuya yagna, when all present have been traumatized by Sisupal’s attempt to kill him before being himself annihilated, Krishna soothes his Krishnaa sakhi inside her mind thus: “I said, ‘When I thought you had died, I wanted to die, too’. Krishna gazed into my eyes. Was it love I saw in his face? If so, it was different in kind from all the loves I knew. Or perhaps the loves I had known had been something different, and this alone was love. It reached past my body, my thoughts, my shaking heart, into some part of me that I hadn’t known existed. My eyes closed of their own accord. I felt myself coming apart like the braided edge of a shawl, the threads reaching everywhere. How long did I stand there? A moment or an eon? Some things can’t be measured. I know this much: I didn’t want it to end… then his voice intruded into my reverie, laughter stitched into its edges, just as I had feared. ‘You’d better not let my dear friends the Pandavas hear that! It could get me into a lot of trouble!’ ‘Can’t you ever be serious?’ I said, mortified. ‘It’s difficult,’ he said. ‘There’s so little in life that’s worth it’ ”.

In the final dialogue on the mountain, he comes back to her again as her earthly consciousness begins to fade and dissolve, though he is physically dead, and (in a scene hauntingly reminiscent of Harry’s meeting with Dumbledore at King’s Cross Station somewhere in limbo) she realizes that all her life she has found bliss only with him.

Did she ever really need anyone else, she who was loved by God? Meera knew she didn’t as a woman, Sri Chaitanya knew he didn’t, as a man. As for me, this yearning has become too great to bear, and am I looking for ‘just’ a man or woman any longer?…

[The Palace of Illusions, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Doubleday/Picador 2008, ISBN 978-0-330-45853-5, Rs. 399]

See the new post

on my other blog, here.

Debarshi in the Netherlands

My favourite old boy Debarshi has just gone off to the Netherlands, to do a master's course in engineering at the University of Delft. He has written the following little essay about his first impressions.

From Durgapur to Delft

In Zuid-Holland, lies a city that is poetry expressed in reality, a municipality that finds its beauty from its canals, and from the breathtaking vistas of Nature bestowed on it so bountifully by the Almighty, and the place that houses one of the finest universities of technology- Delft. I made this journey with one objective in mind- I wanted to learn the way I liked to. It's not every day that the Rector magnificus asks his students to think of themselves as an academic family, where hierarchical power distance is almost non-existent- and invites all of his students to create, innovate and design solutions to real-life problems that affect society as a whole. "If Engineering doesn't change our lives for the better, really address the pressing challenges economically, then that technology is of no use, and just increases theoretical complexity." I attended the Welcome address this very day, and came back with an experience of a lifetime. Care, efficiency, and humanity in every single aspect- this is The Netherlands for me. The Dutch love their tulips, their cheese, their canals, their country- but they love people. Coming from a place that's seen more dog-eat-dog competition than camaraderie, the first days here tasted better than the sweetest chocolate! I found myself thinking- "Maybe it's because they have such a tiny population, in such a beautiful country that seems like a portal to a place back in Time- but, could it be that they had really known the secret to living the good life? It was to co-exist peacefully in harmony, both with their fellow-men and Nature, since all we ultimately are dust in the wind."

Finding luggage too heavy to carry? The Dutch are going to help you out, going out of their way, putting their GPS-enabled phones to real use at the same time while lending a hand with your luggage- and wishing you good luck, when they finally take your leave. Finding yourself in a spot at a busy ticket counter, because you are unable to comprehend their language, that seems to be full of misplaced consonants? The official manning the counter is going to help you out with every single step, and making sure that you understand the concept clearly. Can't seem to find a shop? They will ask you to sit on their bicycles (oh, what a common sight they are all around Delft- there seem to be more bicycles than people!) and get you in the correct direction. The University campus was already strewn with leaves in fall, yet all other alleys and streets and buildings were spotlessly maintained. Love is in the air in The Netherlands- love for beauty, for keeping it so, and comprehending so flawlessly that 72 different nationalities have different cultures, different economic background, diverse religions. TU Delft puts it all in one giant pot, and the concoction tastes sweeter than any other brew! Cooking, cleaning up, washing, studying at the same time- I don't have the warmth of family here, but have found the warmth of fellowship. It has been a long journey- but then the road goes on and on, and whither then? We can only trust that it goes back to the beginning.  

I am now waiting for Saikat to fill me in from the University of Rochester, NY, USA. That should be another blogpost.

The Sen-Bhagwati 'debate', part two

The Pioneer of Delhi carried this article of mine yesterday. My bit for Independence Day this year.

And this is Gopal Gandhi's edit page article in The Telegraph today. I am glad the Mahatma's grandson thinks the way I do, and immensely proud that he has mentioned some teachers with respect.

To pick up the threads from where I left off in the last post:

First of all, despite being as keenly aware as the next economic historian of how much growth has done for humanity over the long term (I have myself written elsewhere that the average American factory worker today lives a lifestyle that would be the envy of medieval kings in many ways), I am with Galbraith in believing that growth is not a cure for all diseases, and growth beyond a point, unguided growth especially, can itself become a terrible disease.  

For one thing, anyone who knows how national income/product accounts are drawn up knows how much jugglery and fudging is involved (polite and canny economists refuse to mention such things to laymen). I won’t go into details here: ask if you are interested. But this means that growth figures not only hide as much as they reveal, but are also far too misleading to be regarded with as much awe and excitement as most economics-illiterate journalists do – are paid to do. For another, as honest professors tell even undergraduate kids, any kind of increase in output is growth: more lifesaving drugs yes, more narcotic drugs yes, too; more nightclubs count for no less in the aggregate national accounts than more schools and libraries and museums! So growth cannot be called a ‘good thing’ without strict qualifications, and a lot of serious value judgments. Third, growth has very unhealthy ‘side effects’, to put it mildly: witness the epidemic of obesity, heart disease, ADHD, casual crime and suchlike that invariably comes hard on the heels of the kind of growth that lets people eat more (of the worst kind of food), work less manually, and have too much leisure and ‘entertainment’ of the tweeting sort. Fourth, there can be near-‘jobless’ growth, as has been by and large the case in virtually all developed countries over the last three decades, so that average unemployment levels have been steadily rising. Fifth, the kind of growth that simultaneously causes rapid depletion of critical non-renewable natural resources and extreme forms of environmental pollution can be sustained at most for a few decades more: no economist can answer that except with the prayer ‘I hope not in my kids’ lifetimes, not at least in my country!’ I can extend this list considerably, but if my point is not yet taken, that is only because the reader just doesn’t want to listen. So it is already a sad fact that both Sen and Bhagwati are eager to assert that they are equally in favour of endless, aimless, pointless growth, important as that may be for the poor in the poorest countries still. Surely economists and politicians could think of higher aims. Once upon a time they actually did!

Now, even if it is admitted that growth is essential, there are still important things to think of.

1.   Who benefits from growth, and how much? The usual pattern – especially in the absence of correctional intervention by government – is that the already rich and privileged get obscenely richer, while the poor keep scrounging, or things get actually worse for them, or at best improve at an agonizingly slow pace (in a slight variation of the idea of ‘you will get your rewards in heaven’, economists keep telling them ‘things will get better in the long run’. Lord Keynes’ unanswerable repartee was ‘In the long run we are all dead’). The difference tends to become steadily wider, as successive generations of the rich get things ready made and cut out for them, and ‘money begets money’. Not fair at all. Only a very selfish or very foolish person will claim otherwise.

2.   They claim – the ‘neoclassical’ (currently mainstream-, because they are good with the calculus, matrix algebra and statistics) economists – that there’s no way you can get growth going without encouraging private entrepreneurship, and private entrepreneurs ‘need’ to make astronomical fortunes in order to keep going: deny them that right, and they will sulk and sit back and let things slide, and the whole nation’s fortunes will suffer. Now, there are three things I must note here: a) they have no real theoretical underpinning for claiming such a thing, for no theory really ‘explains’ growth unless you are willing to start off with all sorts of ridiculous assumptions about human beings, b) funny that only entrepreneurs ‘need’ the lure of vast fortunes in order to make them do their thing, when so many other socially valuable types, from teachers to musicians to soldiers can get along fine without similar blandishments, always done! and c) the historical record says that all countries, including that much-vaunted paradise of ‘free enterprise’, the US of A, have achieved growth and increased social welfare only by virtue of continuous governmental monitoring, regulation, intervention and assistance at times of dire crises in the larger public interest (indeed, American corporate tycoons have a glorious record of insisting on ‘freedom’ only when the going is good, and they run to the government for help when disaster strikes far more eagerly and shamelessly than the poor do – though it is always the poor who are blamed for wanting to live on ‘unearned entitlements’!), and indeed, the ‘best results’, from the collective point of view, have been achieved precisely in those countries which have neither tended too far towards communism nor pampered laissez faire capitalism but steered a steady middle course, from Germany since the time of Bismarck (barring the chaos between 1914 and ’45) and Japan to the Scandinavian countries and Switzerland, New Zealand and the like. Growth may have been somewhat slower there, and they have far fewer billionaires to show off, but from the national point of view, it never really mattered. Both crime rates and poverty are far less there, and the highest average standards of living overall, even if you leave out cultural and environmental criteria.

3.   Sen keeps insisting not only that large-scale government initiatives on building infrastructure, spreading basic education and health care (government, because nowhere on earth do private businessmen want to spend on such things – too expensive, returns too low and slow and risky – though they want the benefits thereof: let the government build the roads while they make the cars, but government is BAD because it calls on them to pay for the roads through increased taxes!) are not only good things in themselves but they actually accelerate growth. I have never stopped wondering how supposedly educated and worldly-wise people could ever think otherwise, blind to all the evidence before their eyes. Whereas Bhagwati actually wants these things too, but seems to imagine they can happen without the presence of that ‘great evil’ called government!

4.   Bhagwati and his tribe see only efficiency and high productivity and maximum all-round social welfare ‘in the long run’ from unfettered competitive laissez faire, while government brings only ‘corruption’,  tyranny, red-tapism and stagnation. Half truth, and as usual, half truths are often more dangerous than outright lies. For one thing, governments do not have a monopoly on the aforementioned evils, as anyone who has lived half a life in the real world and does not have an ax to grind in favour of the private sector will admit (yesterday an old boy was telling me how he has got far better service in a public sector bank compared to a famous private one; and I, for one, have been cheated more than once by private insurance companies and others). For another, the private sector wouldn’t even exist in safety and peace without the protective umbrella provided by governments via the law, the courts, the police and the civil services: the rich actually need government far more than the poor.  For a third, we need governments for reasons far beyond the preservation and development of the economy, a fact that economists too easily forget; slavery would not have been abolished without government effort, nor sati nor child marriage and a hundred other ancient evils. The real debate should centre on how much government we need, without surrendering to extremist notions and perverse SPIN on either side.

P.S.: This editorial in Monday’s issue of my newspaper says that Bhagwati has come down to abusing Sen personally. No better admission of defeat!

The Sen-Bhagwati 'debate'

Some of my most favourite readers have been asking me for my take on the currently raging debate between the two famous economists of Indian origin, Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati, over how central the need for economic growth is to India’s overall development. So I shall try to oblige, within my very limited powers. But here are a few observations first:

1.   The debate is not really new. The two (now very old-) men have been fighting over it for half a century now. I got in and out within less than a decade, and have become very tired of more or less the same things being said over and over ad nauseam. It’s only a new generation of journalists and politicians and maybe academics who have never read anything written before 1950 who can get all het up over it – and I know for a fact that you can get a first class master’s degree in economics from some of India’s best universities these days, and go off to hotshot US universities on scholarship, without ever having touched the seminal classics, basically doing only math and reading only textbooks and class notes instead. It still wasn’t like that in my day.

2.   It is not basically about which of the two stalwarts is more learned and more clever and better informed. It is ultimately a question of which values have priority for them – even if they deny it vehemently (as I think Bhagwati will, much more than Sen: support for unbridled rapacity still calls for more justification, at least among the educated classes, than support for human sympathy).If you accept that, you can avoid the quarrel altogether.

3.      Any serious reader with a memory will know where I stand on this issue, of course. You only have to have read my earlier blogposts like Values, prices, incomes; and Poor little rich thug; Counterculture; My mother is sixty; Good CEOs, bad politicians; Forests, tribals and sombre thoughts; I love Lalit Modi and India, twenty years after, to mention a few that immediately spring to mind. Read them now, or brush them up: it will save me a lot of repetition.

4.      My own views have not been quickly and easily formed. They can be traced back to the Bible, the Koran, and the many texts of Hinduism which enjoin upon us the need for sympathy and justice and brotherhood and charity as the highest desiderata in social life; to the teachings of Adam Smith, the father of modern political economy (and not just The Wealth of Nations but the book he wished all to read in tandem, A Theory of Moral Sentiments, but few have, even among economists), the loftiest (rather than most pragmatic-) urges expressed by the Founding Fathers of the US as much as the noblest socialists (‘the free development of each must be the essential condition for the free development of all’), and, among economists of more recent times, by giants like Joan Robinson of Cambridge (‘one great benefit of reading economics is that you will never be hoodwinked by economists again’) and the great Harvard professor of yesteryear, John Kenneth Galbraith. Anybody who wants to join issue with me must have at least digested Galbraith’s greatest books, including The Affluent Society and Economics and the Public Purpose (and also know that arch supporters of the worst kind of capitalism keep suddenly finding merit in him whenever capitalism undergoes major crises, as keep happening, most recently in 2008).

5.   I took away from the university a lasting disappointment with and contempt for the subject of economics, and much more so for what economists have become: all show and little substance, all arcane math and pretty jargon and little practical sense, all eager to advise statesmen and tycoons on how best to run governments and corporations, yet best only at making up ever more fancy models to explain why their advice led to disaster, and their predictions went hopelessly wrong. Really not much better than astrologers, and slightly worse than meteorologists. I won’t elaborate on this, firstly because it makes me tired at this age, and because someone far more competent – Dr. Ashok Mitra, an economist of impeccable credentials – has recently done it for me here. His article is a must read.

6.      One last thing to be noted: both Sen and Bhagwati, despite their professed philosophical differences over how the world should be managed, have done, and almost equally efficiently, the best for themselves that their profession allows, in terms of degrees, honours, money, fame and security. Also, their greatness as theoreticians notwithstanding, they haven’t really contributed to human welfare and happiness anywhere near as much as scores of great politicians, social workers and writers I could name. That’s my view anyway. Neither would compare himself with a Gandhi or Tagore, I am sure.

Now, to the main issue.

Broadly speaking, as things now stand, both Sen and Bhagwati claim that they agree that economic growth is important for national development and progress. Only, while Bhagwati is gung-ho in support of laissez faire capitalism, because that allegedly best guarantees rapid long term growth, Sen insists not only a) that growth by itself does little (little good, at least) without conscious large scale efforts to redistribute incomes, wealth and opportunity, but indeed such redistribution, according to the historical evidence, best ensures rapid growth, b) nowhere ever has unbridled capitalism produced the best results, and c) the ‘best results’, if you look at things from the collective perspective, are not achieved by saying ‘let the poor wait for whatever trickles down their way while the rich get ever obscenely richer, because there’s no other way the gross national product can grow rapidly’.

[Now this is getting to be a long post, and I know very well about average attention spans. So I consider it prudent to keep the rest of my comments for the next blogpost. Meanwhile those who do not want to bank purely on Sir’s pov might look up this link to see what others have been saying…]

Ha!

To start with, here's the link to the post titled 'Bye bye time again'. It will help my current senior batch, who will be leaving in a few months' time. After you have read that post, don't forget to click on the link provided there!

More than one person asked, after reading the 'zen' story, 'Sir, a) do you really think that kind of passionate interest and devotion are possible?, and, b) is it possible in today's trivia-obsessed world, when anything you write can be forgotten as soon as another Katrina Kaif item number is released, or iPhone6 comes on the market?' My reply is, of course not. I was merely talking about two kinds of extreme. One type will gladly cut off an arm, another won't 'sacrifice' a Facebook account for Sir's sake, and yet would be offended if I laugh at their protestations of love and respect and devotion: they must be given 'reason' enough before they take such a 'drastic' step (but let it go on record that three people have already told me they have deleted their FB accounts after reading the last post, and I won't be surprised if a few others have done it without telling me).

I have decided I shall communicate much less directly with individuals than via these blogs. For one thing, individuals don't really matter much unless they make themselves valuable, but no sooner do I give them some leeway than they begin to take all sorts of liberties with me, and for another, the '200,000 plus page views' tells me something very reassuring: a lot of people are reading what I write, and some do let me know how they are being affected, in a way that gratifies me, so I don't need to bother about particular individuals anyway. Besides, I have said before that my blogs are extensions of my classroom. Those who come to my classrooms come basically to listen to me and learn from me, and perchance to remember and think about and be improved by what I have told them, not to give me the backchat they haven't earned the right, intellectually and emotionally, to try. I have noticed, and not with one person, that those who are only too eager to give me a piece of their mind (whatever passes for their minds) in personal conversations are far more circumspect about doing that on the blogs, to the extent that 'they can't think of what to say', even when I want them to. And maybe that suits me best. 

Also, some people raised the question of gratitude and ingratitude recently. No one of course will deliberately call himself 'ungrateful', but I sometimes think I have got more than my fair share, still. Look up this blogpost.

That's all for now. I shall write very soon again. Don't forget to look up the previous post: it's not grown stale. Language is everything.

P.S.: Looking at the map showing people currently reading, my curiosity is tickled again. I know who reads from Golden, Colorado, and from Kure, Japan, and from Auckland, New Zealand - but who is my reader in Calgary, Canada, in Nokia, Finland, in Mountain View, California, home of Google, and the 'unknown' in Nigeria? Why won't they ever tell me?!

Language, for the love of God, language!

Every human mind, wrote Nehru, is ‘a private universe of thought and feeling’, and no other human can look into it, except in rare (and usually faulty) glimpses. This is all the more true of intelligent, learned, reflective and complex minds. Yet we desperately need to communicate, not only for getting along in the workaday world, but because we are all at heart, at least sometimes, terribly lonely and scared and confused and in need of the warmth which only the loving, understanding and caring of other human minds can give us, short of direct contact with God.  And that can be done only, or at least primarily, through language, through the written and spoken word.

Also, language misused or abused can do immeasurable, often irreparable harm. It can break hearts, confuse and misguide minds, create the worst possible (and often entirely avoidable-) misunderstandings, ruin lives, trigger off riots and wars.  And it can have enduring effects on all history. Which is why Hammurabi and Asoka got their edicts carved on stone, which is why Aesop and Vishnu Sharma told stories, Socrates and Aurelius and the editors of the King James Bible chose their words with great care, which is why diplomats and lawyers take so much time and pay so much attention to ironing out drafts of official documents, which is why my textbooks in French were titled Le français et la vie... French and life. That’s right: language is the very foundation of thought and culture, and you cannot separate it from life itself. For God’s sake, even mathematics and computer codes are types of language, and you cannot explain a fundamental concept in physics or economics without language, no matter how good you are with graphs and equations.  I know. I have been teaching language all my life, among other things.

I have a very special reason for loving and worshipping language, of course. It has fed me richly, both my body and mind. It has ‘kept me from evil’, remembering that the worst evils are hurting the innocent and wasting your time. It has given me something to be proud of, as no mere material possessions and titles and family connections can make one proud. It has allowed me to be a lot of help to a lot of people in need. It has helped me to understand the world, and to know people – both in their richness and their banality. Indeed, nothing tells you more about people’s characters than the kind of language they use: that is why psychoanalysts depend so much on what their clients on the couch say while engaging in free association of thoughts, and even a teacher of mathematics, if he is worth his salt, will insist that his pupils get the successive statements of a proof just right; no shoddiness will be tolerated. So it shouldn’t be too hard to understand why I have always tried to speak rationally, succinctly, lucidly, illustratively... and even more so when I am writing, because writing is more permanent than the spoken word, and you have fewer excuses for shooting your mouth, even if you are writing on google chat. I have talked and written all my life, and said a lot of hard and harsh things to so many people too, yet rarely have I had to take back something I said, while I know people who have to do that twenty times a day. Not an accident. It needs hard work. And one puts in that kind of hard work day in, day out, only when one is convinced about how important it is, how much better a human being one becomes if one makes a lifelong habit of it. If one wants to become a better human being, of course, at least a little more than wanting to buy a better  cellphone or pair of shoes.

So nothing makes me wince or want to throw up more than seeing people mangling language, and saying things they don’t mean (or, “really mean”) simply because they won’t take the trouble. And then lamenting ‘Folks don’t understand me... X, Y or Z misunderstands me so much’! I don’t merely mean the way journalists routinely abuse language through the bad habit of thoughtless overuse and the knowledge that nobody really cares what they write. I don’t merely mean the Bangalore-based IT hack who writes on his Facebook wall, under a photograph of himself in front of the Taj Mahal, ‘1^st time wid soooo wonderful creature n d world!’ He is not, after all, quite a human being. I don’t mean the teenage girl who, whenever she gets annoyed, exclaims ‘Oh, shit!’ imagining that makes her ‘cool’, though she cannot write a decent 400-word essay on any sensible subject under the sun to save her life: she’s got company, and there’s a faint possibility that given the right kind of teachers, she might still grow up, maybe by the time she’s seventy, and she can think beyond getting married and having babies and dolling up for parties. I am certainly not sneering at someone who can use her mother tongue with fluency and élan, though her grasp of the English language might be poor: indeed, I have met far too many people who can write/speak only pidgin English, or Hinglish/Banglish at best, and far too few who can handle chaste Bangla or Hindi, so I actually respect the latter kind. I am no martinet, as my best students can tell you: I too like the occasional bit of fun playing with caricatured language, including its textese format, or writing Bangla in the Roman script, or employing currently fashionable buzzwords. But there is somewhere everybody with education, good taste and self-respect must draw the line, and I do too.

It’s when people who know better – or should know better – do it, and keep doing it, despite knowing well enough it is bad, wrong, hurtful or at best vulgar: do it despite being told. People who are adults, people who like to think of themselves as educated, people who have read more than a few good books, who have themselves grimaced at or even suffered from others’ abuse of language, most of all people who have known me for sometime as a teacher, formally or otherwise. With such people, I feel like puking when I still see that anything can be hot as well as cool, it’s okay to say to anybody ‘I love you’ because they’ve learnt it from stage performers who are paid to blow kisses at audiences and scream ‘I love all you amayyzing people!’, anyone can be called great or awesome, from Alexander to the boyfriend,  anyone can be called foolish or worse, from an ex-classmate to Tagore or Russell because that helps the cause of democracy, I suppose; when such people are too quick to take offence at a reprimand, forgetting that I have never demanded less than and never renounced my dues as a teacher, forgetting hundreds of things they have reason to be grateful for merely because they feel this momentary compulsion to talk back in a hurry; people who have opinions on everything but are repeatedly struck dumb when I ask for their well-considered opinions on certain things because ‘they don’t know what to say’;  people who do not have the strength of character to admit and correct the fact that they contradict themselves too often (like asking for edification one day and telling me they don’t want sermonizing the next), people who hate to be compared with their betters instead of wanting to learn from them, people who insist, in denial of all their education, that others have an obligation to understand their intended meaning instead of listening to what they actually say, people who can dish it out to Sir but can’t take it from him and still imagine they have a right to his kind of attention...

For those who have lost me already, I suggest you re-read the first two paragraphs. You can wipe more than one thing with your handkerchief. How much truer and more significant that is with something infinitely precious and powerful like a language! Especially when it comes to dealing with a language worshipper like me, who has never liked to waste time on trifles or trivial people? I know how I talk when I am dealing with my family doctor, I know how much more reverential attention I shall give to someone of real and ineffable worth, like if I was talking to Vivekananda.  Whoever has been reading this blog consistently for a couple of years, even if s/he has not met me in the flesh, cannot help knowing, even if s/he never has the courage and honesty to acknowledge it and celebrate it, that I am not quite another Tom, Dick or Harry. Surely people ought to admit – especially when I have given them time enough, and I am not an impatient man, as my parents, sisters and the likes of Bijit Mukherjee know – that I have a right, beyond a point, to cut them out of my life? Professional interest apart, why should I keep talking to people who will not listen to me, who will keep irritating me either because they don’t understand they are doing it or can’t help it, and who will never share my love, respect and awe for language and all that it entails: given that that love, respect and awe has paid off vastly more handsomely than knowing such people has or ever will? After all, fifty years is a long time to have been around, and I can still count on two fingers the people to whom I owe anything of value at all! And if I limit my attention to those who are both able and willing to give me anything of value still, should I look beyond my wife, my daughter and my investment counsellor? Is anybody else likely to do better? – get my book published, or give me love (as I define love, not they, it goes without saying), or build a memorial when I am gone? Should I lower my expectations to the level of being invited to weddings instead?

Can anybody claim after reading this post through that I have written a single sentence outside my rights? This link is about how people react to cinema these days, but it fits in perfectly with what I have been saying here. This one, which Mayuri sent me, shows that others too are ruing how the facility of the internet is encouraging us to bring the worst of ourselves out on the surface for full public view. Also, it won’t hurt to look up the posts I have put under the label of ‘netiquette’. Because I know for a fact that I get much less lip and irrelevant chatter when people come over to talk with me face to face. Whether they are 15 or 50.  

All my life I have believed a) there is nothing more worth  having than an education, b) that education means knowing above all else what is crap and why it is necessary to cut out the crap, c) that I want to find a man about whom it can be said he is ‘one whose very company is a complete education’, completely sure that I will do anything for him, and I don’t use words loosely, d) I have tried consciously and single-mindedly to become someone like that myself, e) I have got more than a little acknowledgment that at least I tried, and so, f) I do not want to know people who think less than that of me. For those who can’t or won’t, the rest of the world is waiting. Try the gutter. Try the slums. Try the pubs. Try Facebook. I know that Tagore and Russell and Asimov and Galbraith would have agreed; I know that Pupu agrees, I do not have to waste time considering the ‘opinions’ of lesser creatures masquerading as human beings, no matter what their numbers are. You are above 21 and still use FB, after trying it out for a year? Don’t talk to me. And that you didn’t delete your account immediately after reading this post tells me all I want to know about you and what you really feel about me: how much I 'matter' to you when the chips are down.

I like to tell this zen story: the master was deep in meditation, and the would-be pupil came and kept waiting to draw his attention. It was snowing, and he was out in the open, and eventually he began to freeze, but he hung on. At last the master opened his eyes, and snarled, ‘What do you want, you rascal?’ ‘To be your disciple’, said the man. ‘And what are you willing to give up for me?’ The man drew out his sword, cut off his left arm with his right, and said, ‘Do you want more?’ Then he was accepted. Yes, yes, I know, by closing down your FB account and minding your language you will lose so many ‘friends’, and after all, it’s only numbers that matter, and ‘what will people say?’... alamativistaarena, they say in Sanskrit, don’t talk too much. They don’t listen anyway.

She(y)

আস্তে আস্তে স্তব্ধ দ্বিপ্রহরে আকাশ ঘন কালো মেঘে সজল হয়ে উঠলো, চারিদিকে নিবিড় স্নেহভরা প্রশান্ত অন্ধকার ছেয়ে এলো, ভারী স্নিগ্ধ গা শিরশিরে একটা মৃদুমন্দ বাতাস এসে সর্বাঙ্গে হাত বুলিয়ে দিতে লাগলো পরম যত্নে; জানালা দিয়ে দেখলেম, মাধবীলতা কেঁপে উঠেছে অনির্বচনীয়  সেই স্পর্শে - তখন দেখি সে নিঃশব্দে ধীরপদে এসে ঢুকেছে আমার একলা ঘরে।  কতকাল বাদে দেখা, তবু নতুন করে চিনতে হলো না; সে তো কখনো আমায় ছেড়ে যায় নি, শুধু আড়ালে সরে ছিল এতদিন, আবার আবরণ ঠেলে বেরিয়ে এসেছে আজকে, এই তো। 

চুপটি করে বসলো আমার পাশ ঘেঁষে। অনেকক্ষণ চোখের পলক পড়ে না, নির্বাক চেয়ে আছে মেঝের দিকে, নিশ্বাসের সঙ্গে বুকটি শুধু থেকে থেকে ওঠানামা করছে, এতটুকু চিত্তচাঞ্চল্য প্রকাশ করে ফেলেই বুঝি লজ্জায় জড়সড়। তারপর উঠে গেল জানালার কাছে; গরাদে হাত রেখে নির্নিমেষ চেয়ে রইলো নিরুদ্দেশের পানে; দূরে তালগাছের পাতা সরসরিয়ে বাতাস এসে লাগছে ওর আঁচলে, সারা গায়ে ঢেউ খেলিয়ে ভিজে চুলের গন্ধ মেখে এসে মৃদু তিরস্কারের ঝাপটা মেরে যাচ্ছে আমার মুখে। 

নীল বিদ্যুত তীরের মত আকাশের বুক চিরে মুহুর্তের জন্য ওর মুখখানি উদ্ভাসিত করে, আমার বুকে শেল দিয়ে নিঃশেষে মিলিয়ে গেল; আরো ঘন অন্ধকার ঘরটাকে আষ্টেপৃষ্ঠে জড়িয়ে ধরল আবার। তখন যত দেখলুম তার চেয়ে ঢের বেশি অনুভব করলুম, সে ভীত হরিণীর মত ত্রস্তপদে এসে আবার বসলো আমার পাশটিতে। মাথাটি ঝুঁকে পড়ল আমার কাঁধে। সেই অন্ধকারেও তার অতলস্পর্শ কালো চোখ  দেখতে পেলুম, তাতে টলটল করছে দুটো মুক্তো। তারপর ঠোঁট নড়ল, বুকের মধ্যে তার বুকভাঙ্গা প্রশ্ন শুনতে পেলুম - 'তবে কি তুমি ভুলে গেছ আমায়? আর কি তবে আমাকে তোমার দরকার নেই?'

মুখে কথা সরল না, চোখের পলক পড়ল না, শুধু অন্তরাত্মা অবধি তোলপাড় করে হাহাকার উঠলো - 'আছে, আছে, তোমাকে আমার দরকার  আছে আজও। তুমি ছাড়া এ মহাবিশ্বে আমার কেউ নেই, আমি একা, আমি অনন্যগতি, আমি তোমারই।'

তখন চোখের মুক্তো ঝরে পড়ল, তখন কালো অন্ধকারে আলোঝলমলে অনাবিল স্বস্তির হাসি তার ঠোঁট থেকে উপছে পড়ে আবার আমার ঘর উদ্ভাসিত করে দিল, তখন পরম তৃপ্তিতে দুহাতে আমার গলা জড়িয়ে সে মুখ লুকোলো আমার বুকে। আমি তাকে টেনে নিলেম গভীর আলিঙ্গনে।

তারপর বৃষ্টি নামল। আস্তে আস্তে সে আবার মিলিয়ে গেল পঞ্চভূতে। - তার চুলের অন্ধকার মেঘের গভীর কালোয়, তার অঙ্গের সুবাস ভেজা মাটির গন্ধে, তার চোখের জলের স্পর্শ খোলা জানালা দিয়ে আসা বর্ষণস্নাত দমকা হাওয়ায়। আমার কাছে পড়ে রইলো শুধু তার গলা থেকে খসে পড়া ফুলের মালাখানি। 

[My first ever post in Bangla. Written 23 years ago. Those who can see a great deal of Tagore here need not be surprised or suspect a coincidence - this was at a time I was immersed in him for a couple of years at a stretch, translating some of his works. The more interested and diligent of my readers might care to find out and tell me just which of his little essays inspired this one...]

Dutta vs. Dutta

It is no longer news that Bangla cinema is going through a renaissance of sorts: it’s been years since I used to say that I’d rather watch even Bollywood potboilers. Anjan Dutta’s Dutta vs. Dutta, though maybe not the finest movie I have seen in recent times, is certainly worth watching. It occurred to me that no schoolteacher should set her class to write on the ‘advantages and disadvantages of the joint family’ unless she and they have seen this movie, nor should any child be allowed to wax eloquent about the bliss of filial piety and sibling love until she has seen the worst that reality can serve up. For another thing, it brought back horrid, poignant and faintly comical memories of Calcutta in the throes of the ‘Naxalite-cum-hippie’ quasi-revolution which my generation watched with thumb-in-mouth bewilderment from the sidelines because we were at least ten years too young to take part in it and be burnt by it, while our parents were on average ten years too old. The third thought was that this part of the world has actually changed too little, despite the supposed miracles wrought by television, the internet, the cellphone and the ubiquitious motorcycle, besides higher incomes all around – our ‘with-it’ young hipsters today are going through the same motions that their fathers and even some grandfathers did in their salad days, poor zombies, imagining they are ‘enjoying themselves’ and ‘expressing themselves’ in a more novel and interesting way. Maybe Facebook helps to sustain the illusion. And lastly, I couldn’t help smiling wryly on being reminded of the Bangla saying ‘shongshaar holo shong er shaar’ … family life for most of us for the most part is black comedy.

A more than usually sensitive and gifted boy growing up in a severely dysfunctional family and dreaming of growing up to be a happy human being loved by at least one good person who loves him back and pursuing some relatively offbeat and creative career like music, writing or acting rather than engineering, medicine, accountancy or (as in this case-) law has become something of a staple with ‘movies with a message’ these days, so they can be graded only by how dexterously or clumsily they have handled the subject matter. I think D vs. D has been done rather well. It deals with a largeish number of flawed, even seriously eccentric characters without demonizing any of them. Indeed, more than one arouses one’s sympathy, to my mind none more than Biren Dutta the failed-lawyer dad of the narrator, despite his indolence, his name-dropping, his petty domestic tyrannizing, his gambling, alcoholism and pathetic philandering. He could never express himself well (alas, such a common failing!), his dreams were absurdly beyond his reach… but all he had ultimately wanted was a somewhat better life for himself and his loved ones, a little more dignity and recognition, a little less of lifelong helplessness and futililty. A man like that does not deserve to be beaten like an animal in police lockup for no  fault of his own, nor becoming a paraplegic in the dusk of his life, unable to die and almost unable to bask in the mild glow of wordly success that his nearly-estranged but beloved son has earned at last. I shall not grudge Providence all that it did not let me do in this lifetime that I know I could have done and well, if only it spares me an end like that. While I was watching, the old ABBA number kept playing at the back of my head: ‘People need love, people need loving…,’ probably even the worst of us.

No, this is not an expert’s learned and dispassionate review. It is an unapologetically personal response to something that moved me strongly, and I have tried, in brief, to explain why. In the hope that I may perchance persuade a few people to look at these things my way. Besides, who knows, maybe directors like to read comments like this from the general viewer, too?

Yearning

Some people have been reading my short stories, and asking for more. Here is one I wrote (or rather composed orally, dictating in class, when they told me the board examination paper had asked them to write a story titled ‘Yearning’) back in 2001.

He said he’d come to see me again, the last time we met, and he will not fail me.

He was a very young soldier, tall and strong, with a firm jaw line, when I first set eyes on him. And he had such eyes – eyes that could flash with fire one moment and melt with kindness the next. A captain in the army, I learnt later, but the night I ran to him for help I knew him only as the kind and brave afsar sahib who alone could rescue me from the clutches of the ugly and pitiless demon who was taking me away to hell. And the sahib changed my life forever that night, in more ways than one.

I was a slip of a girl then, hardly fourteen, a dreamy country bumpkin, supposedly pretty, whom her poor and unloving uncle had sold to an oily, smelly, leery, bearded stranger for a fistful of rupees. I was being taken away, fearful and uncomprehending and feebly protesting, to the great city of Mumbai. The stranger had dragged me into a train, given me a paper bag full of dry grams to chew for dinner, and gone to sleep in a drunken state, after telling me he bore me no ill-will; this was just his line of business: he would put me aboard a ship at Mumbai and it would carry me to a faraway foreign land whose name I’ve forgotten, where I would become some rich man’s slave. My captor was soon snoring away peacefully, confident that I was too scared and too stupid to run away. But I had seen the military sahib at the station where he boarded the coach next to mine, and as I sat alone by the window, staring blankly at the darkness rushing past outside, a desperate plan began to form in my head. Twice in the night, when the train halted briefly, I saw the sahib getting out for a stroll on the platform. Twice I hesitated; the third time I rushed out and fell at his feet, crying piteously for succour.

In a trice he had pulled me up roughly by the arms, and demanded an explanation for my strange behaviour. People were staring at us, though the platform was almost deserted at three in the morning. I could see that he was baffled and embarrassed, but he was too innocent to disbelieve me, and too kind to throw me back to the wolves. He told me to take him to the bearded stranger. We got back into my compartment just as the train began to move. Inside, he shook the man awake. Bleary-eyed and frightened by the military uniform and flashing eyes, the rogue apparently confessed to more crimes than he need have, thus putting himself at the sahib’s mercy. And then the sahib made a deal with him – he would be allowed to go free if he agreed to let me go with the sahib without strings attached. God help me – I still feel ashamed to remember the dirty grin with which he waved me away, a grin which made the sahib very angry and red in the face.

He took me to Mumbai. He had no relatives there, he told me; he was just passing through on his long journey back to his frontier post after a month’s home leave – the best he could do for me was to put me up in an orphanage, seeing that I refused to go back to my uncle’s. And so it was that I became an inmate at a destitute girl’s home run by some Christian nuns. They would look after me till I was 18, and try to teach me to look after myself afterwards. The sahib left a little money with them – he was not a rich man, but I knew that he had done all he could for me. I worked hard at learning a trade at the Home, and waited and dreamed and prayed. The sahib came back a year later. He seemed glad to see me, and proud to hear of the progress I had made at learning how to make wickerwork furniture. He left some more money in a bank account for me: money that I could use to set up shop on my own after I came of age. Was he not going to come back any more, I asked. He said he would, and there was a look in his eyes that told me I had a right to hope. He left me an army address to contact if I desperately needed him – his place of posting was secret; no letters were allowed. And I couldn’t read and write at that time anyway.

I am 24 now, and running a small but satisfactory business of my own. My uncle’s family is only too glad to see me these days, and they often urge me to get married. Idiots. I must wait, go on waiting. After six straight years without communication, I wrote to the address they had given me. They wrote back, politely regretful, informing me that the gallant captain had fallen fighting for his beloved country during an incident of cross-border shelling. But of course that can’t be true, can it? He said he’d come again to see me, the last time we met, and he will not fail me.

That’s it. A very short, short story.

A lot of people will find it trivial, or overly-sentimental, or otherwise unimpressive and unmemorable. I don’t want to hear from them. A precious few will feel a very deep, deep resonance inside their hearts, because they too have felt like this, occasionally or very often, and as keenly, as inconsolably. Not necessarily for a lost love in the romantic sense, but for missing parents, or children, or spouse, or student or teacher, even. They might let me know. It is about the same kind of missing someone who is lost or who will never come that I wrote Natalie and Sorcery too. So did Tagore with Kabuliwallah, Postmaster, Aapod, Ak raatri, Samapti, Ghaater Kotha… and many others I could name. It could be yearning for God Himself, when one has realized that all human relationships are ultimately fake, or merely conditional upon mutual convenience (the Bard says, 'most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly'!): ‘e milon toma bina kotha achhe hey ishwar’, and also ‘amar shur guli paye choron, ami pai ne tomare’…

Taking stock once more

My daughter has had an interesting and (for her-) new experience. Read about it here. This is one of the reasons I have sent her off to a big city, awful as the wrench has been.

Rashmi in her latest blogpost has been reflecting upon what I have done for her over the last few years. Anyone who reads it with attention will see this relationship with me has added a major dimension to her life, something she has come to value highly, and not something that has been a cause of any kind of trouble. Vaishnavi is another girl who could tell you. This is precisely the kind of thing I try to do with all my pupils, succeed in doing with a few, and have always dreamt of doing with very large numbers, as witness what I said in the post titled ‘Last Dream’. It needs a lot of intelligent interest, attention and faith on the part of the pupil, too, of course. So I fail with most of those who pass through my tuitions for a few years; no surprises there. Also, perhaps it’s really a good thing that I don’t have to attend to too many people outside my classes – one cannot really give that kind of intense quality time to thousands, or even hundreds of people at once, they all become mere Facebook-friends. An old boy on the phone reminded me yesterday. It has been well said that ‘Not my will, O Lord, but Thy will be done’.

I have always said that these two blogs are extensions of my classes. My best readers have told me they can often actually hear my voice while they are reading. Now that there have been 200,000-plus pageviews, 300-odd members, and this blog routinely gets 800 to 1000 visits every week, I think things are working the way I wanted. They will work even better if my readers interact more, with me and with one another, using these blogs as a common platform. I assure you, nobody with a mind of his or her own ever regretted doing that with me. And the hundreds of posts on these blogs can give you all the talking points you need. Do explore them a bit more assiduously: don’t restrict yourself to the home pages…

A passing thought: while the rumour mill among the parent generation in this town (my dad’s 25 years ago, and now my own) is still almost as busy as ever gabbling away about me to glory, few parents use the internet to read my blogs. The general public opinion about what sort of man I am would have become very very different – and much closer to reality – by now if they did. But no matter. They will die being busy with inconsequential things, as Rashmi has described. So many in fact have already!

The older I grow in teaching, the more deeply I realize how awesome a job it is, and how many of us spend our whole working lives without ever guessing that! Most of us never become more than mere instructors, ‘covering the course’ for some piffling examination be it in physics or history, cooking or gymnastics, painting or music, surgery or law; and it is all so pathetic, because those who can’t learn that kind of stuff from books on their own won’t, instructor or no instructor, and those who can don’t really need instructors at all! No one except he who can show me how to live better in a non-trivial sense (meaning makeup and jewellery and decking up my rooms) qualifies to be called a teacher, and understood in that way, most of us never meet three real teachers in our whole lives, in school or in the university of life. And I also understand that I have, more and more consciously over the years, tried to be the kind of teacher who deserves the title. Much of all the trouble I have had has stemmed from that urge, all the good that has happened has derived from it too. I myself have found all my real teachers only in books… the Buddha, Socrates, Tagore, Vivekananda, Russell, Galbraith, Asimov…; not one teacher I have met in my whole life could hold a candle to these men, in the kindergarten or the university. That is one of the few regrets I shall take to my grave. And maybe the satisfaction of knowing that some people have acknowledged, at least to themselves, that I tried uncommonly hard, much harder than anyone else they have known.

To those who do have this feeling that getting to know Sir up close will make a big difference to their lives, but are still not sure how to, or think they cannot help always having more important and pressing things to do, I shall only say, seize the day. Tomorrow it might be too late.

And you had better start by admitting two things to yourself: a) you have never really made good use of your time till this day, and b) whether you are 14 or 40, there is nothing that you need less than a great number of ‘friends’. They are holding you back from finding out who you are, what you want, and where you would like to go…