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

Profanity in the Age of Globalisation

 

The World-War-II movie Guns of Navarone (1961) had an ensemble cast with some of the greatest stars: Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, David Niven, Anthony Quale, and a very young Harrison Ford, Ford played a cameo in the beginning of the film as an angry Australian pilot who had just lost some fellow pilots in a failed air attack to destroy two strategically placed massive cannons in Navarone (a fictional island on the Aegean Sea). To explain why the attack had been a stupid idea, Ford says something like, ‘The bloody guns are in a bloody cave which can’t be bloody seen from a bloody aircraft in the bloody sky because it’s bloody hidden by a bloody ledge which is bloody big and we don’t have a bloody bomb to do bloody anything to it.’ ... A sentence with a dozen bloodies, give and take a few!

If film were made today, what word would Harrison Ford use instead of “bloody”? Well, no prize for guessing, and we’ll come back to the high-frequency word soon.

We watched The Guns of Navarone when we were in college where no one possibly loved movies more than Tushar did. And among my close friends, none was possibly loved as much as Tushar was. He was and still is a genuinely uncomplicated person. As a young man, he could perhaps have been described accurately by either of the two adjectives that were hardly used then: cool in English, and बिंदास in Hindi. How cool / bindaas was he?

Once, from our university we went on an excursion to Chittaranjan Locomotive Works or CLW, the first loco factory set up in independent India by her now-much-maligned first prime minister. The town around the factory too is called Chittaranjan, which happened to be Tushar’s hometown then. I may be wrong, but I think during the two days we spent there, he didn’t deny himself the company of friends by wasting his time to visit parents. However, he did introduce his family to us. Well, in a way: as we were crossing CLW’s sprawling head-office complex, Tushar pointed at the building and said, ‘Friends, have a close look. My old man pushes pen in there!’ His exact words in Bangla were: ঐ বাড়িটা দ্যাখ, ওখানে আমার বাবা কলম পেষে!

Once, in the beginning of a vacation, when the boarders were going home, Tushar went to the railway station to see off a prospective girlfriend. As the train whistled and was about to start, the girl said casually, ‘Tushar-da, come home sometime.’ (In our time, some girls would address their senior boys with the suffix -da which stands for older brother in Bangla, although they (the girls) didn’t necessarily consider them (the boys) as brothers. And vice versa, needless to say.)

It was a mistake for her. Before she could complete the sentence, Tushar had boarded the train. He returned from North Bengal after three days.

Possibly because he had to spend a major part of his meagre allowance on films, tea, and Charminars, Tushar couldn't afford haircuts. He would get haircuts twice a year when he went home and his mom could no longer suffer the mess that his head was. Consequently, in the rest of the year, Tushar’s shock of curly hair used to end up to about six inches above his nut; he could be recognised from a mile.

The time he saved by not studying he devoted to more esoteric activities like playing cards and watching films. He was a serious movie buff, who would watch every film that was shown in Chitra and Bichitra, the two cinemas in our small university town. Bichitra was a truly classical small-town theatre where we didn’t have the privilege to accompany girls because “ladies” were seated on the balcony. (What a shame!) We would see the screen through a fog of cigarette / bidi smoke and for the front stalls, there were rickety old wooden benches from where enthusiastic viewers would whistle when a heroine (rarely) showed her cleavage or when she was locked with the hero for a kiss that would be aborted by the censors. Only Hollywood actors had the privilege of kissing in Indian cinemas in the 1970s. (In 1969, a committee headed by GD Khosla had decided that Indians had grown enough to kiss, it took many years to implement the guidelines.)

If Tushar took a fancy to a film, he would watch it multiple times. He would also vividly replay it in words for the less fortunate who hadn’t seen it. Being present at the “first-day-first-show” was an article of faith for him. He wouldn’t miss it, for love or money or exams.

For almost 40 years, we friends lost touch with Tushar completely. Almost every time we met and talked about the glorious days in campus, we would grieve that Tushar had been lost. But thanks to the Internet and painstaking research done by two of us, he has been rediscovered recently and fortunately, as the bard with the bald pate said long ago, time hasn’t been able to wither his shock of hair, like it had failed to wither Cleopatra’s beauty earlier.

For me at least, rediscovery of Tushar was almost the only good thing that has happened in the fucking year that 2020 has turned out to be. (Gentle Reader, if you are upset with the f-word, please brace yourself! There will be more.)

*

The human mind works in curious ways. Tushar rushed into my mind only because three days ago, I watched, first time in my life, a first-day-first-show. On Netflix. And it reminded me of the first-day-first-show guy in our hostel.

AK vs. AK, released on 26 December, is a taut thriller that tells an unusual story about a film director Anurag Kashyap, who is a superb actor too, and a film star, played with equal aplomb by Anil Kapoor. It is not a great film, but you can surely watch it. You’ll have two hours of good time.

The following day, my wife and I tried to watch The Gangs of Wasseypur by the same director, but we couldn’t because there was far too much of violence in it for our timid souls; we decided to give up after an hour or so.

Two films by Anurag Kashyap, one new and one old, the latter being the first Hindi film made it to the Cannes Film Festival, although we couldn’t sit through it. The common thread between the two was that in both, in every second sentence somebody used the word fuck. The Hindi equivalent of mother fucker – which in any case is a hybrid word made of English and Hindi – was used almost as extensively (and printed in English subtitle), as articles or prepositions. (If you are not sure of your English grammar, it just shows your sanity. You don’t have to Google for article and preposition; you’ve got the drift, haven’t you?)

The word fuck seems to have united the world.

This morning, when I got up, I was thinking about how cuss words in English has changed from the time of the Guns of Navarone to the Gangs of Wasseypur. My wife was awake and I shared my two-penny linguistic insight with her.

It was still dark then, the time was 5:30. My wife, the ever-curious person with an academic bent of mind, asked, ‘What is the Hindi word for mother fucker?’

I said, ‘No! No, Darling, please don't ask me to say it the first thing in the morning, Not at 5:30.’

Bengaluru / 30 Dec. 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]

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

Note to My Students # 17

The best way to learn English (or any other second language) is to fall in love with her/him (depending on your gender and orientation!).

I fell in love with her long before my wife (confusion intended). And this is an affair where one doesn't feel jealous about competition. 

What about you?

13 Nov 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

Notes to my Students # 16: Please do the needful

This is an Indian English expression we use at the end of almost every business email / letter. But sadly, the rest of the world doesn't understand it. I always thought there is hardly any other more self-explanatory phrase in English than this, particularly in the context of business communication. And I always believed it is just a matter of time before it became part of what is vaguely called Standard English.

But the world has started learning English from us! Please read this from wwwDOTgrammarilyDOTcom.

*

WHAT DOES "DO THE NEEDFUL" MEAN?

"Do the needful originated in India, is commonly used in African countries, and was once heard frequently in the United Kingdom as well. After the Victorian period, its usage in the West died out, but with the increase in outsourcing to and from India, it started catching the ear of English speakers in the West again.

"Do the needful means do that which is needed. It’s mainly used in formal written communication, especially when dealing with bureaucracy. It can be preceded by the words “kindly” or “please.” Ideally, it should follow an explanation of a problem that needs to be fixed or a request that is being made. It’s important to provide enough context about what “the needful” actually is, because the phrase itself doesn’t specify.

"There are many other phrases you could use instead of do the needful. “Please do what I asked” or “could you please fix this” might suffice, although “please do what needs to be done” or “please do what is required” are the phrases closest to the original meaning."

*

Here are a few illustrative sentences that I could think of:

1. "Madam, Of late, your dog has been using our porch as a free open-air toilet, with particular focus on my car tyres. I would request you to please do the needful."

2. "Sir, Raghu has started a side business of exchanging high-denomination notes at a discount. And unfortunately, he is doing this during office hours. Kindly do the needful."

So, if you think you'd like to use this phrase, please do the needful. That is, jot it down in your word book, frame a few sentences around it, and say the sentences in your head, and finally, look for an opportunity to use the expression. Cheers!

Bengaluru
20 Nov 2016

Stephen Hawking on Donald Trump

I have been trying to follow the US Presidential elections, which is due in two days, because the outcome will have a bearing not only on the USA, but on the entire world. Donald Trump’s victory – which is still possible – will be a great fillip to the forces of lack of reason, illiteracy, and bigotry. A lot of countries in the world including the land of “Bharat Mata” are being ruled by such people, let’s not have any illusion about that. On a day when 1700 schools in Delhi have been shut down because children cannot breathe in the toxic Delhi air any more, our wonderful Urban Development minister, who looks and talks like a mawali, is busy defending shutting down NDTV’s Hindi Channel for a day. What sense of priorities! (Don’t know who a mawali is? You must, if you are an Indian. Please google for the word.)

The American election has been one of the nastiest political battles which would put even our Mamtas, Mulayams, and Mayavatis to shame. In a way, it’s good. It has removed the façade of the so-called “liberal democracy” of the West. When the times are bad and the chips are down, most preachers show their teeth and claws.

Another aspect, which has been generally overlooked by the commentators on both either of the Atlantic, is that this election has been singularly devoid of humour. Lack of humour is a bad thing, it indicates something is seriously wrong somewhere. But no problem, the world is fine!

Stephen Hawking, said to be the greatest theoretical physicist of our time, did the job. Please read this hilarious New Yorker report (31 May 2016).

LONDON … Stephen Hawking angered supporters of Donald J. Trump on Monday by responding to a question about the billionaire with a baffling array of long words.

Speaking to a television interviewer in London, Hawking called Trump “a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator,” a statement that many Trump supporters believed was intentionally designed to confuse them.

Moments after Hawking made the remark, Google reported a sharp increase in searches for the terms “demagogue,” “denominator,” and “Stephen Hawking.”

“For a so-called genius, this was an epic fail,” Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, said. “If Professor Hawking wants to do some damage, maybe he should try talking in English next time.”

Later in the day, Hawking attempted to clarify his remark about the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee, telling a reporter, “Trump bad man. Real bad man.”

In case you have missed the point, the USA is a land of native speakers of English. Political illiterates of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your ignorance.

Bengaluru / 6 November 2016

Note to my students # 15

Khizr Khan, a Harvard-educated American Muslim lawyer gave a stirring speech at the Democratic National Convention yesterday. It was a tribute to his late son, Capt. Humayun Khan, who had died in Iraq in 2004, serving the US Army. He was posthumously awarded bravery medals. Huffington Post says:

The speech simultaneously conveyed a father's love for his lost child and pride in his country, punctuated by a direct repudiation of Donald Trump. “Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery?” Khan pointedly asked the Republican nominee, referencing the site of his son's burial. “You will see all faiths, genders, and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing. And no one.”

Khan's speech has since gone viral, with ‪#‎KhizrKhan‬ trending on Twitter. The essay by Doug Hattaway and Zach Lowe in Huffington Post goes on to analyse why Khan’s speech has made such a huge impact.

The first reason is that the personal story of a Muslim sacrificing his life for the USA challenges what psychology refers to as “cognitive dissonance,” in which individuals hold conflicting ideas or emotions at the same time. For example, some non-Muslim Americans experience cognitive dissonance because they value the ideas of religious freedom and tolerance, but simultaneously, also fear terrorism, and suspect that American Muslims aren't always loyal to the U.S.

Beyond the power of his son's story, Mr. Khan and other speakers also used powerful language by referring to his family as "American Muslims" rather than "Muslim-Americans." While the order of the words may seem meaningless, research has shown that these two constructs evoke surprisingly different reactions.

While people associated the expression "Muslim-American" with words such as "foreign" and "strict," and “mistreatment of women”, when the order of the words is switched, the same people responded with phrases such as “came to America for a better life” and “contribute to society.”

These reactions illustrate the importance of the first word in a message, which colours the reactions the words that follow it. The experiment also showed the power of the word “American” to help counter negative portrayals and perceptions of Muslims who are part of the fabric of the diverse society that the USA is.

You might wonder what the connection is between this post and its heading. In a moment, I am going to explain the connections.

Firstly, Dear Student, once you’ve crossed the threshold of basic grammar and vocabulary, when you are able to speak and write English, what matters is not the number of words you know or how fast you can speak. The most important thing about learning a second language is getting a feel of the nuances and the idiom of the language. And the Huffington Post essay, which I have summarized above, tells you how blending language and contents and arranging words carefully can lend your language that extra mile of impact.

Secondly, the speech we are referring to demonstrates almost everything a teacher can teach you about public speaking. This is a six-minute speech and I would strongly recommend that you watch it by searching the Net with the following string:

Khizr Khan's powerful DNC speech (Full speech)

Sunday, 31 July 2016

Note to my students # 14: How can I improve my English?

English has become the unofficial language of the world and every adult learner from non-English speaking countries asks this question sometime or other. I believe you too have. In this article, I’ll answer the question with reference to people who have to use English at college, university, or workplace. First, I will analyse your needs and then offer some practical suggestions.

Most adult learners have a simple aim: to use English effectively, that is, to speak and write clearly, confidently, and fluently. Unfortunately, after 12 years of school, where students attend say, 1,800 hours of classroom teaching in English, most people cannot speak or write English with confidence. Why?

People often don’t learn English, or any other second language in school because a language cannot be taught. It has to be learned. In fact, when it comes to skills, whether it is cooking, driving, or singing, it has to be learned by your own efforts. For example, in India, you get a driving licence typically after say thirty hours of training or 300 kilometres of practice. But do you become a driver on the day you get the licence?

No, never, not in a million years. You become a driver only after you have taken a car on your own to say Barra Bazaar in Kolkata, or Flora Fountain in Mumbai, or Mirpur Road in Dhaka. The journey between getting a licence and driving in a busy market place is a long one, and you have to travel this distance all alone. And the process of learning a foreign language is very similar. You have got to do it alone, on your own.

Let’s now move on to what you can do to achieve this. First, you must shed the fear of "making mistakes". Making mistakes is a part of learning a foreign language. So it's no big deal! No one, yes, no one has ever learned a foreign language without committing mistakes. Only fools laugh at people who make mistakes while speaking a foreign language. So next time anyone laughs at your English, pity them.

Now, let's look at two sentences:

• Smoking is injurious to health.
• 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 correctly, without hunting for words. However, when it comes to the second sentence, most. South Asians would say:

• She got down from the bus.

Right? Wrong! It may look like a fine sentence, but a native speaker of English is unlikely to use it. They would say: She got off the bus.

So where is the hitch? Why don’t we have a problem with the first sentence, but are unsure about the second? Please think about the answer before you move to the next paragraph.

You probably got it: we don’t have a problem with the first – despite the fact that injurious is not a common word – because we have read and heard it thousands of times.

So the Mantra No.1 is:

You 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. So, please

• Read books, particularly books that have been around for over fifty years
• Read newspapers that use authentic English (e.g. The Hindu in India) or the Internet editions of the finest newspapers of the world. I am fond of The Guardian (London) and The New York Times.
• Read magazines like The Frontline, Outlook, Scientific American, The New Yorker.
• Watch news programmes and debates on TV. But be selective. Stick to NDTV 24X7, India Today, BBC, Al Jazeera, etc.
• Follow English lessons and videos on the websites of The British Council and BBC Learning English.
• Watch speeches by famous speakers on YouTube. TED Talks too are mostly excellent.
• Watch English films regularly.

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 have to focus on new expressions, remember them, and use them when you get an opportunity.

A word of caution: Lots of people believe – quite unfortunately – that good English means writing / speaking long sentences with impossible-to-pronounce words like sesquipedalianism or subder-matoglyphic. 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 complete, and (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 just the meaning 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:

• Can you please look into the problem of staff shortage?
• Our company is looking for fresh graduates who can speak Spanish.
• When Radhika went to Barcelona, her mother looked after her little children.

You don’t have to learn all of them at one time. The point is: whenever you read or hear the word look, note what other words go with it. And try to remember the combination.
But how can you remember those combinations? Unless you go back to new words four or five times, you are unlikely to remember them. And that brings us to our Mantra No. 2:

Record new expressions and review them from time to time.

Here is what you can do.

1. Write down new words, their meanings, and one or two illustrative sentences in a personal word book. (If necessary, refer to a good dictionary.) You can also write down the pronunciation in your own language, although it is not the best option.
2. Go back to every new word after a day, after a week, after a fortnight, and after a month.
3. Most importantly, practise writing and speaking and try to use the word. First, you should use the new language in your mind! Think about them, think of a situation when you can use the new language you have learned. And then in real life, use the expressions whenever you get an opportunity. 

And therefore, our Mantra No.3 is:

You need thousands of hours of practice if you wish to speak / write a second language confidently.

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 of Oxford University Press. And here are a few grammar books that I would recommend without any hesitation. 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.
2. Record the new language you come across and review your record regularly.
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.

Bengaluru / Thursday, 21 July 2016

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

2. Last night a young person who I have never met, Arpan Basu took the trouble to telephone and ask me how he could improve his English. I promised to give him some tips and decided to write this. Thanks, Arpan.