Implementing Study Strategies: Sanskrit and Handicraft
Hariprasad Babu was our Sanskit teacher in the ninth grade. He looked close to 60 but always taught something in his classes. He would even agree to let us go early if his class was in the last period of the day. I figured out that I needed to learn a few things in order to scrape through in Sanskrit. The first priority was to roughly understand the meaning of sentences in a passage in Sanskrit. In the tests, some 8 to 10 marks was for translating a given paragraph in Sanskrit into Bengali or English. Once I could make some sense of the sentences, translation task was rather easy for me. The next priority was some parts of Sanskrit Grammar. All the rest involved writing out sentences in Sanskrit that was virtually impossible task for me. I had to some how get 34 marks out of 100 marks in Sanskrit. In the first half-yearly test, I could manage just 19. But that convinced me that I could do better at least by 33% to reach a score of 30 in the finals. But that left still 4 more marks to be secured. I just needed to depend on luck and sympathy of the teachers. In the final examinations, I secured 34 marks that I needed to pass: my calculations showed that I definitely earned at least 30 on my own, the additional 4 marks came because I happened to be right in some answers or the teachers gave me a few marks in grace considering that I had scored much higher marks in all other subjects. That was the end of my Sanskrit affairs.
But the one year Sanskrit exposure did help me in understanding Bengali better. After all Sanskrit is a kind of mother to most Indian languages including Bengali. Many of the words in Bengali are Sanskrit words pronounced or expressed slightly differently. Bengali Grammar was based largely on Sanskrit Grammar. Most students would say Sanskrit was rather easy subject to pick up and it was easier to score marks in Sanskrit. Many of my classmates did in fact score relatively high marks in Sanskrit with ease. But they were learning Sanskrit in the School from sixth or seventh grade, while I came to study Sanskrit only in the ninth grade. My father was unhappy that I was not able to pick up Sanskrit and not giving priority to learning Sanskrit. He was disappointed that I would not be able to taste the beauty of the original texts in Sanskrit literature and that I would not be able to access the wealth of knowledge available in Indian scriptures, philosophy, metaphysics, medicine and other disciplines – all composed in Sanskrit. He knew Sanskrit as much as he knew English. As his son in search of knowledge and wisdom, he would regret that I would remain handicapped because of my Sanskrit illiteracy. But I had no option. I had a great time constraint and becoming fluent in Sanskrit demanded lot of time to be allocated. Besides, I had checked with my elders including my elder siblings who had some reasonable exposure in Sanskrit. Most of them never used Sanskrit in their lives after school, except quoting some idioms and phrases occasionally during discussions. I knew I had to live my life with this handicap.
The educationists of West Bengal had a great idea. They were thinking of work education of school students. I thought that was a great idea. Getting to know the use of tools for electrical, plumbing and carpentry work could contribute to self-reliance at home rather than depend on others. But that was probably not what the educationists had in mind. They wanted students to get exposure in creative arts like painting, sculpture and the like. They did not even consider performing arts like dancing, singing or acting. Probably there were not many graduate carpenters, electrical repairers, plumbing artisans, dancers, musicians, actors and singers available those days to man so many schools. Moreover, the school headmaster would at best be relied upon to assess the teaching ability of sculpting and painting but not is assessing teachers’ skills in carpentry, electrical repairs, dancing, singing, music and acting. So, there was little choice for me. Our school recruited a craft teacher who decided making small models out of clay and plaster of Paris was the best. It suited the school as there was virtually no capital investment required in carpentry, electrical, musical instruments.
But I disliked dealing with messy clay to create animal bodies. Nor did I like dealing with the malleable Plaster of Paris to give shape to figures. One of my class plates (as also a neighbor and a cousin) had a natural inclination in doing this. I took his help: rather, he gave the final touches to our sculpture works to be given to the teacher, Ganesh Baby (I failed to recollect the real name of this handsome and loveable gentleman: we gave him the name as he resembled Lord Ganesha without the trunk), for evaluation. He was a generous man, though not very happy with our class as most of his class periods were in the closing hour of the school and he had to agree to let us off early. Ganesh Babu probably would never give any of his students less than 50. I suspect it would have been difficult to convince other teachers that students could grossly fail in an endeavor to make some toys of clay or drawing and painting something. A cow sitting and looking at me earned me the score enough to close my relationship with handicrafts for life.
There was no question of joining the National Cadet Corps (NCC) unit at the school. That involved additional expenditure of time, effort and money. I did not find good students joining NCC. But in retrospect, I thought the Education Board could have made NCC as a compulsory paper in class IX rather than craft or such other work education. But NCC would not leave me so easily.
In retrospect, I could have found sometime for building my body. Dad used to say Health is Wealth and I should give sometime to daily exercise for body building at the young age to reap the benefits at old age. But I did not care to listen. I cared more for my mental exercises.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Allocating Time as Scarce Resource: My unfolding Voyage 025
Rise of Time Constraint
Transition to higher secondary education for the first time made time appear progressively scarcer. Studies started taking lot of time. School took a longer period of time: 10 AM to 4-30 PM and some time 5-30 PM. This interfered with playing football and cricket on schooldays. One had to seek and exploit opportunities of skipping classes towards the end of the school. Sometimes, teachers with weak control over students were forced to abandon classes that were scheduled after 4 PM. Even them there was little time for outdoor games after returning from school, especially in the winter when dusk arrived as early as quarter to five. Indoor games soon would become speciality during weekends and school holidays. Instead Adda (gossiping while strolling or loitering around the playgrounds and walkways) became progressively attractive.
The playmates were getting fewer with time in the higher secondary school stage. The locality, Dum Dum, had traditionally been a nursery of the leftist political inclination. When we were in the primary and secondary schools, the image of the Indian National Congress was one of a party led and supported by active freedom-fighters of the period of British rule that ended in 1947 but a party that has failed to deliver the economic progress they had made the common people to dream. The party (with the election symbol of twin oxen unlike the present hand) was also viewed as one that was increasingly been dependent on muscle-men goons and crooked personalities. Therefore, the middle income class and particularly the families who had to relocate themselves in Dum Dum area after being evicted from their native places in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) after India became free in 1947 were looking for an alternative party to support. The leftist parties, especially the (now defunct) Praja Socialist Party, the (then undivided) Communist Party of India (CPI) and other socialist parties offered that option and built up their base among the common people. Most of the leaders in the leftist parties were former congressmen. I do not remember which Congressmen were in the election fray in the Dum Dum area for either the State Assembly or the National Parliament. But I faintly remember that Renuka Chakraborty, a leftist, was for quite some time the member of the Parliament elected from Dum Dum constituency. The CPI had been quite active in recruiting potential party activists and members: their leaders would establish the credentials of honesty, selfless social service attitude and their gentleman-like non-violent, non-extremist behavior among the residents and attract young people to their fold. Most of them did not have much academic credentials to boast about, but generally good in Bengali literature and, of course, emotionally attached to Marx and Engel. They did not have had to say much about Lenin and Stalin as at that time, Nehru, India’s Prime Minister had made India as a younger cousin country of Russia, the Mecca of all communists. The CPi had since long been trying to catch the potential activists and members young. Their honest and mostly poor local organizers would be helpful family friends and try to brainwash the young minds on Marxist ideas. But it was not that easy in the beginning. The high school students were more influenced by Rabindra Nath Tagore and still very patriotic to accept unknown foreign philosophers who failed to sell, among their own countrymen, the dream of a just society through armed revolution. The logic of Marxism appeared nebulous and mystic like that of prescriptions of religious preachers’ reference to mythological stories. Some of these young men resisted being brain-washed and tested their brains and hearts themselves if they had retained their immunity to the virus of Marxism after each session of brainwashing they underwent. That was in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The population of Dum Dum increased rapidly with the periodic influx of Hindus who could no longer live in East Pakistan. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, the CPI, therefore, found a great opportunity to expand their base rapidly. The CPI recruiters tapped good and active players showing ability to work hard, struggle and have a sense of team spirit: playmates of these types generally from relatively poor families started missing from the grounds in the evening. Some others from such economic backgrounds but with literary bent of mind and attracted by the poems of Sukanta Bhattachayya, a revolutionary Bengali poet who dies young. These friends went straight from the school to party orientation classes. They became less interested in outdoor games: even when they participated in group activities, they seemed to display a sense of pity for their friends showing lack of political consciousness and ignorance of the great importance of the class struggle. This was just the beginning of spread of communism with the Chinese aggression of Indian Territory just around the corner to cause an end to the ‘Hindi-Chini’ Bhai Bhai (Indians and Chinese are brothers) euphoria created by Nehru’s pursuit of non-aligned movement and expose the weakness of India’s defense planning. In essence, there were few were to play with now with everyone under an emerging constraint of time.
Studies at home would now take much more time. There was no opportunity for Mom to serve dinner early in the evening so that we can go to sleep early. Our dinner would be along with Dad at 9 PM and we had to study for some time more just to keep pace with the progress at the school. In addition, there were newer family tasks that would have to be shared. Getting the ration cards renewed involved visits to the Government office a number of times, waiting in the long queues to submit forms and follow-up was one such tasks. Lifting the weekly ration was another. Bringing in the monthly grocery baggage was yet another along with supplementary grocery purchases now and then. There were many other sundry tasks like searching out the absconding dhobi who provided home delivery of clothes washing and pressing services, serving messages between home and neighbors, going to the post-offices for sending money orders, registered parcels or purchasing postage stamps and post cards. Soon I would be entrusted to be the family cashier to keep records of expenditure under different budget heads.
Time was becoming increasingly a major constraint. Many activities in games and sports had therefore to be given up. Reading story books, including detective stories, required developing rapid reading skills. Club activities became burdensome, especially as arguments among friends became more and more time consuming to resolve. I gave up the club secretary’s position to avoid dealing with politically-inspired disputes and gave up the Cricket and Football captain’s position to save time as you get spared of team selection issues. As only a player, you no more have to deal with game strategies in tournament games.
Time had also been in demand to enjoy the company of the new entrant to the family: my eldest nephew, Joy, was born in 1961. I already had enjoyed seeing my sisters’ children, Bachhu, Babu (daughter and son of my eldest sister Didi) and Kanchan (son of my other sister, Chordi) as they often used to live with us at Gurudham for long periods. But seeing Joy growing up daily throughout the year was a great source of pleasurable experience. There were accidents too. Once Joy happen to pick up an aluminum hanger lying on the bed and put it his mouth unnoticed by anyone at home. The sharp bending tip of the hanger pierced through his cheek. We had to pull the hanger out but he was profusely bleeding and crying incessantly. I had to rush him to the doctor – my first experience of a medical emergency situation of some sort.
As one grew up in age, one tended to spend more time with visiting relatives than one used to do when others considered children ineligible to participate in most group activities at home. Now, elders would accept you as a participant in debates, discussions and gossips. One would start learning to receive visitors and keep them engaged in discussions for a while, while the elders are busy elsewhere. An uncle we called Meshomashai would visit us about once a month. He liked me very much and would enter into discussions on various topics, probably to mark my progress along the maturity curve and also my studies. At home I would now receive some importance for sharing adult like responsibilities. Soon I would be found suitable to be entrusted with the job of the family cashier to keep cash and record expenditure under different budget heads.
Transition to higher secondary education for the first time made time appear progressively scarcer. Studies started taking lot of time. School took a longer period of time: 10 AM to 4-30 PM and some time 5-30 PM. This interfered with playing football and cricket on schooldays. One had to seek and exploit opportunities of skipping classes towards the end of the school. Sometimes, teachers with weak control over students were forced to abandon classes that were scheduled after 4 PM. Even them there was little time for outdoor games after returning from school, especially in the winter when dusk arrived as early as quarter to five. Indoor games soon would become speciality during weekends and school holidays. Instead Adda (gossiping while strolling or loitering around the playgrounds and walkways) became progressively attractive.
The playmates were getting fewer with time in the higher secondary school stage. The locality, Dum Dum, had traditionally been a nursery of the leftist political inclination. When we were in the primary and secondary schools, the image of the Indian National Congress was one of a party led and supported by active freedom-fighters of the period of British rule that ended in 1947 but a party that has failed to deliver the economic progress they had made the common people to dream. The party (with the election symbol of twin oxen unlike the present hand) was also viewed as one that was increasingly been dependent on muscle-men goons and crooked personalities. Therefore, the middle income class and particularly the families who had to relocate themselves in Dum Dum area after being evicted from their native places in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) after India became free in 1947 were looking for an alternative party to support. The leftist parties, especially the (now defunct) Praja Socialist Party, the (then undivided) Communist Party of India (CPI) and other socialist parties offered that option and built up their base among the common people. Most of the leaders in the leftist parties were former congressmen. I do not remember which Congressmen were in the election fray in the Dum Dum area for either the State Assembly or the National Parliament. But I faintly remember that Renuka Chakraborty, a leftist, was for quite some time the member of the Parliament elected from Dum Dum constituency. The CPI had been quite active in recruiting potential party activists and members: their leaders would establish the credentials of honesty, selfless social service attitude and their gentleman-like non-violent, non-extremist behavior among the residents and attract young people to their fold. Most of them did not have much academic credentials to boast about, but generally good in Bengali literature and, of course, emotionally attached to Marx and Engel. They did not have had to say much about Lenin and Stalin as at that time, Nehru, India’s Prime Minister had made India as a younger cousin country of Russia, the Mecca of all communists. The CPi had since long been trying to catch the potential activists and members young. Their honest and mostly poor local organizers would be helpful family friends and try to brainwash the young minds on Marxist ideas. But it was not that easy in the beginning. The high school students were more influenced by Rabindra Nath Tagore and still very patriotic to accept unknown foreign philosophers who failed to sell, among their own countrymen, the dream of a just society through armed revolution. The logic of Marxism appeared nebulous and mystic like that of prescriptions of religious preachers’ reference to mythological stories. Some of these young men resisted being brain-washed and tested their brains and hearts themselves if they had retained their immunity to the virus of Marxism after each session of brainwashing they underwent. That was in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The population of Dum Dum increased rapidly with the periodic influx of Hindus who could no longer live in East Pakistan. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, the CPI, therefore, found a great opportunity to expand their base rapidly. The CPI recruiters tapped good and active players showing ability to work hard, struggle and have a sense of team spirit: playmates of these types generally from relatively poor families started missing from the grounds in the evening. Some others from such economic backgrounds but with literary bent of mind and attracted by the poems of Sukanta Bhattachayya, a revolutionary Bengali poet who dies young. These friends went straight from the school to party orientation classes. They became less interested in outdoor games: even when they participated in group activities, they seemed to display a sense of pity for their friends showing lack of political consciousness and ignorance of the great importance of the class struggle. This was just the beginning of spread of communism with the Chinese aggression of Indian Territory just around the corner to cause an end to the ‘Hindi-Chini’ Bhai Bhai (Indians and Chinese are brothers) euphoria created by Nehru’s pursuit of non-aligned movement and expose the weakness of India’s defense planning. In essence, there were few were to play with now with everyone under an emerging constraint of time.
Studies at home would now take much more time. There was no opportunity for Mom to serve dinner early in the evening so that we can go to sleep early. Our dinner would be along with Dad at 9 PM and we had to study for some time more just to keep pace with the progress at the school. In addition, there were newer family tasks that would have to be shared. Getting the ration cards renewed involved visits to the Government office a number of times, waiting in the long queues to submit forms and follow-up was one such tasks. Lifting the weekly ration was another. Bringing in the monthly grocery baggage was yet another along with supplementary grocery purchases now and then. There were many other sundry tasks like searching out the absconding dhobi who provided home delivery of clothes washing and pressing services, serving messages between home and neighbors, going to the post-offices for sending money orders, registered parcels or purchasing postage stamps and post cards. Soon I would be entrusted to be the family cashier to keep records of expenditure under different budget heads.
Time was becoming increasingly a major constraint. Many activities in games and sports had therefore to be given up. Reading story books, including detective stories, required developing rapid reading skills. Club activities became burdensome, especially as arguments among friends became more and more time consuming to resolve. I gave up the club secretary’s position to avoid dealing with politically-inspired disputes and gave up the Cricket and Football captain’s position to save time as you get spared of team selection issues. As only a player, you no more have to deal with game strategies in tournament games.
Time had also been in demand to enjoy the company of the new entrant to the family: my eldest nephew, Joy, was born in 1961. I already had enjoyed seeing my sisters’ children, Bachhu, Babu (daughter and son of my eldest sister Didi) and Kanchan (son of my other sister, Chordi) as they often used to live with us at Gurudham for long periods. But seeing Joy growing up daily throughout the year was a great source of pleasurable experience. There were accidents too. Once Joy happen to pick up an aluminum hanger lying on the bed and put it his mouth unnoticed by anyone at home. The sharp bending tip of the hanger pierced through his cheek. We had to pull the hanger out but he was profusely bleeding and crying incessantly. I had to rush him to the doctor – my first experience of a medical emergency situation of some sort.
As one grew up in age, one tended to spend more time with visiting relatives than one used to do when others considered children ineligible to participate in most group activities at home. Now, elders would accept you as a participant in debates, discussions and gossips. One would start learning to receive visitors and keep them engaged in discussions for a while, while the elders are busy elsewhere. An uncle we called Meshomashai would visit us about once a month. He liked me very much and would enter into discussions on various topics, probably to mark my progress along the maturity curve and also my studies. At home I would now receive some importance for sharing adult like responsibilities. Soon I would be found suitable to be entrusted with the job of the family cashier to keep cash and record expenditure under different budget heads.
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