I just left the main road: and began strolling along the lane within the neighbourhood.towards home. A neighbour was in his first floor balcony looking at the virtually empty lane that afternoon. He asked me, " Hi, Basu, have the school got the results of the last Higher Secondary Examination today?" I replied to him in the affirmative. He inquired, " So you have passed". I nodded again to indicate that I had passed. He further inquired, " You passed in the third division?" I knew that he had known me as a smart footballer and cricketer and would have expected that I could only be weak student as good players generally were. I did not want to disappoint him but I had to say, "No". He promptly commented, " So, you got Second Division!". I had to say again. "No.". He exclaimed, " That great. You passed in the First Divion". I nodded in the affirmative. He congratulated me on my success achieving a First Dision (Class) result.
I knew that he did not see in my face the glory of a good success and was wondering. I was returning from the school after getting to know the results and getting congratulatory remarks from many classmates and teachers. But deep inside I felt cheated for shortchange. I was unhappy with the marks that I had got. I thought my productivity had got a jolt. The time and effort that I had put in was disproportionately much higher than the results that I have got in retrun. It was certainly bad economics of the project of giving higher secondary examination: this was the first project with low expost return and,later I would experience similar bad economics projects again and again. I had no assessment of what I could have aspired for but what I had got could have been secured with much less effort. I had gone through the marksheet by then and found that the scores were no better than what I used to get in the school with much less effort and time. I knew that I am an instictive participant in any thing and now how to display my qualities through my actions, moves and expressions. So, I could not fathom how I had failed to entice and lure the unknown evalators of my answer scripts into giving me extra-ordinary marks. I would certainly get an understanding of this later. But this issue bothered me even as I had carried the message of my first class success at the Higher Secondary Examinations to my parents, siblings, everyone at home, the relatives and close neighbors and friends. There was thrill, excitement and happiness in the air.
But now I had to get busy in applying to various colleges for admission to the three-year University Bachelor of Arts examinations. I selected for colleges to try: the Presidency College (the most presitigious one), Moulana Azad College (which at that time had the best Economics Faculty), the Scotish Church College and the Belur Ramkrishna Mission College (fully residential). The last one was of course not my choice but my father felt that this college would be able to train me up properly as a human being. I picked up the forms from the Moulana Azad College and the Prsidency College and the Scotish Curch College and filed the forms in the first two colleges. The Presidency College however would not go by the marks we had scored in the Higher Secondary Examinations because it would admit some students who had passed the Indian Schools Certificate Examinations. So the College would take a test in English for screening: not clear as to why they did not think of taking a maths test as well since the College would not admit to Economics honors course any student without having passed in Mathematics at the schoo; leaving examination. I appeared for the examination that apeared to me as a simple affair. Dad took me to the Belur Ramkrishna Mission College. The Pricipal looked at the marksheet and said this was fine. Took an examination in English essay writing on the spot and after evalating gave me the form for admission. We went back home sayin that we should returnl soon with the monies required to get admitted along with all that I needed to stay in the college hostel. Meanwhile the Presidency College published the first list of students to be admitted which did not inclufe my name. But the first list issued by the Moulana Azad College included my name. Without dalay I took admission there and settled for the same as final.
The college would start in a few days. So, I decided to meet my school teachers. They were happy with my results but some of them felt that I could have done better. The Economics teacher met me separately. He said that he was happy also but felt that I have not been assessed properly. He also said that this was a matter of luck and depends on how the students in my school scored on an average and the evaluators general tendency of being cautious in avoiding too much dispersion in the marks alloted students coming from the same svchool. Besdies, unless one is from a school recognised for having outstanding students, the evalators could be conservative. This is what he called the school effect. Then he wanted to know what books I would like to have in the forthcoming prize distribution ceremony for having topped the list in the school. I told him that I will tell him after I find out from the College what books would be worth acquiring for a long-term student of Economics.
I have to get prepared for newer projects in the years to come and succeed irrespective of the economics of the costs and benefits.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Schoolboy Marathon - The Last Leg: My Unfolding Voyage 35
The last leg in the Marathon race, participants run or walk the fastest. The time flies as did the ten weeks prior to and during the Higher Secondary Board Examination. It was three sessions of study of three hours each daily with an hour and a half play between the morning and afternoon sessions and afternoon and evening sessions and six and half hours of sleep at night. The study sessions were tightly scheduled with morning and evening ones staffed with alternative subjects and the afternoon sessions of mock examinations with model question sets. The first 30 days were for going through the entire syllabus of the five subjects (English, Bengali, History, Economics and Mathematics). The next 20 days were for 4 days each for each subject and the finally 10 days allocated to the same subjects @ of two days each in the reverse order of the subjects scheduled for examinations. Bengali was the first subject to appear for in the Examinations: so you studied Bengali for two days just before the examinations. Examination was over in 7 days with two days off in between and two papers of the subject tested for 3 hours each in two sessions with an hour's break for lunch.
Two days before the examinations started I took a bus that traveled for 15 minutes before I alighted, crossed over the road and walked for two minutes to reach the examination center. This trip was just a rehearsal so that I had no problem in reaching the examination center in time. During the lunch break father or brother of some students would come. One day, one such passerby stranger showed interest in the examination question paper. He quickly glanced through it and commented " very easy paper".
My cousin who had come to provide mental support to his younger brother and my classmate immediately quipped," Question papers appear easy to those who are not to appear for the examination". The passer-by quickly quit the place. We generally had a very light lunch at a restaurant nearby, had a last minute look at the relevant books and notes before entering the examination hall for the post lunch session.
The marathon of schooling had at last come to and. We became free for a few months with nothing to worry and a new phase of life to look forward to. We have now to spend our time till the examination results would come out and get busy in getting admission to the university undergraduate course in an affiliated college. That is about another 7 weeks or so- plenty at disposal. Football and other games would get the highest allocation of time for about 4 hours a day in three sessions, one in the early morning, late morning and before dusk would set in. Evening roaming and loitering with friends would take another one and half hour. Two to three hours in the afternoon would go in reading story books, listening to radio, and things of that kind. Night sleep, bathing, breakfast, newspaper reading, lunch, evening snacks and dinner would consume another 10 hours. That would still leave 5 to 6 hours of surplus time available to something or the other: indoor chat/ games session, new hobbies, an occasional movie.
Fortunately, an uncle visited us at that time and proposed that I come with him to visit one of our relatives in Durgapore. I bought, for the first time, two full-length pants for me and some travel kits and went with him to Durgapore by train. He stayed there for a day or two and then proceeded to his base in Burnpur (about 3 or 4 hours journey by bus from Durgapore). I stayed with my cousin who lived there with her husband, two daughters (slightly younger to me), her son and my elderly aunt. Though I had been missing Mom being away from home and her, I did enjoy fun, frolik and food and special attention of my aunt who loved me much and my cousin. The neices had their annual cultral show programme at the school during my saty there. The invited me to the show. Bein an uncle of two participating girls, I got direct entry behind the stage in the green room, till a lady teacher questioned my prsesnce along with the girls. I had to quietly slip out into the balcony seats to witness the show from the front. I had very good time there for two weeks' gossiping and playing with the neices before returning back to Kolkata on a Saturday afternoon that witnessed a terrible gale resulting in trains running behind schedule. For quite some time, I thought traveling on a Saturday was not good.
Playing tricks was under exploration during the last days of the long holidays.. My cousin and classmate used to buy butter from a particular shop while shopping for groceries items he was entrusted to purchase by his mother. On these purchases he had been managing to have some few coins a discounts from the shop keeper who had a small horse-shoe shaped magnet that he used to test if the the high value coins (like a quarter or a Rupee) were genuine of spurious becuase the genuine ones would have metals that would be easily pulled in by the magnet, while the spurios ones would not stick to the horse shoe. A number of times, some of us accompanied my cousin on his shopping rounds. The discounts that he would obtain while shopping were his own earninh. He uwould occasionally buy us some cookies to eat with his shopping earnings. That was a common practice among friends to do. But he was also using his earnings to play the gambling wheel game peddeled by the roadside vendor. The gamble-vendor a wheel a person needed to turn with a push with the side of a finger. The light-weight weal would rotate with its marker facing a circular dial pad marked with 1 to 24 along the circumference. When the wheel would stop its roation, the marker would be close to or on the numbers marked on the circumference of the dial. The player would pay an entry fee of a quarter of a rupee and get a chance to push the wheel to riotate with the push of a finger. If the marker happened to face certain pre-specified numbers on the dial when the wheel comes to stand still, the player wins a prize.: if the marker happens not to face any of those pre-specified lucky number, they player gets nothing.The value of these prizes in the form of a pencil or a pen or an untensil or a framed picture, varried from less than a quarter of a rupee to about two rupees. My cousin had been trying his luck rotating the marker-wheel made of steel but in most occasions he had got no prizes or at best win something that was worth less than the quarter of a rupee that he had pay for each try. He shared a plan with us to win the highest prize by making the wheel stop its rotation when the market just faces the specified number for that highest prize. Three of us knew what exactly we had to do. We were to cazole the marker to to come to the specified number as the wheel starts losing its strength for roational movement by shouting and directing with our fingers from a distance without touching the dial, the wheel or the marker. This particular evening, in the dimly lit street pavement, we kneeled down near the game vendor's wheel to [play.We tried but failed to achieve our objective and lost two quarters. This was part of our plan so that the game vendor did not suspect foul play. In the third atempt we succeeded in geting the wheel to stop when the marker stopped exactly facing the specified number for the highest value award. We rejoiced, just snatched the big prize on display and deserted the scene of the act. We would not know what the vendor or other spectators thought. But we knew that we could skillfully use the small u-shaped magneticdevice that we had borrowed for a few minutes from the butter-vendor's shop and kept it hidden with in one of our palms to control the final movement of the wheel and the marker so that it stops slowly but exactly where we intended it to stop. We did not try this again because we had no intention to cheat the vendor again and run the risk of getting caught. A winning end to the schoolboy marathon!
Two days before the examinations started I took a bus that traveled for 15 minutes before I alighted, crossed over the road and walked for two minutes to reach the examination center. This trip was just a rehearsal so that I had no problem in reaching the examination center in time. During the lunch break father or brother of some students would come. One day, one such passerby stranger showed interest in the examination question paper. He quickly glanced through it and commented " very easy paper".
My cousin who had come to provide mental support to his younger brother and my classmate immediately quipped," Question papers appear easy to those who are not to appear for the examination". The passer-by quickly quit the place. We generally had a very light lunch at a restaurant nearby, had a last minute look at the relevant books and notes before entering the examination hall for the post lunch session.
The marathon of schooling had at last come to and. We became free for a few months with nothing to worry and a new phase of life to look forward to. We have now to spend our time till the examination results would come out and get busy in getting admission to the university undergraduate course in an affiliated college. That is about another 7 weeks or so- plenty at disposal. Football and other games would get the highest allocation of time for about 4 hours a day in three sessions, one in the early morning, late morning and before dusk would set in. Evening roaming and loitering with friends would take another one and half hour. Two to three hours in the afternoon would go in reading story books, listening to radio, and things of that kind. Night sleep, bathing, breakfast, newspaper reading, lunch, evening snacks and dinner would consume another 10 hours. That would still leave 5 to 6 hours of surplus time available to something or the other: indoor chat/ games session, new hobbies, an occasional movie.
Fortunately, an uncle visited us at that time and proposed that I come with him to visit one of our relatives in Durgapore. I bought, for the first time, two full-length pants for me and some travel kits and went with him to Durgapore by train. He stayed there for a day or two and then proceeded to his base in Burnpur (about 3 or 4 hours journey by bus from Durgapore). I stayed with my cousin who lived there with her husband, two daughters (slightly younger to me), her son and my elderly aunt. Though I had been missing Mom being away from home and her, I did enjoy fun, frolik and food and special attention of my aunt who loved me much and my cousin. The neices had their annual cultral show programme at the school during my saty there. The invited me to the show. Bein an uncle of two participating girls, I got direct entry behind the stage in the green room, till a lady teacher questioned my prsesnce along with the girls. I had to quietly slip out into the balcony seats to witness the show from the front. I had very good time there for two weeks' gossiping and playing with the neices before returning back to Kolkata on a Saturday afternoon that witnessed a terrible gale resulting in trains running behind schedule. For quite some time, I thought traveling on a Saturday was not good.
Playing tricks was under exploration during the last days of the long holidays.. My cousin and classmate used to buy butter from a particular shop while shopping for groceries items he was entrusted to purchase by his mother. On these purchases he had been managing to have some few coins a discounts from the shop keeper who had a small horse-shoe shaped magnet that he used to test if the the high value coins (like a quarter or a Rupee) were genuine of spurious becuase the genuine ones would have metals that would be easily pulled in by the magnet, while the spurios ones would not stick to the horse shoe. A number of times, some of us accompanied my cousin on his shopping rounds. The discounts that he would obtain while shopping were his own earninh. He uwould occasionally buy us some cookies to eat with his shopping earnings. That was a common practice among friends to do. But he was also using his earnings to play the gambling wheel game peddeled by the roadside vendor. The gamble-vendor a wheel a person needed to turn with a push with the side of a finger. The light-weight weal would rotate with its marker facing a circular dial pad marked with 1 to 24 along the circumference. When the wheel would stop its roation, the marker would be close to or on the numbers marked on the circumference of the dial. The player would pay an entry fee of a quarter of a rupee and get a chance to push the wheel to riotate with the push of a finger. If the marker happened to face certain pre-specified numbers on the dial when the wheel comes to stand still, the player wins a prize.: if the marker happens not to face any of those pre-specified lucky number, they player gets nothing.The value of these prizes in the form of a pencil or a pen or an untensil or a framed picture, varried from less than a quarter of a rupee to about two rupees. My cousin had been trying his luck rotating the marker-wheel made of steel but in most occasions he had got no prizes or at best win something that was worth less than the quarter of a rupee that he had pay for each try. He shared a plan with us to win the highest prize by making the wheel stop its rotation when the market just faces the specified number for that highest prize. Three of us knew what exactly we had to do. We were to cazole the marker to to come to the specified number as the wheel starts losing its strength for roational movement by shouting and directing with our fingers from a distance without touching the dial, the wheel or the marker. This particular evening, in the dimly lit street pavement, we kneeled down near the game vendor's wheel to [play.We tried but failed to achieve our objective and lost two quarters. This was part of our plan so that the game vendor did not suspect foul play. In the third atempt we succeeded in geting the wheel to stop when the marker stopped exactly facing the specified number for the highest value award. We rejoiced, just snatched the big prize on display and deserted the scene of the act. We would not know what the vendor or other spectators thought. But we knew that we could skillfully use the small u-shaped magneticdevice that we had borrowed for a few minutes from the butter-vendor's shop and kept it hidden with in one of our palms to control the final movement of the wheel and the marker so that it stops slowly but exactly where we intended it to stop. We did not try this again because we had no intention to cheat the vendor again and run the risk of getting caught. A winning end to the schoolboy marathon!
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Mathematics of Love & Hate: My Unfolding Voyage 34
My encounters with Mathematics has all through been a relationship of love and hate. It was similar to my relationship with football. Football was all excitement about dribbling past opponent defenders, accepting passes and forwarding passes to potential scorers in advantageous position, about kicking or placing the ball into the nets of the opposition and about snatching balls away from the feet of the opposition players. But it was equally painful that would make one hate football: the bruises from the falls, the gasping for breadth after repeated runs down the flanks or the middle, the pains from the pulled muscles, the loss of heart from missed scoring chances or waste of sitters. Mathematics was like that. You solve problems to score wins and get the scores in examinations, you enjoy the thrill of newer concepts and their applications, the speed with which one solves the problems: you love them. But there are those silly mistakes and the concepts that are dull and abstract and laborious to deal with. You hate them.
Simple or advanced mathematics had both. Continuous introduction to newer concepts that are exciting and the work that was boring.. Form the use of operators of + , - , x , divisions, the three brackets and of to the dull additions involving counting as if one were a calculating machine in the sales desk and the memorizing of tables, from application of unitary system and fractions and decimals to using non-decimal systems of measurements of values, weights, areas and volumes (the use of Milli, centi, deci, deca, heca, kilo for liters, meters, and 100 paise to a Rupee came only when we are midway in the secondary school but the measurement of time still remained in units of 60, 60, 24, 7, 364 and 365 while the angles are still measured in units of fraction of 360 degrees: I do not know why they never think of introducing decimal metric system of 100 seconds a minute, 100 minutes an hour, 20 hours a day by adjusting the downwards the time counted as second, 20 hours a day, 10, 35 days a month and 10 months a year with adjustments made every fifth year as a leap year. while making the circle made of 100 degrees making 25 degrees of a bigger size than now as right angle). Then there was interesting concepts of decimals but the recurring decimal was a sore, the LCM and GCF ere boring but useful to a certain extent, the concept of number line with zero in the middle was so simple but mind boggling. The application of interest and compound interest was interesting as was the profit-loss sharing on capital invested, but why ask so much of multiplication of compounding interest for 5 years with half-yearly rest involving boring multiplications and additions until you learn logarithms at the higher secondary stage. Geometry involved boring drawings of interesting regular shapes of curves and areas. But unnecessary exercises with equilateral triangles and right angled triangles, Solid geometry further complicated things with repeated use of pi and radius though measuring volumes was interesting but conic sections were best left to those design engineers who would use them.
Trigonometry was fascinating and made you dream that you could calculate the height of mountains you would never be able to climb to their peaks. Algebra became increasingly interesting removing the need for arithmetic, the interesting formula that need to memorized but can be derived from first principle even if one forgets them unlike the complicated trigonometry formula that would take more time to derive from first principles.
Surd's in algebra was fine up to a point, so was factorization. Permutations and combinations opened the gates to imagination as did the solving of simultaneous equations. Coordinate geometry opened up another vistas of imagination, though became complicate as you started learning about hyperbolas, their axes and asymptotes.
I loved something and enjoyed, for some things I had to labor hard and yet cannot master them developing hate. Yet, I needed to score. From class X onwards, I had to learn every part of mathematics myself from the books and the class hours of teachers' instruction at the school. Despite my weaknesses in a number of areas of mathematics, I could maintain high scores at the school. In Class XI, there were two papers in Mathematics : one completely dealing with Algebra while the other covered all sorts of metrics - coordinate geometry, solid geometry and trigonometry. The last examination that I had appeared for in the school on the first paper was an eye opener for me. There were no more classes after the examination. After enjoying few days of leisure and games, I went to the school one afternoon to know the scores of any of the papers that the teachers might have evaluated. A few papers have been evaluated and the teachers told me the scores I secured. The mathematics teacher who was to evaluate the paper on Algebra greeted me well and told me sit down beside him along with some other students because he would start evaluating our papers in front of us. He searched out my paper and started evaluation. I was getting all correct - no mistakes in the sums I had solved page after page. The teacher was as excited as I were. He raced down to the last page and was thrilled that I got all sums right. He was convinced that I got the full marks: 100 out of 100. Then he started adding up the numbers in case if I had missed doing any sum I was supposed to do as a cross check. He added up and we were proceeding towards 100 but at the end it totaled up to 114 or so!. The he started checking with the question paper to find out which sum I have done in excess because the question paper gave options at various places: so you could chose to do one particular sum as an alternative to another one. By cross checking he found that I had indeed done more sums than were required, but I had missed doing a sum - a small one carrying two marks given the choices I had made. So ultimately he gave me 98, the highest in that paper in the school, This incident had told me that keep attempting all the sums in examinations if you were fast enough: you might get the best of the marks out of the alternatives that you would attempt given that you might get a few some wrong somewhere. It was a lesson that I would apply in future. But for the present the teacher was extremely happy with my performance, notwithstanding missing 2 marks. But I was unhappy that yet another time I had missed the opportunity of a perfect score by not being careful about choices of questions and getting carried away by the sums that I could solve easily and not rechecking the answer script before submission if I had any omission.
Classes for higher secondary had got over and now we were to prepare over the next two months at home before we appear for the Final Higher Secondary Board Examinations. The School Principal met my father and advised hum to arrange for special coaching to guide me for the final examinations. My father asked what I would like him to do. I was not inclined to give time for coaching. So, I had to tell him that I would manage myself. He still insisted. Then we settled for mathematics coaching for an hour a day twice a week for the two months so that I can sort out some problems that I might have not been able to manage. I did not want my father to spend further money for my studies at this stage and wanted all that I succeed in scoring in the Final Examination as my own credit or debit.
I knew if I had a Guru it would have helped but I did not know who could have been an ideal guru/ teacher to coach me. I preferred to depend on my own efforts, capabilities and luck. But I knew that I had keeping weaknesses in my mathematics unattended to.
Simple or advanced mathematics had both. Continuous introduction to newer concepts that are exciting and the work that was boring.. Form the use of operators of + , - , x , divisions, the three brackets and of to the dull additions involving counting as if one were a calculating machine in the sales desk and the memorizing of tables, from application of unitary system and fractions and decimals to using non-decimal systems of measurements of values, weights, areas and volumes (the use of Milli, centi, deci, deca, heca, kilo for liters, meters, and 100 paise to a Rupee came only when we are midway in the secondary school but the measurement of time still remained in units of 60, 60, 24, 7, 364 and 365 while the angles are still measured in units of fraction of 360 degrees: I do not know why they never think of introducing decimal metric system of 100 seconds a minute, 100 minutes an hour, 20 hours a day by adjusting the downwards the time counted as second, 20 hours a day, 10, 35 days a month and 10 months a year with adjustments made every fifth year as a leap year. while making the circle made of 100 degrees making 25 degrees of a bigger size than now as right angle). Then there was interesting concepts of decimals but the recurring decimal was a sore, the LCM and GCF ere boring but useful to a certain extent, the concept of number line with zero in the middle was so simple but mind boggling. The application of interest and compound interest was interesting as was the profit-loss sharing on capital invested, but why ask so much of multiplication of compounding interest for 5 years with half-yearly rest involving boring multiplications and additions until you learn logarithms at the higher secondary stage. Geometry involved boring drawings of interesting regular shapes of curves and areas. But unnecessary exercises with equilateral triangles and right angled triangles, Solid geometry further complicated things with repeated use of pi and radius though measuring volumes was interesting but conic sections were best left to those design engineers who would use them.
Trigonometry was fascinating and made you dream that you could calculate the height of mountains you would never be able to climb to their peaks. Algebra became increasingly interesting removing the need for arithmetic, the interesting formula that need to memorized but can be derived from first principle even if one forgets them unlike the complicated trigonometry formula that would take more time to derive from first principles.
Surd's in algebra was fine up to a point, so was factorization. Permutations and combinations opened the gates to imagination as did the solving of simultaneous equations. Coordinate geometry opened up another vistas of imagination, though became complicate as you started learning about hyperbolas, their axes and asymptotes.
I loved something and enjoyed, for some things I had to labor hard and yet cannot master them developing hate. Yet, I needed to score. From class X onwards, I had to learn every part of mathematics myself from the books and the class hours of teachers' instruction at the school. Despite my weaknesses in a number of areas of mathematics, I could maintain high scores at the school. In Class XI, there were two papers in Mathematics : one completely dealing with Algebra while the other covered all sorts of metrics - coordinate geometry, solid geometry and trigonometry. The last examination that I had appeared for in the school on the first paper was an eye opener for me. There were no more classes after the examination. After enjoying few days of leisure and games, I went to the school one afternoon to know the scores of any of the papers that the teachers might have evaluated. A few papers have been evaluated and the teachers told me the scores I secured. The mathematics teacher who was to evaluate the paper on Algebra greeted me well and told me sit down beside him along with some other students because he would start evaluating our papers in front of us. He searched out my paper and started evaluation. I was getting all correct - no mistakes in the sums I had solved page after page. The teacher was as excited as I were. He raced down to the last page and was thrilled that I got all sums right. He was convinced that I got the full marks: 100 out of 100. Then he started adding up the numbers in case if I had missed doing any sum I was supposed to do as a cross check. He added up and we were proceeding towards 100 but at the end it totaled up to 114 or so!. The he started checking with the question paper to find out which sum I have done in excess because the question paper gave options at various places: so you could chose to do one particular sum as an alternative to another one. By cross checking he found that I had indeed done more sums than were required, but I had missed doing a sum - a small one carrying two marks given the choices I had made. So ultimately he gave me 98, the highest in that paper in the school, This incident had told me that keep attempting all the sums in examinations if you were fast enough: you might get the best of the marks out of the alternatives that you would attempt given that you might get a few some wrong somewhere. It was a lesson that I would apply in future. But for the present the teacher was extremely happy with my performance, notwithstanding missing 2 marks. But I was unhappy that yet another time I had missed the opportunity of a perfect score by not being careful about choices of questions and getting carried away by the sums that I could solve easily and not rechecking the answer script before submission if I had any omission.
Classes for higher secondary had got over and now we were to prepare over the next two months at home before we appear for the Final Higher Secondary Board Examinations. The School Principal met my father and advised hum to arrange for special coaching to guide me for the final examinations. My father asked what I would like him to do. I was not inclined to give time for coaching. So, I had to tell him that I would manage myself. He still insisted. Then we settled for mathematics coaching for an hour a day twice a week for the two months so that I can sort out some problems that I might have not been able to manage. I did not want my father to spend further money for my studies at this stage and wanted all that I succeed in scoring in the Final Examination as my own credit or debit.
I knew if I had a Guru it would have helped but I did not know who could have been an ideal guru/ teacher to coach me. I preferred to depend on my own efforts, capabilities and luck. But I knew that I had keeping weaknesses in my mathematics unattended to.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Mid-teen Exciting Gambles: My Unfolding Voyage 33
Mid-teens’ Struggling Gambles
When my elder son was in class IX, he had asked me, “Dad, what do you like me to be?” I tried to guess the motive behind his question. I did not want to show preference for any particular future for my son: really I did not have any such preference: as a father, my only concern had always been that my sons lived a life that they could enjoy without worries and fear. I had replied to him, “Son, I would like your future to be one that makes you happy.” He had responded immediately, “Oh, no. Dad, I am trying to know whether you want me to be an engineer or medical doctor or an economist or business executive.” I had guessed it right: he had a problem of choice of future career. I had replied to him with utmost sincerity and honesty that I wanted him to develop capabilities and mental strength to remain happy under all circumstance irrespective of what career he would ultimately choose and land in. “Because, that is what my experience tells me. Any career that you may choose or land in future will be an experience of dealing with various positive and negative phases due to external environment not under your control. You must from now on develop the capability to remain happy irrespective of whatever happens. Build yourself for the best of career you may aspire for, give the best try that is possible but also be simultaneously prepared to face a future that you would have wished to avoid. The key to all this is developing an attitude of remaining happy irrespective of whatever circumstances that you may face in future. But, coming to the immediate concern you have, I advise you to keep your options open till you get into class XII. For the present target that you do well in Mathematics, English and General Science so that you can get into Higher Secondary in Class XI with all science subjects like Physics , Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics. If you do not like to study biology, you may forgo your option to study medicine. After you pass XII, you can go into engineering or you can study humanities with mathematics and economics. If you choose not to study engineering, you can major in Physics or Mathematics or Statistics or Chemistry or Economics. After you get you bachelor’s degree, you can decide to go for Administrative services or study Master in engineering or the subject of your major. Even after getting a master in Mathematics, you can study engineering or Economics or Statistics at the Ph d level or even go for a Management study or go for Government Administrative Services. Equip yourself with knowledge as much as possible before you get into a particular career. You have time to make your final choice: keep your options open as long as you can.” He would come back to me again on this issue later. Because, it is in the teens that one’s mind attracts the most questions about one self and the most difficult questions.
I had therefore had to reply to him more responsibly as a friend as he would be sixteen in a few years. My father used to say, “prapte too shoroshe borshe, putrang mitra badacharet” – translated from this Sanskrit to English: ‘Treat your son as a friend when he attains the age of sixteen’. But even if the father would behave with his son like a friend, son may not be willing to be a friend willing to share everything. The son would like to solve his questions himself by accessing more information and acquiring skills to sort out questions. The son might not even like to share some issues with the father just because some issues are entirely private personal issues one may not like to share with the same person.
When I was still in the school, my father had made me known that he wished that I go for Government India administrative service. I had told him that I did not like the idea, though I would keep the options open till I graduated with the Bachelor’s degree. My mind was still working on what career would make me happy and whether the process of getting into a particular career would make me happy. As I entered the middle phase of my teenage period, I could observe it was becoming an exciting game of struggle: a struggle between the sudden burst of exposure to and interest in ever expanding variety of aspects of life on the one hand and the pace of building capability - physically, emotionally and intellectually/ mentally, on the other, to fully explore, deal with, experiment and experience these aspects. It was not merely a question of career. It was rather a question of what interests me, what faculties I feel I have and how far I should be making efforts to cultivate my different faculties and interests. I wanted to be mix of many types of persons but with a difference. What combination of a romantic person, an athlete, a singer, a poet, an actor, a clown, a juggler, a magician, an educated person with knowledge in various disciplines, and etc should I try to be? And, how do I arrive at that decision?
The concerns were so many. Had I been able to get physically stronger and agile enough to deal with bullies? Had my looks become attractive enough to attract attention of others? Whose attention would I try to attract? What kind of hairstyles and clothes would make me distinctive and smart enough? How would I acquire these capabilities? Was something special happening within my body and how do I deal them – the beard, the moustache, the hair on the legs? But these were only questions related with the physical body.
What about the emotional tendencies and capabilities? Was fear getting control over my behavior or I needed to strengthen my boldness and courage? And, how would I do that? Was getting sentimental alright and to what extent? Do I want to share each one of my thoughts with someone or the other? Or, should I have some thoughts only to myself? How would I keep my secrets to myself? Should I be sharing some issues and thoughts with some others, and, what with whom? How would I decide what’s best for me and how would I develop these competencies I had thought I needed? Why was that most girls as they walked to and from school in their uniform skirts-blouses or saris looked secretively attractive to get friendly with but there would be nothing really to share with them as friends or acquaintances. Would it be better to ignore them till I grow somewhat older? How much should I get influenced by others’ views?
There were deep intellectual thoughts. Some were purely academic and hypothetical in nature. Could history have been different? What could have made be a citizen of India that had never been invaded and ruled by foreigners? Or, why had the Indians not invented the steam engine or electricity or the telephone or the air plane? What would have happened to my living conditions had my father not lost his property due to the partition of the country into India and Pakistan. What risk had I taken by not opting for Science stream in the higher secondary?
Then there were questions about pursuit of knowledge. How could I become more knowledgeable in physics or Chemistry or biology or engineering or philosophy or geography – the subjects that I would not have any further formal academic opportunity learn in the school or the college? I had to test various methods of trying to acquire further knowledge in these areas with out much success though. But I had to struggle and decide when to give up and why.
There were issues with regard to testing my skills and aptitudes in areas that I liked. Could I continue to develop my faculties as a composer of poems and stories or as a singer or as a juggler or magician or as an actor?
How far could I try doing this and when would I give up these one by one and for what reasons?
What would be the problem if I had chosen to be associated with the student wing of a political party?
I had to find answers to these questions mostly by myself. Rather, the answers had to spring form within my own self reacting to the external environment. Experiments, logical arguments and trade-off in the light of constraints within me and without solved these questions for me. I had been surprised that these got settled without the influence of others or unconsciously. The result or outcome was just a gamble. It was just a stochastic event that the outcome was what I happened to be with a mixture of different things in varying proportions and zero of some other things I was interested in. I had to give up active pursuit of many things as I went along: for example, athletics, cricket, football, all games that I could play – indoor or outdoor, composing poetry and stories, magic, singing, acting, science subjects, subjects like logic, philosophy, and politics had to stop as one of more of the following came in the way – lack of time, constraint of energy, scope for improvement through training, monetary investment involved, domination of poor quality of known persons in my locality pursuing the same interest, sudden decline in interest and realization that my natural ability in these areas were poor. In some areas of interest, activity had only to be temporarily suspended or kept low in the hope that these activities could be revived later. These included But in each of these I explored and experienced my interests and naturally abilities for quite a while but difficult to accommodate for constraint on time or money or energy or training/ coaching.
Now in retrospect, I am not surprised. These answers had sprung up largely independently with little or no influence of others but virtually due to the interaction of the properties that I had inherited or naturally cultivated without any choice. The struggle that I had experienced was essentially among the properties and tendencies that I had genetically inherited. The solving theme had been one of sustainability of capabilities, of interest, of independence. It seems to be now at this old age that the teen age struggle was to sort out inconsistencies among the properties that I genetically inherited as also between them and the external environment that these properties perceived that they were facing. Nothing that had happened then was my choice or decision: all answers had been the outcomes of the interaction of the properties or natural tendencies inherited genetically or otherwise.
Next: Playing Mathematics
When my elder son was in class IX, he had asked me, “Dad, what do you like me to be?” I tried to guess the motive behind his question. I did not want to show preference for any particular future for my son: really I did not have any such preference: as a father, my only concern had always been that my sons lived a life that they could enjoy without worries and fear. I had replied to him, “Son, I would like your future to be one that makes you happy.” He had responded immediately, “Oh, no. Dad, I am trying to know whether you want me to be an engineer or medical doctor or an economist or business executive.” I had guessed it right: he had a problem of choice of future career. I had replied to him with utmost sincerity and honesty that I wanted him to develop capabilities and mental strength to remain happy under all circumstance irrespective of what career he would ultimately choose and land in. “Because, that is what my experience tells me. Any career that you may choose or land in future will be an experience of dealing with various positive and negative phases due to external environment not under your control. You must from now on develop the capability to remain happy irrespective of whatever happens. Build yourself for the best of career you may aspire for, give the best try that is possible but also be simultaneously prepared to face a future that you would have wished to avoid. The key to all this is developing an attitude of remaining happy irrespective of whatever circumstances that you may face in future. But, coming to the immediate concern you have, I advise you to keep your options open till you get into class XII. For the present target that you do well in Mathematics, English and General Science so that you can get into Higher Secondary in Class XI with all science subjects like Physics , Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics. If you do not like to study biology, you may forgo your option to study medicine. After you pass XII, you can go into engineering or you can study humanities with mathematics and economics. If you choose not to study engineering, you can major in Physics or Mathematics or Statistics or Chemistry or Economics. After you get you bachelor’s degree, you can decide to go for Administrative services or study Master in engineering or the subject of your major. Even after getting a master in Mathematics, you can study engineering or Economics or Statistics at the Ph d level or even go for a Management study or go for Government Administrative Services. Equip yourself with knowledge as much as possible before you get into a particular career. You have time to make your final choice: keep your options open as long as you can.” He would come back to me again on this issue later. Because, it is in the teens that one’s mind attracts the most questions about one self and the most difficult questions.
I had therefore had to reply to him more responsibly as a friend as he would be sixteen in a few years. My father used to say, “prapte too shoroshe borshe, putrang mitra badacharet” – translated from this Sanskrit to English: ‘Treat your son as a friend when he attains the age of sixteen’. But even if the father would behave with his son like a friend, son may not be willing to be a friend willing to share everything. The son would like to solve his questions himself by accessing more information and acquiring skills to sort out questions. The son might not even like to share some issues with the father just because some issues are entirely private personal issues one may not like to share with the same person.
When I was still in the school, my father had made me known that he wished that I go for Government India administrative service. I had told him that I did not like the idea, though I would keep the options open till I graduated with the Bachelor’s degree. My mind was still working on what career would make me happy and whether the process of getting into a particular career would make me happy. As I entered the middle phase of my teenage period, I could observe it was becoming an exciting game of struggle: a struggle between the sudden burst of exposure to and interest in ever expanding variety of aspects of life on the one hand and the pace of building capability - physically, emotionally and intellectually/ mentally, on the other, to fully explore, deal with, experiment and experience these aspects. It was not merely a question of career. It was rather a question of what interests me, what faculties I feel I have and how far I should be making efforts to cultivate my different faculties and interests. I wanted to be mix of many types of persons but with a difference. What combination of a romantic person, an athlete, a singer, a poet, an actor, a clown, a juggler, a magician, an educated person with knowledge in various disciplines, and etc should I try to be? And, how do I arrive at that decision?
The concerns were so many. Had I been able to get physically stronger and agile enough to deal with bullies? Had my looks become attractive enough to attract attention of others? Whose attention would I try to attract? What kind of hairstyles and clothes would make me distinctive and smart enough? How would I acquire these capabilities? Was something special happening within my body and how do I deal them – the beard, the moustache, the hair on the legs? But these were only questions related with the physical body.
What about the emotional tendencies and capabilities? Was fear getting control over my behavior or I needed to strengthen my boldness and courage? And, how would I do that? Was getting sentimental alright and to what extent? Do I want to share each one of my thoughts with someone or the other? Or, should I have some thoughts only to myself? How would I keep my secrets to myself? Should I be sharing some issues and thoughts with some others, and, what with whom? How would I decide what’s best for me and how would I develop these competencies I had thought I needed? Why was that most girls as they walked to and from school in their uniform skirts-blouses or saris looked secretively attractive to get friendly with but there would be nothing really to share with them as friends or acquaintances. Would it be better to ignore them till I grow somewhat older? How much should I get influenced by others’ views?
There were deep intellectual thoughts. Some were purely academic and hypothetical in nature. Could history have been different? What could have made be a citizen of India that had never been invaded and ruled by foreigners? Or, why had the Indians not invented the steam engine or electricity or the telephone or the air plane? What would have happened to my living conditions had my father not lost his property due to the partition of the country into India and Pakistan. What risk had I taken by not opting for Science stream in the higher secondary?
Then there were questions about pursuit of knowledge. How could I become more knowledgeable in physics or Chemistry or biology or engineering or philosophy or geography – the subjects that I would not have any further formal academic opportunity learn in the school or the college? I had to test various methods of trying to acquire further knowledge in these areas with out much success though. But I had to struggle and decide when to give up and why.
There were issues with regard to testing my skills and aptitudes in areas that I liked. Could I continue to develop my faculties as a composer of poems and stories or as a singer or as a juggler or magician or as an actor?
How far could I try doing this and when would I give up these one by one and for what reasons?
What would be the problem if I had chosen to be associated with the student wing of a political party?
I had to find answers to these questions mostly by myself. Rather, the answers had to spring form within my own self reacting to the external environment. Experiments, logical arguments and trade-off in the light of constraints within me and without solved these questions for me. I had been surprised that these got settled without the influence of others or unconsciously. The result or outcome was just a gamble. It was just a stochastic event that the outcome was what I happened to be with a mixture of different things in varying proportions and zero of some other things I was interested in. I had to give up active pursuit of many things as I went along: for example, athletics, cricket, football, all games that I could play – indoor or outdoor, composing poetry and stories, magic, singing, acting, science subjects, subjects like logic, philosophy, and politics had to stop as one of more of the following came in the way – lack of time, constraint of energy, scope for improvement through training, monetary investment involved, domination of poor quality of known persons in my locality pursuing the same interest, sudden decline in interest and realization that my natural ability in these areas were poor. In some areas of interest, activity had only to be temporarily suspended or kept low in the hope that these activities could be revived later. These included But in each of these I explored and experienced my interests and naturally abilities for quite a while but difficult to accommodate for constraint on time or money or energy or training/ coaching.
Now in retrospect, I am not surprised. These answers had sprung up largely independently with little or no influence of others but virtually due to the interaction of the properties that I had inherited or naturally cultivated without any choice. The struggle that I had experienced was essentially among the properties and tendencies that I had genetically inherited. The solving theme had been one of sustainability of capabilities, of interest, of independence. It seems to be now at this old age that the teen age struggle was to sort out inconsistencies among the properties that I genetically inherited as also between them and the external environment that these properties perceived that they were facing. Nothing that had happened then was my choice or decision: all answers had been the outcomes of the interaction of the properties or natural tendencies inherited genetically or otherwise.
Next: Playing Mathematics
1962 Awakeining: My Unfolding Voyage 32
The Chinese Connection
Chen and I studied together for four years till I went to a new school in 1960. He had lost one of his parents early in childhood and was a resident in the school's hostel while I was a day-scholar. Chen had converted into Christianity. His manner and behavior was more decent than the most hostel-resident students of this Christian Missionary school. Hostel-inmates generally tended to bully the day-scholars, but Chen was different. He was modest at studies and was good at handicrafts. His handwriting was nice and we were very good friend. We never met after 1959. He was the only Indian Chinese friend I ever had.
I actually knew very little about the Chinese at that time. Except that Indians and the Chinese of the Peoples Republic of China were supposed to be brother after Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India declared so and we had seen Chou en Lai, the then Prime Minister of China visited India. At that time, I had not known about Chinese dishes like chilly chicken or fried rice or noodles. Father used to buy us shoes from Bata Shoe retail outlets but for his own use he used to buy shoes from the Chinebazar where there were many Chinese shoe shops. This was probably because at that time father used to were only the traditional Bengali dress of Dhoti-Punjabi and the particular design of shoes that goes with that dress was not probably manufactured by the Bata Shoe Company.
Later, in the higher secondary school, we learnt more about China from the history books. Initially, I had thought Chinese were Buddhist in general following the Buddhist saints whom Indian emperor Ashok had sent to various parts of Asia to spread the teachings of Gautama Buddha. Might be Buddhism did not spread beyond the land now we refer to as Tibet but China claims that to be part of South China.
I failed to understand however why the Communists in China would have taken such trouble in trying to get the religious Buddhists in Tibet converted into non-religious communists, or, why they would suspect that a Buddhist Tibet could be a strategic threat to China's military might. At least, while studying history during class IX-XI, I had felt that China had inherited great wisdom from Confucius and the some Chinese were wandering scholars. One of them, Huen Tsang or Xuanzang or Hsüan-tsang (600-664) of Guoshi, China had received classical Confucian education before converting to Buddhism. Troubled by discrepancies in the sacred texts, he left for India in 629 to study the religion at its source. He had traveled by foot across Central Asia and reached India in 633. After study at the famous Nalanda monastery, he returned home in 645 to a hero's welcome, bringing back hundreds of Buddhist texts, including some of the most important Mahayana scriptures, and spent the rest of his life translation of theses and established the Weishi (“Ideation Only”) school of Buddhism, which won many followers in Japan. The account of his travel and stay in India provided lot of material to construct Indian history for the relevant period. In the text books, I had learned something about Chinese emperors (and came to also know that Chengis Khan, the great killer of people, was a Mongolian and not a Chinese). How the great Chinese civilization weakened was not in covered in our text book but the Civil War, Communist revolution and Kuomintang along with the heroes like Mao Tse dong, Chiang Kai-sekh and Sun Yet Sen (not related to my family) did find some pages. That was about all that I had picked up before the Sino-Indian broke out in the early winter of 1962 with a few months to go for our final Higher Secondary Board Examinations.
The year 1962 was a bad year. West Bengal lost its Chief Minister (for 14 years since 1948), Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, the renowned MBBS, MRCP, FRCS physician whose patients got cured by just seeing him. West Bengal did not have another such an honest, caring, visionary chief minister who put up considerable struggle in the face of financial difficulties to become a physician, taught at medical schools, worked as a doctor in hospitals, privately practiced medicine life-long only to treat patients from poor families at nominal fee or for free everyday, fought for India’s independence, commanded respect among the senior Congress leaders before and after Independence. Despite his vision, West Bengal, the most industrialized State and economically prosperous State in India till 1960, moved downhill in economic and industrial activity within a few years.
Maybe the Chinese invasion of India soon after his death signified the bad days ahead for West Bengal. At that time, I as a school student, had thought that history was repeating itself: the Aryans invaded and settled in India (though currently there is different opinion about what the Aryans did bring to India), the Greeks invaded but went back, the Huns and Monogolians looted and went back, the Turks and Mughols invaded. Next, the British would come to rule India. India was again and again subjected the foreign rule. I had thought that this time it would be the turn of the Chinese. Chairman of Mao of China would be greatly impressed by the communist revolutionaries in Kolkata to dream that Kolkata would be, along with Havana, the gateways to the liberation of the proletariat across the World from capitalism and imperialism the World.
As the fighting continued along the Himalayas and the Chinese came rushing into Bomdi la, hardly a great military distance from Kolkata, in the compete darkness enforced in Kolkata in the evenings for fear of air strikes raids, I would shudder to think about approaching life of Indians as slaves again – this time not only of the Chinese but also their prodigy team - the mediocre brains of the largely half-educated, vocal chord and vocabulary strong, weak-to-compete, petty-bourgeoisie Indian communists. However, the war did not last long. The Chinese withdrew teaching the Indians a lesson: that Mao and Chou en Lai were much smarter than Nehru. It was morally depressing to any young Indian that Chinese did not merely outnumber us but were stronger than us to humiliate us. It was clear that the Indian National Congress Leaders were not yet competent enough to lead a Nation of India’s size. The Chinese connection to my life would thus be a great burden in future. Relieved with the unilateral withdrawal of the Chinese Dragon I would compose a parody and sing to my nephew : ‘Lal Tupi Chinara, dhoreche je Bayena, Bharater Mati chara R kichu Chi-na’ (The red cap-wearing Chinese have started demanding that nothing but Indian soil would satisfy them) after a hit song from a Bengali film for children (‘Lal Jhunti Kakatua…’) that was released around that time. But, I would see that the communists in West Bengal sensing that their time to liberate the proletariat from the clutches of capitalism had arrived. Soon, the communist struggle would make capital, capitalists, technology, industries and talent flee West Bengal. Our future as an economist to get employed had become bleak now. Generations of communists would arise in West Bengal with their religious belief based on the writings and lives of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Chairman Mao, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Min. Centuries of foreign slavery would make some Indians continue to borrow obsolete foreign ideas and ape foreigners: foreign invasion is no longer required to enslave Indians.
Chen and I studied together for four years till I went to a new school in 1960. He had lost one of his parents early in childhood and was a resident in the school's hostel while I was a day-scholar. Chen had converted into Christianity. His manner and behavior was more decent than the most hostel-resident students of this Christian Missionary school. Hostel-inmates generally tended to bully the day-scholars, but Chen was different. He was modest at studies and was good at handicrafts. His handwriting was nice and we were very good friend. We never met after 1959. He was the only Indian Chinese friend I ever had.
I actually knew very little about the Chinese at that time. Except that Indians and the Chinese of the Peoples Republic of China were supposed to be brother after Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India declared so and we had seen Chou en Lai, the then Prime Minister of China visited India. At that time, I had not known about Chinese dishes like chilly chicken or fried rice or noodles. Father used to buy us shoes from Bata Shoe retail outlets but for his own use he used to buy shoes from the Chinebazar where there were many Chinese shoe shops. This was probably because at that time father used to were only the traditional Bengali dress of Dhoti-Punjabi and the particular design of shoes that goes with that dress was not probably manufactured by the Bata Shoe Company.
Later, in the higher secondary school, we learnt more about China from the history books. Initially, I had thought Chinese were Buddhist in general following the Buddhist saints whom Indian emperor Ashok had sent to various parts of Asia to spread the teachings of Gautama Buddha. Might be Buddhism did not spread beyond the land now we refer to as Tibet but China claims that to be part of South China.
I failed to understand however why the Communists in China would have taken such trouble in trying to get the religious Buddhists in Tibet converted into non-religious communists, or, why they would suspect that a Buddhist Tibet could be a strategic threat to China's military might. At least, while studying history during class IX-XI, I had felt that China had inherited great wisdom from Confucius and the some Chinese were wandering scholars. One of them, Huen Tsang or Xuanzang or Hsüan-tsang (600-664) of Guoshi, China had received classical Confucian education before converting to Buddhism. Troubled by discrepancies in the sacred texts, he left for India in 629 to study the religion at its source. He had traveled by foot across Central Asia and reached India in 633. After study at the famous Nalanda monastery, he returned home in 645 to a hero's welcome, bringing back hundreds of Buddhist texts, including some of the most important Mahayana scriptures, and spent the rest of his life translation of theses and established the Weishi (“Ideation Only”) school of Buddhism, which won many followers in Japan. The account of his travel and stay in India provided lot of material to construct Indian history for the relevant period. In the text books, I had learned something about Chinese emperors (and came to also know that Chengis Khan, the great killer of people, was a Mongolian and not a Chinese). How the great Chinese civilization weakened was not in covered in our text book but the Civil War, Communist revolution and Kuomintang along with the heroes like Mao Tse dong, Chiang Kai-sekh and Sun Yet Sen (not related to my family) did find some pages. That was about all that I had picked up before the Sino-Indian broke out in the early winter of 1962 with a few months to go for our final Higher Secondary Board Examinations.
The year 1962 was a bad year. West Bengal lost its Chief Minister (for 14 years since 1948), Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, the renowned MBBS, MRCP, FRCS physician whose patients got cured by just seeing him. West Bengal did not have another such an honest, caring, visionary chief minister who put up considerable struggle in the face of financial difficulties to become a physician, taught at medical schools, worked as a doctor in hospitals, privately practiced medicine life-long only to treat patients from poor families at nominal fee or for free everyday, fought for India’s independence, commanded respect among the senior Congress leaders before and after Independence. Despite his vision, West Bengal, the most industrialized State and economically prosperous State in India till 1960, moved downhill in economic and industrial activity within a few years.
Maybe the Chinese invasion of India soon after his death signified the bad days ahead for West Bengal. At that time, I as a school student, had thought that history was repeating itself: the Aryans invaded and settled in India (though currently there is different opinion about what the Aryans did bring to India), the Greeks invaded but went back, the Huns and Monogolians looted and went back, the Turks and Mughols invaded. Next, the British would come to rule India. India was again and again subjected the foreign rule. I had thought that this time it would be the turn of the Chinese. Chairman of Mao of China would be greatly impressed by the communist revolutionaries in Kolkata to dream that Kolkata would be, along with Havana, the gateways to the liberation of the proletariat across the World from capitalism and imperialism the World.
As the fighting continued along the Himalayas and the Chinese came rushing into Bomdi la, hardly a great military distance from Kolkata, in the compete darkness enforced in Kolkata in the evenings for fear of air strikes raids, I would shudder to think about approaching life of Indians as slaves again – this time not only of the Chinese but also their prodigy team - the mediocre brains of the largely half-educated, vocal chord and vocabulary strong, weak-to-compete, petty-bourgeoisie Indian communists. However, the war did not last long. The Chinese withdrew teaching the Indians a lesson: that Mao and Chou en Lai were much smarter than Nehru. It was morally depressing to any young Indian that Chinese did not merely outnumber us but were stronger than us to humiliate us. It was clear that the Indian National Congress Leaders were not yet competent enough to lead a Nation of India’s size. The Chinese connection to my life would thus be a great burden in future. Relieved with the unilateral withdrawal of the Chinese Dragon I would compose a parody and sing to my nephew : ‘Lal Tupi Chinara, dhoreche je Bayena, Bharater Mati chara R kichu Chi-na’ (The red cap-wearing Chinese have started demanding that nothing but Indian soil would satisfy them) after a hit song from a Bengali film for children (‘Lal Jhunti Kakatua…’) that was released around that time. But, I would see that the communists in West Bengal sensing that their time to liberate the proletariat from the clutches of capitalism had arrived. Soon, the communist struggle would make capital, capitalists, technology, industries and talent flee West Bengal. Our future as an economist to get employed had become bleak now. Generations of communists would arise in West Bengal with their religious belief based on the writings and lives of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Chairman Mao, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Min. Centuries of foreign slavery would make some Indians continue to borrow obsolete foreign ideas and ape foreigners: foreign invasion is no longer required to enslave Indians.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Fun of Elementary Economics: My Unfolding Voyage 31
Fun of Elementary Economics
Economics was the subject of my choice. This is where I put in my best efforts. My objectives were clear. First, I needed to score good marks in the examinations. Second, I needed to understand each section or chapter in the textbooks to find out what economics was really about and how the knowledge of economics is applied in individual and social life. Third, I needed to have a good grasp of the subject at its most elementary level so that I have less difficulty in my future higher studies in economics at the college and university.
The first objective was difficult to satisfy irrespective of the time I would have put in to study. The first time I had given the economics examination in the school in class IX showed me the bleak future. I thought I had done reasonably well. But when one day the teacher, Mahendra Babu, came to the class with the answer scripts, he almost made me give up my dream of becoming an economist for a while. He called my name and as I stood up, he inquired what I had thought I would have scored in the examination. I replied that I had done not that bad: I could not say that I had done well because the way he had asked the question. He replied that I got only 15 out of 100. Then, he went on going through the answer scripts of other students telling us what each had scored. At the end, he came back to me again and told me that there was a slight mistake: he awarded me the highest mark of 51 out of 100 but had mixed up the digits. He then said with an appreciating smile and beaming eyes that he was happy with my answer script and that I could do much better. From his little drama in declaring the marks in the classroom, I knew that I had permanently own the heart of my first economics teacher with my very first game in economics. My dream of becoming an economist got restored but I knew that during the next two/ three years I would have to be contended with poor marks like 51: this teacher is not going to be generous in awarding marks. My forecast was correct: he awarded higher marks in the subsequent five or six examinations – the marks were in ascending order of Arithmetic Progression like 53, 55, 57, 60, 63 and 66.
Elementary economics was, of course, elementary. But studying this for three years did help in becoming comfortable with the terminology and the special analytical approach of economics, besides getting a good taste of the applied nature of the concepts and principles of economics from the point of view of individual and societal living under scarcity of resources.. It was great experience taking the text books written in English for the undergraduate students taking up economics minor in the college as supplementary reading to the higher secondary school economics textbook written in Bengali. It was an exciting feeling at the high school age to get introduced to such interesting concepts (both in Bengali and English) as the factors of production, organization of production, law of diminishing returns, marginal utility of consumption, law of demand, demand curve, consumer surplus, price elasticity of demand, market equilibrium, perfect competition, imperfect competition, national income, gross national product, money supply, quantity theory of money, inflation, growth of population and Malthusian theory of population, unemployment, scarcity and productivity of resources, rent, profits, wages, interest rates, taxation, Indian economic planning, capitalism, mixed economy, socialism, communism and so on. In those days, many educated adults did not have any idea of these concepts though most educated had some idea about electricity, sound waves, atoms, chemical reaction, oxygen, hydrogen, radio frequency, etc. Unlike today, daily news papers did not have a page or two on economy, banking and finance. There was a single economics daily published from Mumbai (Bombay) and there were no business magazine. Economics had not become a daily topic of discussion among the common people except the concern over inflation and unemployment among educated people in urban areas.
While studying in the higher secondary classes, I had a fairly good idea as what was being taught in Physics, Chemistry or Geography to my fellow class students, all though I was not studying these subjects. This was because elements of these subjects were taught in the schools from the beginning of the secondary stage. But my classmates who did not offer to take economics as a subject had virtually no idea of what was being taught in economics. At the school level very few students studied economics at that time. That there was a subject called economics was known to very few high school students. Even those who had heard about the subject generally thought that economics as some kind of social study on the economic conditions of the people in general, the poor people and rich people. I had thought then that it was indeed good because there would be few economists. But neither did I nor my classmates or people in general had any idea of what the economists do with their degree and what kind of jobs they would get. Naturally no one would study a subject that did not provide knowledge and skills for specialized jobs with high demand. Demand for scientists, engineers, technicians, mathematicians, physicists, chemists, geographers, poets, novelists, teachers in English, Bengali and Sanskrit would be growing in a developing country like India. But what kind of jobs would be there for philosophers and economics? The answer at that time was that an economics degree would fetch no specialist job. So, the impression was that economics must be a subject meant to be studied by those who are unlikely to do specialist jobs or any job at all.
I had lost touch with my former classmates of the English medium Irish missionary school where I had studied for four years from class V to class VII. When I was in class X, I happen to meet one of them while he was cycling away on the high road. He stopped over seeing me cycling across in the opposite direction. We discussed about other friends and what we were all doing at that time. He was surprised to know that I was studying economics. He exclaimed, “Economics is a subject for the girl folks to study. Boys do not study economics. What job would you do after getting an economics degree?” I was a bit amused then but less shocked. True, I had no idea as to where did job opportunities lie for economists. But I wanted to study economics for the sake of economics. Amd with my knowledge in English, Bengali and mathematics, I was confident that some job would be available to me five or six years down the line. As for economics as the choice of subject for girls, I was not sure that my friend was correct. In the neighbourhood or among our relatives, I had till then spotted any school going girl studying economics at that time. Even some 6 or 7 years later, the girl students did not constitute even 20% of the total number of students in my postgraduate economics class.
Some seniors in the neighborhood and among the relatives had the impression that the subject of economics was all about current information about markets for different goods. Or, rather a subject where students are required to pick up quantitative financial and economic information so that they can be a ready source of access to information on the price of commodity X now and a year ago, how much taxes government is collection, how much the government is spending, how many people are unemployed, what is interest rate the banks are offering on 5 year term deposits, what is the planning commission doing and the like. Often, they would try to test my knowledge in economics: they would ask me such things as what was the cost of renting out an apartment in my locality? Or, what was the ruling price of gold? They were extremely disappointed to find that I knew nothing about these even while studying economics. Some others were a bit advanced: they would try to know if I had figured out whether capitalism was bad and communism was good. Still others offered their comments that the study of economics was not very useful as was proved by the disastrous economic planning that Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, had introduced in 1951. Even more advanced were some executives in companies: they felt that Marx’s theory of exploitation of labor by the owners of factories was correct and expected students of economics to find out from the books a solution to this problem other than the solution of communist revolution. For them, the best economist of the country was Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India. And, some even thought that Mahatma Gandhi was probably one of the greatest economists the humanity has ever produced.
I was rather amused at the tendency of educated people without any background in economics trying to form their own opinion about what economics was all about and their expert comments on capitalism, communist revolution and economic planning. I could see their ignorance about the subject of economics as also their interest in being recognized as amateur economists of some standing. But I had many questions about applying whatever elementary economics lessons I was picking up in the school. My elder brother, already a post-graduate in commerce had studied economics as a minor at the under-graduate level. I would often ask him as to how I could apply some of these economic principles/ lessons in real-life markets and Indian economy. He would encourage me to ask such questions but always advised me that the application of economics was not an easy task as in the case of physical sciences. He advised me to hold on to my questions till the time I would complete my Masters degree in economics before really trying to apply economic theory. I had realized then that application of economics was not about working out some sums using formulas or expressing opinions on current economic events or future economic scenario using one of the hands and ignoring the other hand. He also game me the impression that the study of commerce and accountancy was part of the application of economics. I started looking at some commerce books: accountancy did not interest me much at that stage because I had no idea how businesses are managed at that time. The books on commercial business organization however appealed to me as being part of applied economics. I had to wait for quite a few years before I could get the opportunity to test application of economics.
But it was not all economics that we were taught in this course. We had to study politics and the Indian constitutions as well. Maybe, this was the tradition of economics being taught as political economy. We must have had to relate the study of economics to the context of the political thoughts and political framework in India where the State and the public sector had assumed the commanding heights in the economy in which the principles of market mechanism and of capitalistic macro-economic management by the Government would have to compete with State planning and control over markets. The background in political theories and the Indian constitution was useful at that time. One could clearly see that most politicians and their active supporters were bereft of any knowledge of these subjects at that time. Those who were learned among the politicians were well read in political history, Gandhi and Marx. With virtually no formal exposure to economics, accountancy and political theory, Indian political elite was trying to march ahead in economic development and seeking to be an important player in international politics. To my mind studying economics was all the more interesting at that time.
Economics was the subject of my choice. This is where I put in my best efforts. My objectives were clear. First, I needed to score good marks in the examinations. Second, I needed to understand each section or chapter in the textbooks to find out what economics was really about and how the knowledge of economics is applied in individual and social life. Third, I needed to have a good grasp of the subject at its most elementary level so that I have less difficulty in my future higher studies in economics at the college and university.
The first objective was difficult to satisfy irrespective of the time I would have put in to study. The first time I had given the economics examination in the school in class IX showed me the bleak future. I thought I had done reasonably well. But when one day the teacher, Mahendra Babu, came to the class with the answer scripts, he almost made me give up my dream of becoming an economist for a while. He called my name and as I stood up, he inquired what I had thought I would have scored in the examination. I replied that I had done not that bad: I could not say that I had done well because the way he had asked the question. He replied that I got only 15 out of 100. Then, he went on going through the answer scripts of other students telling us what each had scored. At the end, he came back to me again and told me that there was a slight mistake: he awarded me the highest mark of 51 out of 100 but had mixed up the digits. He then said with an appreciating smile and beaming eyes that he was happy with my answer script and that I could do much better. From his little drama in declaring the marks in the classroom, I knew that I had permanently own the heart of my first economics teacher with my very first game in economics. My dream of becoming an economist got restored but I knew that during the next two/ three years I would have to be contended with poor marks like 51: this teacher is not going to be generous in awarding marks. My forecast was correct: he awarded higher marks in the subsequent five or six examinations – the marks were in ascending order of Arithmetic Progression like 53, 55, 57, 60, 63 and 66.
Elementary economics was, of course, elementary. But studying this for three years did help in becoming comfortable with the terminology and the special analytical approach of economics, besides getting a good taste of the applied nature of the concepts and principles of economics from the point of view of individual and societal living under scarcity of resources.. It was great experience taking the text books written in English for the undergraduate students taking up economics minor in the college as supplementary reading to the higher secondary school economics textbook written in Bengali. It was an exciting feeling at the high school age to get introduced to such interesting concepts (both in Bengali and English) as the factors of production, organization of production, law of diminishing returns, marginal utility of consumption, law of demand, demand curve, consumer surplus, price elasticity of demand, market equilibrium, perfect competition, imperfect competition, national income, gross national product, money supply, quantity theory of money, inflation, growth of population and Malthusian theory of population, unemployment, scarcity and productivity of resources, rent, profits, wages, interest rates, taxation, Indian economic planning, capitalism, mixed economy, socialism, communism and so on. In those days, many educated adults did not have any idea of these concepts though most educated had some idea about electricity, sound waves, atoms, chemical reaction, oxygen, hydrogen, radio frequency, etc. Unlike today, daily news papers did not have a page or two on economy, banking and finance. There was a single economics daily published from Mumbai (Bombay) and there were no business magazine. Economics had not become a daily topic of discussion among the common people except the concern over inflation and unemployment among educated people in urban areas.
While studying in the higher secondary classes, I had a fairly good idea as what was being taught in Physics, Chemistry or Geography to my fellow class students, all though I was not studying these subjects. This was because elements of these subjects were taught in the schools from the beginning of the secondary stage. But my classmates who did not offer to take economics as a subject had virtually no idea of what was being taught in economics. At the school level very few students studied economics at that time. That there was a subject called economics was known to very few high school students. Even those who had heard about the subject generally thought that economics as some kind of social study on the economic conditions of the people in general, the poor people and rich people. I had thought then that it was indeed good because there would be few economists. But neither did I nor my classmates or people in general had any idea of what the economists do with their degree and what kind of jobs they would get. Naturally no one would study a subject that did not provide knowledge and skills for specialized jobs with high demand. Demand for scientists, engineers, technicians, mathematicians, physicists, chemists, geographers, poets, novelists, teachers in English, Bengali and Sanskrit would be growing in a developing country like India. But what kind of jobs would be there for philosophers and economics? The answer at that time was that an economics degree would fetch no specialist job. So, the impression was that economics must be a subject meant to be studied by those who are unlikely to do specialist jobs or any job at all.
I had lost touch with my former classmates of the English medium Irish missionary school where I had studied for four years from class V to class VII. When I was in class X, I happen to meet one of them while he was cycling away on the high road. He stopped over seeing me cycling across in the opposite direction. We discussed about other friends and what we were all doing at that time. He was surprised to know that I was studying economics. He exclaimed, “Economics is a subject for the girl folks to study. Boys do not study economics. What job would you do after getting an economics degree?” I was a bit amused then but less shocked. True, I had no idea as to where did job opportunities lie for economists. But I wanted to study economics for the sake of economics. Amd with my knowledge in English, Bengali and mathematics, I was confident that some job would be available to me five or six years down the line. As for economics as the choice of subject for girls, I was not sure that my friend was correct. In the neighbourhood or among our relatives, I had till then spotted any school going girl studying economics at that time. Even some 6 or 7 years later, the girl students did not constitute even 20% of the total number of students in my postgraduate economics class.
Some seniors in the neighborhood and among the relatives had the impression that the subject of economics was all about current information about markets for different goods. Or, rather a subject where students are required to pick up quantitative financial and economic information so that they can be a ready source of access to information on the price of commodity X now and a year ago, how much taxes government is collection, how much the government is spending, how many people are unemployed, what is interest rate the banks are offering on 5 year term deposits, what is the planning commission doing and the like. Often, they would try to test my knowledge in economics: they would ask me such things as what was the cost of renting out an apartment in my locality? Or, what was the ruling price of gold? They were extremely disappointed to find that I knew nothing about these even while studying economics. Some others were a bit advanced: they would try to know if I had figured out whether capitalism was bad and communism was good. Still others offered their comments that the study of economics was not very useful as was proved by the disastrous economic planning that Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, had introduced in 1951. Even more advanced were some executives in companies: they felt that Marx’s theory of exploitation of labor by the owners of factories was correct and expected students of economics to find out from the books a solution to this problem other than the solution of communist revolution. For them, the best economist of the country was Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India. And, some even thought that Mahatma Gandhi was probably one of the greatest economists the humanity has ever produced.
I was rather amused at the tendency of educated people without any background in economics trying to form their own opinion about what economics was all about and their expert comments on capitalism, communist revolution and economic planning. I could see their ignorance about the subject of economics as also their interest in being recognized as amateur economists of some standing. But I had many questions about applying whatever elementary economics lessons I was picking up in the school. My elder brother, already a post-graduate in commerce had studied economics as a minor at the under-graduate level. I would often ask him as to how I could apply some of these economic principles/ lessons in real-life markets and Indian economy. He would encourage me to ask such questions but always advised me that the application of economics was not an easy task as in the case of physical sciences. He advised me to hold on to my questions till the time I would complete my Masters degree in economics before really trying to apply economic theory. I had realized then that application of economics was not about working out some sums using formulas or expressing opinions on current economic events or future economic scenario using one of the hands and ignoring the other hand. He also game me the impression that the study of commerce and accountancy was part of the application of economics. I started looking at some commerce books: accountancy did not interest me much at that stage because I had no idea how businesses are managed at that time. The books on commercial business organization however appealed to me as being part of applied economics. I had to wait for quite a few years before I could get the opportunity to test application of economics.
But it was not all economics that we were taught in this course. We had to study politics and the Indian constitutions as well. Maybe, this was the tradition of economics being taught as political economy. We must have had to relate the study of economics to the context of the political thoughts and political framework in India where the State and the public sector had assumed the commanding heights in the economy in which the principles of market mechanism and of capitalistic macro-economic management by the Government would have to compete with State planning and control over markets. The background in political theories and the Indian constitution was useful at that time. One could clearly see that most politicians and their active supporters were bereft of any knowledge of these subjects at that time. Those who were learned among the politicians were well read in political history, Gandhi and Marx. With virtually no formal exposure to economics, accountancy and political theory, Indian political elite was trying to march ahead in economic development and seeking to be an important player in international politics. To my mind studying economics was all the more interesting at that time.
Forefather's Language: My Unfolding Voyage 30
Dealing with Mother Tongue
Time and again people debate two things in West Bengal: one, should the medium of instruction be the mother tongue, Bengal in the case of Bengalis and two whether it is necessary to teach English in schools. The same two issues were hotly debated even when we were in the schools. I had always thought that these issues were irrelevant: both issues are an attempt by vested interests to argue for or argue against.
The real issue to me is whether a student (or, his/ her parents) is given the choice of his medium of instruction and to learn or not learn English? To my mind, the student should have the freedom to choose what suits him and the learned educationists or the State has any right to force students either way. Yes, all schools and colleges may not offer all choices: but a student can enroll in any school and chose any language in which he would write his examinations as also choose English as a subject of study. If the school has difficulty in evaluating the student’s examinations answer scripts, the school can arrange to get these evaluated by teachers of another school: if necessary the student may be asked to pay an extra fee for this purpose. There are very easy solutions to such problems of different languages as medium of instruction and study of various languages. In this age of computers, internet and Open University system, it is all the more foolish for the State or the educationists to restrict the freedom of choice to the students. Somehow, the Bengalis seem to find it difficult not to ape their British Rulers in thinking that they know what is better for the students of India.
I had studied in Bengali medium for five years during primary and pre- primary stages with English as a medium of study, studied in English medium during the secondary stage of four years with Hindi as a second language, in Bengali medium for the three years of higher secondary with English as a subject of study and the entire university education from undergraduate to post graduate to Ph d studies entirely in English medium. I never felt that I have been any way handicapped compared with those Bengalis who had studied all through in Bengali medium and not studied English at all or not seriously at all. I did not feel that I have had any less enjoyable life than those: I wrote my love letters in Bengali, I wrote poems and essays in Bengali, I taught Economics and management in Bengali to those who had difficulty with English. There are/ were ministers in West Bengal who studied all through in Bengali language – they have not done any thing to make Bengalis in general to be proud with their intellectual capability. Most of the Bengalis at home and outside speak a language that is a mixture of English, Bengali and Hindi languages any way.
In any case, Bengali is not an easy subject to study for even the Bengalis. I had to study Bengali in my own way. The teachers who taught Bengali in the school, in any case, have no idea of teaching a language, except teaching grammar and literature. Because they were Bengalis they thought they could naturally teach Bengali to Bengali student. After the initiation in the childhood years, the habit of reading the books and periodicals (novels, story books, newspapers, essays), writing and composing and giving speeches made a person pick up the mother language (rather any language) better and better. The teachers needed to intervene intelligently to make that process both interesting and interactive. That demanded lot of time and skills in teaching. Bengali teachers generally do not acquire that if they teach Bengali language to Bengalis – but they develop if they teach English.
I do not remember most of the teachers who had taught me Bengali and what had they been teaching in Bengali in my three years of higher secondary education or the next two years at the college. Yes, I do remember two: one in the school, one of our Assistant headmasters who was a poet keeping us astounded with his oratory and recitation in Bengali and his explanations of what were in the minds of the poets whose Bengali poems we had to study, and the other at the college, a renowned Bengali poet whose discourse most students did not even care to hear in the class.
But I had to learn Bengali for at least reasons. First, I had to clear the examinations and get decent marks. Second, I needed to communicate effectively both verbal and written in my community: a workable knowledge and skill in Bengali was necessary for a Bengali to be termed as an educated person. Third, I should have the minimum skills in Bengali composition and find out my own style of writing or speaking to express as a poet of some sort my feeing and emotions whenever I might so desire. Fourth, the selection of various pieces of essays, poems, stories and novels by great authors that we had to study in Bengali did indeed expose us to various kinds of thoughts, knowledge, analytical and logical exercises, presentations, styles, rhythms and perspectives. But no teacher in Bengali would really be helpful in the pursuit of my above for above objectives. That was clear to me as a student in the higher secondary school. So, I had to depend on myself. And, I did it satisfactorily to achieve my objectives. The first objective was rather easy to realize. But, I had to put in more time to my books for realizing the last three objectives.
A sub-objective of the third objective was to develop capabilities of using Bengali language for written and verbal communication to attract the attention of girls. I had observed at that time that certain styles, construction of sentences, delivery, diction or hand-writing and the choice of words had impact on the ability to draw attention of the girls. Even some students who would not study subjects seriously were very particular about developing good handwriting, style of using the Bengali language and choice of appropriate words only to draw attention of the girls. This was a special felt-need for adolescent guys like me who were not handsome or brave enough to attract girls’ attention. And, no teacher could have catered to this specific need. Therefore, I had to put in efforts to develop my expertise in this special kind of application of communicating in Bengali: after all the girls around were only Bengalis. It is another matter that the Lady Luck did not give adequate opportunity. The school was only for the boys, a rare girl would be bold enough to share a few words on the streets or playgrounds in the neighborhood. In the college, there were very few girls around any way and not all were worthy of attracting attention. I had to wait for long to test the the extent of my skills in this special type of communication.
One aspect of study of Bengali in the higher secondary school was the exposure to the study of Bengali literature from its origin. This was very interesting but up to a point. It gave us a new perspective – later in life I could look at many non- Bengalis in the eastern India as close relatives because the origin of our languages at a point of time in history was the same. We could jointly claim the same poets as the father of our different languages – though those poets had written in a language that is completely different from the languages we call as ours now. History, if recorded, written and taught intelligently, could tie us to a common bond, rather than encouraging enmity. This part of history was fascinating and did not depend on dates, kings, oppression, invasion, battles, wars, crookedness and ideology. The subject was not very important to my passing the school examinations but it was attractive to read this history. Good that I put more time than was necessary on this subject. It would serve a purpose later.
The study of Bengali had an additional effect. Once I had tasted the writings of sample pieces of authors like Bankim chandra, Rabindranath and Saratchandra, I automatically developed an urge to read all the writings of these great authors. I had become naturally inclined to taste Bengali literature. While in the case of English, there was no automatic urge to study English literature. Once I had learnt a bit of the English language and could communicate in English effectively, the basic purpose had been achieved. But learning Bengali language through the composition of such great authors just flowed into a taste for Bengali literature. I could enjoy literature all the more because I would not be required to remember what I had read or give tests. I enjoyed reading the poems, the essays, the short stories, the novels and all that and this enjoyment did not depend on whether others enjoyed them or not. Much of this enjoyment ultimately translated in to imparting preferences for certain values in the core of my own personality and behavior. Most of the Bengali literature that I had exposed myself to I would fail to recall, but I would have been a different man had I not read the writings of Bankimchandra, Rabindranath and Saratchandra. And, through reading these I could get the sense of the story my father had narrated regarding the alternative descriptions of the same thing: A dry log of wood (Sushkam Kastom) was lying ahead or My vision was stuck on a life-less branch of a tree (Niraso Tarubaro). I wanted to acquire the capability of moving from alternative paths to description with ease and wherever possible blend them, even if my father would not have liked the idea.
The unfolding voyage that lied ahead would of course be impacted by the enjoyment of reading the above three authors outside the classroom and beyond the examinations. The food I ate when I was young had helped build and grow my physical body, the education imparted at the schools and colleges helped developed my mental faculties and enjoyment of racing through Bengali literature at home helped mould my preferences. While it might be somewhat difficult to recollect what I ate during my younger days and what lessons I picked up while being educated, it would almost impossible for me to recount what enjoyment Bengali literature provided me before I became addicted to my working life: the enjoyment was simply nourishing.
Time and again people debate two things in West Bengal: one, should the medium of instruction be the mother tongue, Bengal in the case of Bengalis and two whether it is necessary to teach English in schools. The same two issues were hotly debated even when we were in the schools. I had always thought that these issues were irrelevant: both issues are an attempt by vested interests to argue for or argue against.
The real issue to me is whether a student (or, his/ her parents) is given the choice of his medium of instruction and to learn or not learn English? To my mind, the student should have the freedom to choose what suits him and the learned educationists or the State has any right to force students either way. Yes, all schools and colleges may not offer all choices: but a student can enroll in any school and chose any language in which he would write his examinations as also choose English as a subject of study. If the school has difficulty in evaluating the student’s examinations answer scripts, the school can arrange to get these evaluated by teachers of another school: if necessary the student may be asked to pay an extra fee for this purpose. There are very easy solutions to such problems of different languages as medium of instruction and study of various languages. In this age of computers, internet and Open University system, it is all the more foolish for the State or the educationists to restrict the freedom of choice to the students. Somehow, the Bengalis seem to find it difficult not to ape their British Rulers in thinking that they know what is better for the students of India.
I had studied in Bengali medium for five years during primary and pre- primary stages with English as a medium of study, studied in English medium during the secondary stage of four years with Hindi as a second language, in Bengali medium for the three years of higher secondary with English as a subject of study and the entire university education from undergraduate to post graduate to Ph d studies entirely in English medium. I never felt that I have been any way handicapped compared with those Bengalis who had studied all through in Bengali medium and not studied English at all or not seriously at all. I did not feel that I have had any less enjoyable life than those: I wrote my love letters in Bengali, I wrote poems and essays in Bengali, I taught Economics and management in Bengali to those who had difficulty with English. There are/ were ministers in West Bengal who studied all through in Bengali language – they have not done any thing to make Bengalis in general to be proud with their intellectual capability. Most of the Bengalis at home and outside speak a language that is a mixture of English, Bengali and Hindi languages any way.
In any case, Bengali is not an easy subject to study for even the Bengalis. I had to study Bengali in my own way. The teachers who taught Bengali in the school, in any case, have no idea of teaching a language, except teaching grammar and literature. Because they were Bengalis they thought they could naturally teach Bengali to Bengali student. After the initiation in the childhood years, the habit of reading the books and periodicals (novels, story books, newspapers, essays), writing and composing and giving speeches made a person pick up the mother language (rather any language) better and better. The teachers needed to intervene intelligently to make that process both interesting and interactive. That demanded lot of time and skills in teaching. Bengali teachers generally do not acquire that if they teach Bengali language to Bengalis – but they develop if they teach English.
I do not remember most of the teachers who had taught me Bengali and what had they been teaching in Bengali in my three years of higher secondary education or the next two years at the college. Yes, I do remember two: one in the school, one of our Assistant headmasters who was a poet keeping us astounded with his oratory and recitation in Bengali and his explanations of what were in the minds of the poets whose Bengali poems we had to study, and the other at the college, a renowned Bengali poet whose discourse most students did not even care to hear in the class.
But I had to learn Bengali for at least reasons. First, I had to clear the examinations and get decent marks. Second, I needed to communicate effectively both verbal and written in my community: a workable knowledge and skill in Bengali was necessary for a Bengali to be termed as an educated person. Third, I should have the minimum skills in Bengali composition and find out my own style of writing or speaking to express as a poet of some sort my feeing and emotions whenever I might so desire. Fourth, the selection of various pieces of essays, poems, stories and novels by great authors that we had to study in Bengali did indeed expose us to various kinds of thoughts, knowledge, analytical and logical exercises, presentations, styles, rhythms and perspectives. But no teacher in Bengali would really be helpful in the pursuit of my above for above objectives. That was clear to me as a student in the higher secondary school. So, I had to depend on myself. And, I did it satisfactorily to achieve my objectives. The first objective was rather easy to realize. But, I had to put in more time to my books for realizing the last three objectives.
A sub-objective of the third objective was to develop capabilities of using Bengali language for written and verbal communication to attract the attention of girls. I had observed at that time that certain styles, construction of sentences, delivery, diction or hand-writing and the choice of words had impact on the ability to draw attention of the girls. Even some students who would not study subjects seriously were very particular about developing good handwriting, style of using the Bengali language and choice of appropriate words only to draw attention of the girls. This was a special felt-need for adolescent guys like me who were not handsome or brave enough to attract girls’ attention. And, no teacher could have catered to this specific need. Therefore, I had to put in efforts to develop my expertise in this special kind of application of communicating in Bengali: after all the girls around were only Bengalis. It is another matter that the Lady Luck did not give adequate opportunity. The school was only for the boys, a rare girl would be bold enough to share a few words on the streets or playgrounds in the neighborhood. In the college, there were very few girls around any way and not all were worthy of attracting attention. I had to wait for long to test the the extent of my skills in this special type of communication.
One aspect of study of Bengali in the higher secondary school was the exposure to the study of Bengali literature from its origin. This was very interesting but up to a point. It gave us a new perspective – later in life I could look at many non- Bengalis in the eastern India as close relatives because the origin of our languages at a point of time in history was the same. We could jointly claim the same poets as the father of our different languages – though those poets had written in a language that is completely different from the languages we call as ours now. History, if recorded, written and taught intelligently, could tie us to a common bond, rather than encouraging enmity. This part of history was fascinating and did not depend on dates, kings, oppression, invasion, battles, wars, crookedness and ideology. The subject was not very important to my passing the school examinations but it was attractive to read this history. Good that I put more time than was necessary on this subject. It would serve a purpose later.
The study of Bengali had an additional effect. Once I had tasted the writings of sample pieces of authors like Bankim chandra, Rabindranath and Saratchandra, I automatically developed an urge to read all the writings of these great authors. I had become naturally inclined to taste Bengali literature. While in the case of English, there was no automatic urge to study English literature. Once I had learnt a bit of the English language and could communicate in English effectively, the basic purpose had been achieved. But learning Bengali language through the composition of such great authors just flowed into a taste for Bengali literature. I could enjoy literature all the more because I would not be required to remember what I had read or give tests. I enjoyed reading the poems, the essays, the short stories, the novels and all that and this enjoyment did not depend on whether others enjoyed them or not. Much of this enjoyment ultimately translated in to imparting preferences for certain values in the core of my own personality and behavior. Most of the Bengali literature that I had exposed myself to I would fail to recall, but I would have been a different man had I not read the writings of Bankimchandra, Rabindranath and Saratchandra. And, through reading these I could get the sense of the story my father had narrated regarding the alternative descriptions of the same thing: A dry log of wood (Sushkam Kastom) was lying ahead or My vision was stuck on a life-less branch of a tree (Niraso Tarubaro). I wanted to acquire the capability of moving from alternative paths to description with ease and wherever possible blend them, even if my father would not have liked the idea.
The unfolding voyage that lied ahead would of course be impacted by the enjoyment of reading the above three authors outside the classroom and beyond the examinations. The food I ate when I was young had helped build and grow my physical body, the education imparted at the schools and colleges helped developed my mental faculties and enjoyment of racing through Bengali literature at home helped mould my preferences. While it might be somewhat difficult to recollect what I ate during my younger days and what lessons I picked up while being educated, it would almost impossible for me to recount what enjoyment Bengali literature provided me before I became addicted to my working life: the enjoyment was simply nourishing.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Seniority Show-off: My Unfolding Voyage 29
Showing off Seniority
When we were in the higher secondary school, a communist revolution was about to change our lives in West Bengal. That was but only in the air: the revolution did happen in the air and it became calm when the revolutionary air swept in, through democratic elections, the communists of a variety to power to the rule the State.
In the early sixties, the State was still the dominating industrial state in India and therefore the most congenial to the business of ‘petty bourgeoisie’ led struggle for higher wages, lower working hours and lower labor productivity of industrial labor so that Marxian exploitation of the capitalist of the power of industrial labor could be progressively reduced. That was the beginning of de-industrialization of West Bengal, aided by the Govt. of India’s Five Year Plans and balanced regional development policy that would throttle the comparative industrial advantage of West Bengal and improve the advantage of Maharashtra and Gujarat while ushering in a deep industrial recession in engineering industries concentrated in West Bengal. That would make the business of ushering communist revolution in West Bengal more attractive with rising numbers joining the unemployed labor force to support. Equally important, the American imperialism was fighting a losing battle in Vietnam and Vietnam struggle the role model for West Bengal’s ‘petty bourgeoisie” upper Hindi caste communist leaders with generally poor educational achievements. Nehru had in the previous decade spoiled the image of socialist revolution in India with his policy of submissive friendship with Russia and China. The young communist recruits were dreaming of ending all injustice soon by establishing anti-American and anti-Nehruvian Socialism in West Bengal. The student’s wing of the communist party was active in protests against the American aggression in Vietnam and Nehru’s Congress Government in the country as well as the State of West Bengal. The Chinese with their aggression had exposed the balloon of mighty India he had been trying to fly across the World. Strikes now spread easily from the factories and offices to educational institutions. By not attending classes, the young communists thought that they could help defeat the Americans in Vietnam: their leaders saw in this an opportunity to get more young recruits. Subhas Chakrabarty, after demonstrating his not-so-great achievements and talents in education, was at the time cultivating his organizing talents by leading youth and student movements against any thing that can be linked to Government oppression and American domination. One day, he led his local party juniors to various schools to ask the students to come out of the class-rooms, mid-way during the school hours, to show solidarity with the fighting Vietnamese against the imperialist, capitalist American military invaders. I am certain the Vietnamese cared little for that solidarity from India.
But the school students here cared little about either the Americans or the Vietnamese but would enjoy an early end to school on some pretext or others. Most of the students would go out from the school gladly back home and teachers would not say anything as to be against Americans was a social fashion in West Bengal since long when the Indians realized that the British which ruled India were not as mighty or as rich as the Americans were. They liked the British who gave them English, English Literature, general western education and nice cities: the British despised the Americans: their slaves learned to do the same.
Of the somewhat risky applications of my Narodian guidance to my classmates, one related to that socio-political environment.The first opportunity had come thanks to the Americans, the Vietnamese and the West Bengal communists. It was not clear to us in those days of closed Indian system what was going on elsewhere in the World, least of all in Vietnam. All that we knew was that the few great economic and military powers in the World were only two: USA and USSR. UK, France and the part of Germany that was not under the control of the Russians were technologically and economically advance countries alright but not super powers. Japan was the rising economic power with strong ties with the US while China with one fifth of the World population under the slavery of Mao’s communist party was struggling to become powerful through USSR help and trying to bully India. Vietnam was not a country worth naming except that the local communists were considering them as Great heroes fighting a bitter battle with the imperialist American military forces in Vietnam. After taking oath in the name of Marx, our communists would take the names of Lenin and Stalin as God’s representatives and Ho Chi Min as a smaller communist god (Mao was yet to gain such a status yet, but will soon win the hearts of new generation communists in the late sixties led by young comrades who could not rise fast in the hierarchy in the Communist Party of India Marxists – called CPM in short). So, at that time, the CPM, led by Harekrishna Konar and Jyoti Basu were building up CPM in West Bengal with great success and they needed to recruit young men who could wean the school and college students to the CPM ideology and join CPM’s political agitation on the streets, schools, factories and offices to stop exploitation of the labor and peasant classes by the industrialists, big land owners and elitist bourgeoisie Many of the young men who would rise in the hierarchy of CPM later and get rewarded for their struggle during the late fifties and the sixties by getting ministries when CPM would come to power in the seventies in West Bengal, were engaged in investing their time and energy in building their political career when we were in the schools and colleges. Not that they had any idea of the material comfort pay-off they would reap later as Ministers: but they had no other alternative to becoming Jyoti Basu’s followers. They had very little chance of winning in any field whether in higher education or government service or sports; for various reasons like lack of talent, capability, minimum economic conditions and etc., they would not have been able to succeed in these highly competitive areas. Choosing to be with CPM did not require talent or skill or investment of capital: rather the alternative to not joining the CPM those days was for such persons idling away productive time of the youth. One of them was Subhas Chakrabarty, who had been a West Bengal Minister for three decades and a very popular leader among various sections of the society from slum dwellers to middle class white collar workers, from blue collar workers to small businessmen, to rogues, goons and mafia to medical professionals (doctors), from playwrights, dramatists and singers to sportsmen, footballers, cricketers and athletes, from rickshaw-pullers, to bus drivers and conductors, from construction firm owners to government contractors and small hotel owners, and so on. But most of these sections of the society he could cultivate only after becoming minister with powers to distribute favors: he rose in the CPM hierarchy initially as a student leader and little later as trade union leader – a leader whose basic task was to organize strikes. Vietnam and Ho Chi Min were the two imported novelties to attract students along with the traditional Marxist theory of surplus value exploitation by the capitalists. Go on strike so that the surplus value appropriated by the capitalist gets reduced. Go on strike to show solidarity with the great Vietnamese fighting the mighty American imperialists and enjoy extra days of school/ college off-days. That was the theory that sold heavily in the 1960s. That was the way to become a student leader even if your performance as a student was hopelessly poor.
On one sunny day of the revolution, Subhas Chakrabarty with his followers, maybe 15 – 20, were moving from school to school and college to college to ask students to come out from the classes as a mark of protest against the American military forces raging the soil of Vietnam and then go home early or enjoy a matinee film show in the local theater. Most students would readily come out of the school and colleges: they teachers would say nothing: another day of leisure for the teachers, besides showing sympathy to the Vietnamese heroes. The American forces had to withdraw ultimately from Vietnam as the American households did not like the idea of continuing loss of US soldiers killed and kidnapped by the Vietnamese guerillas for such a prolonged period. Thus the Vietnamese won the war by their sheer determination. Part of the credit must go the people of West Bengal because they have boycotted classes and agitated on the streets and before the American Consulate offices to demonstrate their solidarity with the Vietnamese.
Most of the boys in our school were just waiting for Subhas Chakrabarty’s team of 20 to arrive at the school gate and ran out of the school’s main 4 storied sprawling building as soon as possible.
On that day, an opportunity had come for the senior students to show their superiority. Our class room was in the first floor of a separate two storied school administrative office building. The economics teacher, Mahendra Babu, asked us whether we would like to go out. My Narodian suggestion to my class of 20 students was that we need not join the strike as the class in Economics was important to us than Vietnam. Moreover, the CPM student union leader was not a worthy student whose call needed any attention by us – the senior students of the school. We are not to act like cattle following some shepherd boy of unknown educational credentials. Most of us agreed not to join the strike call. The visiting striking party of Subhas Chakraborty did not have time even to notice that a single class has stayed back in the school. They had to go to other school and colleges to get the students out of the class. But we did enjoy our share of the holiday. The teachers and the staff did not want to continue to attend the school for the full day with just one class of 20 students. They let us off soon after noon. We did not have to join a strike that meant nothing for us and yet we got our share of half a day off from school. How I wish we had joined that student strike on that day: we could have claimed that we had contributed to the success of the Vietnamese in defeating the American military.
Probably, the Americans and the Vietnamese got to know off our disinterest in their war: the Americans would soon withdraw and the Vietnamese would later become good friends and beneficial trading partners of USA.
While going back from the school on that day, some of us were worried: Subhas Chakrabarty’s CPM would have gotten angry with us when the would have come to know of our not joining the strike and might beat us up as we return home through the road on which CPM’s Dum Dum Headquarters (then thached and now a mulistried, building) was located. But nothing would happen to us. Those days were different: political parties then wanted to recruit more supporters with infinite patience and never thought of bullying or repressing those who remained neutral to political parties. In the early sixties, no political party could afford to threaten, let alone beat up, school students returning home: that would have cost them heavily in terms of public support. Political parties in those days were not expected to be violent: violence was the prerogative of only the criminals and the police beating up agitating supporters of the opposition parties as a measure of protecting law and order. Political parties with violent workers or criminals were not accepted by the general public.
The things would however soon change when political parties would actively cultivate violence and terrorism. CPM would have to fight the violent army of the Naxalites and of the criminals and musclemen who got shelter in the Congress Party. Over the years CPM would turn itself into a party that uses violence to command people’s respect and obedience and would beat all other parties in this area of performance by miles.
Another opportunity to flex muscle of seniority however brought us embarrassment: we did not turn out to be as smart as we had thought of ourselves. smart. The person responsible for ringing the school bell at the beginning of the school, at the end of each class period and at the end of the school one day made a mistake for unknown reasons: he rang the long duration bell that marked the end of the school hours around 3 PM rather than 5PM. We suspected that there was some mistake. But as senior students we thought we could interpret the bell as the end of the school for the day. Before the next period teacher could come to the class, we quietly left the school unnoticed. The next morning, the school principal came to our class as soon as the prayer was over. He was furious and demanded to know from us the reason of en masse quitting of classes two hours earlier than normal.
We had our reply ready: it was because we had heard the final bell ring at 3PM. He asked us since 3PM was not the usual closing time, why had we not checked with the school’s office if indeed that had been the final bell to announce the end of the day? We replied that such a question did not occur to us. The he gave a long lecture, accused us of being “Gyan- Papis” (those who commit sins with full knowledge of what the sin was” and awarded a punishment. For the rest of the day we had to attend the classes standing up on our seats. Fortunately, our class room was in a separate building in the corner of the top floor: no other student in the school would have to pass by our classroom.
We had thought then that the Principal had been correct in his assessment but had not sporting enough! Life ahead would show that seniors are often not sporting enough.
When we were in the higher secondary school, a communist revolution was about to change our lives in West Bengal. That was but only in the air: the revolution did happen in the air and it became calm when the revolutionary air swept in, through democratic elections, the communists of a variety to power to the rule the State.
In the early sixties, the State was still the dominating industrial state in India and therefore the most congenial to the business of ‘petty bourgeoisie’ led struggle for higher wages, lower working hours and lower labor productivity of industrial labor so that Marxian exploitation of the capitalist of the power of industrial labor could be progressively reduced. That was the beginning of de-industrialization of West Bengal, aided by the Govt. of India’s Five Year Plans and balanced regional development policy that would throttle the comparative industrial advantage of West Bengal and improve the advantage of Maharashtra and Gujarat while ushering in a deep industrial recession in engineering industries concentrated in West Bengal. That would make the business of ushering communist revolution in West Bengal more attractive with rising numbers joining the unemployed labor force to support. Equally important, the American imperialism was fighting a losing battle in Vietnam and Vietnam struggle the role model for West Bengal’s ‘petty bourgeoisie” upper Hindi caste communist leaders with generally poor educational achievements. Nehru had in the previous decade spoiled the image of socialist revolution in India with his policy of submissive friendship with Russia and China. The young communist recruits were dreaming of ending all injustice soon by establishing anti-American and anti-Nehruvian Socialism in West Bengal. The student’s wing of the communist party was active in protests against the American aggression in Vietnam and Nehru’s Congress Government in the country as well as the State of West Bengal. The Chinese with their aggression had exposed the balloon of mighty India he had been trying to fly across the World. Strikes now spread easily from the factories and offices to educational institutions. By not attending classes, the young communists thought that they could help defeat the Americans in Vietnam: their leaders saw in this an opportunity to get more young recruits. Subhas Chakrabarty, after demonstrating his not-so-great achievements and talents in education, was at the time cultivating his organizing talents by leading youth and student movements against any thing that can be linked to Government oppression and American domination. One day, he led his local party juniors to various schools to ask the students to come out of the class-rooms, mid-way during the school hours, to show solidarity with the fighting Vietnamese against the imperialist, capitalist American military invaders. I am certain the Vietnamese cared little for that solidarity from India.
But the school students here cared little about either the Americans or the Vietnamese but would enjoy an early end to school on some pretext or others. Most of the students would go out from the school gladly back home and teachers would not say anything as to be against Americans was a social fashion in West Bengal since long when the Indians realized that the British which ruled India were not as mighty or as rich as the Americans were. They liked the British who gave them English, English Literature, general western education and nice cities: the British despised the Americans: their slaves learned to do the same.
Of the somewhat risky applications of my Narodian guidance to my classmates, one related to that socio-political environment.The first opportunity had come thanks to the Americans, the Vietnamese and the West Bengal communists. It was not clear to us in those days of closed Indian system what was going on elsewhere in the World, least of all in Vietnam. All that we knew was that the few great economic and military powers in the World were only two: USA and USSR. UK, France and the part of Germany that was not under the control of the Russians were technologically and economically advance countries alright but not super powers. Japan was the rising economic power with strong ties with the US while China with one fifth of the World population under the slavery of Mao’s communist party was struggling to become powerful through USSR help and trying to bully India. Vietnam was not a country worth naming except that the local communists were considering them as Great heroes fighting a bitter battle with the imperialist American military forces in Vietnam. After taking oath in the name of Marx, our communists would take the names of Lenin and Stalin as God’s representatives and Ho Chi Min as a smaller communist god (Mao was yet to gain such a status yet, but will soon win the hearts of new generation communists in the late sixties led by young comrades who could not rise fast in the hierarchy in the Communist Party of India Marxists – called CPM in short). So, at that time, the CPM, led by Harekrishna Konar and Jyoti Basu were building up CPM in West Bengal with great success and they needed to recruit young men who could wean the school and college students to the CPM ideology and join CPM’s political agitation on the streets, schools, factories and offices to stop exploitation of the labor and peasant classes by the industrialists, big land owners and elitist bourgeoisie Many of the young men who would rise in the hierarchy of CPM later and get rewarded for their struggle during the late fifties and the sixties by getting ministries when CPM would come to power in the seventies in West Bengal, were engaged in investing their time and energy in building their political career when we were in the schools and colleges. Not that they had any idea of the material comfort pay-off they would reap later as Ministers: but they had no other alternative to becoming Jyoti Basu’s followers. They had very little chance of winning in any field whether in higher education or government service or sports; for various reasons like lack of talent, capability, minimum economic conditions and etc., they would not have been able to succeed in these highly competitive areas. Choosing to be with CPM did not require talent or skill or investment of capital: rather the alternative to not joining the CPM those days was for such persons idling away productive time of the youth. One of them was Subhas Chakrabarty, who had been a West Bengal Minister for three decades and a very popular leader among various sections of the society from slum dwellers to middle class white collar workers, from blue collar workers to small businessmen, to rogues, goons and mafia to medical professionals (doctors), from playwrights, dramatists and singers to sportsmen, footballers, cricketers and athletes, from rickshaw-pullers, to bus drivers and conductors, from construction firm owners to government contractors and small hotel owners, and so on. But most of these sections of the society he could cultivate only after becoming minister with powers to distribute favors: he rose in the CPM hierarchy initially as a student leader and little later as trade union leader – a leader whose basic task was to organize strikes. Vietnam and Ho Chi Min were the two imported novelties to attract students along with the traditional Marxist theory of surplus value exploitation by the capitalists. Go on strike so that the surplus value appropriated by the capitalist gets reduced. Go on strike to show solidarity with the great Vietnamese fighting the mighty American imperialists and enjoy extra days of school/ college off-days. That was the theory that sold heavily in the 1960s. That was the way to become a student leader even if your performance as a student was hopelessly poor.
On one sunny day of the revolution, Subhas Chakrabarty with his followers, maybe 15 – 20, were moving from school to school and college to college to ask students to come out from the classes as a mark of protest against the American military forces raging the soil of Vietnam and then go home early or enjoy a matinee film show in the local theater. Most students would readily come out of the school and colleges: they teachers would say nothing: another day of leisure for the teachers, besides showing sympathy to the Vietnamese heroes. The American forces had to withdraw ultimately from Vietnam as the American households did not like the idea of continuing loss of US soldiers killed and kidnapped by the Vietnamese guerillas for such a prolonged period. Thus the Vietnamese won the war by their sheer determination. Part of the credit must go the people of West Bengal because they have boycotted classes and agitated on the streets and before the American Consulate offices to demonstrate their solidarity with the Vietnamese.
Most of the boys in our school were just waiting for Subhas Chakrabarty’s team of 20 to arrive at the school gate and ran out of the school’s main 4 storied sprawling building as soon as possible.
On that day, an opportunity had come for the senior students to show their superiority. Our class room was in the first floor of a separate two storied school administrative office building. The economics teacher, Mahendra Babu, asked us whether we would like to go out. My Narodian suggestion to my class of 20 students was that we need not join the strike as the class in Economics was important to us than Vietnam. Moreover, the CPM student union leader was not a worthy student whose call needed any attention by us – the senior students of the school. We are not to act like cattle following some shepherd boy of unknown educational credentials. Most of us agreed not to join the strike call. The visiting striking party of Subhas Chakraborty did not have time even to notice that a single class has stayed back in the school. They had to go to other school and colleges to get the students out of the class. But we did enjoy our share of the holiday. The teachers and the staff did not want to continue to attend the school for the full day with just one class of 20 students. They let us off soon after noon. We did not have to join a strike that meant nothing for us and yet we got our share of half a day off from school. How I wish we had joined that student strike on that day: we could have claimed that we had contributed to the success of the Vietnamese in defeating the American military.
Probably, the Americans and the Vietnamese got to know off our disinterest in their war: the Americans would soon withdraw and the Vietnamese would later become good friends and beneficial trading partners of USA.
While going back from the school on that day, some of us were worried: Subhas Chakrabarty’s CPM would have gotten angry with us when the would have come to know of our not joining the strike and might beat us up as we return home through the road on which CPM’s Dum Dum Headquarters (then thached and now a mulistried, building) was located. But nothing would happen to us. Those days were different: political parties then wanted to recruit more supporters with infinite patience and never thought of bullying or repressing those who remained neutral to political parties. In the early sixties, no political party could afford to threaten, let alone beat up, school students returning home: that would have cost them heavily in terms of public support. Political parties in those days were not expected to be violent: violence was the prerogative of only the criminals and the police beating up agitating supporters of the opposition parties as a measure of protecting law and order. Political parties with violent workers or criminals were not accepted by the general public.
The things would however soon change when political parties would actively cultivate violence and terrorism. CPM would have to fight the violent army of the Naxalites and of the criminals and musclemen who got shelter in the Congress Party. Over the years CPM would turn itself into a party that uses violence to command people’s respect and obedience and would beat all other parties in this area of performance by miles.
Another opportunity to flex muscle of seniority however brought us embarrassment: we did not turn out to be as smart as we had thought of ourselves. smart. The person responsible for ringing the school bell at the beginning of the school, at the end of each class period and at the end of the school one day made a mistake for unknown reasons: he rang the long duration bell that marked the end of the school hours around 3 PM rather than 5PM. We suspected that there was some mistake. But as senior students we thought we could interpret the bell as the end of the school for the day. Before the next period teacher could come to the class, we quietly left the school unnoticed. The next morning, the school principal came to our class as soon as the prayer was over. He was furious and demanded to know from us the reason of en masse quitting of classes two hours earlier than normal.
We had our reply ready: it was because we had heard the final bell ring at 3PM. He asked us since 3PM was not the usual closing time, why had we not checked with the school’s office if indeed that had been the final bell to announce the end of the day? We replied that such a question did not occur to us. The he gave a long lecture, accused us of being “Gyan- Papis” (those who commit sins with full knowledge of what the sin was” and awarded a punishment. For the rest of the day we had to attend the classes standing up on our seats. Fortunately, our class room was in a separate building in the corner of the top floor: no other student in the school would have to pass by our classroom.
We had thought then that the Principal had been correct in his assessment but had not sporting enough! Life ahead would show that seniors are often not sporting enough.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Class X Strategy: My Unfolding Voyage 28
Class Ten Strategy:
Leadership role consistent with seniority was however not a priority. The firstt priority was to deal with the subjects of study and how to clear the examinations: I had been rather focused on getting the best marks in the two more subjects that would not remain in Class Eleven: these marks would appear in our Higher Secondary Examination score sheets but would not be counted for aggregate marks.
The first was Social Studies: at that time what we thought was a mixture of social history, economic history and social geography. We had a relatively easy reading textbook giving a new way of looking at people/ societies in the past and in different areas in the present. There was a chapter on the socio-economic conditions during the Mogul period. In the final Class X examinations, there was a question on the economic conditions of the poor people during Emperor Akbar’s reign. I had skipped that question tried other questions: five were required to be attempted out of seven questions. And, to my surprise, I found one of well-known weak students in the class continuing to write pages after pages answering the social studies in questions. We felt this classmate must have found great interest in social studies and prepared himself well for this subject. I thought that I might not be able to score the highest marks. When later the teacher announced the results of the Social Studies examination, that classmate was declared as having failed to score the minimum score required to pass the test: he got a big zero. We were really surprised. The teacher explained that my friend had answered only a single question. The question that he attempted to answer was the one on socio-economic conditions during Akbar’s time: he had written 10 pages just giving the list of prices of various commodities including those that were not available at that time! And, the prices were as per his imagination. We were all amazed at the friend’s sense of humor: he disliked the subject altogether and never even tried to prepare for the test. The only thing that he knew that in the text book, there were, at some places, a few short schedules of prices of different mass consumption articles. He really had patience to scribble 10 long pages of imaginary figures.
Compulsory Mathematics was the other subject that would be over at the end of class X. I had to live up to the expectations of the teachers that I had created during the first twelve months at this school. Besides, Compulsory Mathematics considerably aided my main two Mathematics papers in the Elective (Advanced) Mathematics. Equally important, Compulsory Mathematics introduced some new interesting topics: Solid geometry, mensuration and statistics. As usual geometry was interesting to me only up to a point. So I had to limit my effort allocation to geometry.
With these two subjects dealt with, what remained were the two Languages English and Bengali, Economics, History and Elective Mathematics. These would continue in Class XI.
The teachers in English were very fond of me. One of them, Indu Babu, tried hard to improve my grammar, vocabulary and use of idioms and phrases. I could barely satisfy him as I had little of my memory power allocated to these. The other teacher, Bhabani Babu, was more focused on translation, comprehension and precise writing. Precise writing practice was something I liked because less time was involved per unit of exercise. The same was true of comprehension tests. Translation helped my thoughts gather greater flexibility to move between two languages. The third teacher concentrated on literary composition. Earlier he used to teach English poetry, stories and literature selections. But the Higher Secondary English syllabus virtually got rid of English literature text books: we just had rapid readers that had to be red but no questions asked as to what the poets thought or what happened at that time and why or analyzing a character. So, this teacher, Priyanath Babu wanted to float in the flow of my English literary composition focusing on what I liked the style, the imagination and smoothness without picking up uncommon words from the dictionary. In a sense he spoiled me a bit. He made me write more words and sentences than examination duration would normally allow: he made me visualize going through environments that I had never been to and express them with implicit Romanticism. He cared little about my limited vocabulary and enjoyed my freedom of forms of expression in English, even if these were not standard. I enjoyed a special relationship with my teachers in the class and the answer scripts, but with most of them I hardly had any intersection outside the class room.
Our History teacher, Atin Homeroy provided the inspiration to my natural contrarian tendencies. He set a question in one examination: prove that Aurangzeb was the greatest among the Mogul emperors. That is what I always wanted in examinations: questions that had no standard answers in the text books, requiring one to think, argue and express in writing in the examination hall. Atin Babu was a teacher who made history texts, shorn of the dates and the narrative stories, appear interesting. His classes made me come to a belief history was not about persons, events and dates but about imagining logical connection and interactions among motives, beliefs, aspirations and various characteristics of leading personalities as also the peoples. For a quiet a while, I firmly study of political history and wars and battles should be banned till people become old: this would have helped children to avoid develop communal, racial pride, hatred and jealousy. I had felt that all history books should have been re-written on the basis of principles and theories that are justified on empirical testing across time and geographical wars. There should have been theorems on why wars take place under different circumstances and with what effect rather than narrating them in chronological calendar time, on why and how the closest become betrayers, on what gives strength to armies in winning battles and wars, on qualities of leaders and heroes that contributes to failures and successes under different circumstances, on progress of civilization through education, art and culture, science, technology, sacrifice, enterprise and innovation, on individual and group behavior, and so on. I still do not like children studying stories about kings and queens, their admirals, war heroes and empire expansion, the subjugation of one community / religious group/ race by another. How relevant is today for children to know about Alexander invading India, Ashoka spreading Buddhism, of the oppression by Aurangzeb, of the greatness of Akbar, of the British capturing India lands, of communal riots in Punjab and Bengal, of the Crusades and Jehads, of Napolean turning a democracy into monarchy, of Hitler’s holocaust, of the Russian Czar, the French, American and Russian revolutions or of the Atom Bomb in Hiroshima? They vitiate the child’s mind from what needs to be done in future as a human being, individually and in group to who was right and who was wrong, who was great and who was not, who oppressed whom and who should have retaliated, whose ancestors were and bad? The school text books should provide the lessons from history and not the history of events. The latter stories could be read even otherwise by any one at any stage: education should provide the means to deal with the future with the lessons from history, modern technology, imaginative thinking and human values. For three years, Class IX through Class XI, I had studied history in the School Indian history – ancient, medieval and modern as well as modern World history: I consider myself lucky that I could forget most of the narration: I did not want to remember any event that generate ill feelings towards any one else in this World because of what his / her ancestors did long time back in the past.
How would study of history as a subject in the school made me different from my juniors in the school? I would have more information on the past before my birth but no clue in shaping the present or the future for any one any better than others. But history would not leave me so easily yet.
The remaing three papers, Additional Mathematics, Economics and Bengali would require separate posts.
Leadership role consistent with seniority was however not a priority. The firstt priority was to deal with the subjects of study and how to clear the examinations: I had been rather focused on getting the best marks in the two more subjects that would not remain in Class Eleven: these marks would appear in our Higher Secondary Examination score sheets but would not be counted for aggregate marks.
The first was Social Studies: at that time what we thought was a mixture of social history, economic history and social geography. We had a relatively easy reading textbook giving a new way of looking at people/ societies in the past and in different areas in the present. There was a chapter on the socio-economic conditions during the Mogul period. In the final Class X examinations, there was a question on the economic conditions of the poor people during Emperor Akbar’s reign. I had skipped that question tried other questions: five were required to be attempted out of seven questions. And, to my surprise, I found one of well-known weak students in the class continuing to write pages after pages answering the social studies in questions. We felt this classmate must have found great interest in social studies and prepared himself well for this subject. I thought that I might not be able to score the highest marks. When later the teacher announced the results of the Social Studies examination, that classmate was declared as having failed to score the minimum score required to pass the test: he got a big zero. We were really surprised. The teacher explained that my friend had answered only a single question. The question that he attempted to answer was the one on socio-economic conditions during Akbar’s time: he had written 10 pages just giving the list of prices of various commodities including those that were not available at that time! And, the prices were as per his imagination. We were all amazed at the friend’s sense of humor: he disliked the subject altogether and never even tried to prepare for the test. The only thing that he knew that in the text book, there were, at some places, a few short schedules of prices of different mass consumption articles. He really had patience to scribble 10 long pages of imaginary figures.
Compulsory Mathematics was the other subject that would be over at the end of class X. I had to live up to the expectations of the teachers that I had created during the first twelve months at this school. Besides, Compulsory Mathematics considerably aided my main two Mathematics papers in the Elective (Advanced) Mathematics. Equally important, Compulsory Mathematics introduced some new interesting topics: Solid geometry, mensuration and statistics. As usual geometry was interesting to me only up to a point. So I had to limit my effort allocation to geometry.
With these two subjects dealt with, what remained were the two Languages English and Bengali, Economics, History and Elective Mathematics. These would continue in Class XI.
The teachers in English were very fond of me. One of them, Indu Babu, tried hard to improve my grammar, vocabulary and use of idioms and phrases. I could barely satisfy him as I had little of my memory power allocated to these. The other teacher, Bhabani Babu, was more focused on translation, comprehension and precise writing. Precise writing practice was something I liked because less time was involved per unit of exercise. The same was true of comprehension tests. Translation helped my thoughts gather greater flexibility to move between two languages. The third teacher concentrated on literary composition. Earlier he used to teach English poetry, stories and literature selections. But the Higher Secondary English syllabus virtually got rid of English literature text books: we just had rapid readers that had to be red but no questions asked as to what the poets thought or what happened at that time and why or analyzing a character. So, this teacher, Priyanath Babu wanted to float in the flow of my English literary composition focusing on what I liked the style, the imagination and smoothness without picking up uncommon words from the dictionary. In a sense he spoiled me a bit. He made me write more words and sentences than examination duration would normally allow: he made me visualize going through environments that I had never been to and express them with implicit Romanticism. He cared little about my limited vocabulary and enjoyed my freedom of forms of expression in English, even if these were not standard. I enjoyed a special relationship with my teachers in the class and the answer scripts, but with most of them I hardly had any intersection outside the class room.
Our History teacher, Atin Homeroy provided the inspiration to my natural contrarian tendencies. He set a question in one examination: prove that Aurangzeb was the greatest among the Mogul emperors. That is what I always wanted in examinations: questions that had no standard answers in the text books, requiring one to think, argue and express in writing in the examination hall. Atin Babu was a teacher who made history texts, shorn of the dates and the narrative stories, appear interesting. His classes made me come to a belief history was not about persons, events and dates but about imagining logical connection and interactions among motives, beliefs, aspirations and various characteristics of leading personalities as also the peoples. For a quiet a while, I firmly study of political history and wars and battles should be banned till people become old: this would have helped children to avoid develop communal, racial pride, hatred and jealousy. I had felt that all history books should have been re-written on the basis of principles and theories that are justified on empirical testing across time and geographical wars. There should have been theorems on why wars take place under different circumstances and with what effect rather than narrating them in chronological calendar time, on why and how the closest become betrayers, on what gives strength to armies in winning battles and wars, on qualities of leaders and heroes that contributes to failures and successes under different circumstances, on progress of civilization through education, art and culture, science, technology, sacrifice, enterprise and innovation, on individual and group behavior, and so on. I still do not like children studying stories about kings and queens, their admirals, war heroes and empire expansion, the subjugation of one community / religious group/ race by another. How relevant is today for children to know about Alexander invading India, Ashoka spreading Buddhism, of the oppression by Aurangzeb, of the greatness of Akbar, of the British capturing India lands, of communal riots in Punjab and Bengal, of the Crusades and Jehads, of Napolean turning a democracy into monarchy, of Hitler’s holocaust, of the Russian Czar, the French, American and Russian revolutions or of the Atom Bomb in Hiroshima? They vitiate the child’s mind from what needs to be done in future as a human being, individually and in group to who was right and who was wrong, who was great and who was not, who oppressed whom and who should have retaliated, whose ancestors were and bad? The school text books should provide the lessons from history and not the history of events. The latter stories could be read even otherwise by any one at any stage: education should provide the means to deal with the future with the lessons from history, modern technology, imaginative thinking and human values. For three years, Class IX through Class XI, I had studied history in the School Indian history – ancient, medieval and modern as well as modern World history: I consider myself lucky that I could forget most of the narration: I did not want to remember any event that generate ill feelings towards any one else in this World because of what his / her ancestors did long time back in the past.
How would study of history as a subject in the school made me different from my juniors in the school? I would have more information on the past before my birth but no clue in shaping the present or the future for any one any better than others. But history would not leave me so easily yet.
The remaing three papers, Additional Mathematics, Economics and Bengali would require separate posts.
Senior for Two years: My Unfolding Voyage 27
Seniors for Two years
We moved to Class X and became the first batch of students in the school who would enjoy the status of the senior most class for two successive years. Such events take pace rarely unless you fail in the school-leaving examination. When we got promoted to Class X, the previous batch of Class X passed the School Final Examination and was out of the school: if they all passed, they would have got into a college to do one year Pre-University class and if any one failed they would not be able to get back to our school as there would be no longer any Class X for School Final Examination. So, we became the senior most class when we got into class X: in the next year we will go into Class XI – the first batch of Class XI in the school and would appear at the end of Class XI, the new order school leaving examination called the Higher Secondary Examination. So, in Class XI we would still be the senior most class batch in the school. Much later, however, education reforms would break up school education into three parts: Primary up to class IV, Secondary from Class V to Class X and then Higher Secondary covering classes XI and XII.
Becoming senior most class did give us an added sense of status to us. The teachers became much friendlier than before. They all became interested in preparing us for better performance at the Higher Secondary Board Examinations. We had greater say in the conduct of various school activities like school magazine, sports, etc. Two years of being the senior most was really pleasurable.
Senior students were obliged to take responsibility for various school events like the holding of the Saraswati Puja (worshiping the Goddess of learning) and the associated feast, sports, school magazines. But I for one was not at all interested in taking any organization responsibility at school. One reason was that I did not find interesting spending time at the school outside class hours – as I would like to get back home soon. I also did not like skipping some classes to attend to school’s other activities because, I was more comfortable in using the class hours to complete as much of my understanding of the subjects rather than labor at home to understand things on my own when the teachers’ assistance was readily available. I always wanted to know what the teachers had to say. Besides, there was a competition among students to lead and one needs to work under the guidance and supervision of teachers. I hated to compete with schoolmates, especially classmates in areas other than studies (examination performance). I was also not very comfortable mixing with the teachers outside the class hours because of a certain peculiar shyness. This is one reason why teachers thought I was only a good student. I did not want them to know and appreciate my involvement with sports or literature or organization. Moreover, I was already happy with my organization leadership roles in the local club of my friends who had already been comfortable with me. Rather, I had just started developing an attitude of influencing the club’s group’s activities without being a formal leader. As we grew in age, we were developing individual views and opinions on different social, political and club activity issues. As a leader, I did not want to argue with others on these issues and force my opinion. At that young age I had felt not all would appreciate my logic and arguments being separate from my individual preferences and from my position as the leader. I did not want that they perceived me as a dictator. On the other hand, leaving the official leadership position despite the friends’ request to continue helped me lift my position to one of a guide and a strategist rather than taking up execution and implementation responsibility. This role had the added advantage that no body saw in me any particular self interest or domination- motive in my logic and arguments. My local club and friends would drop many of their proposals/ ideas after listening to me and would refer to me as Narod (contrarian spoiler) with considerable affection.
We moved to Class X and became the first batch of students in the school who would enjoy the status of the senior most class for two successive years. Such events take pace rarely unless you fail in the school-leaving examination. When we got promoted to Class X, the previous batch of Class X passed the School Final Examination and was out of the school: if they all passed, they would have got into a college to do one year Pre-University class and if any one failed they would not be able to get back to our school as there would be no longer any Class X for School Final Examination. So, we became the senior most class when we got into class X: in the next year we will go into Class XI – the first batch of Class XI in the school and would appear at the end of Class XI, the new order school leaving examination called the Higher Secondary Examination. So, in Class XI we would still be the senior most class batch in the school. Much later, however, education reforms would break up school education into three parts: Primary up to class IV, Secondary from Class V to Class X and then Higher Secondary covering classes XI and XII.
Becoming senior most class did give us an added sense of status to us. The teachers became much friendlier than before. They all became interested in preparing us for better performance at the Higher Secondary Board Examinations. We had greater say in the conduct of various school activities like school magazine, sports, etc. Two years of being the senior most was really pleasurable.
Senior students were obliged to take responsibility for various school events like the holding of the Saraswati Puja (worshiping the Goddess of learning) and the associated feast, sports, school magazines. But I for one was not at all interested in taking any organization responsibility at school. One reason was that I did not find interesting spending time at the school outside class hours – as I would like to get back home soon. I also did not like skipping some classes to attend to school’s other activities because, I was more comfortable in using the class hours to complete as much of my understanding of the subjects rather than labor at home to understand things on my own when the teachers’ assistance was readily available. I always wanted to know what the teachers had to say. Besides, there was a competition among students to lead and one needs to work under the guidance and supervision of teachers. I hated to compete with schoolmates, especially classmates in areas other than studies (examination performance). I was also not very comfortable mixing with the teachers outside the class hours because of a certain peculiar shyness. This is one reason why teachers thought I was only a good student. I did not want them to know and appreciate my involvement with sports or literature or organization. Moreover, I was already happy with my organization leadership roles in the local club of my friends who had already been comfortable with me. Rather, I had just started developing an attitude of influencing the club’s group’s activities without being a formal leader. As we grew in age, we were developing individual views and opinions on different social, political and club activity issues. As a leader, I did not want to argue with others on these issues and force my opinion. At that young age I had felt not all would appreciate my logic and arguments being separate from my individual preferences and from my position as the leader. I did not want that they perceived me as a dictator. On the other hand, leaving the official leadership position despite the friends’ request to continue helped me lift my position to one of a guide and a strategist rather than taking up execution and implementation responsibility. This role had the added advantage that no body saw in me any particular self interest or domination- motive in my logic and arguments. My local club and friends would drop many of their proposals/ ideas after listening to me and would refer to me as Narod (contrarian spoiler) with considerable affection.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
