Santiniketan, a famous author, and two bright kids

 

Rabindranath Tagore had set up his ashram-school in the turn of the nineteenth century. Despite perpetual paucity of funds, he managed to recruit a galaxy of eminent teachers (including some from abroad). Or maybe, it was the other way round. A galaxy of brilliant people gravitated towards the greatest thinker and visionary Bengal has ever produced. Rabindranath’s idea was to recreate the past Indian tradition of educating children in the midst of nature, where teachers and students lived in close contact. Where facilities were basic, but children grew up unfettered by regimentation, where they could expand their inner world. The experiment worked. The eminent Indians who evolved in Santiniketan included Ramkinkar Baij, KG Subramanian, Mahashwheta Devi, Satyajit Ray, Amartya Sen, and many more.

The glory days of Visva-Bharati was gone long ago, but if a tradition of excellence is built up over decades, it takes time to destroy it. Here is an anecdote written by Palki, who grew up in Santiniketan in the 1980s. It is about her meeting with Annada Shankar Ray.

Annada Shankar was a curious combination of an ICS officer, an essayist, and a writer of children’s rhymes. (He left ICS midway to become a fulltime writer.) His twenty-five-line poem “Teler shishi bhanglo bole khukur pore rag karo” has been a landmark in Bangla literature.

Moving back to Palki, she was a precocious child of 10 who had read everything Annada Shankar had written for children and a little of what he hadn’t written for children. At that time, she was seriously considering a career in writing and naturally, she had decided to leave an everlasting mark in Bangla literature, like Annada Shankar, who she had anointed as her literary idol.

Therefore, when she heard that her idol would visit Santiniketan to receive Deshikottam, the highest award conferred by the university, she was quick to hatch a plan along with her bosom buddy Susmita. A day before the award function, when Annada Shankar had arrived in Santiniketan, the two little girls barged into the university guest house where important visitors stayed. In Palki’s words, Santiniketan hadn’t become Securityniketan then, and nobody bothered that two girls—who had no business to be there—were there. Palki and Susmita covered the long treelined driveway to the circular guest house with much excitement. When they got off their cycles in front of a covered balcony and looked up, they saw Annada Shankar in a cane chair, drinking tea. Palki had no difficulty in recognising him as she had seen his pictures.

The girls had grown up in freedom, they were not to be cowed down by the proximity of great men. They breezed up the stairs leading to the balcony and bent down to touch Annada Shankar’s feet before he knew what was happening. But he would have discerned the purpose of his little visitors in a moment and got talking with them. When he asked them their names, they furnished not only names, but also which school and grade they studied in. By then, Annada Shankar’s wife Lila Ray joined the party. Incidentally, she was an American who had spent years in Santiniketan. Another round of feet touching. Asking them to sit down, Lila Ray gave them biscuits. But the girls were becoming impatient. When they brought out their autograph books, Lila Ray asked, ‘Why do you want autographs?’

You might think it would be a difficult question for ten-year-olds to handle, but no! The children of Santiniketan explained in detail why they thought getting autographs was a good idea. Lila Ray then asked them to recite a poem. The girls quickly finished their biscuits, wiped their faces and stood up. And flailing their arms and possibly their plaits too, recited

For breaking a bottle of oil, you take the child to task,

But you grown-up kids break nations. Why, may I ask?

After such a performance, they naturally got what they came for. Mission accomplished.

* 

I do not know Susmita, but Palki’s mother, who left at an early age and her father, both have been senior friends. Palki hasn’t become a literary sensation (yet). She has just done a PhD from Oxford and teaches at the finest university of liberal arts in India. She is young and I do hope she will achieve her childhood dream someday! All the best, Palki.Picture of the open-air classroom from Mallarika Sinha Roy’s Facebook page

A postcard from the countryside: Homecoming

The tecoma, which had hardly any flowers when we left last month, is flowering, although the yellow bloom is yet to reach the fullness of spring. The same thing can be said about the pink bougainvillea. (Alas! I needed three attempts to get the spelling right!) The hibiscuses, which flower in all times, didn’t disappoint us either. The tiny beds of spinach and fenugreek too are doing well. And a few aubergines are ready to be plucked. On the whole, it was a happy homecoming: the spring is in the air.

The following day was perhaps the International Caterpillars' Day. In the morning, I saw more caterpillars together than what I had seen in the rest of my life. There were hundreds of them on the courtyard and on the roads near our house. Seemingly homeless, they were moving aimlessly in every direction. Was there a political strife in their habitation? Were they migrating? 

Our domestic help Gomathi Amma is exceedingly smart. Although we don’t have a common language, she understands everything we tell her and shapes out her ideas effectively in her limited Hindi and English vocabulary. She came as soon as she knew we had come. 

Gomathi Amma (who is some other Amma actually) is one of the countless women of our country who are treated harshly by life. Mother of a grown-up son and a daughter, she is a widow. But the passing of the abusive husband hasn’t given her freedom. Her father calls the shots in her life. Gomathi Amma supplements her income as a domestic help by tending her father’s 50 goats. She is naturally free-spirited. She is never absent, but comes to work anytime between 10 AM and 4 PM when she wishes. Her employer (my far better half) has accepted the arrangement because Gomathi Amma is great at work. 

Her son works in a factory and the daughter is married in Bengaluru to a man almost twice her age. The son doesn’t give Gomathi Amma any trouble, but the son-in-law does. The daughter is illtreated and beaten up. She wants to return home but cannot. Her mother is reconciled, but her grandfather won’t allow it. The old man, a factory worker and goat farmer, thinks it would be dishonourable for the family. (Indeed, there’s no dishonour in getting beaten by one’s own husband!) 

For Gomathi Amma, the new year didn’t begin on a happy note. Her son had an accident early in the morning of January 1. Karthik was going to a temple near Hosur with a friend. They were on a motorbike, with Karthik riding pillion. At four o’ clock when it was pitch dark, they crashed head-on with a bike from the other side at a sharp bend on the road. The biker on the other vehicle died on the spot. Karthik’s friend, who had a helmet but hadn’t strapped it up, was badly injured in the head. His helmet had flown some distance away upon the impact. Karthik, who had never had a helmet in life, had stitches on his face and a broken jaw. Gomathi Amma said Karthik had had “plastic surgery” and “clamps” have been fitted to fix his lower jaw. The words I have put within inverted commas, she said in English. For the jaw, she demonstrated it with her own. He cannot eat anything solid; it will take some time before he can. 

Gomathi Amma has already spent a lakh and thirty thousand on Kathik’s treatment. She borrowed most of it on interest, at 4% per month. (I have seen this everywhere, if the rate of interest is usurious, it is always given in months. The poor doesn’t think it is 48%.) But before leaving, she said, ‘I am not worried about my son. He will recover anyway. But I do not know what will happen to my daughter.’ 

I felt angry about Gomathi Amma’s son-in-law and son. Perhaps more about her son. How can he be so irresponsible that he doesn’t have a helmet although he has a bike? But later, on more tranquil reflection, the thought came to my mind: is Karthik really to blame? 

Or should we blame the complete lack of education that the country offers to her underprivileged, even in Tamil Nadu, the best managed state in India? Or, should we blame the state of the economy which has made motorbikes affordable but basic awareness impossible to achieve? What are our priorities, why are schools closed when shopping malls are open during the third wave of the pandemic?

08 January 2022

A Reverse Roll Call

 

When we were promoted to Class VI, the half-sleeve white shirt remained the same, but the colour of our school shorts changed from white to khaki. We also moved to the secondary section of the school which began in the same premises at 11 in the morning. (The primary school got over at 10.30.) 

     I have just narrated the story of an extra-ordinary human being and teacher we met in the secondary school: Umapati Kumar. We had a number of other wonderful teachers. For example, Big Sunil Babu, who taught us English beautifully, together with dollops of affection. The qualifier Big was used as there was a Small Sunil Babu too, who was much shorter. Big Sunil Babu was always in Dhoti, Kurta, and covered shoes with socks, for which reason he was also referred to as Socks-wearing Sunil Babu.  

     However, as Horace said: nihil est ab omni parte beatum, there are no unmixed blessings. Unlike in the primary section, not all the teachers of our senior school commanded respect, naturally, or otherwise. I was in two minds whether to write about them because there is a saying in Bangla: Criticising a teacher is the worst possible sin. (গুরু নিন্দা মহা পাপ।) On the other hand, the brilliant Bengali writer, Syed Mujtaba Ali shared this doggerel:

যদ্যপি আমার গুরু শুঁড়ি বাড়ী যায়, / তদ্যপি আমার গুরু নিত্যানন্দ রায়।

My guru might drink bootlegged liquor / But Nityananda Ray is my teacher.

So, after some hesitation, I have decided to describe the darker side too. For example, our first history teacher in the secondary school was the opposite of Big Sunil Babu as far as energy was concerned. He would ask us to study a chapter at home and in the next class, we would have to reel out – one student after the other – whatever we had managed to memorise, beginning at one end of the first bench. By the time the first speaker finished, the teacher would be snoring peacefully; the second student would pick up the baton. Every one of us would eagerly wait for Sudipto’s turn to come, because he would speak from memory – on whatever the topic was, and sometimes beyond it – the chapter(s) from Kiran Chowdhury’s undergraduate history textbook, every word of it. Sudipto would continue until the bell rang and so, we could indulge in whatever pastime we enjoyed, reading storybooks being a primary one. (We would graduate to pornography in due course, but that would be much later.)

Sudipto had a memory that could be compared to the magnetic tape of the Grundig tape-recorder that I was fortunate to see in action. His other intellectual faculties too matched his memory. He left the school two years later, when his father, a renowned economist, took up a teaching job at a New Zealand university. Much later, thanks to another classmate Tushar, I spoke to Sudipto for a few minutes and then exchanged a couple of emails until he died in his early fifties. He had been a professor at London School of Economics then. After his passing, I read Sudipto’s CV on the LSE website. It was breathtaking.

Academics was not my forte, to put it mildly. Neither was I good at sports or music. I think the only area I was reasonably good at in school was painting. It is therefore natural that our fine arts teacher would leave a deep impression on me. He had been a topper of his class at Calcutta Government Art College. Much later, after a painting exhibition organised by him, a critic lamented (in the Bangla magazine Desh) that school teaching had destroyed the artist in him; he could have become a top-notch painter.

We couldn’t have known his level as an artist, but he thrilled us by quickly drawing brilliant landscapes in our drawing notebooks. He taught me how to use the oil pastel. I copied his style with the reverence that a pre-teen can have for a guru. When my work at a sit-and-draw competition was judged the best in school, someone complained I had smuggled in one of his landscapes torn off my notebook and submitted it as my own work. Sadly, my idol too believed it was actually his work!

So, a good effort by me led to the ignominy of being labelled as a suspected cheat. After repeating the pastel drawing while the teacher sat in front, I told him, ‘Sir, I won’t accept the prize.’

The prize – which incidentally was sponsored by him every year – was a silver medal with his mother’s name inscribed on it. He was taken aback by the cheeky protest and quite possibly, felt bad about his error of judgement. He also knew that in the land of Gandhi, I couldn’t be punished for taking a moral high ground. After much melodrama over the next week or so, I was cajoled into accepting the medal in the prize distribution ceremony that followed.

I am not sure if I still have the medal, but its memory stands for a lesson I’ve tried not to forget: to be fair when I had the power over other human beings, however small it might be. It also feels great that I have been a pioneer in the field of “award-wapsi” long before it became a fashionable form of protest in India.

Patro Babu’s speciality was a subject that was finer than fine arts: physics. He was easily the most exciting teacher we had in school. One had to be really dumb not to get a concept that he explained. Besides teaching brilliantly, his other speciality was that he had worked out the physics of hitting errant boys in a way that maximum impact would be made with the least effort.

The redoubtable teacher had an unfortunate clash with Shakuntala Devi, who mesmerised the world by doing long arithmetical calculations (like multiplying two thirteen-digit numbers) in her head. At the University of California, Berkeley, she worked out the cube root of 61,629,875 and the seventh root of 170,859,375 under controlled conditions even before the psychologist who was testing her could jot down the numbers. (She could do it possibly because she had no formal education in her childhood; she was the daughter of a trapeze artist and lion-tamer in a circus.)

When Shakuntala Devi visited our school, she was at the peak of her fame. We, all the students, sat down on the floor of our auditorium, armed with results of long calculations in our notebooks which had been checked multiple times by multiple people. (Electronic calculators were in the womb of a distant future then.) On the stage, where Shakuntala Devi sat, there was a black-board. A senior student would write down the task on the board and Shakuntala would give the answer almost before he could finish writing. The student who had prepared the task would confirm the result.

We were awe-struck, but not Patro Babu. He wrote a complex sum on the board, not a long arithmetical function. Shakuntala Devi hadn’t claimed she could solve every mathematical problem under the sun. She looked at the black-board and asked for the next task. To this, Patro Babu wrote on the board – “Could not be solved”. We were not impressed by this crude exhibition of vanity. 

Vanity would be an unthinkable character trait for Subhankar Babu, who taught us chemistry. Anther brilliant teacher, Sir wouldn’t raise his voice ever. That doesn’t mean our stupidity and lack of application didn’t hurt him. But for him, the most violent form of admonition was a wry smile.  

Although I opted to study science in high school, I was most impressed by three high-school English teachers: Suprabhat Chakraborty, Ajit Babu, and Sailesh Babu. Besides being exceedingly well-read, each one of them was a minor rock star; there was never a dull moment when they were in class. Ajit Babu directed three of us in a play based on the Irish Independence struggle: Lady Augusta Gregory's Rising of the Moon. It was an unforgettable experience.

Suprabhat Babu, who genuinely loved us, could get violently angry. Every time he hit the ceiling, we felt he would suffer brain hemorrhage. One day, when someone did something reprehensible, Sir started from a corner. Standing menacingly in front of the boy he asks, ‘Did you do it?’

Student 1 stands up: ‘No, Sir.’

Sir (at the top of his voice): ‘Are you sure?’

Without waiting for an answer, Suprabhat Babu lands three hefty blows on the fellow and moves on to next in line, ‘Did you do it?’

Boy 2: ‘No Sir.’

Three smacks and then to the next row.

The same words and action were repeated until the teacher was completely exhausted. I haven’t seen a more even-handed, socialistic in distribution of punishment ever. The people who abolished corporal punishment in schools had no idea how entertaining it could be with teachers like Suprabhat Babu around. During the rest of our school days, if we wished to hit a classmate, we wouldn’t forget to ask ‘Are you sure?’ before action.

Ramaranjan Adhikary, who taught us Bangla, had a whacky sense of humour. He regaled us with stories and anecdotes even when he taught grammar. Thanks to him, we learned grammar could be genuinely entertaining. 

Ramaranjan Babu passed away in May 2019. Umapati Babu and Suprabhat Babu had left us earlier. And surely, some others too would have gone. But they continue to live in our collective memory. Teachers, like parents, continue to live even after their death.   

 

Tuesday, 08 September 2020

Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram

Raghupati, Raghu for us, was my classmate for years during my undergraduate studies at Santiniketan. He was a colourful fellow with many special qualities. I haven’t come across too many people who are more capable. And more complex.

If I may digress from Raghu for a moment, during the last 25 years I’ve been writing the stories of my life, I have written only one anecdote on someone who I had to say something unpleasant about. It is unsurprising because memory works like a sieve and removes unpleasant incidents and people. Yet, some problematic people defy the memory filter and remain, by the sheer strength of their personality. Raghu is such a person.

I won’t tell you how Raghu looked, whether he was tall or short, slim or pudgy, handsome or otherwise. One of the finest Indian writers in English, RK Narayanan, would never describe the physical attributes of his characters. He believed looks didn’t matter, at least in most stories. Narayanan is one of my gurus, but I don’t quite agree with him on this point. However, to hide the identity of my friend, I would follow Narayanan’s style today. I haven’t met Raghu for almost 40 years, but I’ve heard from common friends about his spectacular success in business. And although he has made crores, he’s the same down-to-earth Raghu of yore. The doors of his two palatial buildings in Kolkata – I am told – are always open to old friends. Some of them who visit the city on various errands stay in Raghu’s house for days together. Raghu doesn’t have the time to talk to them these days, but he has never been stingy about hospitality. I spotted Raghu’s business acumen early and knew he would make it big. How did I know? That will come later. And before I come to that, here’s an outline of Raghu’s personality. He was great company, exceedingly intelligent, and a compulsive liar. Raghu was also ever-smiling and easy to deal with. But behind his happy-go-lucky exterior, he had a mind of steel. Unknown to the rest of the world, he was a local leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist), CPI ML for short, commonly known and dreaded as Naxalites. There were other shades of Naxalites, but the CPI ML was particularly vicious. Under their – if I may say so – insane leader Mr Charu Mazumdar, they decided that the easiest way to bring in a just, egalitarian society and to remove all the socio-economic problems would be to kill rich people one after the other and also, policemen. To put a sheen on the act, they didn’t call the process killing or murdering. They would say it was “annihilation of class enemies”. Unfortunately, they couldn’t reach the big fish, so their targets were small money lenders and nasty landowners who treated poor people shabbily. They also killed policemen, but hardly any senior official among them. The elderly physician Dr. Radha Krishna Sinha was rich, but he didn’t satisfy the other requirements to be annihilated by Naxalites. He was popular in our small town and was known to be a generous man who helped the poor. Once, in a bitterly cold winter morning when we returned from our departmental excursion to Ranchi, we heard that Dr Sinha had been “annihilated”. During the trip, Raghu had been with us and regaled us with his wit. Much later, I came to know – to our horror – that he was the mastermind (or one of the masterminds) behind the murder of Dr. Sinha. He had gone on the excursion only to have a watertight alibi. His luck ran out after some time and he was arrested. And tortured in jail in the normal course of business. He lost several months of college in the process. However, before our final year exams, he was released on bail. Although he hadn’t had the requisite attendance, the university allowed him to take the final year exams “on compassionate grounds”. This happened during the summer vacation that year, shortly after which our exams were scheduled. I was in Kolkata then. Raghu telephoned me at home and said, ‘Do you know what you should do when the police beat you?’ ‘How would I? I’ve never been beaten by anyone except by father.’ ‘Keep this in mind, it might come in handy someday. When they hit you, you should cry out as loudly as you can. You should say “Babare, maare, more gelumre, banchao!” (Dad! Mom! Save me, I’m dying!) or anything you wish, but you must holler as loudly as you can.’ ‘How does it help?’ ‘It makes your pain much more bearable.’ Raghu didn’t call me with the altruistic motive to train me how to deal with police torture. He wanted me to help him out with preparations for the forthcoming exams. It was decided I would cut short my vacation and return to hostel. He too would join me there. When no one else was around, I would help him and we both would prepare for the exam in the quiet solitude of an empty hostel. I too thought it would be a good move. Besides, I was exceedingly fond of Raghu. The prospect of spending time with him was not a minor attraction. On the appointed day, there was no Raghu. His family – they lived in a small market town – was well-off, but those days, personal telephones were unthinkable except in cities. There was no way I could get in touch with him. After waiting for two days in the empty hostel, I became a little worried about Raghu’s wellbeing. Had he been picked up again? I took a train to where Raghu lived. Although I hadn’t been to his home earlier and had no idea where it was, I could easily find out his digs, such was his fame. Well, digs wouldn’t be the right word to describe the evidently wealthy man’s three-storey building in gaudy colours and the usual embellishment of lotuses (or was it flying swans?) carved out on the parapets of the balconies. The gate was stout and enormous. (Did Raghu’s old man too fear annihilation by Naxalites?) And no calling bell. After I made sufficient noise, a naked man in just a loincloth poked his nose out of the narrowly opened gate. When I asked for Raghu, he said, ‘Raghu Babu is not home.’ ‘Where is he?’ ‘Gone to attend a wedding.’ ‘When will he be back?’ ‘Don’t know, maybe a week, maybe …’ I returned to our hostel, had food at “Boudi’r dokan” (Sister-in-law’s eatery) nearby and spent the rest of the vacation studying alone. In the end, I was thankful to Raghu. That year, I did reasonably well in the exams, by my standards. Keeping people waiting was something Raghu specialised in. Years later, he called me up one evening, I had no idea how he got my phone number. I was working for a bank in Kolkata then and Raghu had some problem with his bank which he wanted to discuss with me. There was a sense of urgency in his voice when he said, ‘I must talk to you face to face. Are you home?’ He hung up after saying he would be in my place in an hour. I didn’t expect him to come, an expectation he duly fulfilled. But a few days later, he did come to my office later to get some professional advice. That was the last time we met. By then, Raghu had breached the commercial boundaries of his tiny hometown; he was a civil contractor and a somewhat well-known businessman in the district. He had his ways of dealing with people. For example, according to an apocryphal tale, once he bought a second-hand car, got it refurbished and drove it to the wedding reception of the daughter of a local Public Works Department (PWD) executive engineer. While leaving, he left the keys and papers of the vehicle with the government official and got home by rickshaw. His rose spectacularly – I was told – specialising in bridges and fly-overs. He built some major fly-overs before the 1982 New Delhi Asiad. However, among his many hits, there were a few misses too. A bridge built by him across the River Kopai collapsed. But unlike her more well-known cousin, The Bridge on the River Kwai, nobody dynamited her. The local people were furious and wanted to lynch the contractor, that is, our Raghu. The powers-that-be quickly arrested him and kept him in jail for months, which incurable backbiters said was only to save Raghupati Banerjee’s precious life. Raghu had come a long way from his revolutionary past and joined the ranks of small-time dubious businessmen with flexible conscience who are an integral part of the power structure in Indian small towns. He had moved to the other side of the equation. In the beginning of this story, I said I would tell you how I knew – early in his business career – that Raghu would be hugely successful. To make my point, I’ll have to take you back to 1973 or 74. We were doing Masters then. Raghu had dropped out after graduation. He had been in and out of jail since our failed rendezvous and the Naxalite movement was dying. He had also fallen in love with a beautiful and bright girl, Neera, a few years our junior. We had a brutal government in West Bengal then, which was handling Naxalites in four different ways. The first group was killed by police or their goons in cold blood or otherwise. There’s no official estimate about the number, but it’s widely believed around 5000 young men and women, who included some of the finest of our generation, were eliminated. The second group, to which belonged a majority of the Naxalite activists, often suffered torture in jail and managed to destroy – completely or partly – their future prospects. After a point, they drifted away from the self-annihilating movement and found various ways to deal with life. As their stories are unspectacular, their sacrifices have been unrecorded and almost completely forgotten. A third, much smaller group, the offspring of people with power and deep pockets, were bundled off to Europe or America for higher studies and rehabilitation. The fourth and last group was encouraged to set up businesses locally and given financial support and bank loans. Raghu belonged to the fourth set. Raghu’s story began with an annual excursion, and it will end with another, in a way, completing a circle. Our physics department students went to Darjeeling that year. Raghu wasn’t with us. He had left both studies and the revolution and just begun small-time civil contract work in his hometown. But he would often visit our campus, primarily to catch up with his girlfriend. It’s often said, “The journey is more exciting than the destination.” The saying was literally true for the 70-kilometre from Jalpaiguri to Darjeeling, which the tiny, narrow-gauge “toy trains” would cover in four to five hours. The beautiful blue train had only three coaches with big windows without the usual iron gratings. It would move slowly, particularly while going uphill. There was a bitumen road beside almost all along the railway track. Getting off and on the running train was great fun for us. As normal brakes wouldn’t work on steep inclines, there was another toothy rail in the middle, parallel to the rails. If for some reason the train had to be stopped on an ascent or descent, the engine driver would lower a gear which would catch the toothy rail. When the gear was jammed in addition to brakes, the train couldn’t but stop. Also, for some reason, not one, but three trains would leave the New Jalpaiguri station one after the others. I was on the second train, standing at a door. We crossed one of the many picturesque rivers on the way, along a jangling bridge with no girders. I looked at the steam far below, from the banks of which children waved at us wildly. The winter sun was dipping on the horizon and the Himalayas looked gorgeous in the orange glow of the setting sun, while the aging train struggled on a steep incline. Suddenly, I heard some noise ahead and looked up. The train in front was sliding back uncontrolled; gaining speed every moment. The engine driver was shouting and gesticulating madly to the driver of our train. After a minute or so, our driver too jammed the brakes and started reversing. I jumped off and saw the third train had stopped on the rickety bridge we had just crossed, a few hundred metres away. If it remained stationary, our train would crash on it right on the girder-less bridge and it was scary to imagine the consequences. The people who had got off our train started shouting to the passengers, asking them to get off, because they could see the danger that was only seconds away. Soon, people started jumping off our train. Some managed it neatly, but most of the ordinary people jumped in the wrong direction because they had never studied physics or the laws of inertia. I saw human bodies dropping like sacks of potato. The budding physicists of our group had no such problem, almost all of them were off the train without much trouble. However, two girls among us had nasty falls possibly because they were wearing sari. One of them was Neera, Raghu’s girlfriend. I do not remember how our group completed the journey, but I didn’t, that day. Neera and Preeti – both of them had head injuries – had to be rushed to the nearest hospital in Kalimpong in hastily arranged taxis. They were admitted immediately. As someone had to be there to look after the injured girls and deal with emergencies, I stayed back in Kalimpong until their parents arrived two days later. Fortunately, they were safe by then, each with dozens of stitches on their head. * The down Darjeeling Mail reached Bolpur early in the morning a week after the accident. As we were leaving the station, I saw a beaming Raghu, a little late, but eager to meet his girlfriend after a week’s separation. Clearly, he hadn’t got the news. I took him to a nearby tea stall and broke the story gently. Dumbfounded, Raghu looked at me for a long time through the steam over our tea cups. The silence, which was beginning to be a little unbearable, was broken by a deeply thoughtful Raghu, speaking more to himself than to me, ‘I am getting some tarpaulin sheets at a throwaway price. I don’t need them right now, but should I buy them for the future?’ It was my turn to be dumbfounded. After hearing that Neera was out of danger, the pragmatic businessman in him had turned his attention completely to more worldly matters. Soon he asked me to join him. I said, ‘Raghu, you won’t find a more useless business partner, I can guarantee that.’ ‘I know, but you can write and speak English.’ Therefore, I got the first job offer in my life thanks to the pernicious long-term effects of British colonialism. I asked him, ‘After working for so many years to emancipate the wretched of the earth, how do you find yourself in a position where you have to exploit workers?’ ‘You’re dead wrong. In business, you can make money without exploiting anyone.’ I was almost as astonished as Karl Marx would have been, ‘Really? How?’ ‘My first contract was to construct a road. Underneath the surface, I just put third quality bricks instead of first quality, as required by the contract papers. And made a huge profit without exploiting anyone. Do you get the point?’ I knew Raghu had a bright future. [Gentle Reader, Except for the Visva-Bharati Physics Department and our excursions, every other character and detail given here are imaginary. Any coincidence with anyone dead, alive, or in coma is completely coincidental.] Monday, 26 October 2020 

[Photo of the Toy Train courtesy Wikimedia Commons. By Arne Hückelheim - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12719221 / The other picture is by me]

Another narrative

Abhijit Banerjee, the recipient of the Eco Nobel in 2019, is a serial offender.

Please make no mistake about it. After studying at two of the worst institutes in India infested with communist rats, namely, Presidency and JNU, like most other morally ambivalent unprincipled good students, he went to the decadent West for his Ph.D., ignoring the enormous wellspring of native wisdom in India (which, incidentally, would be freely available on WhatsApp in a few decades). His ethical duplicity was established beyond the faintest shadow of doubt when he accepted a prof’s chair carrying the name of – can you beat it? – Ford Foundation, an old bugbear for his commie comrades since Lord Ram’s glory days, besides being an arm of the CIA in the 1970s, as we all know.

It hurts me to trash a fellow Bong. But can I ignore what he did in March 2019? Can I ignore that the said Abhijit Banerjee was the fifth signatory amongst 108 economists / social scientists who claimed that the economic data gathering infrastructure (CSO, NSSO, etc.) in India was screwed under the much-loved and widely-hugged crusader for truth who removes plastic from beaches in his spare time? I was so bloody upset to read the news that day! … I wondered why the community of Indian economists was so f****ing anti-national! (Please count the asterisks, I didn’t mean what you think.) Why didn’t even one of them stand up and call the bluff of this horrible hundred-and-eight? Fortunately, soon, as many as 131 pro-national chartered accountants put their head above the parapet to declare that the 108 were talking bullshit. That settled the issue. Nationalist beat libtards 131-108. Period.

Let me also recall, this blabbering Banerjee was a paid agent of a political party lead by an Italian Catholic! Banerjee authored the NYunyatam Aay Yojana or the NYAY, a scheme for guaranteeing minimum wage across poverty-stricken India. The hopeless semi-Italian political party went to town before the 2019 general elections tom-tomming the bizarre idea that NYAY would solve our poverty issues once and for all and be a game changer for the poor. Fortunately, we Indians saw through their dirty design and re-elected a government that has been producing the largest number of Indian billionaires every year since 2014. Many more than any previous government had had. Poverty be dammed.

However, as I pen these lines in deep sorrow, a freaking question is niggling me!  The Hindu today reports in page 11 that our honourable Prime Minister has congratulated Banerjee for “notable contributions”?

Why Sir, why? Or, is it fake news?

Tuesday, 15 October 2019

[The picture file used here is under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.]        

The Golden Treasury

I wouldn’t say Palgrave’s Golden Treasury was a constant companion of my father. But surely it was the book he would read most often after the eight-volume leather-bound set with the expository title Book of Knowledge, and the 28-volume Encyclopedia Americana, which was the biggest investment in his lifetime. (He couldn’t afford to buy The Encyclopaedia Britannica.) His library was an eclectic mix of books of poetry to religious texts to biographies to history to popular science, and quite a few tomes on Gandhi. However, for some reasons, he never touched fiction.

For long, I preserved my father’s torn and profusely underlined hardbound volume of The Golden Treasury, but I cannot find it now. However, this morning, I found another copy of the same treasure, a later and fatter edition. The book was gifted to my daughter by her pishidida, that is, my pishi (my dad’s sister).

As I leafed through the book, I found a note written by aunt.

Dear …,

It was perhaps over sixty years ago when we, girls and boys, sat enchanted as some poems were recited in class. Even now I can feel traces of that sense of enchantment.

I am giving the poems for you to read. And I have marked in pencil some of the lines that I loved; I still do.

Hope you will like them.

Affectionately,

Pishidida

If I am not a complete ignoramus, it is primarily because I was born in a family that valued literature in particular and knowledge in general. I have always felt – forgive me if I sound snooty – that those who’ve never read literature haven’t seen perhaps the second most beautiful facet of life after Nature. And also, those who read are somewhat different from those who don’t.

If you are a young man or woman who reads only on the social media, I would request you to read serious literature. You will never look back. Trust me!

How do you know what is serious literature and what isn’t? There’s a simple way not to get cheated. Read any book that was published 50 years ago or earlier and which is still available in the market.

As I secretly bowed to the men and women who kindled in me a love for reading, I flipped through the Golden Treasury and randomly opened a page to find these lines by Percy Bysshe Shelley (To a Skylark) marked on the side in pencil:

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of the saddest thought.

12 September 2019

What kind of a role model are you Sir?

The prime minister certainly has the right to interact directly with school children across the country, which he did yesterday, at Talkatora Stadium in New Delhi, and through video links – to all the CBSE schools in the country. But besides rights, he has an obligation too: to share with the nation what his motives are. We, the ordinary people, too have obligations – to ask questions about those motives, and his moral credentials to address our youth.

Firstly, should it be aired to and made mandatory for every CBSE affiliated school? Should every school be compelled to send a video to prove their compliance? The moment state-sponsored compulsion comes in, the interaction ceases to be free and two-sided. It becomes a case of ramming down a talkative PM and his ideology down the throat of young people who cannot protest.

Secondly, and more importantly, what prime minister?

A man who tears into his political opponents with lies and nothing but lies every day? A man without the faintest sense of history or science? A man whose academic records are fuzzy? A man who has demonstratively lied about selling tea in a non-existing railway station in order to build a fake subaltern image?

A man under whose direct charge 1,500 Indians were brutally murdered and countless more families destroyed? A man whose government went out of its way to protect the murderers and rapists? A man whose political comrades and pet bureaucrats have been hauled up for extra-judicial killings time and again? And in order to prove their innocence, attempts have been made to kill the justice delivery system itself, if not a judge in flesh and blood? A man who equates Muslims being killed in communal strife with puppies coming under a car? A man – despite having unlimited powers in his party and government – who has done nothing to protect innocent Muslims, Christians, and Dalits against brutal violence initiated by his saffron stooges?

No Prime Minister, you are hardly a role model to be presented to the children of our country. If I had school-going children, I would say, ‘No Prime Minister, I don’t think my daughter or son should waste their time on you. In fact, you make a terrible model for the youth of our country.'

Dear Reader, if you were reading this and if you were a parent, what would you do?

Our future depends on your answer.

Saturday, 17 February 2018

Asima Chatterjee and ...

It is wonderful to wake up and see Google celebrate the centenary of Dr. Asima Chatterjee, a scientist who is either unknown to or forgotten by her compatriots.

Asima Chatterjee is fortunate to have been just forgotten.

Subhash Mukhhopadhyay, a physician and a fellow Bengali scientist who independently created the second "test-tube baby" in the world almost single-handed in his primitive lab, was the target of intense envy of his fellow scientists and the all-knowing bureaucrats warming the chairs in the government secretariat in Kolkata.

Under the watchful eyes of a communist government lead by another "great" Bengali, a Commission was formed to verify the claims of Dr. Mukhopadhyay. The Commission, which included an atomic physicist among other luminaries, rubbished Mukhopadhyay's claims. Mukhopadhyay was humiliated as a fraud and transferred to a TB hospital. (I think, but will have to verify, the atomic physicist was the head of the panel.)

While we are proud that the world today recognises Asima Chatterjee's basic research in chemistry which has contributed to development of chemotherapy for treatment of cancer, let us also remember another Indian scientist of her generation who couldn't take it any more and committed suicide in 1981.

Durga, the baby who got her life thanks to Dr Mukhopadhyay, and Louise Brown of England, the first test-tube baby in the world, were both born in 1978, Durga 67 days later.

Twenty-nine years after Mukhopadhyay's death, in 2010, Robert G. Edwards, an English scientist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for developing the technique of in vitro fertilization.

23 September 2017

How can I improve my English?

  

[This is an expanded version of Section 2.4 of my book Learn English, A fun book of functional language, grammar and vocabulary © 2013 by McGraw Hill Education India Private Limited, India.

Published in Extra Reader. You will also find  this article on Linked In.]

English has become the language that connects the world, and every educated non-native speaker of English asks this question at some time or other: “How can I improve my English?”. As you are reading this article, I presume you too have thought about it.  

Let me begin by telling you – without a shred of doubt – that everyone can become an effective speaker and writer in English. In this brief article, I am going to offer you some simple strategies you could adopt to improve your English language skills.

Most adult learners have a simple aim: to speak and write clearly, (reasonably) accurately, and fluently. Unfortunately, after 12 years of school in their medium of their mother tongue, where pupils attend say, 1,800 hours of classroom teaching in English (in India), most of them cannot speak or write English with confidence. Why?

The reason is simple: A second language cannot be taught. 

It must be learned. Language is a skill, and the statement above is true for any other skill – cooking, singing, or driving. For example, in my country, you get a driving licence typically after thirty hours and 300 kilometres of training. But the day you get the licence, can you say you have become a driver?

The answer is a resounding NO. You become a driver only after you have driven a car alone through a marketplace or a busy city road. The journey between getting a licence and driving in a crowded city is a long and difficult one, and you must travel this distance all alone.

The process of learning a foreign language is similar. And you’ve got to do it alone, mostly. It isn’t easy. You must work smartly and consistently, over a long time. From my experience of teaching English for 16 years, I would say if you have the basic communication skills, you will need at least two years to become fluent and reasonably accurate in English.

Why can’t I speak in English?

Let’s move on to analysing the problems. Look at the two sentences: 

1. Smoking is injurious to health. 
2. She got off the bus.

I can bet my silk pyjamas that you won’t have a problem with the first sentence. If there is an occasion to tell someone that he/she shouldn’t smoke, you will use the first sentence easily, without hunting for words. However, when it comes to the second sentence, most South Asians would say:

·         She got down from the bus. û

It may look like a fine sentence, but it isn’t. A native speaker of English will perhaps never use it. They say: She got off the bus.

So, where’s the hitch? Why don’t we have a problem with the first sentence, although injurious is not a common word, but we’re unsure about the second? Please think about the answer and write it down before you move to the next section.

Three simple rules

You have possibly got it: we don’t have a problem with the first expression because we’ve heard and read it thousands of times. That brings us to our first mantra.

Mantra No.1: We learn English by reading and listening to good, accurate English repeatedly.

If you read, it will help you to improve your written language. When you listen to good speakers, it will help you speak better. Therefore,

·         Read books, particularly books that have been around for ten years or more.

·     Read newspapers that use correct English (e.g. The Hindu) or the Internet editions of the finest newspapers of the world. I am fond of The Guardian (London) and The New York Times. The first one is available on the Net for free. (They’ll ask you to contribute from time to time, which I think is fair.) For reading the NY Times regularly, you have to subscribe to it.

·   Read magazines like The Frontline, Outlook, the Scientific American, The New Yorker, the Economist, and so on. Most good magazines are available online. And you can read some articles gratis. But it would be better if you subscribe to at least one of them.

·      Watch news programmes and debates on TV. But be selective. Please do not watch TV channels where the anchor and the participators fight like hungry street dogs at a garbage dump. English is a polite language. It is not to be spoken aggressively. So, I would recommend you stick to NDTV 24X7, BBC, Al Jazeera, and CNN IBN.

·   Follow speeches and debates on the YouTube, which is a vast reservoir. Another wonderful resource of our time are the TED talks. Visit www.ted.com/ if you haven’t been visiting the site already.

·         Watch English films as often as you can.

The best way to learn a foreign language is to follow good speakers and writers. The operative word here is “follow”. If you read or listen passively, if you do not make mental notes of the new language you come across, you won’t improve. You must focus on new expressions, remember them, and use them when you get an opportunity.

A word of caution: Lots of people believe – may God forgive them – that good English means using long sentences with impossible-to-pronounce words like sesquipedalianism or subdermatoglyphic. It is not true, trust me! You can live happily and produce healthy children without ever using these words.

In fact, language is a tool to communicate and the simpler you are, the better it is. However, you need to write complex sentences with uncommon words (with precise meanings) if you are an academic, diplomat, or lawyer. You will need long complex sentences only for two reasons: (a) to make your language more compact and incisive, or (b) to hide what you wish to say.

So instead of focussing on just difficult words, look for words and expressions you are likely to use in your life. Like she got off the bus. Let me give you another example. You know what the word “look” means. But the meaning alone doesn’t help. You must learn how to use the word. For example: Look at me.

Here are a few more examples of how the verb look can be used:

ü  Sir, can you please look into the problem of frequent power outages?

ü  Our company is looking for fresh graduates with strong communication skills.

ü  Radhika and Ravi have a nanny to look after their children during the day.

You don’t have to learn all of them at one go. The point is: whenever you read or hear the word look, note what other words go with it. And try to remember the combination.

Also, look for brilliant turns of phrase while watching TV or reading. For example, when Iran was first given the go-ahead to build a nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes during the Barack Obama regime, I watched this interview with a diplomat:

Interviewer:        How will you ensure that Iran doesn’t produce weapon-grade material in the plant?

Diplomat:           Well, we have an agreement.

Interviewer:        But is it set in concrete?

The interviewer could have asked the question in hundreds of ways, but he chose to put it in a phrase that not only captured the idea, but also captured the listener’s attention. From now on, as you listen / read, note brilliant expressions that you think might be useful in the context of your life.

But how will you remember those phrases? Language experts tell us that unless you go back to new words and expressions five or six times, you may not remember them. And that brings us to our second mantra.

Mantra No. 2: I will record new expressions in a personal wordbook and review them from time to time.

Here is what you can do.

1.       Write down new words, their meanings, and a few illustrative sentences in a personal word book. If necessary, refer to a dictionary that gives lots of illustrative sentences. For example: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/. Listen to the pronunciation of the word. Write down the pronunciation in your own language.

2.       Go back to every new word after a day, after a week, after a fortnight, after a month, and whenever you can.

Most importantly, practise writing and speaking and try to use the word. First, you should use the new expressions in your mind. Think about them, think of a situation when you can use the new language you’ve just learned. And use the expressions whenever you get an opportunity. So, our next mantra is:

Mantra No.3: I will imagine situations where I can use the new language I’ve just learned and frame sentences in my head. I’ll wait for an opportunity and use the new expression the moment I find one.

Besides, keep a good dictionary and a reliable grammar book that you can refer to whenever a question arises in your mind. My favourite dictionary is The Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (Oxford University Press). But please remember, a grammar book can only be a supporting tool. It can never become the main prop!

To sum up:

1.       Read and listen to good, accurate English regularly.

2.       Record the new language you come across and review them.

3.       Use the new language you have learned.

Mastering a second language is not a hundred-metre dash, it is a fascinating journey that never ends. But the good news is: you can teach yourself to become a fine speaker and writer. Cheers!

Santanu Sinha Chaudhuri

Bengaluru / 14 March 2017