Too many 'wokes' around?

The currently in-vogue meaning of the word 'woke' (which was, traditionally, just the past participle of the verb 'wake') is 'one who is keenly and actively attentive as well as empathetic to important societal facts and issues', such as racial- or gender-prejudice and injustice. Wikipedia tells me it is derived from African-American vernacular English. And the number of 'wokes' is rapidly proliferating not only in the Anglo-American world but also, apparently, among the urban, well-heeled, English-educated Indian elite under the age of forty.

Now I trust I have been more than commonly aware and empathetic about all kinds of social injustices, but I cannot help thinking that these people are overdoing things, and making laughing stocks of themselves at best, or making a lot of enemies at worst. Look at the way they insist these days, for instance, that you cannot say 'chairman' and 'chairwoman', because that is sexist, and not even 'chairperson' (what was wrong with that?) but merely 'chair': so these days someone is just Chair of the department of physics, chair of the inquiry commission, and I can never stop laughing when I wonder whether they say 'The Chair sat on his chair'! If only they could at least be consistent with their own usage! Even Americans go on saying 'Congresswoman' Jane Smith said so, not 'Congress' Jane Smith, mind you, which is what should be said if we follow the same rule... and, since we must bow to the sensitivities of a lot of unusual people these days, we must use the plural they for individuals when in saner days we would have said either 'he' or 'she'. What about the sensibilities of people like me, who wince every time they have to use a plural along with a singular? What is wrong with 'it', which our teachers long ago taught us was neutral gender? No no, that would be pejorative, even offensive.

Which brings me to another point: many of these 'wokes' insist, on the one hand, following Salman Rushdie I suppose, that 'nobody has a right to be offended', but, if my reading experience serves me well, it seems they themselves are among the most thin-skinned. They are capable of taking offence at virtually everything you do. Of late I see my newspaper is running a campaign exhorting people to be more thoughtful and careful about not unnecessarily hurting others' feelings by saying 'insensitive' things, like 'You know a lot of science for a commerce graduate', 'You are very punctual for a Bengali', or 'You are very strong for a girl'. For heaven's sake, doesn't it occur to these blockheads that one might be merely joking, or even paying a compliment, besides stating things which have long been known to be true (such as that Bengalis are notoriously unpunctual?). Has it occurred to them, moreover, that all normal conversation would grind to a halt if we have to monitor and filter every sentence we utter? In saner times, we sometimes laughed back, or grimaced, or came back with a biting rejoinder if we were clever enough - and then simply moved on!

More and more it seems to me that too few people have anything worthwhile to do with their time, besides having become incurably obtuse. I have heard that in some countries it is now perfectly alright for even pre-teen students to show the teacher the middle finger, but God help the wretched teacher who dares even to scold them for such gross misbehaviour - for the whole might of the woke-powered state would be commandeered to teach him a lesson in sensitivity towards the freedom and rights of children! In my time we should have been caned, then our parents told to chastise us further or else. And I am deeply thankful I grew up in such an era. Now, even in this country, teachers and schools and examination boards are falling over themselves to convince every schoolgoer that s/he is highly talented and absolutely brilliant, so everyone deserves to score 90%-plus in exams; the many thousand-year old and highly realistic way of grading them into 'Extraordinary-good-average-poor-hopeless' is going out of the window (the fact that most of them are going to end up being delivery boys, shop attendants, mechanics and clerks of various hues in ill-paid and dead end jobs after having been certified as brilliant all through school will not, of course, hurt their self-esteem). According to the latest 'science', children who have been reprimanded or given poor scores grow up severely maimed and warped mentally. I cannot see that I have been so harmed, nor can the closest of my friends. And that's one last thing: these days 'science' can apparently be harnessed to support any stupid idea that sounds avant garde. The way things are going on, it won't be long before the sacred name of 'science' is ruined beyond redemption and turned into a poor joke by too many people who don't understand it.

And then one turns around to face the other aspect of contemporary reality: authoritarian and orthodox-minded regimes all over the world are doubling down and reviving or reinforcing age-old, utterly stupid, highly unjust prejudices and superstitions, apparently with the support of large majorities: Newton's third law asserting itself in the social sphere? As a great author said, we only have a choice of nightmares.

Hiring for beggars... sorry, teachers!

First, Bankura University and then Viswabharati have posted situations vacant ads for teachers to be hired on contract (meaning on a purely temporary basis with no benefits) at ridiculous salaries - a couple of hundred rupees per class, ten to twenty classes per month - which have raised a brief storm on the internet. Now I find that storm rather disingenuous, if not downright dishonest and silly. 

It has been true for a long, long time that, along with paying lip service to teaching as a 'noble' profession which 'builds the nation', we have always looked down on real-life teachers and paid them a pittance in terms of both money and respect. There is no better proof of this than the fact that many of the teachers who taught my grandfather's generation had to live like beggars and were never consulted by policymakers on anything that could mean 'nation-building', and many bright young people of my father's generation gave up teaching jobs for better ones in business and industry simply to make a tolerable living. Then, around the turn of the century, teachers' salaries - much more for college teachers than schoolteachers, though - were somewhat improved, but far from enough to attract the brightest and most dedicated to this profession, as I have seen all my working life as a teacher: hardly any of my good students have even considered teaching as an option, especially teaching in school, where, as I hold, 90% of all that is truly vital in education is imparted (as all the greatest minds, including Tagore, Russell and Vivekananda have agreed). I myself gave up the schoolteacher's job quite simply because the pay was so poor that without the option of private tuition on the side, I would have faced poverty after retirement.

Now what has been happening over the last at least four decades is that the set image of teaching as a relatively 'easy', unchallenging and 'secure' job which nevertheless offers some 'bhodrolok' status at the lower end of the scale (as opposed to, say, truck drivers who might earn much more but are 'chhotolok') has drawn vast numbers of the absolute dregs of humanity into this profession. Those who were simply no good for anything else, those who were laziest, least knowledgeable, least committed and most clueless became teachers by the hundred thousand (I am speaking a very inconvenient and unpalatable truth here, but truth it is). Add to that the fact that in millions of middle class families, schoolteaching has been considered one of the few 'safe' and 'permissible' jobs for females, and anyone who had a master's degree, however worthless, could become one, if only one could flatter and bribe the right people. Makes for a ghastly mix, doesn't it? The results are there for all to see, so I won't belabour them, but the fact remains that no one addresses the elephant in the room: the fact that private tuition has become near-universal and is considered absolutely essential right from middle school if not earlier for anyone who can afford it. I have been saying this publicly for a long time now - those who can teach become private tutors, those who cannot stay in school.

Nothing suddenly shocking is happening now; things are merely touching a nadir. Imagine: the job advertisers are confident that they are going to find enough young people with master's degrees who have cleared the NET or got a PhD  and are eager to fill those pathetic posts, 'teaching' jobs which bring in less than my driver and my cook make. (Meanwhile it has now become common knowledge that countless young people are openly bribing officials for jobs in government schools or working in private schools for sums that are too pitiful to be openly mentioned). Then imagine, how low the self-esteem of those job applicants must be, how little their confidence in their own knowledge and ability, how desperate their desire for a 'safe' and 'respectable' job, how lacking in ambition they are, that they would deign even to think of applying for such jobs. And then imagine what kind of teachers they will make, what they will do for and to their students! It gives me nightmares...

You could read this post in tandem with an older one, What price education? which I notice has just come into the most-read list again. And my profoundest salutations and apologies to those truly dedicated souls, few and far between as they are, who continue to give of their best as good teachers, despite the humiliation and privation lifelong. I have never been able to figure out what makes them tick: committed to doing my work to the best of my ability as I have always been, I have also been entirely professional about it, always. I teach because it feeds my family decently.

Endless summer

We are in the midst of the third 'heat wave' in West Bengal this summer, and it simply goes on and on and on. The real monsoon, of course, never starts before mid-July, but officially at least we get to know that on the first of June it has arrived in Kerala, so that we can expect its formal arrival in this state in about ten days after that, even if only to grace us with a token shower or two. This time round the monsoon has officially halted somewhere around the Andamans and has been stuck there for the last fortnight, with the Met having no idea when it will finally deign to start moving northwards again. So there is not even hope to sustain us through the gruelling heat. Even the occasional thundershowers that relieved us through May seem to have decided to go on strike...

After two and a half months of working every single day I took a two-day break and made a quick trip to Mukutmanipur with two old boys, Sahnik the newly-minted doctor and Swarnava, on his way to becoming a high-energy physicist (good fiction writer too, God willing). We ate well and slept well, but that is about all that can be said, because it was baking hot from eight in the morning till nearly midnight. My mother - God bless her strength and spirit - made a round trip to Digha without mishap, and she at least enjoyed it thoroughly, the weather by the sea being apparently much better. I don't know whether I should envy her. Given a different roll of the dice, I would have spent the entire summer somewhere lush above 6000 feet.

And now, to add to our woes, our street in particular is in the throes of incessant power outages and voltage fluctuations. An overloaded transformer burst, and we stewed for twelve hours straight, starting from 2 a.m. The replacement was quick, but has not apparently solved the problem fully. Yesterday I shepherded a few seriously-old local residents (the sort of dodderers who still regard me as a young man!) on a deputation to the Station Manager of the WBSEDCL Customer Service Centre. The lady at least heard us out politely, and accepted our written plea to do something urgently and prevent further misery. Let us see whether things improve, and how soon.

Meanwhile, I am soldiering on, and asking readers yet again to suggest things they want me to write about. Right now, I can't think of a thing by myself... as Sukumar Ray wrote long before all this ballyhoo about global warming and climate change began to be heard, 'raja boley brishti naama, noile kichhui milchhe na'!

Strengthening democracy

When I think about things we can do to ensure that democracy survives, improves and flourishes in India throughout the foreseeable future, the following, it seems to me, have become absolutely urgent.

 

We should drastically amend the Representation of the Peoples Act and other basic laws to provide that

1.      Political parties cannot proliferate endlessly, with almost indistinguishable manifestos and differentiated only by their leaders who fight and drift apart from mother parties to satisfy their own egos, ambitions and narrow interests,

2.      Make the Election Commission a truly powerful and impartial body, supervised by Parliament alone (with a strong voice for the opposition which the ruling party cannot steamroll), which will monitor all political activity of all parties and not only just before and after elections,

3.      Parties must be commitment bound to deliver on at least most of their pre-election promises or resign from power, and no party may criticize government policies which it itself espoused strenuously while in power,

4.      Electoral constituencies must have the power of recalling their representatives at any time after the first year if they turn out to be duds, frauds or downright criminals,

5.      Serious and repeat offenders of a criminal nature (which must include election fraud) must be permanently barred from standing for elections,

6.      All parties must fully and honestly publicize their sources of funding, itemized in case of all large donations, and parliament and courts must stringently monitor which donors are being unlawfully favoured when those parties are in power,

7.      All legitimately recognized parties must be publicly funded, at least up to 80% of their needs, and allow compulsory audit of their finances.

8.      The Constitution must be amended to spell out very specific rules about how elections and politics may be done, and the High and Supreme courts must exercise unceasing, strict and minute supervision over the whole process, perhaps assisted by a public ombudsman.

9.      Illegitimate, coercive muscle power must be removed from the political arena by an all-round consensus among all contending parties. Investigative agencies must not function at the whim and behest of executive authority, but only under parliamentary and court supervision, with stringent media oversight.

10.  The mass media must commit themselves to genuinely fearless, probing, analytical and impartial reporting,

11.  Accredited, well-respected, well educated social workers must be encouraged to join politics en masse after they have made their reputations in their chosen fields of service,

12.  The well-off elite with time and leisure on their hands must be encouraged likewise to join public service, so that they are not easily lured by the temptation of misgoverning to make big bucks quickly for themselves and their kin.

13.  All political parties whose agenda openly spread lying and hateful fiction about their perceived ‘enemies’ in society must be put beyond the pale, once and for all, whether they are on the left or right, religious or atheistic, whether they are feminists or misogynists, casteists and vegans or those who want to kill casteists and vegans.

14.  Civil society NGOs with good and long-standing reputations must be strongly encouraged to take a hand in the political process (in this context, read this article).

15.  All elected leaders, from town councillors to PMs, as soon as they start behaving like kings and despots, must be summarily removed from office as soon as a minimum number of genuine complaints have been registered, which may vary from 100 in case of a panchayat pradhan to 100,000 for a prime minister.

16.  Since the permanent rather than elected executive actually runs the day to day administration and deals with all citizen needs, requests and demands (sarkari naukars, from the peon right up to the department IAS secretary), and since they have acquired a deep, abiding and countrywide reputation for being incompetent, unwilling, grossly unhelpful and venal on the whole, all political parties must come together to remove or cure this scourge once and for all – a sarkari naukar will work hard according to well defined standards day in, day out round the year all his working life, to be judged only by his clients and supplicants, or be first warned, then suspended, then dismissed, and finally in extreme cases jailed. There is no other way of clearing this particular Augean stable without making a frightening example of a few tens of thousands of careers and lives ruined. It has gone on for far too long.

17.  Voter education must be made a very serious and compulsory part of school education right from class 6 to 12, so that when they start choosing their candidates, they may not vote like ignorant or brainwashed idiots (as even most college graduates do in this country). This ‘education’ must clearly teach growing generations what they should ask of their elected representatives, as well as what they should not ask or expect.

18.  Much more power should be devolved down to the states, and further onwards to the lower units of local self government, so long as they commit formally that they are all going to obey the Constitution, never dream of seceding, and accept a minimum template of duties and commitments to the voters that has been set by higher levels of government – indices that can be constantly monitored, measured and commented upon, like crime rates and literacy rates and employment rates and pollution levels, to mention just a few.

19.  Absurd, out of date and utterly anti-democratic laws like the sedition act must be repealed and thrown into the dustbin of history. Every citizen must be free and unafraid to air his views on any subject of public concern, as long as her views are reasonable and informed.

20.  Learning from the best practices of all nations which are widely recognized as successful democracies must be made mandatory for all who dream of being our future leaders.

 

Achieving all this will take time, but a beginning must be made, now. Even ten years later it might be too late, and democracy might dissolve into first anarchy and then autocracy, as it has often done in many countries.

Achieving all twenty of the above will be very hard, and all of them may never be fully achieved. Also, in the off chance that they are indeed all achieved, it still won’t make for a perfect democracy – nothing is ever perfect, certainly not something as complex and messy as a democracy of such gigantic proportions – but India will certainly become a much better place to live in.

The whole question is whether a sufficient number of intelligent, wise, civic minded citizens are at all keen enough to preserve and improve democracy in India. From what I have seen over a period of nearly fifty years of observation and reflection – I have been politically conscious from a very early age – I fear that that might not be the case. If that is true, democracy in India is doomed, and, despite being one who is painfully aware of the drawbacks of democracy, I would opine that that would be a disaster for almost all of us.

One last word.  I first wrote out a similar list of desiderata in 1987 to help out a friend who was going to sit for the UPSC examinations. Thirty six years on, I have found little reason to make major changes in the list – indeed, I wrote this one out almost off the cuff. Shows both how little India has changed in the intervening years as much as how stable my own opinions have remained.

[It should be obvious to any mindful reader that I do not side blindly with any single existing political party or ideology. For instance, much that the TMC or BJP are currently doing might be wrong or bad or simply misguided, but I know and remember too much of the CPIM and Congress eras to imagine naively that everything will be hunky dory if only they can return to power, having learnt nothing about honest and good governance in the intervening years out in the wilderness]

Mid-May diary entry

Thank God I still find youngsters delightful and invigorating on the whole, after more than forty years with them. One little boy, who has barely attended six classes, made my day yesterday by whispering conspiratorially to me on his way out: 'Sir, your classes are very interesting!'

The second heat wave of the year was grilling us over the last week, but today there was a magnificent thundershower following a dust storm, nor'wester style, and it is now blessedly cool as I write, with a gentle breeze blowing. The pleasure never seems to pall...

I asked my readers a couple of questions in the last post, and I was waiting for a few answers. Sad that I haven't received any yet.

I think I have had to give up on my swimming sessions at last. They had been becoming increasingly infrequent over the last few years, and I now dislike the long lonely drives too much, given our bad roads and extremely unruly traffic, to keep going. One of my dearest wishes - a pool in my own neighbourhood - is never likely to be fulfilled. 

The ICSE results have come out once more, for the tenth time since my daughter passed. The less said about them the better, but I have given my freshest batch of ex students something to think about by drawing their attention to the post titled ICSE 2013 and us. I hope it will mean something to them and their juniors. Serious readers might also look up a book review titled Those who love, if only to find out what 'education' meant 200+ years ago, and reflect how far we have regressed. 

I have been watching how democracy has been working (or faltering...) in India and many other countries, and thinking for a long time about what we need to do to put it back on a strong footing with a future to look forward to. Perhaps I shall make a little essay out of it in the next post. Keep visiting.

Caesar, language, books and old classes

The fact that my daughter has got me hooked on a series of fictionalized history based on the life of Julius Caesar could not have come at a better time: I am going to deal with Shakespeare's Caesar in my classes again, and I am being considerably re-educated. Conn Iggulden has taken great liberties with history as it is recorded, even when it is not absolutely certain, but he makes superb reading, and I hope to get at least a handful of current pupils interested, if I am assured that they have attained at least basic literacy.

April went dry and blisteringly hot, but we were blessed with a strong shower on the very last evening, and then again today, though only briefly. So the last 'heat wave' is only a nasty memory already, and we are bracing for the next one. But I have lived through rainy and balmy Mays, so there's no harm on hoping that the weather gods might be kind again.

I have been reading back what I wrote about turning fifty ten years ago, and wondering what I should write on my sixtieth birthday, in October. Any suggestions from old and fond readers?

This year is also significant in that I wrote To My Daughter exactly twenty years ago.

With reference to the previous post, my thanks to those who cared to reply here and in our Whatsapp group called 'Suvro Sir's intimates'. It makes me feel good. I hope it will be remembered at least in some circles, by at least a few hundred people, that I loved and adored the English language, not merely made a living out of it, and it was that love that gave me whatever good I had in me as a teacher. Would some of my ex students reading this post care to tell me what they miss most about my classes, and what they would have liked to have more of while they were attending my classes?

I shall also be grateful if some of you gave me ideas about what to write about next, things that I might be capable of writing and interested too.

A special thanks to Saikat for coming back to the post titled Fafaia yet again.

World English Day

Yesterday, April 23, I learnt very recently from a Google Doodle made for the occasion, was the UN World English Language Day. It was chosen - not inappropriately, I believe - because it was the date on which William Shakespeare was born and also supposedly died. The UN decided in 2010 to observe the day every year as such. Their website article claims that today one in four human beings uses English in one way or the other. Both Shakespeare and Thomas Carlyle would have smiled: I think it was the latter who said towards the end of the 18th century that Shakespeare was more valuable to 'us' (the British) than the empire, and so it has turned out to be. Via Shakespeare, the very best of what it once meant to be English has been spread around the world. But certainly both Shakespeare and Carlyle would have been astounded to see how much and how diversely the language has changed since their times, and what people are doing with it these days. Although, come to think of it, as one of the supremely great creative artists of all time and therefore an inveterate experimenter and pusher of boundaries, Shakespeare would probably have been more amused than shocked.

English and Shakespeare have fed me all my life. Materially, aesthetically, intellectually and spiritually. My debt to them is immeasurable, but I thank them every single day.

However, in this context, as an observant and thinking man, I would like to put on record a few ideas.

1. If you learn English for a purely utilitarian purpose - to wit, passing school exams and getting a job - you are bound to learn it poorly, which you will gradually realize with dismay as the years roll by. If it is worth learning, it is worth learning well.

2. Don't be taken in by fancy labels and tall claims: many schools, coaching institutes and internet mentors don't know much English at all, and while they are eager to fleece you, they will teach you little, and what is worse, they will teach you a lot of things that are just plain wrong. Not knowing is much better than 'knowing' wrong things. 

3. You don't have to disrespect and neglect your native tongue in order to learn good English. Indeed, I lament the great disservice that has been done by (West-) Bengalis to their vernacular over the last fifty years in their haste to become slavish imitators of the sahibs: very few Bengalis can read, write or speak fluent and correct Bangla today, and that has rarely been compensated by a really good grasp of the English language. From Rammohun Roy to Satyajit, they have all shown that you can be equally a master of both Bangla and English.

4. English grants you access to all the great books of the world, ancient and modern, spiritual, artistic, philosophical, scientific and technical, as no single other language does, or is ever likely to. So learn English well in order that the doors of the world's knowledge can be opened widest for you.

5. Finally, do not let the latrine slush of social media push you down into the gutter of what used once to be called pidgin, or 'coolie English'. I have no intention of being called elitist, or a snob, or a 'grammar Nazi', but if you imagine that knowledge of language needs no discipline of the mind, no hard work, no sense of standards, you have lost sight of both culture and civilization. Remember, 'I does' is plain wrong, writing 'Sir was' when you mean 'Sir is' is not a small mistake, 'He stopped to look' and 'he stopped looking' mean exactly opposite things, saying a natural sight is 'sick' when you mean lovely is weird, brilliant engineering is not 'insane', everything in this world is not 'great' or 'amazing', nor is anyone cool because s/he is hot. It only means your brains have fallen out, and you have joined the ranks of the great (mentally-) unwashed. No glory in that, though there might be safety in numbers, of the kind that is appropriate only for quadrupeds.

Happy English learning to all.

Living inside an oven

My new batches have all begun, and there's a heat wave over southern Bengal, so it's all I can do to maintain my iron work routine - besides eating, reading, sleeping and chatting with old boys, that is: hence the delay in posting something new on the blog.

March was balmy this year, what with the three days of rain, but over the last two weeks summer has descended upon us with a vengeance. The Celsius breached 40 three days ago, and has been rising relentlessly. The Met has threatened that it might go close to 50, so I fear for us all, because those are killing temperatures. The evenings are, mercifully, cooling down rather quickly, and the air being very dry, the evaporation coolers are doing a great job, so this time round the tag of 'desert cooler' has suited them to a T: it indeed feels rather as though we are living in a desert. I feel most strongly for the poor kids who arrive for the mid-afternoon classes; stepping out of my cool, shaded classroom for even five minutes feels like walking into a blazing oven. No - I actually feel most for the crazy parents who wait out the whole class outside, since the children, after all, can sit and study in air conditioned comfort. I wouldn't have done it for my daughter, and I have grown tired and stopped trying to persuade these parents that it is simply not worth it. But when some of them enviously say 'apni khub bhalo achhen Sir', I laugh and say 'That is exactly why I decided to become a teacher long ago!' I wish the younger generation, at least the brighter ones among them, would think about it a little more seriously. Is it really so worthwhile to run around six days a week to make a living?

Meanwhile, I never stop thinking about a thousand things, and sometimes, when I sit down to wonder what I am going to write here this time, I am blocked by an embarras de richesses... I don't know which subject to select. Anyway, I have been thinking about what my old boy Swarnava sent me via text yesterday: something that some American said sadly in the 1960s, pointing out a malaise that has now spread worldwide. 'We are developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won't be able to think.' I wonder - would this make any sense to the citizenry that we see all around us today? Do they even know what it means to 'think', as distinct from reading posts on twitter?

One of the last books that my most favourite philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote towards the end of his long life was titled Has Man a future? It was written against the background of a possible all-out nuclear war, shortly after the Cuban missile crisis, and he was afraid of an imminent apocalypse. That crisis has probably passed for good, but the way I see it, maybe mankind is going to perish in a much less dramatic way, still owing to its own incurable follies. The words penned by Eliot keep echoing in my mind: This is the way the world will end... not with a bang but with a whimper!

Sorry about the gloom. It's probably the heat.

Household concerns, cosmic vibes

So another admission session is more or less over, and I am all set to start yet one more seven-days-a-week work season again, which lasts till the end of November. I am wishing myself luck! This year I am a little extra bucked up, because the ICSE Council has prescribed Julius Caesar after a very long hiatus: 2011, in fact, was the last year they tested candidates on that text. I did JC myself for ICSE back in '79, started teaching with it, and now I guess I am going to retire with it. Nice: I like closure.

It's been raining off and on over this last fortnight, quite unlike in 2022, lowering the temperature briefly but repeatedly as it tries to soar beyond 37 Celsius, which makes life miserable. Last night, from latest inputs over the phone, I learnt that it was raining more or less simultaneously in Kolkata, Durgapur, Ranchi and Delhi. Don't know about the rest of the country. I love the rains.

Just finished watching the first episode titled Chasing Starlight of a new Netflix series called Our Universe, with Morgan Freeman doing the voiceover. Nothing factually new to me, but the commentary woven in with striking visuals - some real life, some special effects - was delicious to watch. Everything ultimately lives on and dies of starlight: that is the theme that runs through the narrative. The sun's energy absorbed by the grass, eaten by wildebeest in the millions, turns into vital energy in the mitochondria of Wa Chini the cheetah and her cubs on the vast plains of Serengeti Wildlife Reserve. They could have, of course, completed the circle by pointing out how Wa Chini when she dies will be eaten by bacteria and turn into soil, while that eternal indestructible energy is released back into the cosmos, to take new shapes again. They might also have pointed out that it is the same starlight which powers the worst of disasters, like hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. So it has been for the last three and half billion years, so it will continue for a few billion more. 

One cannot, unless one is emotionally very dull, help going all mystical over this. If at all any aspect of Nature has to be worshipped, it has got to be the sun, for it powers everything that we call reality - a true god, certainly (though not, I think, God). Hence jawakusum sankashang kashyapeyang mahadyuting... How strange that some of our rishis fairly anticipated much of the whole process purely through superficial (but long and methodical-) observation and meditation thousands of years ago: all our recent physics and chemistry and biology with their equations and tables, microscopes and telescopes and spectroscopes have only helped to fill in and confirm the details. 

But this is not where thought stops. What came before and after the sun, what before and after the universe itself? Oh, okay, the sun will explode into a Red Giant, then collapse meekly into an insignificant White Dwarf after a while, but modern science currently stops - indeed, prohibits asking such questions beyond the speculative Big Bang and Big Crunch: you cannot ask such questions about the Great Beyond, because space and time and causation themselves stop meaning anything beyond those singularities. However, Man will NEVER stop asking. And so some have suggested that there is God, from whom everything came and into whom (or which) everything dissolves: only to be recreated over and over again. So God is immanent in Nature, and yet above, beyond and infinitely greater than Nature: indeed, many religions have called identifying Nature with God, despite her vastness, power and complexity, the ultimate blasphemy. That is where the poet and the seer takes over: through a riddle, in the end, sagacity must go.

That is when the bhakta implores tuhu kaise Madhav, kaho tuhu moye (Tell me what You are, Lord) and only the Upanishadic sage and Sri Ramakrishna have said, 'I have seen the effulgent Being beyond death, the darkness and the void...' Who knows better?

And yet, and yet, the greatest of all miracles of creation is Man himself, for, so lately emerged from  animal  ancestry (if the scientists have got the story right) he alone wonders, and imagines, and creates, and keeps on changing the Reality around himself, not always wisely and well, but relentlessly, burning with the Promethean fire. Just a few thousand years - less than a blip on the cosmic scale - and he has gone from the Stone Age to the age of atomic reactors, computers, space exploration and artificial intelligence. So agonizing and insufferable, this existence, but all our wisest men have rightly claimed that of all births this is the most wonderful of all...

Exam scores, successes and very sick people

Looking at the advertisement of one of the nationwide cram shops in my newspaper today, loudly tomtoming their great recent 'achievement', namely that eight of their students have been placed in the 100th percentile of the JEE (engineering entrance examination), I was reminded of something that I have been pondering over for nearly two decades now.

Ever since the public examination boards started showering marks on their candidates, so that even in English and History hundreds, if not thousands started scoring astounding numbers (I won't call them marks, and I shall presently explain why not), in the high nineties, some even scoring 100 out of 100 - which, as any real examiner with long experience will tell you is simply impossible, unless the entire question papers are full of only multiple-choice questions with a single correct answer for each, preferably in one word, short phrase or date (can you imagine a meaningful English or history exam paper like that?). For at least two decades, I have been watching students who never score more than 65-70 per cent in the tests I give them (despite my having become much more liberal than I was in the late eighties) go on to score 95% plus marks in the board exams. Their mothers go wild celebrating their 'grand success' (it of course occurs to no one that nothing that thousands of people can do every year should be called success in any significant sense), but maybe it should not be called success at all? Maybe it all looks so glamorous because the boards have started quietly replacing actual marks with percentiles? 

Consider what percentile means (a lot of so-called educated people don't really know, or don't want to know). You place the scores of all the candidates in ascending or descending order, then arrange them in terms of percentiles (or deciles, or quartiles). Someone who has scored in the 100th percentile has NOT scored 100 per cent marks: s/he has only found a place among the highest one per cent of scorers. Then let the realization sink in: if the top scorer has got only 60% marks, say, then anyone who has got 58 or 59 will find a place in the highest (100th) percentile, though the fact is that his performance has been only mediocre at best! Yet by this little specious subterfuge, the examiners are giving a chance to thousands to enjoy a bit of false glory, a chance to preen among their relatives and neighbours for a short while... to what end? Tens of thousands of school leavers are stopped at the gates of the precious few government colleges soon enough, which demand absurd scores to give admission (a certain college in Delhi made headlines a few years ago by setting 100% aggregate as the 'cutoff' mark!), so that the great majority of them have to be turned away, and make a beeline for the ever mushrooming private colleges which fleece them in exchange for degrees of highly questionable value...

Indeed, I often wonder. It is a moot question whether exam standards have been declining over the last few decades, as some old retired teachers grumble, but even if they have not, have exam scores at the top remained more or less the same, or is it the case, as I have strong reason to suspect, looking at the pathetic intellectual quality of the thousands I have been grooming all these years, that the actual scores have been continuously declining, and that national shame is being sought to be hidden by replacing percentage scores with the little-understood trick called percentiles? I read a Harvard professor saying some years ago that these days they are having to routinely give As and A+s to the kind of students who would have barely managed to score B- or even C when he was young (meaning the 1960s), and I even have a newspaper cutting stored away somewhere which revealed that a large proportion of Oxford undergraduates couldn't even spell. Maybe what has been happening in the world's 'best' universities has been happening India-wide too? Maybe there is a global dumbing down, and, for reasons that I do not claim to understand fully, we are all involved in a giant conspiracy to hide the shame from ourselves? Maybe it is not an accident that 'artificial' intelligence is booming - the chief reason being that 'natural' intelligence (and knowledge, and wisdom) have sunk through the floor? When I read of a judge in the US awarding compensation to a customer who got burnt by spilling coffee over herself because the cafe owner had not posted a highly visible written warning that hot coffee could scald you, I begin to think that humans might have lost the right to call themselves intelligent creatures any more.

And think of what kind of adults these students are growing up into. I watched a true crime TV show on Netflix yesterday, a real life incident about a young woman (well, actually 33, not all that young) who was a low-level IT worker in Bangalore, earning a modest salary, who had got neck deep into debt trying to live a fashionable lifestyle far beyond her means (apparently a very common type nowadays), lavished money on her secret boyfriend, became gradually helpless, terrified, depressed and suicidal upon realizing that she was rapidly sinking into destitution - and finally killed her 'beloved' mother so that the latter might not have to bear the public shame of it becoming known what a wayward failure her daughter had become. This woman was a fair representative of the kind of 'educated', 'talented' youth who are swarming the streets (and bars and salons and malls) of our cities today, though not many of them take their sickness so far. What does it say about the society which breeds the likes of her in the millions? What does it hint about our collective future? Imagine if the woman had lived on to become a mother and perhaps even a teacher somewhere. It makes me shudder.

Springtime

The fortnight I spent in Delhi was deliciously languorous. I read a great deal, watched some movies, recorded podcasts with Pupu for future use, did the sort of household chores that soothe the nerves even while tiring out the muscles and working up a good appetite, followed by deep sleep. The new neighbourhood is becoming familiar, especially the marketplace, which I enjoy visiting. The young vegetable vendor says 'bahut din baad aye uncle', while the old Sikh spice vendor greets me with a warm toothless smile, and the meat seller knows that I have come to buy offal for the dog. 

The season was just right for lazing at all hours on the balcony. There was a visit to Diggins near Gargi College for risotto, and to Ghalib's at Nizamuddin for kebabs where we are sure to be cordially recognized now, followed by a dekko of Humayun's tomb and the vast verdurous expanse of Sundar Nursery next door. Another evening was spent dining at Moti Mahal in Daryaganj: run by Hindus, yet boasting of the 'best' traditional meat dishes in Delhi, and flaunting photos of every kind of celebrity who has visited, from John F. Kennedy (I think that's a fib: it was his wife who visited actually) to Amitabh Bachchan. I persuaded my daughter to accompany me on walks almost every evening. 

Talking of books, my big discovery this time (thanks to Pupu, again) was the Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud. Even those who have read the Foundation series and the Dune series and LOTR and Eragon series and Harry Potter are guaranteed to enjoy it hugely. A fantasy in which an immortal shape-shifting demon with a gift for sharp repartee is the central character! As I keep saying, there is nothing, nothing more wonderful than the human imagination, and may it flourish evermore, leaving AI for the unintelligent masses...

On the drive to the airport the day I was returning, I was charmed to see one roadside aflame with palash flowers. God bless those who care so much for trees and flowers in the megalopolis, and may the other metros learn from Delhi.

Now I am back in Durgapur, enjoying (or cursing) the lonely life once more, because my mother has not yet returned from her own holiday trip. The nastiest thing of all, for me, is groggily making your own tea first thing in the morning. It rained a bit yesterday evening after five successive entirely dry months, and I am hoping there will be a repeat performance soon. Gearing up for the next admission session. It seems the last one ended only yesterday!

Weekend in Goa

This latest trip was absolutely perfect in every way.

We set off on Thursday the 16th. Took a train to Kolkata after ages – because road trips are taking too long lately – the Coalfield Express, which brought back a flood of old memories, then a cab to the airport. A long wait, then a two and half hour flight (try not to fly Spice Jet whenever you can avoid it; they invariably give you creepy moments, besides the cramped Boeing 737s, though Pupu had got us the front row, which was very considerably better) to the spanking new MoPa airport in north Goa. We arrived at the resort a little before 8 p.m. This – the Grand Leoney, close to the Marriot but much closer to the beach – was, on the whole, the very best place I have stayed at in all these years, and surprisingly enough, far from the most expensive, so that was a delight, since we stayed for three nights and four days.

Over the weekend, I discovered that we had also made the best possible choice of beach, the Vagator, with Anjuna beach close by: wide expanse, lovely view with the Chapora fort to the right upon a cliff overlooking the bay, not too crowded, restaurant right on the sand, various kinds of water sports if you are interested including scooter- and motorboat rides. We slept late and woke up sinfully late every day; breakfast was given the miss in favour of one kind of brunch or the other. On Friday we bathed in the sea, then hired a Fascino scooty and zipped around, visiting the fort, the Baga and Calangute beaches, and a little bookshop called Champaca. At Baga, after huffing and puffing up and down from the fort, where cool coconut water soothed our parched throats (the view reminded me of Simhachalam at Vizag) we spent a whole hour dozing on shaded and padded beachside deck chairs. At Calangute, we bought a bottle of port, but then ran away from the crowd. From the bookshop, I bought a new work on Tagore’s ecological thinking by a Vishwabharati scholar.

On Saturday we had a lovely late morning swim in the hotel pool, then made a trip to south Goa in  a rented car (the view of the Mandovi river from the swanky new bridge brings to mind the backwaters of Kerala), taking in the Basilica of Bom Jesus (not much impressed by Portuguese baroque architecture, and things like the mummified remains of St. Francis Xavier leave me cold), the Se Cathedral, and the adjoining museum of ancient and medieval art maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India, followed by a trip to Fort Aguada (the Taj resort is next door, and located in a neighbourhood which has unfortunately become terribly crowded – I would never dream of burning money staying in a locale like that!) and rounded up by a sight of Candolim beach, where we watched a glorious sunset. By the way, these little forts are a joke to people who have travelled around Rajasthan and Delhi: I wonder why the Mughals didn’t blast them off the earth when they could. The two late evenings we drank beer and chatted on the beach as only Pupu and I can do.

Sunday was spent lazing about, the highlights being a long spell in the sea at midday, followed by a very refreshing full-body massage and a very late lunch of prawn and rice, local style, along with the inevitable beer. A short snooze in the early evening, then packing up. We took a cab to Dabolim airport in south Goa (now called Goa International). Arriving at 10:30 p.m., we were horrified to see the crowd at the lounge, but mercifully it thinned out as flight after flight left. Ours – IndiGo – was at 2 a.m. There was a layover and change of flight at Jaipur, where I grumbled over a second-round security check and worried about losing our luggage in transit. However, we arrived without mishap at Delhi a little after 6:30 a.m. on Monday the 20th, and were home within an hour.

My impressions of Goa: you can see women in almost every state of undress if you are interested, though it’s rarely a pretty sight. Everyone seems to be drinking all the time (as a Bengali waiter remarked with irritation, liquor is the only thing that comes cheap). Food at the cafes is good but very expensive (many things on the menu, like shark steak, are generally unavailable), and they are mildly surprised if you only want a meal without drinks. So is transport, except for the Scootys. The eateries have all kinds of interesting names, like Nibbles and Jaws and Gin Mill and The Last Hangover. Most of the beaches are rather too crowded, and too many people keep soliciting custom all the time, offering everything from local handmade trinkets to parasailing. The common language is Konkani, but most people have at least passable English and a little Hindi. The weather was balmy, with the Celsius rising up to 33 and falling to 22, but the sun is hot and dazzling if you forget your sunglasses. And it can get clammy when the breeze drops. Most of the cafes play loud music almost non-stop. The foreign tourists are back post-pandemic in full force. Beef is openly available, despite Goa being ruled by the BJP now: I guess they know very well which side of the bread is buttered, and are scared of chasing away their biggest, if not only, source of revenue. The locals like to do everything in a slow, easygoing fashion, so don’t expect to be served pronto even if you are hungry. The landscape is an odd mix of high-urban and still-rural. People with Portuguese surnames are far less common than might have been expected, though one of the reception clerks was called Albuquerque. The roads are good, and new high rise condos are coming up all over the place. People come travelling by car from as far away as Kerala and UP. We saw a lifeguard at only one beach, and though I had expected changing rooms (or rather tin huts), there were none, exactly as in Bengal. Likewise, pillion riders don’t have to wear helmets mandatorily. Very few policemen are in evidence, not even traffic cops, so it must be a peaceful sort of place. Everyone buys hats and the trademark Goan shirts with palm tree motifs on them. For those who have deep pockets and extravagant tastes, there are ten-minute helicopter rides which cost eight thousand rupees per head, but no balloons, which I would have liked. Knowing that the sea is murky, I decided against snorkelling and scuba diving.

So now you can make up your own mind. One can have a jolly good short vacation while working online from time to time. No wonder it’s so popular with today’s young, as well as all kinds of corporates arranging workshops and conventions. Didn’t find out how much fun it would  be if you are travelling on a shoestring budget, though!

For photos click here.

Count your blessings

The more I reflect upon the life I have lived so far, the more it seems to me that on the whole I have been very lucky:

That I was not born severely handicapped, or a poor Dalit in the rural badlands.

That I became self-reliant, psychologically, financially and socially, so early in life.

That I have been allowed to work and earn a decent living without shame or guilt of any kind for myself and my dependents for so long.

That, following a sickly childhood, I have remained more or less fit and healthy continuously almost all my working life: that’s close to forty years.

That I have narrowly avoided so much and so many kinds of trouble which I have seen other people suffering from.

That my outlook on life, though increasingly tired and bored, has become much sunnier since teenage, and no one, no matter how hard so many people tried, has managed to get me down for very long.

That I have been allowed to learn so much about this world and about humanity, and thus acquire the kind of poise and composure and (dare I say it?) wisdom that so many people never do.

That I lost my parents but got them back.

That I was blessed with such a wonderful daughter.

That I can still appreciate the beauty and joy of simple things.

That I have no debts to repay, monetary or otherwise.

That I have enjoyed the affection, admiration and respect of many, and more importantly, that it doesn’t matter very much these days.

That for ages I have had a lot of time to call my own, and leisure.

That only God can make me retire, and

That I am not afraid of dying.

 

Every one of the above could have turned out very differently, and horribly worse.

Yes, like everyone else, I could draw up a huge list of things I have lost, things that have badly hurt me, things that I thought I well deserved but didn’t get. But merely running my eyes mentally down the above fills me with such an ineffable peace and thankfulness that the other list does not rankle any more. The exercise saves me from a lot of heartburn and that other terribly common human sin, envy of others who seem to have been more fortunate. ‘I lamented I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no legs’. No wonder the Christian hymn tells us to count our blessings morning and night… it is indeed the better way to live.

Swarnava wishing that I might find ‘serenity’ prompted me to write this up. If I still cannot find serenity, it will be only due to some lingering weakness in me, not anybody else’s fault.

One of my YouTube videos

I don't know how many of my readers have visited my YouTube channel: where I stopped posting several years ago. I was listening to some of my videos, and here's a link to one of them which I think all readers  who imagine themselves to be 'patriotic' ( and also some who don't!) should listen to, then self-examine.

Happy listening. As always, I shall be glad to have sensible and thought-provoking comments.

P.S., Feb. 06: I am delighted to see that the numbers on the visit counter have been jumping up lately, and that some old favourites have come back on the most-read list, including Look, for heaven's sake LOOK! (It also reminded me that, sadly, while visits have increased rapidly, comments, especially sensible and substantial comments which can trigger off lively debates, have become far fewer and farther between).

Most populous country

We have not had a census since 2011 (another critical area where the government has been inexplicably dragging its feet for years), but global authorities say this year we are finally going to outstrip China to become the most populous country in the world. It may have actually happened already. 

Before some Indians start celebrating even that as another 'great achievement', let me remind everyone of a few sombre facts:

India is still, in per capita income terms, among the poorest countries in the world (see the ranking list here), and likely to remain that way in the foreseeable future. Leave alone the really rich countries, she is miles behind even China. Coupled with extreme inequality, that means most of the poorest people in the world live in India - think remote tribal villages, think of the vast slums alongside railway tracks in and near all the metro cities.

Also to be remembered is that with 1.4 billion squeezed into such a (relatively) small landmass - as compared to huge countries like Canada, China, the US and Australia - we suffer every malaise that arises from extreme overcrowding. And although the growth rate is slowing, that number is projected to rise to at least 1.67 billion before the graph flattens off or heads downwards, post 2050.

A lot of Indians get themselves drunk on excitement, telling one another that we have been making huge technological strides in all spheres lately, but everybody who knows anything knows what a sad joke that is. Even if one maniacally focuses on the IT industry, remember that the full $100 billion it brings goes out again to pay for our oil import bill alone. As for BharOS, it is likely to become a quickly-forgotten damp squib like Mangalyaan and Vande Bharat...

So far as cultural riches are concerned, I can only weep. Yes, we are the land of the Upanishads and Ajanta and Aryabhatta and Susruta and the Taj and Tagore, but you simply have to look at the average Indian swearing filth and peeing by the roadside. That of course includes millions with college degrees and driving cars, too.

World's most populated country, yes. Alas.

Sometimes you can only laugh

We live in a world where on the one hand, people are constantly exulting over how fast everything is 'progressing' or 'advancing', and on the other, most people, including particularly the (formally-) educated and well-heeled, are constantly complaining about so many things that are going awry in their lives. We seem to be happily living with this cognitive dissonance: how can people grow continuously more dissatisfied, more agitated and unhappy, where everything 'advances' all the time? Unless we have chosen to forget what 'advancing' ought really to mean - nothing except what conduces to increased human happiness can be called real advancement?

And people will complain, but they will not do a thing to change things, even within the limits they can. Poor scores in exam after exam, but they won't study regularly according to a routine. Obesity - they won't exercise and gorge less on junk food. Pollution related diseases, but they will keep littering, ignoring rules of hygiene and buying more motor vehicles. Loneliness and misunderstanding, but they won't reach out to make friends, even with those who try, remembering that you must give if you want to receive. Marital discord, but they won't compromise. Unsatisfactory careers, but they won't seriously search for better alternatives. Neck deep in debt, but they won't learn to live within their means. Boredom, but they won't try out good hobbies. Every day ends with irritation, confusion and misguidance ensuing from social media involvement, but they won't sign out...

Sometimes you can only laugh, especially when you recall the proud belief that 'man is a rational animal'. Except when you remember that you have some of these defects yourself, and then you must try hard not to cry!

Desiderata, far beyond reach

I was born in Kolkata, but I was brought over to Durgapur when I was less than two years old. Since then, barring the eight years in Kolkata after school, I have spent all my life in this town. Maybe this is where I shall spend the rest of my life, too. So I guess I can now call myself an old-timer here, most of my seniors having already passed away or reached senility. I sometimes wish it were a nicer place to live in. Here are a few improvements I'd have liked to see in my town:

Footpaths along all major thoroughfares.

Much sterner policing of traffic. 

Good, reliable, reasonably priced public transport round the clock.

Several more fully equipped hospitals, both public and private, competing to provide the best possible service. Also hospices and at-home nursing services for the old and permanently ill.

Many more parks scattered around the town, and shady trees along every road, Delhi style.

Much stricter curbs on noise pollution, whether it is being caused by weddings, fairs, pujas or just plain drunken revelry.

A municipality and police force which actually listen to and act promptly and effectively in response to public complaints and demands (at present that's a joke. I have tried, and not once, to provide feedback on their websites, and been silently ignored).

Twice daily flights to all major cities around the country from the new airport.

Civilized and informed people between 20 and 70 with real interests, with whom you can have conversations beyond shopping and children's exam scores or salaries and the latest cars and phones, and whose social attitudes have evolved beyond the 1950s.

Good job opportunities aplenty, which would encourage well-educated as well as talented people to come back and settle here: and I am not talking about doctors and engineers. I'd have liked to see many artists and writers and sportspersons and competent, idealistic teachers, too.

I know, it goes without saying, that I am destined to die dissatisfied. Who knows but Durgapur will have become another overgrown shanty town or ghost town by the time I die. Thank God Dr. Bidhan Roy didn't live long enough to see which way his dream new town had gone...

Vivekananda's birthday again. Mercifully he is long dead, too. How far away his work and his vision seem now, how remote and irrelevant! He had wanted India to eradicate poverty and ignorance and modernize materially without losing her soul, her great spiritual riches ... do these things even mean anything to millennial Indians any more?

End of 2022

And so passes 2022. For me, as for nearly the whole world post-pandemic, a pretty nondescript year, I think.

It started well, with a lovely road trip, and I finished it with another one-dayer yesterday: Bhatinda falls, Topchanchi lake and Maithan - with the same team of boys plus one (Koushik, Swarnava and Pratyush, besides Firoz) which, too, was perfect. The boys discovered for me how good the music system in my car was. Good adda, good food, good sleep...

In between, there were two traumas: once we nearly lost poor Bheblu in mid-February, and then my mother in late September. But God was kind, so we all survived.

The highlight of this year, of course, was Pupu staying with me for a while, first time after the lockdown of 2020. This time it wasn't forced, though. Otherwise, with a few short breaks, it was work, work, work. Luckily, I enjoyed it for the most part.

Some of my favourite old boys have been having a tough time, so my prayers go with them for a better new year.

My prayer for myself: please God, keep me far away from people who don't like me but fake it for a while.

As usual, I am already and eagerly looking forward to the next mid-February break. Even if it is only vacationing in Delhi.

I have often written more feelingly and at considerably greater length about the Christmas-New year season. See, for instance, Santa Claus is coming to town and Behold, there cometh the Lord. No point repeating myself. 

December 1989

18th December. Alas, it seems we won't have a proper winter this time round at all! It became comfortable enough by mid-November, but even today the maximum has touched 26 celsius, while the minimum yesterday was barely 12-13. This can be called winter in Mumbai, Kolkata or Chennai maybe, but certainly not here.

I was re-visiting the memories of December 1989, when I was 26, exactly the age my daughter is now. More and more I love to make these mental comparisons. I had joined St. Xavier's School as a teacher the previous year, and helped very greatly to organise their silver jubilee celebration: they have airbrushed me out of their official memoirs, the idiots, imagining that that way they can actually erase history! In 1989, they were paying me a very modest salary, which was shored up just a little bit by the extra I was earning from private tuitions - many of my less gifted contemporaries were making considerably more then, and it would be more than a decade later that I would manage to draw ahead of them. But I was enjoying myself hugely. I was my own man, helping out with the family finances; we had just finished building (the first floor of-) our own new house, and that December, I floated the idea of taking some boys and colleagues on a school excursion. First time ever for our school. 'Who will take the responsibility?' asked Father Wavreil the headmaster, thrilled but wary. 'I will, of course,' I assured him, and so it was done. Even the railway booking was done through my father's journalistic connections. We went travelling for about a week, I seem to remember, visiting Hardwar, Hrishikesh, Lakshmanjhula, Dehradun and Mussoorie, staying and moving around very comfortably on just seven hundred rupees per head, which was even in those days a shoestring budget, and still managed to return a bit to every boy afterwards. 

I remember we got off the return train early in the morning, and the headmaster was waiting for us. He took a suitcase from my hand, and as I shook hands with him, crying exultantly, 'Father, I did it!' He laughed like a boy and said, 'Yes, you said that you would do it and you did it!' (for the illiterate, that was an impromptu quote from Bernard Shaw's play, Pygmalion). If his successors can read and are reading this, I hope they feel ashamed to realize how far they have fallen, and just why I quit. This was a headmaster: I couldn't tolerate lesser creatures. 

One reward was that some parents later came to see me and said, 'Sir, given the glowing reports we are getting from our sons, and the dirt-cheap way you managed to do it all, why don't you arrange a trip like that for us parents?' and another was that some of those boys (ICSE 1991) looked me up much later and declared, 'Sir, we have travelled much, far and wide, but never have we enjoyed a trip as much as that one!' It is a pity that I was such good friends with my senior colleagues like Uday Roy and Shanti Biswas in those days, and they have all found it preferable to forget me or badmouth me... I still wonder what they got out of it.

But Pupu, note well, I was still poor then. So you have time to make a solid career for yourself, see? All that matters is that you want to, you have faith in our Maker, and you are giving of your best. And remember, I did have lots of fun even though I was poor!  

Books I recently enjoyed

In the chapter titled On Books in To My Daughter, I expressed the fervent hope that my daughter would grow up into a good reader. That prayer has been richly answered, and as I have mentioned before, Pupu has of late turned into my main supplier of highly interesting books from many different genres, not excluding books on cookery! 

This time round, we went shopping to Pupu's new favourite haunt, The Book Shop on Lodi Road, inside the Embassy of Georgia complex. Tiny, yet very enticingly stocked. It was a delight to pore over all kinds of new titles, many by authors I hadn't read before, and to see a place where people of different ages came solely to explore and talk about books - made me feel intensely for the umpteenth time that I, sadly, live for the most part in a village, where reading is anathema to highly 'educated' people.

Within a span of about ten days, I have hugely enjoyed reading four books in quick succession. One was a Bengali volume, Goyendapeeth Lalbazar, by serving IPS officer Supratim Sarkar, from Ananda Publishers. A compilation of twelve bizarre criminal cases solved by the detective department of the Calcutta Police, once proudly called a close second only to Scotland Yard. Well written - even a bureaucrat can sometimes write well! - and a valuable contribution, maybe the first ever, to the history of crime detection in our country. Mr. Sarkar deserves the kudos and thanks of many.

Two more detective books - fiction this time round, but based on a lot of hard historical facts, and both very interestingly set in India, during the late years of the British Raj. One, The Last Kashmiri Rose, based in south Bengal 1922, at an imaginary military outpost called Panikhat: quite a gripping page-turner with a most unexpected and rather sinister twist in the tale, very expertly written with excellent and accurate historic details woven in, though I have no idea where the writer found hilly country fifty miles from Calcutta, and the biggest mistake was not making one mention of the biggest thing that had happened over the previous year, namely Gandhi's Non Cooperation movement which had nearly brought the whole administration to a grinding halt. The other was The Rising Man, written by Abir Mukherjee, who grew up in Scotland, whose protagonist is Captain Sam Wyndham, survivor of the trenches during the First World War, now employed by Calcutta Police on the express recommendation of the legendary commissioner Charles Tegart, though the writer has got some details wrong or confused: the name was Tegart, not Taggart, and he was only a 'Sir', not a 'Lord' at least in those days (look him up on wikipedia), and who unravels a deadly mystery against all sorts of odds, in the process exposing the dark underbelly of the Raj. I have some issues with the writer's English: no Englishman in those days would have used the expression 'called out' to mean 'criticised', simply because it did not exist then, nor written 'he was likely sent to jail' (the word used to be 'probably'), nor 'he looked like he wanted to say something' when he meant 'it seemed as if he wanted to say something': these are all Americanisms from the social media age, four generations after a 1919 detective. And writing 'he was sat' when one means 'he sat' is downright wrong and silly. Also, a Bengali brahmin from a rich old Calcutta family with a first class law degree from Cambridge and a cut-glass English accent who passed the IPS entrance exam got his first posting as a mere sergeant in shorts, not allowed to sit down before his British superiors? when Satyendranath Tagore, the first Indian ICS officer, had become a deputy magistrate half a century ago?! But at least this writer took into account Jallianwala Bag, and the story is well told. I shall look forward to the next three in the Sam Wyndham series. The one book was written by an Englishwoman, the other by an expatriate Indian: I can only marvel at the dedicated amount of research both  must have done to get 99% of the period details right.

Finally, a book from a very different genre: Quest for Kim, by Richard Hopkirk. Those who have not read Rudyard Kipling's Kim and adored it lifelong as the finest book about India ever written in English will be left cold; so will all those who hate everything about Kipling without knowing much more than zero about him, but I am one of the lifelong diehard aficionados, and for like-minded people, I'd say, re-read Kim at once, then go and read Hopkirk's earnest, arduous and years-long labour of love to retrace Kim's steps across the length and breadth of India, and find out all he can about the Great Game and all the outstanding characters, old Teshoo Lama, Kim himself, Field Marshall Roberts of Kandahar the Jang i laat sahib, Mahbub Ali, Lurgan Sahib and Babu Hurree Chunder Mukherjee. You will be regaled and rewarded beyond your expectations.

I can't thank you enough, Pupu ma. Looking hungrily forward to what you will ask me to read next. Meanwhile, I am eagerly into Bending over backwards, by Carlo Pizzati, a very different kind of book again, and hoping to be much educated and entertained. Then a history of the British Indian army is waiting, along with a newly published collection of essays on the cimema by Satyajit Ray that Swarnava has kindly gifted me. What a feast! May God have pity on those who don't read books.

P.S.: I have linked some photos in the previous (travel-) post.  

Quick trip to Chail

I get very tired of sitting at home taking classes relentlessly for more than two months at a stretch (remember that I have no Sundays even, and I have stuck to this routine for twenty straight years now), and since my daughter was visiting till a while ago, I left Durgapur after a gap of four whole months. I took my mother along and went – where else? – to Pupu’s place in Delhi on November 29. As I have written before, I have been looking forward to wintering there, and I wasn’t disappointed first time round, Delhi still having a very mild winter at the time of writing, and a lot of sun and open air on top of that, along with a chance to sit out on the balcony every now and then.

At 3 a.m. next night, we set off in a hired car for Chail, which we had last visited in 2004, when Pupu was a child (though she still has a fair recollection), about 60 km from Shimla. You don’t have to visit Shimla to reach Chail, by the way, and we had been warned against visiting that now-overcrowded market town (Kipling must be turning in his grave) – you take a different route from Solan. The best time to avoid the terrible traffic snarls north of Delhi, our car hire agency had wisely advised us, was a few hours before daybreak, and so it proved. We whizzed past Sonepat and Panipat and Karnal and Ambala and reached Chandigarh by eight. The hill road starts minutes after you cross the turning towards Pinjore (of the fabulous Mughal garden fame), and within less than an hour after that we had reached Brahmapur, where we had stayed at the Whispering Winds resort en route to Kasauli in the summer of 2018. Then on to Solan and then Kandaghat, where, despite frantic but rather garbled instructions from Google Maps (that horrible accent!) we managed to lose our way and wasted nearly an hour. From Kandaghat the road becomes serpentine, with a lot of hairpin bends once you cross Shivphul, reminding you of the approach to Kalimpong; we were all a little tired and shaken up, including poor Bheblu for whom it was the first ever experience, being cooped up in a car and tossed about non-stop for so many hours, by the time we reached our destination, the Royal Swiss Cottages resort a little downhill from the erstwhile palace of the Maharaja of Patiala.

The last couple of kilometres were a nightmare for a car meant essentially for smooth highways, all bump and grind at a snail’s pace down a very narrow, wavy and rutted kuchcha road strewn with little boulders, so that I had begun to grumble when we finally came to a halt. Then clambering up a goat track very roughly hewn into the hillside for a hundred yards or so before we reached our room, and my own knees hurting like hell telling me how much my mother must have suffered. But I think we all agreed it was well worth it when we had seen the room and inspected the view. The last time I had stayed at a place like that was, I believe, at Rudraprayag in February 2018 – how the years have flown! – on a ledge overhanging the foaming Ganga just downstream of the sangam, and our accommodation this time was far more spacious and luxurious. There was a grand mountain vista right in front, and the rustling of the pine forest, even in the daytime, was like a distant storm. The wind was piercingly cold even at midday, but wherever the sunrays fell it was delicious, all the way into the bones. We caught a much needed nap that lasted beyond sundown. Young Kanishk Sen the son of the proprietor, who looks after the business, along with the service staff, Raju ji, Lata ji and Deepa ji, all smiles and eager helpfulness, gave us a very warm though informal welcome and a lip-smacking dinner. There was a young couple with their little son Rishi in tow in the next suite, both doctors in private practice in Meerut and evidently doing very well for themselves judging by their chauffeured BMW SUV, who were celebrating their anniversary. They got a bonfire going on the grounds and warmly welcomed us to share when we strolled down for a bit. Extremely well-mannered people, bringing up their child excellently, because we saw him enjoying himself variously without ever feeling the need to bawl or scream. Even their choice of music and the volume at which they played it left nothing to complain about. A blessing, because we know from long experience how bad fellow boarders can ruin your holiday.

The night was cold, the temperature going down to four or five Celsius, but I decided after some hesitation not to ask for a room heater, and in the event we were comfortable enough with all the quilts and blankets provided. A walk to look around the precincts in the afternoon with Pupu, which called for a bit of huffing and puffing, then Pupu got some work done online, ma sat out in the lovely private lounge for a bit, and I spent a couple of hours devouring a wonderful British detective novel set in Bengal 1922 called The Last Kashmiri Rose by Barbara Cleverly, written 2003, about which more later. We went to bed early, resolved to enjoy the pleasures of sleep for as long as we could, and in fact, though ma got up earlier, Pupu and I managed more than ten hours of the dreamless.

I had solemnly told Kanishk that I intended to ‘do nothing’ during the entire stay, and that is what I earnestly did the whole of the next day, determined just to ‘stand (or rather sit) and stare’. No better place than the mountains if you love them, and if you can find a place so beautiful as well as so free of noise and crowd and pollution. As Pupu said, every time we deeply inhaled, our lungs were being surprised by the sharp, exhilarating tang of what they had become quite unused to, namely fresh air. I spent several quiet hours simply sunbathing on the beautifully laid out wooden terrace. Dropping in every now and then, young Kanishk regaled us with stories about his ancestors, who were originally from Bengal, migrated to Kashmir in the era of the Khiljis, and became Himachali nearly a hundred years ago. We assured him that he was living our dream: I could imagine few better ways of ending my life than owning and running a property like this, taking in only very discriminating guests, while Pupu stays beside me and attends to other kinds of work. In a hundred little details, including signs put up here and there, we found evidence that some highly educated and sensible mind had taken care to plan the whole setup – ‘lose yourself in the hills if you want to find yourself’, said one, ‘green is the primary colour of the world’, said another, while another warned ‘do not waste food; remember, ten per cent of the world goes hungry to bed’.

The day passed like a dream, and like all good dreams, all too soon. I am glad now that so many dreams have become stored in my mind as so many happy memories: I can tell Wordsworth I know exactly what he meant when he wrote those last lines of Daffodils. The next morning, having given the palace a miss because we had seen it once earlier and Kanishk assuring us that there was no point visiting it again, we packed up in leisurely fashion, partook a brunch of very tasty sandwiches, packed into the car at around 12:30, stopped a couple of times for tea and snacks, and returned to our house in Delhi just after 10 p.m. We could have been half an hour sooner if we hadn’t been caught up in a nasty jam a little before entering the city limits. Oh well, you can’t have everything. On the whole, a lovely little getaway. I’ve already told Pupu, busy as she is, that we have to do it more often, and we have to find good locales a little closer home, not more than four to six hours’ driving.

For photos, click here.