“The sun went down and so did I. Night came again. Why again those haunting thoughts, those shattered dreams, those midnight screams...”
A shrill cry of the hyena woke me up and reminded me of my loneliness. When my eyes opened, the stars glistened in a distant sky. Here, I lay under a banyan tree by the side of the holy Ganges, whose water just flowed by in the stillness of the night.
A blasphemous wave hit the rock, trying to breach the boundary; the same gurgling sound. Not a blemish on the rock.
“These ripples live only to die,” I thought, as memories of the day flooded back to me.
*********
It was the last day of the Pujas – the nine day ceremony of worshipping Goddess Durga. Magic floated in the air as Kolkata drunk itself with joy.
“No Raag, I can’t love you. You know I am married. Our society does not allow this.”
“Why not Sheetal? I love you, and I know you love me too. Why must the society decide what's right...”
The drums had begun and my words got lost in the loud beats that rose to a crescendo just then. Sheetal walked away and did not look back.
*********
“Ah, the same beats, the same drums.”
A crowd had gathered at some distance. They had come to immerse the Goddess. For nine days they had worshipped her, decorated her, celebrated her, and now they would sink her in the water, for her earthen body to simply melt away.
Loudly, they chanted – Asche bochor aabar hobe – Next year, again.
Another wave hit the rock; the same gurgling sound, again. Not a blemish on the rock, still.
“If only to die, these ripples must live,” I thought as I got up to go back home.
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Our first marriage anniversary
For those who have forgotten (and really I don’t blame anyone here, I am pretty bad at remember dates myself), Deepika and I celebrated our first marriage anniversary yesterday. Those who tried contacting us and couldn’t, I am sorry.
We were “out of coverage area” for most part of the day. I woke up at 5:30 am (before Deepika for the first time in last one year, I suppose). Deepika had already prepared on the night before the food for the day (some Puris and sabzi and Dahi Vada), some of which we heated in our newly acquired microwave oven (now you know!) and left home around 7 am. We went for a long (120 odd kms) drive to a place called Shivanasamudram. Deepika drove on the way for about half an hour. There are two waterfalls here – Gaganchukki and Barachukki. We bathed and swam in Barachukki, which was safe for swimming (bathing in Deepika’s case), though some part of the lake on near the waterfall was almost 200ft deep. At least that’s what the boatman told us. He took us around that lake in his circular boat (remember Dil Hai Choota Sa in Roja) and even did a spin in the middle of the lake. In the evening we went to another place nearby – Talakkadu. They have excavated some temples at here and have an interesting tale about its history (maybe in another post!). Later again, we went for boating in one of those round boats in still waters of Cauvery (I think) in the orange glow of a setting sun. The journey back was again through some jungles and we stopped by at several places just to see the clear sky so full of stars. We reached back home at about 10 in the night, yet neither of us could say that we were tired. On the whole, this last one year has been just like our journey yesterday – smooth and beautiful. I hope it continues that way for me (and for everyone else).
We were “out of coverage area” for most part of the day. I woke up at 5:30 am (before Deepika for the first time in last one year, I suppose). Deepika had already prepared on the night before the food for the day (some Puris and sabzi and Dahi Vada), some of which we heated in our newly acquired microwave oven (now you know!) and left home around 7 am. We went for a long (120 odd kms) drive to a place called Shivanasamudram. Deepika drove on the way for about half an hour. There are two waterfalls here – Gaganchukki and Barachukki. We bathed and swam in Barachukki, which was safe for swimming (bathing in Deepika’s case), though some part of the lake on near the waterfall was almost 200ft deep. At least that’s what the boatman told us. He took us around that lake in his circular boat (remember Dil Hai Choota Sa in Roja) and even did a spin in the middle of the lake. In the evening we went to another place nearby – Talakkadu. They have excavated some temples at here and have an interesting tale about its history (maybe in another post!). Later again, we went for boating in one of those round boats in still waters of Cauvery (I think) in the orange glow of a setting sun. The journey back was again through some jungles and we stopped by at several places just to see the clear sky so full of stars. We reached back home at about 10 in the night, yet neither of us could say that we were tired. On the whole, this last one year has been just like our journey yesterday – smooth and beautiful. I hope it continues that way for me (and for everyone else).
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Happy New Year
A friend sent me this story with new year wishes.
As a little child was walking on the beach, she noticed thousands of star fish finding it difficult to get back to water after being washed ashore by the rough seas. In a moment of inspiration, she started to collect as many star fish as possible in her tiny hands to throw them back into water. She was doing this for some time when an elderly gentleman who was noticing her came up and asked her. "It is nice to see what you are doing. But there are thousands of star fish dying here. What difference does it make?" The little girl looked at the gentleman in the eye, pointed to the star fish in her hand and told him "to this star fish, it makes a difference".
Wishing you all a fulfilling and joyous new year!
As a little child was walking on the beach, she noticed thousands of star fish finding it difficult to get back to water after being washed ashore by the rough seas. In a moment of inspiration, she started to collect as many star fish as possible in her tiny hands to throw them back into water. She was doing this for some time when an elderly gentleman who was noticing her came up and asked her. "It is nice to see what you are doing. But there are thousands of star fish dying here. What difference does it make?" The little girl looked at the gentleman in the eye, pointed to the star fish in her hand and told him "to this star fish, it makes a difference".
Wishing you all a fulfilling and joyous new year!
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Mango Showers
To write about a time I was not even born in is difficult. I have only heard stories about Kolkata of the seventies. Surprisingly, the horror of naxalite movement had passed us by at a time when, as history books would tell you, Kolkata was in great turmoil.
Papa used to work for a railway track material manufacturing company. A young, non-descript engineer, fresh out of Allahabad University, trying to find his feet in the metropolis, he lived with his two brothers, their wives, their children, an elder sister, her children and his parents in a small one bedroom house in Kankurgachi.
My grandfather was an honest lawyer in Sikar and had not accumulated any wealth worth its name. After my uncles showed no signs of academic brilliance, they had been sent to Kolkata. It was now upon them find their way in life.
Like many other young Marwari men, my uncles started trading in steel. The Marwaris had built a fiefdom around the steel trading business – sourcing materials from rolling mills that dotted the Howrah region and selling them to BHEL and other such giants across the country. While some businessmen had fled the city due to naxalite violence, most had preferred to stay back.
Those were the days of struggle and a hand-to-mouth existence. Every effort had to be made towards cutting costs. But those were days of joys too, when the smallest victory was celebrated. So, new clothes were always bought for Diwali, even if they were mostly bought from the footpath, and then brought home and refurbished with some embroidery or patchwork to make them look presentable. The vegetables were bought from Machhua bazaar – quite some distance from Kankurgachi, but it was the cheap wholesale market. Ma (my grandma) and Bhuaji (Papa’s elder sister) would go in crowded buses and trams once a week to buy the weekly ration.
It was one of those days when Ma and Bhuaji went for their weekly vegetable shopping to Machhua; sometime early in an April of the seventies when I was only a few years away from seeing my first light of the day. I expect that they left sometime late in the afternoon, around three perhaps, after Bhuaji had her mandatory afternoon siesta and Ma her cup of tea.
They took a bus from Kankurgachi to Maniktala and then a tram to somewhere close to Machhua. After that, they would have to walk their way. Those days, the bus and tram fares were very low (they still are in Kolkata, where you would expect to get 25 paise back as change even at a time when 25 paise coins can no longer be found anywhere else in the country). The credit must go to no less a person than Kolkata’s very own Jyoti Basu. As a young student leader, he lead dharnas against the government on every 5 paise increase in fare. And, his dharnas used to be full of light and, I daresay, fire. So every time the government raised the bus fare, the only way to make them retract, would be to burn a few buses.
Anyway, fare had not been raised in the past few days, and there was no such possibility in the coming days either, so it was an ideal day to travel. The afternoon sun was shining at its brightest, so Ma and Bhuaji suspected no trouble with weather either.
Many things change with time; yet, somethings never do. Like the Mango Showers. When the scorching heat of summers begins to grip most of the country, West Bengal gets a brief respite in March and April when the north-westerly winds bring with them grey skies, dusty roads and thunderous showers. These showers, which normally arrive late in the evenings, are also called Kalboishakhi – black showers in the month of Boishakh. And, what is special about these showers is that even as they wreck havoc when they come, some water seeps into the parched lands where mango trees grow, and brings to life the juicy mango fruits that begin to arrive a month later.
For some reason, Ma and Bhuaji, did not factor in the Mango Showers that day. After hectic bargaining, with loaded baskets when they boarded a tram near Machhua, the skies became grey. It was the rush hour when offices got over with people jostling for space in the crowded little tram.
All this while, I have been telling you about Ma and Bhuaji together almost as if they were inseparable. But, alas, they were not.
At the very stop before which Ma and Bhuaji were to get off together, they got separated. Ma, along with her basket full of vegetables, got pushed out by the rushing passengers whose destination had arrived. Bhauji struggled, got off at the next stop and started walking back.
The winds had started to blow by now. Dust was swirling all around, and the trees waving hastily. For once, Bhuaji felt that she would get blown away in the madness of the elements. But that did not happen, and drenched in the now pouring rain, Bhuaji reached the tram stop where Ma was waiting for her. Together again, they sighed a sigh of relief, and boarded the next bus to Kankurgachi.
It was a minibus; unlike the other tin plated buses, this looked a lot more modern with its red and yellow coloured exteriors. Even for only a few paise more, travel in minibus was a luxury for our family. If it weren’t for the rains, Ma and Bhuaji wouldn’t have boarded one.
As luck would have it, they had to get off it soon too. The moment a conductor came to sell the ticket, Ma and Bhuaji together realized that the handkerchief in which all the money was tied and which was kept in the vegetable basket that Ma was carrying, was no longer there. And, so, all the money for the entire month was gone in one shot. All the money – with which all household expenses for the month were to be met – vegetables, fruits, milk, rations, school fees for the kids, travel expenses, house rent to be paid to Mrs. Basu, electricity bill – everything was gone.
For a while they stood stupefied by what had happened. Then, not knowing what else to do, they started walking towards home. The rain was getting only worse, and water ran past their cheeks, and rest of the body, mingling inseparably with tears. They wept and they walked and kept walking, even as Bhuaji’s only slippers came off and floated away with a current of water that was beginning to flow like a stream in rage. In the process, Ma fell down and hurt her head.
A guilty and upset Ma and Bhuaji reached home. Night had descended on the city by then, and the rains had subsided. Those were the days of severe power shortage in the city, and the situation only worsened when it rained. Everyone in the city knew this was to be a dark night. Quietly, Ma and Bhuaji, slipped into the kitchen where my aunts were already cooking meals.
Later that night, when Bade Tauji, my eldest uncle, came home, they let their little secret out to everyone and Bhuaji started crying again.
My uncle just smiled.
“Tum aam laayi ya nahin?” (Did you get the mangoes or not?), he asked.
“Aam abhi kahaan, unke aane mein to abhi kam se kam ek mahina hai” (Mangoes will take at least one more month to arrive), retorted Ma.
And then consoling Bhuaji, Bade Tauji said, “Jiji, yeah din bhi nikal jayenge. Kyun chinta karti ho.” (Sister, we shall see these days off as well, why do you worry so much).
That night no one slept well at home. But time passed by, and somehow the expenses were met that month.
A month later, my uncles got their largest contract till then. They earned a lakh from it. And, Ma and Bhuaji, given to their habit, got vegetables from Machhua bazaar. With them, they brought home some juicy ripe mangoes.
Papa used to work for a railway track material manufacturing company. A young, non-descript engineer, fresh out of Allahabad University, trying to find his feet in the metropolis, he lived with his two brothers, their wives, their children, an elder sister, her children and his parents in a small one bedroom house in Kankurgachi.
My grandfather was an honest lawyer in Sikar and had not accumulated any wealth worth its name. After my uncles showed no signs of academic brilliance, they had been sent to Kolkata. It was now upon them find their way in life.
Like many other young Marwari men, my uncles started trading in steel. The Marwaris had built a fiefdom around the steel trading business – sourcing materials from rolling mills that dotted the Howrah region and selling them to BHEL and other such giants across the country. While some businessmen had fled the city due to naxalite violence, most had preferred to stay back.
Those were the days of struggle and a hand-to-mouth existence. Every effort had to be made towards cutting costs. But those were days of joys too, when the smallest victory was celebrated. So, new clothes were always bought for Diwali, even if they were mostly bought from the footpath, and then brought home and refurbished with some embroidery or patchwork to make them look presentable. The vegetables were bought from Machhua bazaar – quite some distance from Kankurgachi, but it was the cheap wholesale market. Ma (my grandma) and Bhuaji (Papa’s elder sister) would go in crowded buses and trams once a week to buy the weekly ration.
It was one of those days when Ma and Bhuaji went for their weekly vegetable shopping to Machhua; sometime early in an April of the seventies when I was only a few years away from seeing my first light of the day. I expect that they left sometime late in the afternoon, around three perhaps, after Bhuaji had her mandatory afternoon siesta and Ma her cup of tea.
They took a bus from Kankurgachi to Maniktala and then a tram to somewhere close to Machhua. After that, they would have to walk their way. Those days, the bus and tram fares were very low (they still are in Kolkata, where you would expect to get 25 paise back as change even at a time when 25 paise coins can no longer be found anywhere else in the country). The credit must go to no less a person than Kolkata’s very own Jyoti Basu. As a young student leader, he lead dharnas against the government on every 5 paise increase in fare. And, his dharnas used to be full of light and, I daresay, fire. So every time the government raised the bus fare, the only way to make them retract, would be to burn a few buses.
Anyway, fare had not been raised in the past few days, and there was no such possibility in the coming days either, so it was an ideal day to travel. The afternoon sun was shining at its brightest, so Ma and Bhuaji suspected no trouble with weather either.
Many things change with time; yet, somethings never do. Like the Mango Showers. When the scorching heat of summers begins to grip most of the country, West Bengal gets a brief respite in March and April when the north-westerly winds bring with them grey skies, dusty roads and thunderous showers. These showers, which normally arrive late in the evenings, are also called Kalboishakhi – black showers in the month of Boishakh. And, what is special about these showers is that even as they wreck havoc when they come, some water seeps into the parched lands where mango trees grow, and brings to life the juicy mango fruits that begin to arrive a month later.
For some reason, Ma and Bhuaji, did not factor in the Mango Showers that day. After hectic bargaining, with loaded baskets when they boarded a tram near Machhua, the skies became grey. It was the rush hour when offices got over with people jostling for space in the crowded little tram.
All this while, I have been telling you about Ma and Bhuaji together almost as if they were inseparable. But, alas, they were not.
At the very stop before which Ma and Bhuaji were to get off together, they got separated. Ma, along with her basket full of vegetables, got pushed out by the rushing passengers whose destination had arrived. Bhauji struggled, got off at the next stop and started walking back.
The winds had started to blow by now. Dust was swirling all around, and the trees waving hastily. For once, Bhuaji felt that she would get blown away in the madness of the elements. But that did not happen, and drenched in the now pouring rain, Bhuaji reached the tram stop where Ma was waiting for her. Together again, they sighed a sigh of relief, and boarded the next bus to Kankurgachi.
It was a minibus; unlike the other tin plated buses, this looked a lot more modern with its red and yellow coloured exteriors. Even for only a few paise more, travel in minibus was a luxury for our family. If it weren’t for the rains, Ma and Bhuaji wouldn’t have boarded one.
As luck would have it, they had to get off it soon too. The moment a conductor came to sell the ticket, Ma and Bhuaji together realized that the handkerchief in which all the money was tied and which was kept in the vegetable basket that Ma was carrying, was no longer there. And, so, all the money for the entire month was gone in one shot. All the money – with which all household expenses for the month were to be met – vegetables, fruits, milk, rations, school fees for the kids, travel expenses, house rent to be paid to Mrs. Basu, electricity bill – everything was gone.
For a while they stood stupefied by what had happened. Then, not knowing what else to do, they started walking towards home. The rain was getting only worse, and water ran past their cheeks, and rest of the body, mingling inseparably with tears. They wept and they walked and kept walking, even as Bhuaji’s only slippers came off and floated away with a current of water that was beginning to flow like a stream in rage. In the process, Ma fell down and hurt her head.
A guilty and upset Ma and Bhuaji reached home. Night had descended on the city by then, and the rains had subsided. Those were the days of severe power shortage in the city, and the situation only worsened when it rained. Everyone in the city knew this was to be a dark night. Quietly, Ma and Bhuaji, slipped into the kitchen where my aunts were already cooking meals.
Later that night, when Bade Tauji, my eldest uncle, came home, they let their little secret out to everyone and Bhuaji started crying again.
My uncle just smiled.
“Tum aam laayi ya nahin?” (Did you get the mangoes or not?), he asked.
“Aam abhi kahaan, unke aane mein to abhi kam se kam ek mahina hai” (Mangoes will take at least one more month to arrive), retorted Ma.
And then consoling Bhuaji, Bade Tauji said, “Jiji, yeah din bhi nikal jayenge. Kyun chinta karti ho.” (Sister, we shall see these days off as well, why do you worry so much).
That night no one slept well at home. But time passed by, and somehow the expenses were met that month.
A month later, my uncles got their largest contract till then. They earned a lakh from it. And, Ma and Bhuaji, given to their habit, got vegetables from Machhua bazaar. With them, they brought home some juicy ripe mangoes.
Saturday, October 02, 2004
Some memories from my school
Some memories of my childhood never leave me - I still remember the picture of me walking down from the park, my bat in my hand, dust blowing all around on a grey cloudy evening. The Kalboishakhi, also called the Mango Showers, had arrived, threatening to blow away the rather strangely placed tin sheet on a part of the roof of our otherwise palatial house.
Opposite that park, used to be my School – Salt Lake (Eng. Med.) School. The Eng. Med. part of the name was important. It meant this wasn't like one of the many other Bengali Medium schools in the neighbourhood, and that you had to wear clean shoes, and cut your nails. And that boys with long hair could find teachers tying up their hair with rubber bands.
This was in Salt Lake - land created by filling up a marshy salty lake; a suburb of Calcutta; known for its matrixed roads and green parks. One such park, the biggest of them all, was the BA-CA Park. The one in which I played cricket.
Ah, I should mention this here - as I tell you about all this, you would observe that all the objects appear in past tense - the school was, the park was. It is not that the school or the park or other things don’t exist anymore. Just that they are not my school or my park any more.
So, this BA-CA Park used to be my park at that time. It was divided into two halves, one for the BA Block and one for the CA Block. And, each half was almost the size of a football field. At one end of this park was a small tent-like structure. It used to be called some football association, but besides the football classes in the evenings, it used to also hold Karate classes in the mornings. Briefly, Bhupati sir, our PT teacher, also used to conduct physical training here.
I was always very bad in most sports. I used to play cricket and sometimes opened the batting too. But that was because of three reasons. One, I used to own the bat. Two, the lunch after the match was always at my place. And three, my captain always knew that I would not survive beyond an over so the batsmen to follow would never have to wait for too long.
There was a fourth reason too, perhaps. My friends used to like me.
Now I am confused. I don’t know for sure what I want to tell you about. There are so many small things that happened in the school that I could tell you about. Or, I could tell you about my summer holidays when I played table-tennis all day. Ok. Let’s settle for this. I will tell you about all of those, but for now let me just show you around my school and let me tell you about some things that changed my life forever.
Ok, now you know that my school stood in front of the BA-CA Park. This was a two storied building, white in color. When freshly whitewashed with chuna, the outside of my school building used to dazzle shamelessly on summer afternoons. The classrooms weren't whitewashed so often though, and had strange patterns built by dampness every monsoon. In most rooms, there were blackboards. Some had boards that were green, and those looked so much better. My class was one with a green board. It was a largish room that was divided into two parts by a wooden partition. One side was my class, Class IX B, and the other was Class IX A. And, there were these desks and chairs, of the same color as the wooden partition. The polish on the wood was particularly bad, and was made to look worse by all the scribbling with compasses that we had done. These scribbling were never as obscene or direct as they used to be in the boy’s toilets; most often they were either declarations of love or simply some grouse against a teacher. I never had the guts to scribble my secret yearnings though.
What were the other objects in the room? Chalks. Duster. A wardrobe in which absolutely nothing was kept. Fans. And the tube-lights of course. White radiations of which I always hated and the lizards always loved.
Talking about tube-lights reminds me that they always need a starter to get started and often we (I say we because I was part of the class, never part of the gang that did this though. Ah me, the timid little stranger in class!) used to take out the starters and hide them to delay classes. This was especially effective on those unlucky rainy days on which we didn’t get our rainy day holidays.
I want to tell you a lot more about rains really. They have been linked with my life in many ways. Lot of good things happened to me on days when skies were grey and the roads in Calcutta were water logged. To begin with, I was born on one such day. Then, on my fifth birthday (or was it sixth?), when whole of Kankurgachi was submerged in water, I had forced Mummy to get my birthday gift, wading through those waters. Years later, it had rained copiously on the day I finally got admitted to my college - Presidency College. Intriguingly, that was my 19th birthday too. And then of course, CAT 1997 – it rained in December. IIMC interview – 25th March 1998 – it rained. IIMC results day – it rained. And first day in IIMC again – it rained.
Two things here – one, it doesn’t rain round the year in Calcutta. And two, I think other things would have happened too on rainy days that I either don’t remember or have not mentioned here.
Ok, so back to the classroom and the tube-light and lizards. I hate lizards. Perhaps they look slimy, so I hate them. But I hate them. And, they make a strange kind of rhythmic sound that is so easy for humans to replicate. I had learnt how to make that sound way back in class II, and then made that sound in the school assembly when we literally had a pin-drop silence. And, when I was asked who made the sound, I had promptly pointed the finger at the girl next to me. I had taught her how to make that sound, and she had made it too with me. She got a slap for it. Eventually I got two when the whole story was out.
I hate lizards, that’s it.
Ok, so I told you that I will show you around my school. I have shown you the classroom, and you would have realized that there wasn’t much to see there. There used to be something to smell every now and then even till class VI when one of my classmates would lose control of his bowel movement. We will skip that though.
So, get out of the classroom on a typical day. Let us say it is Thursday afternoon, the period after lunch. It is the Drawing class. Drawing sir, PDG, with his long gray hair and much whiter mustache has asked, as usual, who all had not got the paints. Dipti is one of them. She is asked to leave the class with twelve others. I have got the paints, but tell sir that I don't have them either. Standing outside the class, atleast I get to see Dipti. It is a different matter though that I have never spoken to her.
Anyway, ignore us and just walk down the corridor. We have our morning and afternoon assemblies in this corridor that surrounds the central quadrangle. As part of our Socially Useful and Productive Work, we had planted some Dahlias and Chrysanthemums in middle of the quadrangle. You can see the flowers blooming now.
Where one wall of the corridor meets the other, there are the toilets. So, ignore them too and take a right. And, you hit the Physics laboratory on your left. Peep inside. If you see a spectacled middle aged lady sitting on a desk, it must be Sushmita miss, my Physics teacher. If you see a young athletic mustached guy with a smirk that can never be wiped off, well, that is Rajat da. I cannot tell you much about the other stuff you will see inside the Physics laboratory. For one, it was way too long back when I had seen all that. Secondly, even then I hardly knew what all that stuff was. If you are a keen observer, you would have noticed by now the windows of the Physics laboratory open into our small playground.
Talking about playgrounds, actually we had three playgrounds inside the school. One at the back side, the one at the front, and the third was the quadrangle. We were not supposed to run around on the grass in the quadrangle, but invariably that was the place where we enjoyed playing the most. That was also the place for the major punishments – like Nandita miss used to give us – “Go and stand in the quadrangle with your tongues out!”
The playground outside the school was of course the large BA-CA ground. That’s where we practiced for our Sports Day and that’s where our Sports day used to be held.
Ok, now move forward from the Physics Laboratory. This again ends at another corner that has the toilets, so take a right turn again, and you have three classrooms on your left. If you had come here with me, or with Manas perhaps, in 1996, you would have seen an Aquaguard water filter on this wall. This filter was installed that year but didn’t survive long. Manas’ friend, Golgi as he was known, wanted to figure out how the system works and ensured that it never worked again.
But you keep walking. Further down is another corner. On this corner is the staircase. The wall adjacent to that has the staff room. We shall not go inside the staff room for now, as that would be another long story. Let us go down instead to the ground floor. Right underneath the staff room is Madam’s room. Next to that is the school office where Rajesh sir sits. Behind other walls are classrooms or toilets in the same way as they you saw them on the first floor.
Now you must be wondering how the school could accommodate its 1200 students. Well, we had two batches – the morning batch and the day batch. Morning batch timings were from 7 am to 10 am. Manas had the misfortune of being in morning batch for several years. I was always in the day batch. For my batch, the school assembly used to be at 10:30. That was also usually the time I used to leave my home at. I had to run diagonally through the park, and as a result I knew long before we were taught in Geometry that the sum of two sides of a triangle is always greater than the third. Anyways, I used to be invariably late and I would hope that Sapna miss, our strict Vice-Principal would ask me to go back home for coming in late. But that never happened. I had to write in my diary twenty times – “I will never be late again” – and I would be allowed in.
Ok, so by now you would have figured out what a loser I was. Yes, always late to school, standing out even in Drawing class, opening the batting and getting out for naught, having a crush on a girl that I had not spoken to all my life… the list could be endless. In fact, from class III to class IX, I had always been “Promoted on trial”. Probably it took some doing to flunk in Salt Lake (Eng. Med.) School.
But then some things just happened.
We had to choose our sixth subject in Class IX. Or, I should say our sixth subject had to choose between us. The options were – Physical Education, Computers Science or Economics.
My 20 seconds for running fifty meters and the inability to complete three pushups had disqualified me from Physical Education. Now, it was a toss between Computers Science and Economics.
Those were the heady days of computers. Our school had four of them. All kept in the only air-conditioned room in the whole school where no one was allowed to walk in with their shoes on. And, even among them, the most coveted was the one with a color monitor. One in which text appeared in green.
So, there was a high demand for the Computer Science course. The initial plan was to take in students based on their marks in the final examination of class VIII. But somehow this plan got changed. So there was to be a test for the Computer Science course – an aptitude test.
20 students out of our class of 60 were to be selected. I was obviously a rank outsider.
Now, I don’t remember whether it rained that day or not, but an aptitude test was held. It had none of the math questions that I surely wouldn’t have been able to answer. Just some silly sequences and pictorial patterns. Ah, nothing from the syllabus at all.
As it would be, when the results came a lot of people were surprised. I had reconciled myself by then with taking up Economics. But I got the second highest marks in that test. A test in which there were negative marks, I had got 19 out of 25. Highest was 21 out of 25. And, most of the class was below -6.
Something triggered there.
Then came in Sushmita miss. Yes, the same spectacled middle aged lady you just saw in the Physics Laboratory. She joined the school when I was in class IX.
And, she came to take our Computer Science class. Or, was it the Physics class? Well, I cannot remember.
Anyway, she asked a question in the class, and I was the first to respond with the correct answer. Now, I don’t know what it was, was it that one correct answer that I gave or something else, Sushmita miss started believing that I was the best student in her class.
Ask me, was I the best student? No way. No way, at all!
But Sushmita miss believed it nevertheless.
I had already started believing that I was underselling myself to my own self, and started believing in my abilities. And now, there was this expectation of a teacher to be met.
So, what followed was a virtuous cycle. Old habits didn’t change. I would still not do my homework as it needed to be done. I would still have to burn the midnight lamp to pass my exams. But my performance improved. And improved quite a bit.
In my board exams in class X I did rather well. And then, in class XII, I was made the first Head Boy of my school.
Years later, during my MBA, I read about the “Pygmalion Effect”. In a nut shell – if you expect, not just want, someone to do well and convey that in unambiguous terms, then that person is likely to reward you for your belief in them.
For too many years, I had not believed in myself. And, none of my teachers had believed in me. And, when that changed, my life changed.
I feel lucky that this happened to me. I have seen many people whose would have done so well with one such trigger in their life. This, of course, is not to say that I have succeeded in keeping all my self-doubts aside. But then, I do believe that all of us have the inherent ability to achieve whatever we dream of.
Opposite that park, used to be my School – Salt Lake (Eng. Med.) School. The Eng. Med. part of the name was important. It meant this wasn't like one of the many other Bengali Medium schools in the neighbourhood, and that you had to wear clean shoes, and cut your nails. And that boys with long hair could find teachers tying up their hair with rubber bands.
This was in Salt Lake - land created by filling up a marshy salty lake; a suburb of Calcutta; known for its matrixed roads and green parks. One such park, the biggest of them all, was the BA-CA Park. The one in which I played cricket.
Ah, I should mention this here - as I tell you about all this, you would observe that all the objects appear in past tense - the school was, the park was. It is not that the school or the park or other things don’t exist anymore. Just that they are not my school or my park any more.
So, this BA-CA Park used to be my park at that time. It was divided into two halves, one for the BA Block and one for the CA Block. And, each half was almost the size of a football field. At one end of this park was a small tent-like structure. It used to be called some football association, but besides the football classes in the evenings, it used to also hold Karate classes in the mornings. Briefly, Bhupati sir, our PT teacher, also used to conduct physical training here.
I was always very bad in most sports. I used to play cricket and sometimes opened the batting too. But that was because of three reasons. One, I used to own the bat. Two, the lunch after the match was always at my place. And three, my captain always knew that I would not survive beyond an over so the batsmen to follow would never have to wait for too long.
There was a fourth reason too, perhaps. My friends used to like me.
Now I am confused. I don’t know for sure what I want to tell you about. There are so many small things that happened in the school that I could tell you about. Or, I could tell you about my summer holidays when I played table-tennis all day. Ok. Let’s settle for this. I will tell you about all of those, but for now let me just show you around my school and let me tell you about some things that changed my life forever.
Ok, now you know that my school stood in front of the BA-CA Park. This was a two storied building, white in color. When freshly whitewashed with chuna, the outside of my school building used to dazzle shamelessly on summer afternoons. The classrooms weren't whitewashed so often though, and had strange patterns built by dampness every monsoon. In most rooms, there were blackboards. Some had boards that were green, and those looked so much better. My class was one with a green board. It was a largish room that was divided into two parts by a wooden partition. One side was my class, Class IX B, and the other was Class IX A. And, there were these desks and chairs, of the same color as the wooden partition. The polish on the wood was particularly bad, and was made to look worse by all the scribbling with compasses that we had done. These scribbling were never as obscene or direct as they used to be in the boy’s toilets; most often they were either declarations of love or simply some grouse against a teacher. I never had the guts to scribble my secret yearnings though.
What were the other objects in the room? Chalks. Duster. A wardrobe in which absolutely nothing was kept. Fans. And the tube-lights of course. White radiations of which I always hated and the lizards always loved.
Talking about tube-lights reminds me that they always need a starter to get started and often we (I say we because I was part of the class, never part of the gang that did this though. Ah me, the timid little stranger in class!) used to take out the starters and hide them to delay classes. This was especially effective on those unlucky rainy days on which we didn’t get our rainy day holidays.
I want to tell you a lot more about rains really. They have been linked with my life in many ways. Lot of good things happened to me on days when skies were grey and the roads in Calcutta were water logged. To begin with, I was born on one such day. Then, on my fifth birthday (or was it sixth?), when whole of Kankurgachi was submerged in water, I had forced Mummy to get my birthday gift, wading through those waters. Years later, it had rained copiously on the day I finally got admitted to my college - Presidency College. Intriguingly, that was my 19th birthday too. And then of course, CAT 1997 – it rained in December. IIMC interview – 25th March 1998 – it rained. IIMC results day – it rained. And first day in IIMC again – it rained.
Two things here – one, it doesn’t rain round the year in Calcutta. And two, I think other things would have happened too on rainy days that I either don’t remember or have not mentioned here.
Ok, so back to the classroom and the tube-light and lizards. I hate lizards. Perhaps they look slimy, so I hate them. But I hate them. And, they make a strange kind of rhythmic sound that is so easy for humans to replicate. I had learnt how to make that sound way back in class II, and then made that sound in the school assembly when we literally had a pin-drop silence. And, when I was asked who made the sound, I had promptly pointed the finger at the girl next to me. I had taught her how to make that sound, and she had made it too with me. She got a slap for it. Eventually I got two when the whole story was out.
I hate lizards, that’s it.
Ok, so I told you that I will show you around my school. I have shown you the classroom, and you would have realized that there wasn’t much to see there. There used to be something to smell every now and then even till class VI when one of my classmates would lose control of his bowel movement. We will skip that though.
So, get out of the classroom on a typical day. Let us say it is Thursday afternoon, the period after lunch. It is the Drawing class. Drawing sir, PDG, with his long gray hair and much whiter mustache has asked, as usual, who all had not got the paints. Dipti is one of them. She is asked to leave the class with twelve others. I have got the paints, but tell sir that I don't have them either. Standing outside the class, atleast I get to see Dipti. It is a different matter though that I have never spoken to her.
Anyway, ignore us and just walk down the corridor. We have our morning and afternoon assemblies in this corridor that surrounds the central quadrangle. As part of our Socially Useful and Productive Work, we had planted some Dahlias and Chrysanthemums in middle of the quadrangle. You can see the flowers blooming now.
Where one wall of the corridor meets the other, there are the toilets. So, ignore them too and take a right. And, you hit the Physics laboratory on your left. Peep inside. If you see a spectacled middle aged lady sitting on a desk, it must be Sushmita miss, my Physics teacher. If you see a young athletic mustached guy with a smirk that can never be wiped off, well, that is Rajat da. I cannot tell you much about the other stuff you will see inside the Physics laboratory. For one, it was way too long back when I had seen all that. Secondly, even then I hardly knew what all that stuff was. If you are a keen observer, you would have noticed by now the windows of the Physics laboratory open into our small playground.
Talking about playgrounds, actually we had three playgrounds inside the school. One at the back side, the one at the front, and the third was the quadrangle. We were not supposed to run around on the grass in the quadrangle, but invariably that was the place where we enjoyed playing the most. That was also the place for the major punishments – like Nandita miss used to give us – “Go and stand in the quadrangle with your tongues out!”
The playground outside the school was of course the large BA-CA ground. That’s where we practiced for our Sports Day and that’s where our Sports day used to be held.
Ok, now move forward from the Physics Laboratory. This again ends at another corner that has the toilets, so take a right turn again, and you have three classrooms on your left. If you had come here with me, or with Manas perhaps, in 1996, you would have seen an Aquaguard water filter on this wall. This filter was installed that year but didn’t survive long. Manas’ friend, Golgi as he was known, wanted to figure out how the system works and ensured that it never worked again.
But you keep walking. Further down is another corner. On this corner is the staircase. The wall adjacent to that has the staff room. We shall not go inside the staff room for now, as that would be another long story. Let us go down instead to the ground floor. Right underneath the staff room is Madam’s room. Next to that is the school office where Rajesh sir sits. Behind other walls are classrooms or toilets in the same way as they you saw them on the first floor.
Now you must be wondering how the school could accommodate its 1200 students. Well, we had two batches – the morning batch and the day batch. Morning batch timings were from 7 am to 10 am. Manas had the misfortune of being in morning batch for several years. I was always in the day batch. For my batch, the school assembly used to be at 10:30. That was also usually the time I used to leave my home at. I had to run diagonally through the park, and as a result I knew long before we were taught in Geometry that the sum of two sides of a triangle is always greater than the third. Anyways, I used to be invariably late and I would hope that Sapna miss, our strict Vice-Principal would ask me to go back home for coming in late. But that never happened. I had to write in my diary twenty times – “I will never be late again” – and I would be allowed in.
Ok, so by now you would have figured out what a loser I was. Yes, always late to school, standing out even in Drawing class, opening the batting and getting out for naught, having a crush on a girl that I had not spoken to all my life… the list could be endless. In fact, from class III to class IX, I had always been “Promoted on trial”. Probably it took some doing to flunk in Salt Lake (Eng. Med.) School.
But then some things just happened.
We had to choose our sixth subject in Class IX. Or, I should say our sixth subject had to choose between us. The options were – Physical Education, Computers Science or Economics.
My 20 seconds for running fifty meters and the inability to complete three pushups had disqualified me from Physical Education. Now, it was a toss between Computers Science and Economics.
Those were the heady days of computers. Our school had four of them. All kept in the only air-conditioned room in the whole school where no one was allowed to walk in with their shoes on. And, even among them, the most coveted was the one with a color monitor. One in which text appeared in green.
So, there was a high demand for the Computer Science course. The initial plan was to take in students based on their marks in the final examination of class VIII. But somehow this plan got changed. So there was to be a test for the Computer Science course – an aptitude test.
20 students out of our class of 60 were to be selected. I was obviously a rank outsider.
Now, I don’t remember whether it rained that day or not, but an aptitude test was held. It had none of the math questions that I surely wouldn’t have been able to answer. Just some silly sequences and pictorial patterns. Ah, nothing from the syllabus at all.
As it would be, when the results came a lot of people were surprised. I had reconciled myself by then with taking up Economics. But I got the second highest marks in that test. A test in which there were negative marks, I had got 19 out of 25. Highest was 21 out of 25. And, most of the class was below -6.
Something triggered there.
Then came in Sushmita miss. Yes, the same spectacled middle aged lady you just saw in the Physics Laboratory. She joined the school when I was in class IX.
And, she came to take our Computer Science class. Or, was it the Physics class? Well, I cannot remember.
Anyway, she asked a question in the class, and I was the first to respond with the correct answer. Now, I don’t know what it was, was it that one correct answer that I gave or something else, Sushmita miss started believing that I was the best student in her class.
Ask me, was I the best student? No way. No way, at all!
But Sushmita miss believed it nevertheless.
I had already started believing that I was underselling myself to my own self, and started believing in my abilities. And now, there was this expectation of a teacher to be met.
So, what followed was a virtuous cycle. Old habits didn’t change. I would still not do my homework as it needed to be done. I would still have to burn the midnight lamp to pass my exams. But my performance improved. And improved quite a bit.
In my board exams in class X I did rather well. And then, in class XII, I was made the first Head Boy of my school.
Years later, during my MBA, I read about the “Pygmalion Effect”. In a nut shell – if you expect, not just want, someone to do well and convey that in unambiguous terms, then that person is likely to reward you for your belief in them.
For too many years, I had not believed in myself. And, none of my teachers had believed in me. And, when that changed, my life changed.
I feel lucky that this happened to me. I have seen many people whose would have done so well with one such trigger in their life. This, of course, is not to say that I have succeeded in keeping all my self-doubts aside. But then, I do believe that all of us have the inherent ability to achieve whatever we dream of.
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