Last School
Recently, the highly dynamic and experiment-oriented school educational authorities in West Bengal have reportedly decided to change the school year from April- March to January- December. Last time they changed, some fifty years ago, the school year shifted from January-December to April-March: during the last five decades, they were busy changing school education tier-system (from primary-secondary to primary-secondary-higher secondary), the number of school years (from 4+6=10 to 4+ 4+ 3=11 to 4+4+2+2= 12 and now probably to 4+5+1+1+1= 12), the ban on English in primary school to withdrawal of such ban, changing syllabuses, publishing textbooks, rewriting history textbooks, teacher recruitment examinations, etc. Fifty years back, I had benefited tremendously from the change of calendar year as also change in syllabus. Sanskrit was removed from the compulsory subjects after ninth grade and I had to just secure the minimum pass marks in Sanskrit to get promoted to the tenth grade. Had Sanskrit remained compulsory at the school leaving examination, I would not have got through to the university for higher studies. It was a long-term benefit to me. The purely short-term benefit accrued from the change in the school year. My secondary education was in a Christian missionary school linked to junior and senior Cambridge education with January-December school year. I shifted to higher secondary school system of the local government that changed to April-March school year around that time. So, I got an extended Christmas leave from mid-December till end-March.
This extra three months helped me enjoy my eldest brother’s marriage to the fullest extent. He got married in mid-February. As usual father was comfortable with the choice of spouse for his son as he was when his two daughters got married earlier or when his other three sons married earlier. Mother, as usual was not so very pleased with the choice of the bride for her eldest son as she was not very pleased with the choice of bridegrooms for her daughters earlier or with the choice of the brides for her three other sons later. My father was always in a hurry to get the choices made and contended with the consequences of the choices; my mother always wanted to make the best choice among many alternatives. Dad’s hurry or the sons’ hurry gave Mom restricted the choice set available to her. She wanted the best partners for her children and therefore had to be satisfied by constrained optimization or sub-optimal choices. But she also had a great capacity to enjoy whatever would ultimately happen. Yet as a school student then and later as a graduate student, I could see through her regret that she did not succeed in her mission to get the most suitable partner as per her preferences for any one of her six children who lived to marry. Even after Mejda (the second elder brother) gave her a few years to find the bride of her choice, she failed to get her dream fulfilled. I always felt sad for her but believed that many mothers in the world had the same fate in this regard.
With wedding celebrations over, I applied to get admissions to new school. I had to sit for tests in both the school. One school, not a good one, immediately offered admission. I joined that school and started attending classes. The better school – the best in the locality (Dum Dum) those days, the one in which my younger brother was in his sixth grade and the one where my two elder brothers studied some 12/13 years ago, did not include my name of the students offered admission. That was the news that my younger brother got us one day after looking up at the school notice board. But a few days later, he brought a message from the school’s headmaster that he was waiting for me. The school teachers were impressed by my performance in English test and were rather disappointed with my ability to deal with the four sums they had given me. The headmaster offered me admission to the humanities stream. All my brothers wanted that I join their school. My elder brothers suggested that if I wanted to join the science stream, they could talk to their beloved headmaster and convince him to get me admitted to the science stream. I told them that this would not be necessary as science or humanities were not my concern. I had already decided to study Economics and Mathematics as my area of major interest during my academic career. My brothers were bit surprised with the choice of subjects but did not pursue me further on this.
Why did I choose these subjects? I was already influenced by two persons in this regard during the previous two years, though they did not want to influence me and even might not have realized that their words or views were having an impact on me. One of them was my some 22-year elder brother-in-law. He was a science graduate but talked a lot about the successful career of his cousin who majored in economics and was with the World Bank at that time. He told me that his cousin was a great hero in their family and that economics and statistics were a great combination for the future. The second person who influenced me was a neighbor about three/ four years elder to me who studied economics at the school but later joined the army and became a part of the army medical core. I had an opportunity to glance through his textbook on economics and was most impressed by concepts like demand, supply, price and market. The terms ‘economics’ and ‘statistics’ sounded very attractive and uncommon as compared with physics, chemistry or biology at that time. And, economics was part of humanities stream those days (you did not get to study B.Sc or M.Sc in economics in India those days – things are somewhat different now). Similarly, if you have not studied mathematics, you would be rather a literary economist rather than an applied economist. Also, for studying statistics one needs to be good at mathematics. I still believe in these views that just got transmitted to me by the two persons I mentioned. My choice was of academic career was not made by the influence of any predominant fad among school boys at that time or by imposed on me by my elders at home.
But as my astro-palmist maternal uncle had predicted, I would have to face serious threats to the pursuit of education. The first was the problem with school admission and choice of stream, which got sorted out with relative ease. The second problem was a goof-up by me. Father gave me something like fourteen rupees to get admitted to the school. There was lot of rush and the school clerks were rather slow. I had to wait for long. By the time they were prepared to take the money from me, someone came to search me and told me to immediately meet the headmaster. I went to meet him. He told me that I was not careful enough and had lost the cash while waiting without even realizing that I had lost the cash that was picked up some other student and deposited to him. By the amount of the cash he knew that someone had come to deposit money to get admission to the ninth grade and the only one, among those offered admission, who was yet to take admission, was I. I was astonished by his deductions to link from the amount of lost cash deposited to him to the person who lost cash.
I came back with the money and deposited to the cashier to get the receipt, a school prospectus and a fee receipt book. But he wanted to the transfer certificate from my previous school. I told him that I did not take any such certificate. Then, he suggested that as an alternative, I needed to get a certified copy of my horoscope prepared at the time of my birth as a proof of my birthday within seven days to complete the admission formalities. I reported the new requirement to my father. He said since he did not have such a horoscope made earlier I should get in touch with a practicing astrologer-priest neighbor to get the horoscope made. I got this for a fee of probably two/ three rupees and submitted to the school within two days. Now I started going to school. But problems would crop up again. The school had decided that no student in the humanities stream would be offered the choice of higher mathematics as a subject of study and geography was offered as an alternative. Most disappointed, I purchased the geography text book and started attending geography classes. Meanwhile, Chordi came to visit us for a few days. She discovered the mischief that I had done taking advantage of her absence from home now that she had been married for three years and living with her husband in a place at a distance of overnight journey by train. She found out why I was not producing the transfer certificate from the previous school. She objected to my changing the name while getting admitted to the new schools. It was she who had changed my name from Basudev to Tapas Kumar when I took admission to the Christian college four years back. She was so happy to give me a modern name that also rhymed with my elder brothers' name Tarun Kumar and Kishore Kumar. But I did not find the name she gave me for a number of reasons. Dada became TK and Mejda KK as per their initials but I also became TK. I wanted a distinctly separate initials. Besides, I did not like to called by initials. I was more known as Basu everywhere except in the school that I had just left. So, I wanted to restore my original name in the school. I valued this name more because this name was given to me by my grand father who was no more. And, I had found the elderly people who were very affectionate to me enjoyed calling me by the name Basudev, probably as it is the name of the Lord Krishna that was often part of the Mantras / hymns which Hindus recited while offering prayers and worshipping the God Almighty. The story of Krishna was one of an intelligent and romantic yet dispassionate human being: this had a great impact on my mind. I was determined to restore my original name while Chordi had serious objection to this. Fortunately, my parents and elder brothers did not take side. Chordi's short visit ended soon and the problem passed away soon.
Little did I knew at that time, my name would get marginally altered three years later by some unknown person. For the present, I was satisfied that the name Basudev had been restored for now. Interestingly, another classmate who joined the school with me had the same name but he soon discarded it, went to the court and filed an affidavit to get the new name Bhavesh, - the same as one of our English teachers had. I kept wondering how Bhavesh was more attractive name for my friend than Basudev but was happy that I was the single Basudev in the class.
The problem of not getting to study Mathematics still remained. I was in two minds whether to get back to the other school where I had taken admission. Meanwhile, I concentrated on picking up the Bengali language once again and master the general mathematics that was compulsory for all students in class nine and ten. A friend was trying to find out students for private coaching by his recently retired uncle who had been a professor of commerce. I started taking lessons from him in the evening. Being a Master of commerce, he was strong in Arithmetic but not so strong in Algebra and Geometry. But this helped and I just concentrated on doing all the sums including the worked out illustrations in compulsory mathematics - arithmetic, algebra and geometry, textbook.
The mathematics teacher got some taste of my mathematical abilities in the class. Soon one more young teacher of mathematics joined the school. I did not know what was going on in the school. Within a month of my joining, the school decided to allow students of human stream to take higher mathematics as a subject of study. I was delighted. I along with another classmate joined the science stream students to study this higher mathematics (generally referred to as Additional or Elective Mathematics in the school to distinguish it from the compulsory mathematics paper that all students had to study). I was finally settled in the last of the five schools that I had to go through for a total of twelve years.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Guided Pre-teens: My Unfolding Voyage 022
Secondary Variety of Entertainment
The four years of secondary education was not only relaxed in terms of school tasks and responsibilities because of little competition in the class and from my younger brother to demonstrate excellence in studies, but gave time enough to explore variety outside school and home, with very little responsibility and assignments at home. The only demands at home were get the best reports from the school, take bath and food in time and return home before dusk. And, of course, carry out small and occasional odd jobs of different varieties. Some jobs were allocated by turn between my younger brother and me, though for most such jobs I was considered more capable than my younger brother because he was yet in the primary school or junior secondary. One such job was to get sweetmeats and confectionary items from shops at two minutes distance by bicycle. This would give a chance to get to eat an additional sweet offered free by the shop-salesman as bonus for the discretion I exercised in choosing the particular shops in preference to other nearby shops. Even now, Nagerbazar and Dum Dum area, the sweetmeat shops are a plenty and they have a highly competitive business, resulting in a reasonably high quality of their products and a wide product range: I am not sure if price discounts are still available to children buying sweets.
We would use the bicycle also the get emergency grocery purchases or visiting our maternal uncle to get some Aayurvedic medicine for someone at home by describing the symptoms. Until I had gone to higher secondary school, we seldom had to go to physicians with university degrees in medicine and surgery. Electricity outages were very frequent because of either improper connections of our experiments or circuit faults or some other reasons that I did not understand. But we learnt to fix it. In most cases, we had only to pull down the lever of the main power connection box, pull out the ceramic fuse and check if the thin metal wire had burnt out. If it had not burnt out, we had to immediately rush the two-minute by-cycling-away, Calcutta Electricity Supply Corporation outpost to lodge a complaint so that they could come with their ladders to fix something in the cables joining the lamp-pole that connected power supply to our house. If, however, we had found the wire in the fuse had melted, we had to use a screwdriver to insert a new wire strip in the ceramic wire holder, plug it back to the socket in the box, close the fuse box and put the lever up. That would restore power supply. On a few occasions, the ceramic wire holder slipped out of our hands, fell on the ground and broke into pieces. Then, we had cycle quite a distance to find out the shop that would have another piece of such an out-of date device (already in use for over a quarter century in our house before we first broke the original piece).
In contrast, Bratachari was a spiritual and social improvement movement (Brata or vrata in Bengali) initiated by Gurusaday Dutt in 1932 in Calcutta: it was a comprehensive programme of physical, mental, and intellectual culture based on the best folk traditions of physical exercise, art, dance, drama, music, singing and social service. Certainly, my Bratachari association did very little to achive the objectives.
Collecting elder brothers’ clothes from laundry shop was an alternative day task in the evening. Messenger boy tasks in the neighborhood were not that frequent. Once my Dad asked me to go to a neighbor’s house and bring the next Bengali year’s almanac publication (Hindu Panjika) if they had bought it already (we were yet to buy one) so that he could find the date of the next full moon day. I came back and told him that the neighbors were still to buy the new almanac. My Dad had admonished me that day. He told me that he sent me to a particular neighbor’s house with the singular purpose of knowing the date of the next full moon. And, I had failed to bring him the information. Had I used my intelligence, I could have asked the neighbor if they knew the date since they were known to follow the phase of the moon for their daily worship or I could have gone to some other neighbor’s house in search of the new almanac or at least tried to find out from the Bengali Daly to which they subscribed to know the current phase of the moon (we were subscribing to an English daily which did not contain such information). I was ashamed and learnt a lesson. He said he had not expected such a lousy application of mind by a secondary school scholar. After this incident, I would try to alert my mind to the need of the person giving me a job to do rather than simply follow his instructions. After all, I had to satisfy I need and not merely follow commands, as an animal would have done.
As we graduated from primary to secondary some games got dropped. Playing with marbles, tamarind seeds, cigarette box covers cut into card size, skipping ropes and toys had to be dropped. Among indoor games, money game came in and carom continued. Exploration covered playing various games of card, chess and other kinds of checkers, like Chinese checkers. Elders did not like the idea of playing card games of ‘29’ and ‘Bridge’ or Chess in the childhood: in any case they were somewhat complicated to form a competent group of four to play. ‘Bray’ was interesting and ‘Patience’ helped kill time when no playmate was available. Checkers were simple and involved designing succession of moves into a clear winning or solid defense strategies. It was possible to defeat experienced players without strategies in such games. This helped me get some recognition by some elders, mostly women who generally played with lot of excitement and drawing from experience but without a strategy to trap the opponent.
Some outdoor games had to be adapted to roof-terrace setting: cricket was one with regular balls replaced by glass marbles and cricket bat replaced by thin strips of log: any hit that results in marble flying out of the terrace was an additional event of getting out. Among outdoor games, soccer and cricket flourished. But in came badminton, volleyball, improvised hockey, Kabadi (we used to call Ha-do-do, India’s National sports), Pittu ( something like base-ball without a bat), improvised base ball, Gaddhi (much clean game than Kabadi, but demanded more space) and Getchho (playing hide and seek in teams on the branches of a very old and sprawling tree). Kabaddi Kabbadi or Kabadi), a team sport that spead to south east Asia from India, involves two teams occupy opposite halves of a field and take turns sending a "raider" into the other half, in order to win points by tagging or wrestling members of the opposing team; the raider then tries to return to his own half, holding his breath during the whole raid. If he succeeds his team earns a point. If he fails, the other party gets the turn to raid.
Climbing tall trees without branches was another sport. I could not participate in improvised water handball or diving, as somehow I was scared to be in the ponds and lakes. The regular local club, Colony Institute, organized some Bratachari (form of indigenous drill game), simple gymnastics and parades on the lines of scouts participating in processions and salutes in honor of guests presiding over sports or other functions. Athletics were a winter activity. The best running that I could do brought me occasionally a third prize, but I was often an asset to the winning relay-race side. Three-legged race was one because of the lightweight combination with my regular partner got us some prizes. In high jump and long jump again, I could manage an occasional third in the height group but almost always on top in the narrow age group. I never participated in a ‘Go-As-You-Like’ event. But it is an event that gave me my first brake in smoking. One of my friends once participated in the event as a roaming street vendor selling wares like pan (made with betel leaves), cigarettes and match boxes. Some of us were roaming along with him. An exercise to show courage was cooked up: since smoking cigarette by school-going child was considered bad (not banned those days), whether there was anyone among us could smoke a cigarette in the public play ground where the sports competition was being held? I could easily assess that the risk of some elders noticing and reporting back home was very low and even if that had had happened, I could manage the situation given my other good credentials and telling the truth of the one-time experiment. My friends looked at me with awe and surprise as I lighted the cigarette, available free of cost, and smoked for a while.
The next cigarette of my life would come up for smoking four years later. Earlier, when I was in the primary school, I tasted the smoke without a cigarette on my lips: I had picked up a thrown lighted cigarette on the road, placed it inside an empty cigarette packet and inhales the smoke that would come out from a small hole on the packet. That was just simple curiosity.
The four years of secondary education was not only relaxed in terms of school tasks and responsibilities because of little competition in the class and from my younger brother to demonstrate excellence in studies, but gave time enough to explore variety outside school and home, with very little responsibility and assignments at home. The only demands at home were get the best reports from the school, take bath and food in time and return home before dusk. And, of course, carry out small and occasional odd jobs of different varieties. Some jobs were allocated by turn between my younger brother and me, though for most such jobs I was considered more capable than my younger brother because he was yet in the primary school or junior secondary. One such job was to get sweetmeats and confectionary items from shops at two minutes distance by bicycle. This would give a chance to get to eat an additional sweet offered free by the shop-salesman as bonus for the discretion I exercised in choosing the particular shops in preference to other nearby shops. Even now, Nagerbazar and Dum Dum area, the sweetmeat shops are a plenty and they have a highly competitive business, resulting in a reasonably high quality of their products and a wide product range: I am not sure if price discounts are still available to children buying sweets.
We would use the bicycle also the get emergency grocery purchases or visiting our maternal uncle to get some Aayurvedic medicine for someone at home by describing the symptoms. Until I had gone to higher secondary school, we seldom had to go to physicians with university degrees in medicine and surgery. Electricity outages were very frequent because of either improper connections of our experiments or circuit faults or some other reasons that I did not understand. But we learnt to fix it. In most cases, we had only to pull down the lever of the main power connection box, pull out the ceramic fuse and check if the thin metal wire had burnt out. If it had not burnt out, we had to immediately rush the two-minute by-cycling-away, Calcutta Electricity Supply Corporation outpost to lodge a complaint so that they could come with their ladders to fix something in the cables joining the lamp-pole that connected power supply to our house. If, however, we had found the wire in the fuse had melted, we had to use a screwdriver to insert a new wire strip in the ceramic wire holder, plug it back to the socket in the box, close the fuse box and put the lever up. That would restore power supply. On a few occasions, the ceramic wire holder slipped out of our hands, fell on the ground and broke into pieces. Then, we had cycle quite a distance to find out the shop that would have another piece of such an out-of date device (already in use for over a quarter century in our house before we first broke the original piece).
In contrast, Bratachari was a spiritual and social improvement movement (Brata or vrata in Bengali) initiated by Gurusaday Dutt in 1932 in Calcutta: it was a comprehensive programme of physical, mental, and intellectual culture based on the best folk traditions of physical exercise, art, dance, drama, music, singing and social service. Certainly, my Bratachari association did very little to achive the objectives.
Collecting elder brothers’ clothes from laundry shop was an alternative day task in the evening. Messenger boy tasks in the neighborhood were not that frequent. Once my Dad asked me to go to a neighbor’s house and bring the next Bengali year’s almanac publication (Hindu Panjika) if they had bought it already (we were yet to buy one) so that he could find the date of the next full moon day. I came back and told him that the neighbors were still to buy the new almanac. My Dad had admonished me that day. He told me that he sent me to a particular neighbor’s house with the singular purpose of knowing the date of the next full moon. And, I had failed to bring him the information. Had I used my intelligence, I could have asked the neighbor if they knew the date since they were known to follow the phase of the moon for their daily worship or I could have gone to some other neighbor’s house in search of the new almanac or at least tried to find out from the Bengali Daly to which they subscribed to know the current phase of the moon (we were subscribing to an English daily which did not contain such information). I was ashamed and learnt a lesson. He said he had not expected such a lousy application of mind by a secondary school scholar. After this incident, I would try to alert my mind to the need of the person giving me a job to do rather than simply follow his instructions. After all, I had to satisfy I need and not merely follow commands, as an animal would have done.
As we graduated from primary to secondary some games got dropped. Playing with marbles, tamarind seeds, cigarette box covers cut into card size, skipping ropes and toys had to be dropped. Among indoor games, money game came in and carom continued. Exploration covered playing various games of card, chess and other kinds of checkers, like Chinese checkers. Elders did not like the idea of playing card games of ‘29’ and ‘Bridge’ or Chess in the childhood: in any case they were somewhat complicated to form a competent group of four to play. ‘Bray’ was interesting and ‘Patience’ helped kill time when no playmate was available. Checkers were simple and involved designing succession of moves into a clear winning or solid defense strategies. It was possible to defeat experienced players without strategies in such games. This helped me get some recognition by some elders, mostly women who generally played with lot of excitement and drawing from experience but without a strategy to trap the opponent.
Some outdoor games had to be adapted to roof-terrace setting: cricket was one with regular balls replaced by glass marbles and cricket bat replaced by thin strips of log: any hit that results in marble flying out of the terrace was an additional event of getting out. Among outdoor games, soccer and cricket flourished. But in came badminton, volleyball, improvised hockey, Kabadi (we used to call Ha-do-do, India’s National sports), Pittu ( something like base-ball without a bat), improvised base ball, Gaddhi (much clean game than Kabadi, but demanded more space) and Getchho (playing hide and seek in teams on the branches of a very old and sprawling tree). Kabaddi Kabbadi or Kabadi), a team sport that spead to south east Asia from India, involves two teams occupy opposite halves of a field and take turns sending a "raider" into the other half, in order to win points by tagging or wrestling members of the opposing team; the raider then tries to return to his own half, holding his breath during the whole raid. If he succeeds his team earns a point. If he fails, the other party gets the turn to raid.
Climbing tall trees without branches was another sport. I could not participate in improvised water handball or diving, as somehow I was scared to be in the ponds and lakes. The regular local club, Colony Institute, organized some Bratachari (form of indigenous drill game), simple gymnastics and parades on the lines of scouts participating in processions and salutes in honor of guests presiding over sports or other functions. Athletics were a winter activity. The best running that I could do brought me occasionally a third prize, but I was often an asset to the winning relay-race side. Three-legged race was one because of the lightweight combination with my regular partner got us some prizes. In high jump and long jump again, I could manage an occasional third in the height group but almost always on top in the narrow age group. I never participated in a ‘Go-As-You-Like’ event. But it is an event that gave me my first brake in smoking. One of my friends once participated in the event as a roaming street vendor selling wares like pan (made with betel leaves), cigarettes and match boxes. Some of us were roaming along with him. An exercise to show courage was cooked up: since smoking cigarette by school-going child was considered bad (not banned those days), whether there was anyone among us could smoke a cigarette in the public play ground where the sports competition was being held? I could easily assess that the risk of some elders noticing and reporting back home was very low and even if that had had happened, I could manage the situation given my other good credentials and telling the truth of the one-time experiment. My friends looked at me with awe and surprise as I lighted the cigarette, available free of cost, and smoked for a while.
The next cigarette of my life would come up for smoking four years later. Earlier, when I was in the primary school, I tasted the smoke without a cigarette on my lips: I had picked up a thrown lighted cigarette on the road, placed it inside an empty cigarette packet and inhales the smoke that would come out from a small hole on the packet. That was just simple curiosity.
A Flying Time: My Unfolding Voyage 021
The First Flight
Dada had left the Telco job at Jamshedpur and took up a more attractive one near Calcutta, first with Britanna Engineering and then with Guest Keen Williams. So, after a long absence he was back to Gurudham. So, did Mejda return to Calcutta as he with a master degree in commerce and a degree in law joined the British owned Imperial Chemical’s factory cost accounts at Rishra about 100 minutes’ journey from Gurudham. All the four brothers were now with the parents at home now. And, the younger two were back to some greater degree of surveillance, especially on Sundays and holidays. The problems were more in the winter. On Sundays, Mejda would force us go for a short nap after lunch while we needed to go out to play our cricket matches. He would fall asleep fast. We would quietly slip out home without any noise: climbing over the gate to get out helped us avoid creating the noise of opening the gate that could get him awake. By the time Mejda would get up, it was time that we were expected to play outside. Mejda wanted us to study in the evening on weekdays. But Mom helped us manage the situation. She would give us the dinner early and we would fall fast asleep in a corner before Mejda before he returned home from office. He was kind-hearted and never wake-up children in the midst of their sleep. The few evenings we got delayed in dinner made us study for an hour as Mejda would find us awake. Those evenings we had to take the dinner along with Dad at 8-30 PM. By 9 PM, it was all dark at home most evenings.
Father had crossed sixty by then. I was going in the seventh grade and Suku in the fourth. One day, after Dad returned from the daily market and took his break-fast, he found Suku reluctant to go to school.
My brothers had all gone to their work and I had gone to school. The details of the incident were not known to us: apparently Dad had slapped Suku for his mischief and Mom had scolded Dad for beating the child. Our Dad was a much better gentle man than me: I had never seen him arguing with his wife. After that he took his lunch, dressed up and went out. But he did not return home. My brothers were worried about him and Mom could not provide any clue as to where did Father go? That evening some special guests visited us on schedule and Mom managed the show with the help of her elder sons, explaining the Dad had to suddenly go out to Gosaba in the Sunderbans where he owned some landed property. But for the next 6 days we kept worrying about where Dad had gone.
Then, a postcard arrived. Father intimated that he was in Hardware and was on a pilgrimage to different temples on the Himalayas. He wrote that he had found good friends on the way and we need not worry.
Wife’s rebuke had forced him to leave home. He was roaming in the Himalayas with Hindu Sanyasis and pilgrims. Since we had no address of his, we had only one way communication, receiving letters from him every fifth or sixth day in which he narrated his travels and plans for the next few days. After three weeks, he wrote that he was going down to the plains and taking a course towards the north-east. On his way to Kamakshya temple in Assam, he would with his pilgrim friend visit my elder sister’s residence in Bagdogra in north Bengal (my brother-in-law was at that time posted in the metrological office of the Bagdogra Airport. The elder brothers got in touch with my elder sister and then arranged our air passage to Bagdogra. Air fare was always costly even as children we were entitled to a fifty percent of normal fare and Mom got a concession – thanks to elder brothers’ friend who worked with the Indian Airlines. It was a small Dakota or Fokker aircraft is that I remember faintly of the first ever flight into the sky. We had landed soon after we realized that we were in the air: it was less than 30 minutes that we were in the air. My brother-in-law received us at the airport. After two days, my father’s entourage arrived, stayed there for a day or two before proceeding on the next leg of their pilgrimage. This time my mother accompanied them and this marked the beginning of my parents’ pilgrimage era: in the next two/ three years they would go all over the country on several pilgrimage trips – from the Kanyakumarika on the South to the Himalayas on the North and from Dwarka in the West to the Sun Temple in the East. And, by the time they completed their pilgrimages, they became further liberated – losing the chains of many past traditions in living style as well as attitudes towards traditions and cultural practices.
Suku and I stayed back the summer holidays at Bagdogra. It was a very pleasant vacation. We had one neice and a nephew about four to six years’ younger to us. It was rather cool temperature. We had plenty of good food. The goat meat was excellent. One day my brother-in-law had purchased a cart load of ripe jackfruits. They were very cheap. I remember that he had given me one small jackfruit that I had eaten all by myself. The neighborhood where my elder sister Didi lived was interesting. We picked up friends there. We played cricket with them. One of the friends, son of the Anglo-Indian white Airport Manager, took us to their home. His mother served us nice food and for the first time we played a game of housie: she provided the coins for us to play. Another friend, son of the head of the metrology department at the Airport, was studying in the same class as I did. Much later his father was transferred to Dum Dum Airport and I had met him again at their residence in Dum Dum when we were studying for the higher secondary examination.
Both the air trip and the vacation at Bagdogra came about suddenly and gave me a different experience and new ideas. It was first time that we had stepped in side the airport, got hold of boarding passes, the first time we walked along the tarmac and walked up the ladder inside an aircraft that we had so far seen from a distant. It was the first take off and the first landing. The Bagdogra airport was a small one. The airport staff quarter complex was small but beautiful. The people were so warm to a set of strangers. Yet, I felt at that time that the trip had come at a great financial cost to my elder brothers. Air travel those days was for the rich people only. When voyages unfold themselves, they would not care about the human cost-benefit calculus.
Back to school again. A maternal uncle (Mom’s cousin) visited us after a long time. He had acquired some knowledge in palmistry and astrology. Mom insisted that he explored my future. He did and forecast that there would be serious obstacles to my education and I may not go beyond school education. The family did not believe in his forecast about me. But soon I would be afflicted by a queer disease: I could not eat anything. I was put under treatment of another maternal uncle who practiced Aayurvedic medicine. I stopped going to school and was prohibited from playing anything. In the evening, Dad would take me and my brother out for a long walk when we explored different lanes and localities. Within a month I recovered my appetite and resumed school. The first hurdle came and gone. The next obstacle was to come soon. With the record of getting close to 100% marks in most subjects and topping the class for three successive years, my father had demanded of the school principal that I should be awarded a free studentship. The principal heard my father and received his written request. But he neither said yes nor no. I was in the eighth grade then and in the middle of the session the principal changed. The school demanded fees from me. Father was furious. He was inclined to change the school. I was already getting bored with this school. And, I wanted to return to mainstream school from this Cambridge style education. I insisted my father that I do not change to another Christian Missionary School that would be far away – resulting in loss of another hour my lively day time. I stopped going to school about five month’s before the final examinations. It was another good period of non-academic activity.
Meanwhile, parents became busy searching for a bride for Dada my eldest brother. After Chordi got married, my father had rented out about 70% of the house to different tenants. He had to add additional floor space within the house. An expansion project was soon completed. Some tenants had to leave. We now had enough rooms for new entrants to the family.
Dada had left the Telco job at Jamshedpur and took up a more attractive one near Calcutta, first with Britanna Engineering and then with Guest Keen Williams. So, after a long absence he was back to Gurudham. So, did Mejda return to Calcutta as he with a master degree in commerce and a degree in law joined the British owned Imperial Chemical’s factory cost accounts at Rishra about 100 minutes’ journey from Gurudham. All the four brothers were now with the parents at home now. And, the younger two were back to some greater degree of surveillance, especially on Sundays and holidays. The problems were more in the winter. On Sundays, Mejda would force us go for a short nap after lunch while we needed to go out to play our cricket matches. He would fall asleep fast. We would quietly slip out home without any noise: climbing over the gate to get out helped us avoid creating the noise of opening the gate that could get him awake. By the time Mejda would get up, it was time that we were expected to play outside. Mejda wanted us to study in the evening on weekdays. But Mom helped us manage the situation. She would give us the dinner early and we would fall fast asleep in a corner before Mejda before he returned home from office. He was kind-hearted and never wake-up children in the midst of their sleep. The few evenings we got delayed in dinner made us study for an hour as Mejda would find us awake. Those evenings we had to take the dinner along with Dad at 8-30 PM. By 9 PM, it was all dark at home most evenings.
Father had crossed sixty by then. I was going in the seventh grade and Suku in the fourth. One day, after Dad returned from the daily market and took his break-fast, he found Suku reluctant to go to school.
My brothers had all gone to their work and I had gone to school. The details of the incident were not known to us: apparently Dad had slapped Suku for his mischief and Mom had scolded Dad for beating the child. Our Dad was a much better gentle man than me: I had never seen him arguing with his wife. After that he took his lunch, dressed up and went out. But he did not return home. My brothers were worried about him and Mom could not provide any clue as to where did Father go? That evening some special guests visited us on schedule and Mom managed the show with the help of her elder sons, explaining the Dad had to suddenly go out to Gosaba in the Sunderbans where he owned some landed property. But for the next 6 days we kept worrying about where Dad had gone.
Then, a postcard arrived. Father intimated that he was in Hardware and was on a pilgrimage to different temples on the Himalayas. He wrote that he had found good friends on the way and we need not worry.
Wife’s rebuke had forced him to leave home. He was roaming in the Himalayas with Hindu Sanyasis and pilgrims. Since we had no address of his, we had only one way communication, receiving letters from him every fifth or sixth day in which he narrated his travels and plans for the next few days. After three weeks, he wrote that he was going down to the plains and taking a course towards the north-east. On his way to Kamakshya temple in Assam, he would with his pilgrim friend visit my elder sister’s residence in Bagdogra in north Bengal (my brother-in-law was at that time posted in the metrological office of the Bagdogra Airport. The elder brothers got in touch with my elder sister and then arranged our air passage to Bagdogra. Air fare was always costly even as children we were entitled to a fifty percent of normal fare and Mom got a concession – thanks to elder brothers’ friend who worked with the Indian Airlines. It was a small Dakota or Fokker aircraft is that I remember faintly of the first ever flight into the sky. We had landed soon after we realized that we were in the air: it was less than 30 minutes that we were in the air. My brother-in-law received us at the airport. After two days, my father’s entourage arrived, stayed there for a day or two before proceeding on the next leg of their pilgrimage. This time my mother accompanied them and this marked the beginning of my parents’ pilgrimage era: in the next two/ three years they would go all over the country on several pilgrimage trips – from the Kanyakumarika on the South to the Himalayas on the North and from Dwarka in the West to the Sun Temple in the East. And, by the time they completed their pilgrimages, they became further liberated – losing the chains of many past traditions in living style as well as attitudes towards traditions and cultural practices.
Suku and I stayed back the summer holidays at Bagdogra. It was a very pleasant vacation. We had one neice and a nephew about four to six years’ younger to us. It was rather cool temperature. We had plenty of good food. The goat meat was excellent. One day my brother-in-law had purchased a cart load of ripe jackfruits. They were very cheap. I remember that he had given me one small jackfruit that I had eaten all by myself. The neighborhood where my elder sister Didi lived was interesting. We picked up friends there. We played cricket with them. One of the friends, son of the Anglo-Indian white Airport Manager, took us to their home. His mother served us nice food and for the first time we played a game of housie: she provided the coins for us to play. Another friend, son of the head of the metrology department at the Airport, was studying in the same class as I did. Much later his father was transferred to Dum Dum Airport and I had met him again at their residence in Dum Dum when we were studying for the higher secondary examination.
Both the air trip and the vacation at Bagdogra came about suddenly and gave me a different experience and new ideas. It was first time that we had stepped in side the airport, got hold of boarding passes, the first time we walked along the tarmac and walked up the ladder inside an aircraft that we had so far seen from a distant. It was the first take off and the first landing. The Bagdogra airport was a small one. The airport staff quarter complex was small but beautiful. The people were so warm to a set of strangers. Yet, I felt at that time that the trip had come at a great financial cost to my elder brothers. Air travel those days was for the rich people only. When voyages unfold themselves, they would not care about the human cost-benefit calculus.
Back to school again. A maternal uncle (Mom’s cousin) visited us after a long time. He had acquired some knowledge in palmistry and astrology. Mom insisted that he explored my future. He did and forecast that there would be serious obstacles to my education and I may not go beyond school education. The family did not believe in his forecast about me. But soon I would be afflicted by a queer disease: I could not eat anything. I was put under treatment of another maternal uncle who practiced Aayurvedic medicine. I stopped going to school and was prohibited from playing anything. In the evening, Dad would take me and my brother out for a long walk when we explored different lanes and localities. Within a month I recovered my appetite and resumed school. The first hurdle came and gone. The next obstacle was to come soon. With the record of getting close to 100% marks in most subjects and topping the class for three successive years, my father had demanded of the school principal that I should be awarded a free studentship. The principal heard my father and received his written request. But he neither said yes nor no. I was in the eighth grade then and in the middle of the session the principal changed. The school demanded fees from me. Father was furious. He was inclined to change the school. I was already getting bored with this school. And, I wanted to return to mainstream school from this Cambridge style education. I insisted my father that I do not change to another Christian Missionary School that would be far away – resulting in loss of another hour my lively day time. I stopped going to school about five month’s before the final examinations. It was another good period of non-academic activity.
Meanwhile, parents became busy searching for a bride for Dada my eldest brother. After Chordi got married, my father had rented out about 70% of the house to different tenants. He had to add additional floor space within the house. An expansion project was soon completed. Some tenants had to leave. We now had enough rooms for new entrants to the family.
Experimenting Freedom: My Unfolding Voyage 020
Exploring Freedom Opportunities
Boys do not weep, at least in public. Who likes witnessing others – boys or girls weep any way? Further, when one weeps with tears rolling out from the eyes, another tend to suffer the same attack and weeping spreads like a contagious phenomenon. Cousin Dulal-da, about 4 years senior to me burst into weeping aloud as Chordi stepped into the car with her husband on her first trip to the in-laws house, just after she got married with so much fun and feast. For the second time (the Druva cinema incident was the first), I could not control weeping in public. I realized then that this weeping was due to the thought of some loss somewhere. Dulal-da, about five / six years younger than Chordi, enjoyed a lot of affection from Chordi as he and his four younger brothers used to spend a few days or weeks almost every year with us at Gurudham. But I wondered why Chordi gaining into a new life was a loss to any of us. Yes, she would not be with us day and night 365 days a year and that’s great disadvantage as she was taking considerable care. But that’s the way life is. Didi got married 6 years back. Dada has been living at a distance place where he has been working for the last 6 years. Mejda has also been away working in a district in West Bengal for the last four years even as he was completing his graduation from the college. All of us were together during Chordi’s marriage. All of them will go back to their respective places. At home, I and my younger brother Suku would be there with the Parents.
The life would become dull again after the hectic activities for two weeks in connection with Chordi’s marriage. During this period, we had lot of fun as relatives arrived a few days/ weeks in advance for the celebrations, arrangements were being made for the marriage and feast with responsibilities taken up by various uncles, brothers, cousins and other relatives with Dad holding monitoring review meetings every evening. A lot of children had collected at home – cousins, nephews, nieces. We had a great time.
The home control on me and younger brother Suku loosened dramatically with Chordi going to her new home, some 14-hour journey away. Freedom increased: this however came at a nominal cost. We now had to keep track of our things ourselves and provide some help to Mom for doing some rounds of small jobs at home or in the neighborhood. We were now ready to use our enhanced opportunity for freedom. Dada had left his bicycle at home: he had bought this one when he started his career at Jamshedpur, a relatively small, but clean industrial town, and using it for cycling to the factory he worked. Probably, he had moved his residence closer to factory or became entitled to factory pick-up bus and with increase in income he could afford hired cabs for transportation Dada’s bicycle was very heavy in weight and somewhat taller than the regular ones. We needed to learn cycling, but we were always afraid that Dada would not like us to get trained on his costly bicycle. There were two alternatives: we learn cycling on smaller, old and convenient to handle bicycles rented on hourly basis from the nearby cycle repairing shop or quietly use Dad’s cycle with care. We chose to do the latter. We took the cycle to the football ground. Struggled for about two hours as my younger brother helped, I ultimately found my balance on the cycle and grip over its handle, break and the pedals. My feet could barely touch and push a pedal when it was forming 80 to 90 degrees angle with the ground: the bicycle raced forward as I alternatively pushed the right and the left pedals as they came up near my toes. Now it was my turn to help my brother learn. He was shorter than me at that time: so he had to learn balancing while her feet always on the pedals and he could not sit on the seat as I could do. It took another one hours for him to get the balance and the grip. With two / three more days of practice, we were through and could cycle comfortable on the road. We started using the cycle for the rounds we had to make to get something from the market and deliver something to someone’s house at a cycling distance of 5 to 10 minutes. We were forbidden to cycle on the main roads, but we would soon comfortable taking the risk. Before Dada used to come for a short visit home, we would wash clean the cycle and get small repair jobs done at the repairing shop. But Dada would in any case get an overhauling done from time to keep his cycle on tip top conditions. He seemed to accept the risk of his siblings using the cycle based on their trial performance during his absence from home.
Chordi would not have so easily allowed us to fly kites on the terrace. But now we were free as there was no one to keep an eye on our activities. We bought what we needed. This time it was Suku who got it right first flying the kite: I had to struggle for another day till I could make the kite fly. But with ample time to practice and became addicted to kite-flying for a while. Suku was more enthusiastic and wanted apply cutting edge strength to the thread. We did some experiments and it seemed to work a little during our kite-flying games with others attacking our kite: mostly we lost our kites in the air. But we got equal number of kites of others landing on our terrace for us to use. But what U enjoyed most was letting the kite soar as high as we could and appear so small in size. The higher the kite went up the less was it necessary to exercise control over it. The feeling of getting connected to the air so high in the sky closer to the floating clouds was so special.
The low profile philately activity for a while also provided us a similar kind of feeling to get connected to distant lands. Bulk of our collections was through discovery of postage stamp books that elder brothers had lost in old family trunks. But we did purchase some from a store 15 minutes walk from home. We almost lost our collections one evening when Mom, agitated by a complaint received from a friend in the neighborhood about our mistreating him and unable to beat us as we hid under the cot she could not creep in so easily, threw our stamps with from the first floor window on the road below. Early morning next day, we went down to retrieve our treasured collections scattered on the side of the road. But the philately did not stick with us for long.
Boys do not weep, at least in public. Who likes witnessing others – boys or girls weep any way? Further, when one weeps with tears rolling out from the eyes, another tend to suffer the same attack and weeping spreads like a contagious phenomenon. Cousin Dulal-da, about 4 years senior to me burst into weeping aloud as Chordi stepped into the car with her husband on her first trip to the in-laws house, just after she got married with so much fun and feast. For the second time (the Druva cinema incident was the first), I could not control weeping in public. I realized then that this weeping was due to the thought of some loss somewhere. Dulal-da, about five / six years younger than Chordi, enjoyed a lot of affection from Chordi as he and his four younger brothers used to spend a few days or weeks almost every year with us at Gurudham. But I wondered why Chordi gaining into a new life was a loss to any of us. Yes, she would not be with us day and night 365 days a year and that’s great disadvantage as she was taking considerable care. But that’s the way life is. Didi got married 6 years back. Dada has been living at a distance place where he has been working for the last 6 years. Mejda has also been away working in a district in West Bengal for the last four years even as he was completing his graduation from the college. All of us were together during Chordi’s marriage. All of them will go back to their respective places. At home, I and my younger brother Suku would be there with the Parents.
The life would become dull again after the hectic activities for two weeks in connection with Chordi’s marriage. During this period, we had lot of fun as relatives arrived a few days/ weeks in advance for the celebrations, arrangements were being made for the marriage and feast with responsibilities taken up by various uncles, brothers, cousins and other relatives with Dad holding monitoring review meetings every evening. A lot of children had collected at home – cousins, nephews, nieces. We had a great time.
The home control on me and younger brother Suku loosened dramatically with Chordi going to her new home, some 14-hour journey away. Freedom increased: this however came at a nominal cost. We now had to keep track of our things ourselves and provide some help to Mom for doing some rounds of small jobs at home or in the neighborhood. We were now ready to use our enhanced opportunity for freedom. Dada had left his bicycle at home: he had bought this one when he started his career at Jamshedpur, a relatively small, but clean industrial town, and using it for cycling to the factory he worked. Probably, he had moved his residence closer to factory or became entitled to factory pick-up bus and with increase in income he could afford hired cabs for transportation Dada’s bicycle was very heavy in weight and somewhat taller than the regular ones. We needed to learn cycling, but we were always afraid that Dada would not like us to get trained on his costly bicycle. There were two alternatives: we learn cycling on smaller, old and convenient to handle bicycles rented on hourly basis from the nearby cycle repairing shop or quietly use Dad’s cycle with care. We chose to do the latter. We took the cycle to the football ground. Struggled for about two hours as my younger brother helped, I ultimately found my balance on the cycle and grip over its handle, break and the pedals. My feet could barely touch and push a pedal when it was forming 80 to 90 degrees angle with the ground: the bicycle raced forward as I alternatively pushed the right and the left pedals as they came up near my toes. Now it was my turn to help my brother learn. He was shorter than me at that time: so he had to learn balancing while her feet always on the pedals and he could not sit on the seat as I could do. It took another one hours for him to get the balance and the grip. With two / three more days of practice, we were through and could cycle comfortable on the road. We started using the cycle for the rounds we had to make to get something from the market and deliver something to someone’s house at a cycling distance of 5 to 10 minutes. We were forbidden to cycle on the main roads, but we would soon comfortable taking the risk. Before Dada used to come for a short visit home, we would wash clean the cycle and get small repair jobs done at the repairing shop. But Dada would in any case get an overhauling done from time to keep his cycle on tip top conditions. He seemed to accept the risk of his siblings using the cycle based on their trial performance during his absence from home.
Chordi would not have so easily allowed us to fly kites on the terrace. But now we were free as there was no one to keep an eye on our activities. We bought what we needed. This time it was Suku who got it right first flying the kite: I had to struggle for another day till I could make the kite fly. But with ample time to practice and became addicted to kite-flying for a while. Suku was more enthusiastic and wanted apply cutting edge strength to the thread. We did some experiments and it seemed to work a little during our kite-flying games with others attacking our kite: mostly we lost our kites in the air. But we got equal number of kites of others landing on our terrace for us to use. But what U enjoyed most was letting the kite soar as high as we could and appear so small in size. The higher the kite went up the less was it necessary to exercise control over it. The feeling of getting connected to the air so high in the sky closer to the floating clouds was so special.
The low profile philately activity for a while also provided us a similar kind of feeling to get connected to distant lands. Bulk of our collections was through discovery of postage stamp books that elder brothers had lost in old family trunks. But we did purchase some from a store 15 minutes walk from home. We almost lost our collections one evening when Mom, agitated by a complaint received from a friend in the neighborhood about our mistreating him and unable to beat us as we hid under the cot she could not creep in so easily, threw our stamps with from the first floor window on the road below. Early morning next day, we went down to retrieve our treasured collections scattered on the side of the road. But the philately did not stick with us for long.
Groups To Lead: My Unfolding Voyage 019
Influencing Group Actions
The game had to be stopped as my two-years'-in-age younger brother, Suku, shoed me his a bleeding arm. It was in the midst of an afternoon soccer practice session of third to fifth graders in the small neighborhood. I sent someone home to bring anti-septic ointment to treat Suku’s wound, while I investigated the cause of the minor injury. As it turned out my friend Anupam had for long not trimmed his and filed his nails that scratched Suku’s arms during a scramble for the football in the midst of the game. In a fit of rage, I got someone to bring a broken razor blade and advised Anupam to cut his nails before we resumed our soccer practice game. All friends supported me in awed and Anupam meekly obeyed my directive. It was easy to realize that one could bring around a group of people around to a justifiable action if the circumstances were conducive to logical action. This was one of the many childhood experiments to influence group behavior.
The adolescent story books and magazines had already given me some ideas to work on. I influenced some seven playmates in the neighborhood to form a club of our own. It worked remarkably well. They thought high of me even otherwise because very few went to Christian Missionary Schools in the neighborhood. In addition, I had resources in the form a terrace room at home for our meetings and many storybooks and children magazines in an old glass-paned cupboard. And, they were all thrilled to have a club of their own, named “Ever Green Club “– thanks to the suggestion of Pinaki, an year or so younger friend who had not seen a school but one with strong intelligence and a large English vocabulary as he was being taught all R’s at home by his father who rented a part of the ground floor of our house to live with his family. Activities of Ever Green comprised whatever we had been doing while playing together. In addition, our books and magazines now stamped with Ever Green Club rubber stamp became available for borrowing by the members. I managed to get my father order his favorite local carpenter to chisel out some form of a non-willow cricket bat from a wooden log purchased from the nearby saw mill.
We funded the tennis balls in turn for our cricket practice on the open field opposite our house (many buildings would come up there later). We needed no cash subscriptions from members – contributions in kind were adequate. The club would now venture with me launch a hand written Bengali- English bilingual magazine named ‘Aamraa’ (meaning We All), edited by me. The first issue was colourful witn literary (stories, rhymes and essays like the one I composed on the Food Crisis Afflicting the Domestic Ants) and drawing contributions from members and extracts from external sources. It was circulated among the high school or college gong elders who were inquisitive to know what we are up to and they paid a small fee in cash for getting the chance to read what Aamraa contained. My younger members helped me solve my shyness to approach the seniors to with our hand written magazine: they were keen to show potential readers their contributions in the magazine. We could induce one such reader who was appearing for his school final examinations to contribute a poem to one of our issues (there might have been
three or four issues till we grew out of Ever Green stage) – probably he had come to know that some young ladies in the locality were in the readership. Once he was annoyed with me because we misspelled his name in the magazine.
All our meeting circulars, letters and notices were typed by me in the old a portable English Remington Rand Typewriter – one of his solely-owned downtown tea trading office equipment my father used at home at and for which I had become the sole user by that time, often typing out long letters of appeal for hike in pensions for the association of retired, Calcutta-based employees of Imperial Bank of India and its successor, State Bank of India to the bank’s Chairman in Bombay (now called Mumbai) with two carbon copies for records and for sending to the Calcutta operations head of the bank. The letters were drafted by the association’s office bearers that included Prahlad Uncle, my father’s slightly senior in age school friend and te poor pensioners’ needed some free secretarial assistance from me. Their English composition was excellent, but Prahlad Uncle trusted my logical rearrangement and editing of sentences and untrained typing skill besides being so affectionate to me. I also used to type various kinds of other letters my father used to ask me to write, including letters to the Principal of my school for grant of leave of my rare absence from the school due to illness and other reasons. These letters exposed me to certain British-India expressions like ‘ Honorable or Respected Sir’, ‘ I beg to submit ‘ and ‘yours faith fully or obediently’ which for long after Indian Independence pleased addresses – the expressions that I also had to use but with mental agony of a child growing up as a citizen of a free nation.
Ever Green Club provided opportunities to experiment with the use of the Club’s name and my typing resources. One day when I came back from my school, father gave me a big registered parcel delivered by the postman and addressed to me as the secretary of Ever Green Club. This was a mail the public relations or sales manager of the manufacturer (probably Proctor & Gamble) of the popular Vicks Vaporub, a cough and cold relief ointment. They had thanked me for my response to their advertisements aimed at social, cultural clubs and sent me 100 sets of Vicks Vaporub leaflets and colored geographical maps of West Bengal (the province of India that I lived in) for distribution among our members. They could hardly have imagined that they wee responding to a sixth grader. I was obviously delighted with this. And so were my club members.
But Ever Green offered limited scope of experimenting group activity. I needed more fifth or sixth graders with me. They were there in the neighborhood playing soccer during the sixth months of summer and rains – the seniors in the Club who arranged this soccer playing facility so kindly could also arrange an occasional performance of drama, poetry recitation competition, athletics competition and free-hand gymnastics, wall mounted magazine. We had more than score in our age group and needed activities exclusive for us just as in the case of soccer. In any case, we were playing cricket by organizing ourselves. My friends fell in for a new club christened Kishore Sangha (Adolescents’ Club) suggested by Sumanta, a friend strong in Bengali composition who became an intellectual Naxalite – extreme communist and much later, I understand, a producer of television programs. Having given the idea of forming the club and being soccer captain, the Secretary’s position automatically came to me. We carefully chose not to have a President, fearing displeasure of the seniors of the bigger club that arranged many things for the neighbors. Kishore Sangha’s activities were concentrated on organizing cricket practice with proper willow bats and wickets but with tennis balls instead of the regular cricket ball we used to refer to as deuce ball. The tennis ball cricket would become very popular in Calcutta soon giving us opportunity to participate in different competitive and friendly tournaments in many places. It was very inexpensive as compared with regular cricket because there was no need for various costly gears like guards and pads, ground and wicket preparation and there was no danger of getting hurt by the ball. Besides cricket, Kishore Sangha also started its own wall-mounted magazine. Some other activities would be added as we grew up in age.
The game had to be stopped as my two-years'-in-age younger brother, Suku, shoed me his a bleeding arm. It was in the midst of an afternoon soccer practice session of third to fifth graders in the small neighborhood. I sent someone home to bring anti-septic ointment to treat Suku’s wound, while I investigated the cause of the minor injury. As it turned out my friend Anupam had for long not trimmed his and filed his nails that scratched Suku’s arms during a scramble for the football in the midst of the game. In a fit of rage, I got someone to bring a broken razor blade and advised Anupam to cut his nails before we resumed our soccer practice game. All friends supported me in awed and Anupam meekly obeyed my directive. It was easy to realize that one could bring around a group of people around to a justifiable action if the circumstances were conducive to logical action. This was one of the many childhood experiments to influence group behavior.
The adolescent story books and magazines had already given me some ideas to work on. I influenced some seven playmates in the neighborhood to form a club of our own. It worked remarkably well. They thought high of me even otherwise because very few went to Christian Missionary Schools in the neighborhood. In addition, I had resources in the form a terrace room at home for our meetings and many storybooks and children magazines in an old glass-paned cupboard. And, they were all thrilled to have a club of their own, named “Ever Green Club “– thanks to the suggestion of Pinaki, an year or so younger friend who had not seen a school but one with strong intelligence and a large English vocabulary as he was being taught all R’s at home by his father who rented a part of the ground floor of our house to live with his family. Activities of Ever Green comprised whatever we had been doing while playing together. In addition, our books and magazines now stamped with Ever Green Club rubber stamp became available for borrowing by the members. I managed to get my father order his favorite local carpenter to chisel out some form of a non-willow cricket bat from a wooden log purchased from the nearby saw mill.
We funded the tennis balls in turn for our cricket practice on the open field opposite our house (many buildings would come up there later). We needed no cash subscriptions from members – contributions in kind were adequate. The club would now venture with me launch a hand written Bengali- English bilingual magazine named ‘Aamraa’ (meaning We All), edited by me. The first issue was colourful witn literary (stories, rhymes and essays like the one I composed on the Food Crisis Afflicting the Domestic Ants) and drawing contributions from members and extracts from external sources. It was circulated among the high school or college gong elders who were inquisitive to know what we are up to and they paid a small fee in cash for getting the chance to read what Aamraa contained. My younger members helped me solve my shyness to approach the seniors to with our hand written magazine: they were keen to show potential readers their contributions in the magazine. We could induce one such reader who was appearing for his school final examinations to contribute a poem to one of our issues (there might have been
three or four issues till we grew out of Ever Green stage) – probably he had come to know that some young ladies in the locality were in the readership. Once he was annoyed with me because we misspelled his name in the magazine.
All our meeting circulars, letters and notices were typed by me in the old a portable English Remington Rand Typewriter – one of his solely-owned downtown tea trading office equipment my father used at home at and for which I had become the sole user by that time, often typing out long letters of appeal for hike in pensions for the association of retired, Calcutta-based employees of Imperial Bank of India and its successor, State Bank of India to the bank’s Chairman in Bombay (now called Mumbai) with two carbon copies for records and for sending to the Calcutta operations head of the bank. The letters were drafted by the association’s office bearers that included Prahlad Uncle, my father’s slightly senior in age school friend and te poor pensioners’ needed some free secretarial assistance from me. Their English composition was excellent, but Prahlad Uncle trusted my logical rearrangement and editing of sentences and untrained typing skill besides being so affectionate to me. I also used to type various kinds of other letters my father used to ask me to write, including letters to the Principal of my school for grant of leave of my rare absence from the school due to illness and other reasons. These letters exposed me to certain British-India expressions like ‘ Honorable or Respected Sir’, ‘ I beg to submit ‘ and ‘yours faith fully or obediently’ which for long after Indian Independence pleased addresses – the expressions that I also had to use but with mental agony of a child growing up as a citizen of a free nation.
Ever Green Club provided opportunities to experiment with the use of the Club’s name and my typing resources. One day when I came back from my school, father gave me a big registered parcel delivered by the postman and addressed to me as the secretary of Ever Green Club. This was a mail the public relations or sales manager of the manufacturer (probably Proctor & Gamble) of the popular Vicks Vaporub, a cough and cold relief ointment. They had thanked me for my response to their advertisements aimed at social, cultural clubs and sent me 100 sets of Vicks Vaporub leaflets and colored geographical maps of West Bengal (the province of India that I lived in) for distribution among our members. They could hardly have imagined that they wee responding to a sixth grader. I was obviously delighted with this. And so were my club members.
But Ever Green offered limited scope of experimenting group activity. I needed more fifth or sixth graders with me. They were there in the neighborhood playing soccer during the sixth months of summer and rains – the seniors in the Club who arranged this soccer playing facility so kindly could also arrange an occasional performance of drama, poetry recitation competition, athletics competition and free-hand gymnastics, wall mounted magazine. We had more than score in our age group and needed activities exclusive for us just as in the case of soccer. In any case, we were playing cricket by organizing ourselves. My friends fell in for a new club christened Kishore Sangha (Adolescents’ Club) suggested by Sumanta, a friend strong in Bengali composition who became an intellectual Naxalite – extreme communist and much later, I understand, a producer of television programs. Having given the idea of forming the club and being soccer captain, the Secretary’s position automatically came to me. We carefully chose not to have a President, fearing displeasure of the seniors of the bigger club that arranged many things for the neighbors. Kishore Sangha’s activities were concentrated on organizing cricket practice with proper willow bats and wickets but with tennis balls instead of the regular cricket ball we used to refer to as deuce ball. The tennis ball cricket would become very popular in Calcutta soon giving us opportunity to participate in different competitive and friendly tournaments in many places. It was very inexpensive as compared with regular cricket because there was no need for various costly gears like guards and pads, ground and wicket preparation and there was no danger of getting hurt by the ball. Besides cricket, Kishore Sangha also started its own wall-mounted magazine. Some other activities would be added as we grew up in age.
Secondary Schooling: My Unfolding Voyage 018
Education as Secondary
" In the name of the Father and of His Son, Holy Ghost Amen. Hail O Mary ..." was the prayer that we started the Day at 9 AM sharp, standing in queues in the long corridors just outside the class rooms and wish Good Morning to the Principal as he walked past each set of class students. Then the Class teacher would lead us into the classroom where we had already kept our bags and books in the respective desks. I did wonder whether prayers to Mother Mary would change my religion. No one told me that I have to put my right hand on my shoulders and the head and the heart to form a Cross as the prayer begun, but I felt it would look nice to do so. No guidance came from home on this issue: the subject never came up for discussion at all. I thought praying to God was independent of religion.
After four years of primary school where different periods of 40 minutes each was for different teachers to come and teach us, here the same teacher taught us throughout the school hours, except for a 40-minute session twice a week when the Hindi teacher would teach us Hindi. English was the rest of the time: Bengali was not to be taught. The Class teacher taught us everything - handwriting, reading, recitation, arithmetic, natural science, geography, history, moral science, singing and occasionally playing. On his birthday, the Irish Brother class teacher, besides giving us nice dry foods to eat. took us to Metro theatre hall in the heart of the city by train and bus to enjoy the film " For Whom the Bell Tolls" (half a century later, my elder son would find the film for me through Netflix and we would enjoy the film together at his Atlanta residence till the end when the bell would toll for the hero Roberto fighting unto death as the heroine Maria would be carried away to safety).
Soon I would find out that not much effort was required to lead the class in tests and exams: I was by far the best student. The reason was simple I knew the sums well and my proficiency in English came up far to quickly. The school study workload was very little, though very structured. Homework was very little and an hour’s study at home was more than sufficient. No one at home cared to know why: they were proud to see my reports and paste the report inside the glass in the Almirah for everyone to see my great performance. But I knew that the standards were too low and the progress was to slow for me because of my earlier advanced education at home. I also could sense that the English grammar was weak but that did not matter as better part of written and oral communication in English cam just by practice - reading and writing. We had an excellent Hindi teacher: he emphasized on correct spelling, correct pronunciation and correct writing as was done in the case of English. The Hindi grammar was tough: I learned the Hindi grammar quite well to get the full marks but I failed to develop a taste for the Hindi language because of the stress on the grammar and little use of Hindi communication while Hindi lessons were imparted. I would fail to pick up Hindi even later when I started enjoying Hindi films and Hindi film music. I had difficulty learning anything that is not used frequently as a matter of course. I just though in Bengali and dealt with my Hindi. But in all other subjects in the school, I started thinking only in English so much so that even at home while pursuing my own interest in Bengali composition (my own stories, essays and stories), I would try to experiment with the structure of my English composition thought. As in the case of English, I would remain weak in Bengali grammar as well: I would not know why and when I was grammatically correct or incorrect: in both cases I was happier with my fluency, speed and communication rather than being grammatically correct. I carried this weakness throughout my life but somehow I managed to avoid getting into trouble as I became late in life increasing aware (not learned) of the intricacies of grammar in these two languages. I did better than many who knew more of the grammar and had a much wider vocabulary. I made a trade off: effective communication that makes an impression easily rather than expressing with command over the rules of the language. I could sense that most people including the teachers ignored my grammatical inaccuracies because of the content and structure of my verbal and written thoughts. Literature is what I avoided along with grammar: the only thing that drove me to study of poetry and prose was the free flow of thoughts in structured as well as non-conventional compositions.
Learning natural science in St. Mary's was a great fun. The books were so live and experiments were so casual. However, natural science was not rigorous in fifth to eighth grades. Another study of natural things was ‘Geography’. I would pronounce this word differently at school and home as in the case of many other words: some how I liked both the Bengali and English styles of pronunciation equally interesting and could not develop a fascination for one or the other style- correct pronunciation was besides the point for me. One of my class mates, a Telegu (one whose origin is traced to Andhra Pradesh, now renamed Telegu Desam, a southern Indian State where people speak in a language called Telegu) always read 'and' as 'ando' and for each such pronunciation of the word while reading or communicating in the class, the teacher would lash his palm with the thick leather strap. He cried and I felt for him, because his Telegu at home were interfering with his pronunciation. I developed distaste for correctness about pronunciation. Decades later I found the variations in pronunciation of the same English words were an amazing and pleasant diversity across the nations in the World. No one seemed correct in English pronunciation including the Englishman but everyone provided real fun to the years of others except those who were more interested in some notion of chastity.
Arithmetic, geometry and algebra progressed very slowly during each and over successive grades. I found the standards too low to be interesting. I suspected that either the teachers were not very comfortable with Mathematics or they wanted all the students to learn at the rate at which the relatively weak majority could deal with sums. My advantage in mathematics started waning.
But the most disturbing thing in the first few months at the new school was the disappearance of the food from the lunch boxes somewhat magically. The School’s orphanage did have children with varying family backgrounds and races. Some children had developed an art of stealing the contents of the lunch-boxes without getting spotted in a matter minutes during the 10 minute small break around 10-20 AM. We learned to be careful protecting our foodstuff till we ate them during the lunch hour from 12 noon to 1 PM. The teacher made effort to pull up suspected thieves. Meanwhile, it was possible to convince parents at home to skip taking lunch boxes for a while and taste food bought from the pastry man. The items I liked however were few: the patties and the loaf of bread with two deliciously tasty potatoes inserted inside with gravy (this would cost then one-eighth of an Indian Rupee; my to and fro journey by bus between residence and the school would cost the same).
Once I was chosen in the school’s cricket team that played a match against another school’s team in our own ground. Most probably, we won the game for as far as I remember we took fielding first and I was not out when we batted. I was the youngest player in our team and was not an important member. Probably there were not enough senior boys willing to play cricket in the school, that they had to include me. But that cricket match was memorable to me for another reason: this was the first and the last time I was hurt while fielding and walked out of the field with an injury. Nobody knew how I got injured and where during playing. I was placed in the mid-on position and the only time I had to collect a ball that was driven strongly towards the mid-off boundary. I had to move a very little from my position and the ball suck clean in my palms one bounce. There were lots of claps as I returned the ball to the bowler’s end promptly. A few minutes later I sensed a pain between the third and the fourth fingers of left hand and found that blood was coming out of skin joining the two fingers. I had held the fast racing ball all right but its thrust caused the little injury. I went up to the Captain and showed him my injury. He immediately dispatched me to the nurse at the dormitory who would put some anti-septic cream on the injury and a small little bandage. The injury healed within a few days but for years the particular point of injury remained somewhat thicker than normal. But injuries seldom caused me to stop playing, even for a single day. I just learned to avoid certain kind of injuries while learning to endure and live with some other types.
" In the name of the Father and of His Son, Holy Ghost Amen. Hail O Mary ..." was the prayer that we started the Day at 9 AM sharp, standing in queues in the long corridors just outside the class rooms and wish Good Morning to the Principal as he walked past each set of class students. Then the Class teacher would lead us into the classroom where we had already kept our bags and books in the respective desks. I did wonder whether prayers to Mother Mary would change my religion. No one told me that I have to put my right hand on my shoulders and the head and the heart to form a Cross as the prayer begun, but I felt it would look nice to do so. No guidance came from home on this issue: the subject never came up for discussion at all. I thought praying to God was independent of religion.
After four years of primary school where different periods of 40 minutes each was for different teachers to come and teach us, here the same teacher taught us throughout the school hours, except for a 40-minute session twice a week when the Hindi teacher would teach us Hindi. English was the rest of the time: Bengali was not to be taught. The Class teacher taught us everything - handwriting, reading, recitation, arithmetic, natural science, geography, history, moral science, singing and occasionally playing. On his birthday, the Irish Brother class teacher, besides giving us nice dry foods to eat. took us to Metro theatre hall in the heart of the city by train and bus to enjoy the film " For Whom the Bell Tolls" (half a century later, my elder son would find the film for me through Netflix and we would enjoy the film together at his Atlanta residence till the end when the bell would toll for the hero Roberto fighting unto death as the heroine Maria would be carried away to safety).
Soon I would find out that not much effort was required to lead the class in tests and exams: I was by far the best student. The reason was simple I knew the sums well and my proficiency in English came up far to quickly. The school study workload was very little, though very structured. Homework was very little and an hour’s study at home was more than sufficient. No one at home cared to know why: they were proud to see my reports and paste the report inside the glass in the Almirah for everyone to see my great performance. But I knew that the standards were too low and the progress was to slow for me because of my earlier advanced education at home. I also could sense that the English grammar was weak but that did not matter as better part of written and oral communication in English cam just by practice - reading and writing. We had an excellent Hindi teacher: he emphasized on correct spelling, correct pronunciation and correct writing as was done in the case of English. The Hindi grammar was tough: I learned the Hindi grammar quite well to get the full marks but I failed to develop a taste for the Hindi language because of the stress on the grammar and little use of Hindi communication while Hindi lessons were imparted. I would fail to pick up Hindi even later when I started enjoying Hindi films and Hindi film music. I had difficulty learning anything that is not used frequently as a matter of course. I just though in Bengali and dealt with my Hindi. But in all other subjects in the school, I started thinking only in English so much so that even at home while pursuing my own interest in Bengali composition (my own stories, essays and stories), I would try to experiment with the structure of my English composition thought. As in the case of English, I would remain weak in Bengali grammar as well: I would not know why and when I was grammatically correct or incorrect: in both cases I was happier with my fluency, speed and communication rather than being grammatically correct. I carried this weakness throughout my life but somehow I managed to avoid getting into trouble as I became late in life increasing aware (not learned) of the intricacies of grammar in these two languages. I did better than many who knew more of the grammar and had a much wider vocabulary. I made a trade off: effective communication that makes an impression easily rather than expressing with command over the rules of the language. I could sense that most people including the teachers ignored my grammatical inaccuracies because of the content and structure of my verbal and written thoughts. Literature is what I avoided along with grammar: the only thing that drove me to study of poetry and prose was the free flow of thoughts in structured as well as non-conventional compositions.
Learning natural science in St. Mary's was a great fun. The books were so live and experiments were so casual. However, natural science was not rigorous in fifth to eighth grades. Another study of natural things was ‘Geography’. I would pronounce this word differently at school and home as in the case of many other words: some how I liked both the Bengali and English styles of pronunciation equally interesting and could not develop a fascination for one or the other style- correct pronunciation was besides the point for me. One of my class mates, a Telegu (one whose origin is traced to Andhra Pradesh, now renamed Telegu Desam, a southern Indian State where people speak in a language called Telegu) always read 'and' as 'ando' and for each such pronunciation of the word while reading or communicating in the class, the teacher would lash his palm with the thick leather strap. He cried and I felt for him, because his Telegu at home were interfering with his pronunciation. I developed distaste for correctness about pronunciation. Decades later I found the variations in pronunciation of the same English words were an amazing and pleasant diversity across the nations in the World. No one seemed correct in English pronunciation including the Englishman but everyone provided real fun to the years of others except those who were more interested in some notion of chastity.
Arithmetic, geometry and algebra progressed very slowly during each and over successive grades. I found the standards too low to be interesting. I suspected that either the teachers were not very comfortable with Mathematics or they wanted all the students to learn at the rate at which the relatively weak majority could deal with sums. My advantage in mathematics started waning.
But the most disturbing thing in the first few months at the new school was the disappearance of the food from the lunch boxes somewhat magically. The School’s orphanage did have children with varying family backgrounds and races. Some children had developed an art of stealing the contents of the lunch-boxes without getting spotted in a matter minutes during the 10 minute small break around 10-20 AM. We learned to be careful protecting our foodstuff till we ate them during the lunch hour from 12 noon to 1 PM. The teacher made effort to pull up suspected thieves. Meanwhile, it was possible to convince parents at home to skip taking lunch boxes for a while and taste food bought from the pastry man. The items I liked however were few: the patties and the loaf of bread with two deliciously tasty potatoes inserted inside with gravy (this would cost then one-eighth of an Indian Rupee; my to and fro journey by bus between residence and the school would cost the same).
Once I was chosen in the school’s cricket team that played a match against another school’s team in our own ground. Most probably, we won the game for as far as I remember we took fielding first and I was not out when we batted. I was the youngest player in our team and was not an important member. Probably there were not enough senior boys willing to play cricket in the school, that they had to include me. But that cricket match was memorable to me for another reason: this was the first and the last time I was hurt while fielding and walked out of the field with an injury. Nobody knew how I got injured and where during playing. I was placed in the mid-on position and the only time I had to collect a ball that was driven strongly towards the mid-off boundary. I had to move a very little from my position and the ball suck clean in my palms one bounce. There were lots of claps as I returned the ball to the bowler’s end promptly. A few minutes later I sensed a pain between the third and the fourth fingers of left hand and found that blood was coming out of skin joining the two fingers. I had held the fast racing ball all right but its thrust caused the little injury. I went up to the Captain and showed him my injury. He immediately dispatched me to the nurse at the dormitory who would put some anti-septic cream on the injury and a small little bandage. The injury healed within a few days but for years the particular point of injury remained somewhat thicker than normal. But injuries seldom caused me to stop playing, even for a single day. I just learned to avoid certain kind of injuries while learning to endure and live with some other types.
Father hands over to Father: My Unfolding Voyage 017
The Irish English
The elderly Irish gentleman in long, sparkling white robes was discussing with my father in English for about 10 minutes. I could make out what my father was speaking but failed to catch a single word uttered by the Irish father. I could just hear some low decibel humming tone. I was wondering how my father was having conversation with this gentleman. Finally, he looked at me reluctantly and asked a couple of questions which I could respond and then handed over a form and a fee book to my father. We soon left the huge room the Irish father, the Principal of my new school, St. Mary's Orphanage and Day School. It was about 10 AM this December morning as we came out from the Principal's room and climbed down the stairs to the lawn in front of the sprwaling two-storied school building, with big statue of Mother Mary with Child Jesus in her lap placed in an artificially made cave like structure on the western boundary of the campus. Then, we walked about 100 yards along the broad pathway between two huge playgrounds to check out of the gate of the school on the Dum Dum Road and take the bus trip back home. Next month I would get used to travelling in a public carrier bus alone while most of my friends in the locality would have to wait till their parents consider such bus travel safe enough.
This December marked a turning point. Just got the final results of the fourth grade from my primary school and selected for the district scholarship competition (in which I did not win a prize). I have to go to a secondary school now. Chordi dressed me up in a good dress and my father took me by bus to get me admitted to this school. A few days later, one of my cousins would go to the school to pay the school fees and bring the school calender and the book list. Within a few days, there was very nice journey by bus with my father to the Oxford Book House on Ganesh Chunder Avenue,in the business zone of the City of Calcutta to purchase the new books. A school bag, a lunch box and three sets of uniforms were ready soon. The classes started in January.
From Bramho teachers in the preparatory to Hindu and Muslim teachers in the primary school, I would now take lessons Christian Missionary Brothers as teachers in the secondary school. My father gave a short briefing on getting admitted to the school that cost him at least ten times more for my education compared with what the cost of my education would have been had I got myself admitted to any of the local schools. He thought it prudent to impose the higher financial burden to the family given the potential and promise that he saw in me. And, I must live up to promise and potential.
How did this part of the voyage go? Very pleasant and enjoyable. Easy life, little contribution to the utilization or enhancement of my potential directly. The four years of secondary education at St. Mary’s was only an extension of the 5 years at the primaries. Enhance the skills, test the various parts of the basic learning and enjoy life to the brim as the rule enforcement adults at home, in the neighborhood and in the school become less vigilant with you. At home the main control points were the school progress reports, complaints from the neighbor and adherence to the rule of’ back home before street lights are on and getting into studies at the fall of dusk. And, you get some share of the small household tasks: ‘go and get something from the neighbor or the market’ or ‘be a delivery boy or a messenger’.
This was one of the busiest periods of life and at the same time the most varied. The range of exposures was so large and varied in the space of just four years: in retrospect, I feel that the period was so short. The freedom was going up, the vigilance and controls were fewer, and the opportunities to experiment were more, the exposures varied and responsibility minimal with very little household work to be shared.
School activity had become manageable. You just kept your performance steady. Any decline in performance would threaten return of controls while occasional improvement brought you rewards here and there. In the school teachers did stop train you in all detail. Both the school and the neighborhood would like you to engage in sports and games and in cultural activities. The rules at home might not appreciate these activities but would tolerate most things you diversify into if your school progress reports were as per their reasonable expectations. While some classmates had hard time living with the high and rising expectations from the parents, most of us had no pressure at home unless you show declining performance.
So, games and sports flourished.
The elderly Irish gentleman in long, sparkling white robes was discussing with my father in English for about 10 minutes. I could make out what my father was speaking but failed to catch a single word uttered by the Irish father. I could just hear some low decibel humming tone. I was wondering how my father was having conversation with this gentleman. Finally, he looked at me reluctantly and asked a couple of questions which I could respond and then handed over a form and a fee book to my father. We soon left the huge room the Irish father, the Principal of my new school, St. Mary's Orphanage and Day School. It was about 10 AM this December morning as we came out from the Principal's room and climbed down the stairs to the lawn in front of the sprwaling two-storied school building, with big statue of Mother Mary with Child Jesus in her lap placed in an artificially made cave like structure on the western boundary of the campus. Then, we walked about 100 yards along the broad pathway between two huge playgrounds to check out of the gate of the school on the Dum Dum Road and take the bus trip back home. Next month I would get used to travelling in a public carrier bus alone while most of my friends in the locality would have to wait till their parents consider such bus travel safe enough.
This December marked a turning point. Just got the final results of the fourth grade from my primary school and selected for the district scholarship competition (in which I did not win a prize). I have to go to a secondary school now. Chordi dressed me up in a good dress and my father took me by bus to get me admitted to this school. A few days later, one of my cousins would go to the school to pay the school fees and bring the school calender and the book list. Within a few days, there was very nice journey by bus with my father to the Oxford Book House on Ganesh Chunder Avenue,in the business zone of the City of Calcutta to purchase the new books. A school bag, a lunch box and three sets of uniforms were ready soon. The classes started in January.
From Bramho teachers in the preparatory to Hindu and Muslim teachers in the primary school, I would now take lessons Christian Missionary Brothers as teachers in the secondary school. My father gave a short briefing on getting admitted to the school that cost him at least ten times more for my education compared with what the cost of my education would have been had I got myself admitted to any of the local schools. He thought it prudent to impose the higher financial burden to the family given the potential and promise that he saw in me. And, I must live up to promise and potential.
How did this part of the voyage go? Very pleasant and enjoyable. Easy life, little contribution to the utilization or enhancement of my potential directly. The four years of secondary education at St. Mary’s was only an extension of the 5 years at the primaries. Enhance the skills, test the various parts of the basic learning and enjoy life to the brim as the rule enforcement adults at home, in the neighborhood and in the school become less vigilant with you. At home the main control points were the school progress reports, complaints from the neighbor and adherence to the rule of’ back home before street lights are on and getting into studies at the fall of dusk. And, you get some share of the small household tasks: ‘go and get something from the neighbor or the market’ or ‘be a delivery boy or a messenger’.
This was one of the busiest periods of life and at the same time the most varied. The range of exposures was so large and varied in the space of just four years: in retrospect, I feel that the period was so short. The freedom was going up, the vigilance and controls were fewer, and the opportunities to experiment were more, the exposures varied and responsibility minimal with very little household work to be shared.
School activity had become manageable. You just kept your performance steady. Any decline in performance would threaten return of controls while occasional improvement brought you rewards here and there. In the school teachers did stop train you in all detail. Both the school and the neighborhood would like you to engage in sports and games and in cultural activities. The rules at home might not appreciate these activities but would tolerate most things you diversify into if your school progress reports were as per their reasonable expectations. While some classmates had hard time living with the high and rising expectations from the parents, most of us had no pressure at home unless you show declining performance.
So, games and sports flourished.
Binding Rules: My Unfolding Voyage 016
Primary Rules
Long voyage is unfolding. You acquire resources and principles that seek to provide a steering capability and a sense of security. You lead yourself somewhat inhibited in the unfolding environment. Ability to speak and the facility with three R's (reading, writing and arithmetic) were great resources. But one needed more to negotiate the life ahead. You need to use the morals and lessons from the stories that you enjoyed during the summer evenings and at other times.
'Early to bed and early to rise,
Is the way to be healthy, happy and wise'.
This is one of the many rules imbibed at the primary stage. As one grows, some of these rules get into your blood, some rules stick with you, some get amended and some abandoned or replaced. Early to bed and early to rise rule lived perfectly through the secondary school days but then started getting modified. After half a century, the modified rule just added
'Follow the rule with your watch set four hours late,
less time for others, extra hours for the Self you get'.
'Telling lies is a shame that makes you smell'. Tell the Truth or go to hell'. Telling lies was also proved difficult because you need to remember a lot to be consistent. Avoiding telling the Truth without telling lies was the only alternative available in limited circumstances one had to identify as time passed. And, stories and jokes allow you to fabricate things / incidents that are not true. But this rule gets into your blood. You tell a single lie and it pricks and haunts you throughout the life. You cannot enjoy a life with such pricks disturbing your mental peace.
Another principle, 'Never utter or convey unpleasant Truth' was clearly difficult to practice. Often you as a messenger has the only duty to tell the unpleasant truth. To defend your theory, you need to bring in facts that are truths unpleasant to the years of your rivals. Being objective and focused on target problem solving, a team with a mission or task to achieve, unpleasant truths are better shared first instead of causing the team to get surprised later.
'Be polite, show respect to seniors and be gentle and civilized in your conduct'. This is rather easily followed, especially if minimise interactions with seniors and strangers. Maybe in the process you cultivate shyness.
'Do not get into quarrels or fights and never use dirty, abusive expressions'. Very easy to follow. The techniques are: Do not protest, avoid quarrelsome, bullying persons using filthy language. You just tend to develop judgement and sense as you get exposed to varying groups and varying elements in each group. And, you learn to quarrel as well as evolve acceptable expressions that are more effective than filthy, abusive terms. Physical fighting is the only thing that had to be restrained except in exigencies of self defence.
A more diplomatic rule was 'Let not neighbours and friends complain to us (parents/siblings) about your bad behavior'. Only strategies and tactics can help one adhere to this rule.
'Do not brag or express pride in your self. Be modest'. Or, 'Do not be jealous and do not envy. Be content with what you have and achieve' These were appealing and easy to practice. You explore life without getting noticed by those who could envy you, without getting disappointed with others more capable or fortunate than you.
There were health, safety and social norms to be followed. 'No loitering and gossiping on the streets. Give way to passers by on the roads'. Or, 'Keep yourself clean. Wash your face and limbs whenever you come home from outside. Wash your hands before taking food. Do not go out on the streets without shoes or sandals. Wear a vest before you put on the shirt'. And, there were others inhibitions to imbibe: 'Return home as soon the street lights are on'. Or, 'Boys mix with boys. Do not trouble girls as they are to be sweet mothers'.
Directional motivation was also imparted. 'One who is regarded and recognized by others as Great are truly Great, not the ones who think themselves as Great'. Or, 'Education is the way to prosperity. Perform well in the studies at school'. Copying and cheating does not pay'. 'Study at least an hour in the early morning and another hour after dusk. These are the times when you learn the best and quickest'.
'Do not take others' things without their consent'. 'You lose stolen things". This was easily accepted as you had ample opportunities to steal within homes to satisfy yourself with the thrill of stealing. It was a game to be played virtually with Mom hiding the most tasting sweets in odd places and my ability to find that out before she comes to know that her hidden stock has depleted. There was no social embarrassment in such stealing.
'Guests are representatives of God and serve them well to please God'. 'Do not despise the beggar and the poor. Help them as far as you can'. The taste of enjoyment from sacrifice and helping others easily catches a child's mind. 'Do not throw stones to street dogs unless attacked was clearly a prudent safety principle for the unfolding voyage now set to operate within a much larger orbit.
Using these principles and learning new ones would impart new skills in you. You are soon to get to the big Secondary School, travelling by public bus on your own. You will have much bigger groups of different kind of people with different and unknown roles to deal with. You have not merely to explore and enjoy but establish and maintain relationships, protect yourself, complete tasks and achieve greater heights. How far are you prepared and how would you fare in the next part of the voyage ?
Long voyage is unfolding. You acquire resources and principles that seek to provide a steering capability and a sense of security. You lead yourself somewhat inhibited in the unfolding environment. Ability to speak and the facility with three R's (reading, writing and arithmetic) were great resources. But one needed more to negotiate the life ahead. You need to use the morals and lessons from the stories that you enjoyed during the summer evenings and at other times.
'Early to bed and early to rise,
Is the way to be healthy, happy and wise'.
This is one of the many rules imbibed at the primary stage. As one grows, some of these rules get into your blood, some rules stick with you, some get amended and some abandoned or replaced. Early to bed and early to rise rule lived perfectly through the secondary school days but then started getting modified. After half a century, the modified rule just added
'Follow the rule with your watch set four hours late,
less time for others, extra hours for the Self you get'.
'Telling lies is a shame that makes you smell'. Tell the Truth or go to hell'. Telling lies was also proved difficult because you need to remember a lot to be consistent. Avoiding telling the Truth without telling lies was the only alternative available in limited circumstances one had to identify as time passed. And, stories and jokes allow you to fabricate things / incidents that are not true. But this rule gets into your blood. You tell a single lie and it pricks and haunts you throughout the life. You cannot enjoy a life with such pricks disturbing your mental peace.
Another principle, 'Never utter or convey unpleasant Truth' was clearly difficult to practice. Often you as a messenger has the only duty to tell the unpleasant truth. To defend your theory, you need to bring in facts that are truths unpleasant to the years of your rivals. Being objective and focused on target problem solving, a team with a mission or task to achieve, unpleasant truths are better shared first instead of causing the team to get surprised later.
'Be polite, show respect to seniors and be gentle and civilized in your conduct'. This is rather easily followed, especially if minimise interactions with seniors and strangers. Maybe in the process you cultivate shyness.
'Do not get into quarrels or fights and never use dirty, abusive expressions'. Very easy to follow. The techniques are: Do not protest, avoid quarrelsome, bullying persons using filthy language. You just tend to develop judgement and sense as you get exposed to varying groups and varying elements in each group. And, you learn to quarrel as well as evolve acceptable expressions that are more effective than filthy, abusive terms. Physical fighting is the only thing that had to be restrained except in exigencies of self defence.
A more diplomatic rule was 'Let not neighbours and friends complain to us (parents/siblings) about your bad behavior'. Only strategies and tactics can help one adhere to this rule.
'Do not brag or express pride in your self. Be modest'. Or, 'Do not be jealous and do not envy. Be content with what you have and achieve' These were appealing and easy to practice. You explore life without getting noticed by those who could envy you, without getting disappointed with others more capable or fortunate than you.
There were health, safety and social norms to be followed. 'No loitering and gossiping on the streets. Give way to passers by on the roads'. Or, 'Keep yourself clean. Wash your face and limbs whenever you come home from outside. Wash your hands before taking food. Do not go out on the streets without shoes or sandals. Wear a vest before you put on the shirt'. And, there were others inhibitions to imbibe: 'Return home as soon the street lights are on'. Or, 'Boys mix with boys. Do not trouble girls as they are to be sweet mothers'.
Directional motivation was also imparted. 'One who is regarded and recognized by others as Great are truly Great, not the ones who think themselves as Great'. Or, 'Education is the way to prosperity. Perform well in the studies at school'. Copying and cheating does not pay'. 'Study at least an hour in the early morning and another hour after dusk. These are the times when you learn the best and quickest'.
'Do not take others' things without their consent'. 'You lose stolen things". This was easily accepted as you had ample opportunities to steal within homes to satisfy yourself with the thrill of stealing. It was a game to be played virtually with Mom hiding the most tasting sweets in odd places and my ability to find that out before she comes to know that her hidden stock has depleted. There was no social embarrassment in such stealing.
'Guests are representatives of God and serve them well to please God'. 'Do not despise the beggar and the poor. Help them as far as you can'. The taste of enjoyment from sacrifice and helping others easily catches a child's mind. 'Do not throw stones to street dogs unless attacked was clearly a prudent safety principle for the unfolding voyage now set to operate within a much larger orbit.
Using these principles and learning new ones would impart new skills in you. You are soon to get to the big Secondary School, travelling by public bus on your own. You will have much bigger groups of different kind of people with different and unknown roles to deal with. You have not merely to explore and enjoy but establish and maintain relationships, protect yourself, complete tasks and achieve greater heights. How far are you prepared and how would you fare in the next part of the voyage ?
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