Mid-teens’ Struggling Gambles
When my elder son was in class IX, he had asked me, “Dad, what do you like me to be?” I tried to guess the motive behind his question. I did not want to show preference for any particular future for my son: really I did not have any such preference: as a father, my only concern had always been that my sons lived a life that they could enjoy without worries and fear. I had replied to him, “Son, I would like your future to be one that makes you happy.” He had responded immediately, “Oh, no. Dad, I am trying to know whether you want me to be an engineer or medical doctor or an economist or business executive.” I had guessed it right: he had a problem of choice of future career. I had replied to him with utmost sincerity and honesty that I wanted him to develop capabilities and mental strength to remain happy under all circumstance irrespective of what career he would ultimately choose and land in. “Because, that is what my experience tells me. Any career that you may choose or land in future will be an experience of dealing with various positive and negative phases due to external environment not under your control. You must from now on develop the capability to remain happy irrespective of whatever happens. Build yourself for the best of career you may aspire for, give the best try that is possible but also be simultaneously prepared to face a future that you would have wished to avoid. The key to all this is developing an attitude of remaining happy irrespective of whatever circumstances that you may face in future. But, coming to the immediate concern you have, I advise you to keep your options open till you get into class XII. For the present target that you do well in Mathematics, English and General Science so that you can get into Higher Secondary in Class XI with all science subjects like Physics , Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics. If you do not like to study biology, you may forgo your option to study medicine. After you pass XII, you can go into engineering or you can study humanities with mathematics and economics. If you choose not to study engineering, you can major in Physics or Mathematics or Statistics or Chemistry or Economics. After you get you bachelor’s degree, you can decide to go for Administrative services or study Master in engineering or the subject of your major. Even after getting a master in Mathematics, you can study engineering or Economics or Statistics at the Ph d level or even go for a Management study or go for Government Administrative Services. Equip yourself with knowledge as much as possible before you get into a particular career. You have time to make your final choice: keep your options open as long as you can.” He would come back to me again on this issue later. Because, it is in the teens that one’s mind attracts the most questions about one self and the most difficult questions.
I had therefore had to reply to him more responsibly as a friend as he would be sixteen in a few years. My father used to say, “prapte too shoroshe borshe, putrang mitra badacharet” – translated from this Sanskrit to English: ‘Treat your son as a friend when he attains the age of sixteen’. But even if the father would behave with his son like a friend, son may not be willing to be a friend willing to share everything. The son would like to solve his questions himself by accessing more information and acquiring skills to sort out questions. The son might not even like to share some issues with the father just because some issues are entirely private personal issues one may not like to share with the same person.
When I was still in the school, my father had made me known that he wished that I go for Government India administrative service. I had told him that I did not like the idea, though I would keep the options open till I graduated with the Bachelor’s degree. My mind was still working on what career would make me happy and whether the process of getting into a particular career would make me happy. As I entered the middle phase of my teenage period, I could observe it was becoming an exciting game of struggle: a struggle between the sudden burst of exposure to and interest in ever expanding variety of aspects of life on the one hand and the pace of building capability - physically, emotionally and intellectually/ mentally, on the other, to fully explore, deal with, experiment and experience these aspects. It was not merely a question of career. It was rather a question of what interests me, what faculties I feel I have and how far I should be making efforts to cultivate my different faculties and interests. I wanted to be mix of many types of persons but with a difference. What combination of a romantic person, an athlete, a singer, a poet, an actor, a clown, a juggler, a magician, an educated person with knowledge in various disciplines, and etc should I try to be? And, how do I arrive at that decision?
The concerns were so many. Had I been able to get physically stronger and agile enough to deal with bullies? Had my looks become attractive enough to attract attention of others? Whose attention would I try to attract? What kind of hairstyles and clothes would make me distinctive and smart enough? How would I acquire these capabilities? Was something special happening within my body and how do I deal them – the beard, the moustache, the hair on the legs? But these were only questions related with the physical body.
What about the emotional tendencies and capabilities? Was fear getting control over my behavior or I needed to strengthen my boldness and courage? And, how would I do that? Was getting sentimental alright and to what extent? Do I want to share each one of my thoughts with someone or the other? Or, should I have some thoughts only to myself? How would I keep my secrets to myself? Should I be sharing some issues and thoughts with some others, and, what with whom? How would I decide what’s best for me and how would I develop these competencies I had thought I needed? Why was that most girls as they walked to and from school in their uniform skirts-blouses or saris looked secretively attractive to get friendly with but there would be nothing really to share with them as friends or acquaintances. Would it be better to ignore them till I grow somewhat older? How much should I get influenced by others’ views?
There were deep intellectual thoughts. Some were purely academic and hypothetical in nature. Could history have been different? What could have made be a citizen of India that had never been invaded and ruled by foreigners? Or, why had the Indians not invented the steam engine or electricity or the telephone or the air plane? What would have happened to my living conditions had my father not lost his property due to the partition of the country into India and Pakistan. What risk had I taken by not opting for Science stream in the higher secondary?
Then there were questions about pursuit of knowledge. How could I become more knowledgeable in physics or Chemistry or biology or engineering or philosophy or geography – the subjects that I would not have any further formal academic opportunity learn in the school or the college? I had to test various methods of trying to acquire further knowledge in these areas with out much success though. But I had to struggle and decide when to give up and why.
There were issues with regard to testing my skills and aptitudes in areas that I liked. Could I continue to develop my faculties as a composer of poems and stories or as a singer or as a juggler or magician or as an actor?
How far could I try doing this and when would I give up these one by one and for what reasons?
What would be the problem if I had chosen to be associated with the student wing of a political party?
I had to find answers to these questions mostly by myself. Rather, the answers had to spring form within my own self reacting to the external environment. Experiments, logical arguments and trade-off in the light of constraints within me and without solved these questions for me. I had been surprised that these got settled without the influence of others or unconsciously. The result or outcome was just a gamble. It was just a stochastic event that the outcome was what I happened to be with a mixture of different things in varying proportions and zero of some other things I was interested in. I had to give up active pursuit of many things as I went along: for example, athletics, cricket, football, all games that I could play – indoor or outdoor, composing poetry and stories, magic, singing, acting, science subjects, subjects like logic, philosophy, and politics had to stop as one of more of the following came in the way – lack of time, constraint of energy, scope for improvement through training, monetary investment involved, domination of poor quality of known persons in my locality pursuing the same interest, sudden decline in interest and realization that my natural ability in these areas were poor. In some areas of interest, activity had only to be temporarily suspended or kept low in the hope that these activities could be revived later. These included But in each of these I explored and experienced my interests and naturally abilities for quite a while but difficult to accommodate for constraint on time or money or energy or training/ coaching.
Now in retrospect, I am not surprised. These answers had sprung up largely independently with little or no influence of others but virtually due to the interaction of the properties that I had inherited or naturally cultivated without any choice. The struggle that I had experienced was essentially among the properties and tendencies that I had genetically inherited. The solving theme had been one of sustainability of capabilities, of interest, of independence. It seems to be now at this old age that the teen age struggle was to sort out inconsistencies among the properties that I genetically inherited as also between them and the external environment that these properties perceived that they were facing. Nothing that had happened then was my choice or decision: all answers had been the outcomes of the interaction of the properties or natural tendencies inherited genetically or otherwise.
Next: Playing Mathematics
Saturday, November 14, 2009
1962 Awakeining: My Unfolding Voyage 32
The Chinese Connection
Chen and I studied together for four years till I went to a new school in 1960. He had lost one of his parents early in childhood and was a resident in the school's hostel while I was a day-scholar. Chen had converted into Christianity. His manner and behavior was more decent than the most hostel-resident students of this Christian Missionary school. Hostel-inmates generally tended to bully the day-scholars, but Chen was different. He was modest at studies and was good at handicrafts. His handwriting was nice and we were very good friend. We never met after 1959. He was the only Indian Chinese friend I ever had.
I actually knew very little about the Chinese at that time. Except that Indians and the Chinese of the Peoples Republic of China were supposed to be brother after Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India declared so and we had seen Chou en Lai, the then Prime Minister of China visited India. At that time, I had not known about Chinese dishes like chilly chicken or fried rice or noodles. Father used to buy us shoes from Bata Shoe retail outlets but for his own use he used to buy shoes from the Chinebazar where there were many Chinese shoe shops. This was probably because at that time father used to were only the traditional Bengali dress of Dhoti-Punjabi and the particular design of shoes that goes with that dress was not probably manufactured by the Bata Shoe Company.
Later, in the higher secondary school, we learnt more about China from the history books. Initially, I had thought Chinese were Buddhist in general following the Buddhist saints whom Indian emperor Ashok had sent to various parts of Asia to spread the teachings of Gautama Buddha. Might be Buddhism did not spread beyond the land now we refer to as Tibet but China claims that to be part of South China.
I failed to understand however why the Communists in China would have taken such trouble in trying to get the religious Buddhists in Tibet converted into non-religious communists, or, why they would suspect that a Buddhist Tibet could be a strategic threat to China's military might. At least, while studying history during class IX-XI, I had felt that China had inherited great wisdom from Confucius and the some Chinese were wandering scholars. One of them, Huen Tsang or Xuanzang or Hsüan-tsang (600-664) of Guoshi, China had received classical Confucian education before converting to Buddhism. Troubled by discrepancies in the sacred texts, he left for India in 629 to study the religion at its source. He had traveled by foot across Central Asia and reached India in 633. After study at the famous Nalanda monastery, he returned home in 645 to a hero's welcome, bringing back hundreds of Buddhist texts, including some of the most important Mahayana scriptures, and spent the rest of his life translation of theses and established the Weishi (“Ideation Only”) school of Buddhism, which won many followers in Japan. The account of his travel and stay in India provided lot of material to construct Indian history for the relevant period. In the text books, I had learned something about Chinese emperors (and came to also know that Chengis Khan, the great killer of people, was a Mongolian and not a Chinese). How the great Chinese civilization weakened was not in covered in our text book but the Civil War, Communist revolution and Kuomintang along with the heroes like Mao Tse dong, Chiang Kai-sekh and Sun Yet Sen (not related to my family) did find some pages. That was about all that I had picked up before the Sino-Indian broke out in the early winter of 1962 with a few months to go for our final Higher Secondary Board Examinations.
The year 1962 was a bad year. West Bengal lost its Chief Minister (for 14 years since 1948), Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, the renowned MBBS, MRCP, FRCS physician whose patients got cured by just seeing him. West Bengal did not have another such an honest, caring, visionary chief minister who put up considerable struggle in the face of financial difficulties to become a physician, taught at medical schools, worked as a doctor in hospitals, privately practiced medicine life-long only to treat patients from poor families at nominal fee or for free everyday, fought for India’s independence, commanded respect among the senior Congress leaders before and after Independence. Despite his vision, West Bengal, the most industrialized State and economically prosperous State in India till 1960, moved downhill in economic and industrial activity within a few years.
Maybe the Chinese invasion of India soon after his death signified the bad days ahead for West Bengal. At that time, I as a school student, had thought that history was repeating itself: the Aryans invaded and settled in India (though currently there is different opinion about what the Aryans did bring to India), the Greeks invaded but went back, the Huns and Monogolians looted and went back, the Turks and Mughols invaded. Next, the British would come to rule India. India was again and again subjected the foreign rule. I had thought that this time it would be the turn of the Chinese. Chairman of Mao of China would be greatly impressed by the communist revolutionaries in Kolkata to dream that Kolkata would be, along with Havana, the gateways to the liberation of the proletariat across the World from capitalism and imperialism the World.
As the fighting continued along the Himalayas and the Chinese came rushing into Bomdi la, hardly a great military distance from Kolkata, in the compete darkness enforced in Kolkata in the evenings for fear of air strikes raids, I would shudder to think about approaching life of Indians as slaves again – this time not only of the Chinese but also their prodigy team - the mediocre brains of the largely half-educated, vocal chord and vocabulary strong, weak-to-compete, petty-bourgeoisie Indian communists. However, the war did not last long. The Chinese withdrew teaching the Indians a lesson: that Mao and Chou en Lai were much smarter than Nehru. It was morally depressing to any young Indian that Chinese did not merely outnumber us but were stronger than us to humiliate us. It was clear that the Indian National Congress Leaders were not yet competent enough to lead a Nation of India’s size. The Chinese connection to my life would thus be a great burden in future. Relieved with the unilateral withdrawal of the Chinese Dragon I would compose a parody and sing to my nephew : ‘Lal Tupi Chinara, dhoreche je Bayena, Bharater Mati chara R kichu Chi-na’ (The red cap-wearing Chinese have started demanding that nothing but Indian soil would satisfy them) after a hit song from a Bengali film for children (‘Lal Jhunti Kakatua…’) that was released around that time. But, I would see that the communists in West Bengal sensing that their time to liberate the proletariat from the clutches of capitalism had arrived. Soon, the communist struggle would make capital, capitalists, technology, industries and talent flee West Bengal. Our future as an economist to get employed had become bleak now. Generations of communists would arise in West Bengal with their religious belief based on the writings and lives of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Chairman Mao, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Min. Centuries of foreign slavery would make some Indians continue to borrow obsolete foreign ideas and ape foreigners: foreign invasion is no longer required to enslave Indians.
Chen and I studied together for four years till I went to a new school in 1960. He had lost one of his parents early in childhood and was a resident in the school's hostel while I was a day-scholar. Chen had converted into Christianity. His manner and behavior was more decent than the most hostel-resident students of this Christian Missionary school. Hostel-inmates generally tended to bully the day-scholars, but Chen was different. He was modest at studies and was good at handicrafts. His handwriting was nice and we were very good friend. We never met after 1959. He was the only Indian Chinese friend I ever had.
I actually knew very little about the Chinese at that time. Except that Indians and the Chinese of the Peoples Republic of China were supposed to be brother after Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India declared so and we had seen Chou en Lai, the then Prime Minister of China visited India. At that time, I had not known about Chinese dishes like chilly chicken or fried rice or noodles. Father used to buy us shoes from Bata Shoe retail outlets but for his own use he used to buy shoes from the Chinebazar where there were many Chinese shoe shops. This was probably because at that time father used to were only the traditional Bengali dress of Dhoti-Punjabi and the particular design of shoes that goes with that dress was not probably manufactured by the Bata Shoe Company.
Later, in the higher secondary school, we learnt more about China from the history books. Initially, I had thought Chinese were Buddhist in general following the Buddhist saints whom Indian emperor Ashok had sent to various parts of Asia to spread the teachings of Gautama Buddha. Might be Buddhism did not spread beyond the land now we refer to as Tibet but China claims that to be part of South China.
I failed to understand however why the Communists in China would have taken such trouble in trying to get the religious Buddhists in Tibet converted into non-religious communists, or, why they would suspect that a Buddhist Tibet could be a strategic threat to China's military might. At least, while studying history during class IX-XI, I had felt that China had inherited great wisdom from Confucius and the some Chinese were wandering scholars. One of them, Huen Tsang or Xuanzang or Hsüan-tsang (600-664) of Guoshi, China had received classical Confucian education before converting to Buddhism. Troubled by discrepancies in the sacred texts, he left for India in 629 to study the religion at its source. He had traveled by foot across Central Asia and reached India in 633. After study at the famous Nalanda monastery, he returned home in 645 to a hero's welcome, bringing back hundreds of Buddhist texts, including some of the most important Mahayana scriptures, and spent the rest of his life translation of theses and established the Weishi (“Ideation Only”) school of Buddhism, which won many followers in Japan. The account of his travel and stay in India provided lot of material to construct Indian history for the relevant period. In the text books, I had learned something about Chinese emperors (and came to also know that Chengis Khan, the great killer of people, was a Mongolian and not a Chinese). How the great Chinese civilization weakened was not in covered in our text book but the Civil War, Communist revolution and Kuomintang along with the heroes like Mao Tse dong, Chiang Kai-sekh and Sun Yet Sen (not related to my family) did find some pages. That was about all that I had picked up before the Sino-Indian broke out in the early winter of 1962 with a few months to go for our final Higher Secondary Board Examinations.
The year 1962 was a bad year. West Bengal lost its Chief Minister (for 14 years since 1948), Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, the renowned MBBS, MRCP, FRCS physician whose patients got cured by just seeing him. West Bengal did not have another such an honest, caring, visionary chief minister who put up considerable struggle in the face of financial difficulties to become a physician, taught at medical schools, worked as a doctor in hospitals, privately practiced medicine life-long only to treat patients from poor families at nominal fee or for free everyday, fought for India’s independence, commanded respect among the senior Congress leaders before and after Independence. Despite his vision, West Bengal, the most industrialized State and economically prosperous State in India till 1960, moved downhill in economic and industrial activity within a few years.
Maybe the Chinese invasion of India soon after his death signified the bad days ahead for West Bengal. At that time, I as a school student, had thought that history was repeating itself: the Aryans invaded and settled in India (though currently there is different opinion about what the Aryans did bring to India), the Greeks invaded but went back, the Huns and Monogolians looted and went back, the Turks and Mughols invaded. Next, the British would come to rule India. India was again and again subjected the foreign rule. I had thought that this time it would be the turn of the Chinese. Chairman of Mao of China would be greatly impressed by the communist revolutionaries in Kolkata to dream that Kolkata would be, along with Havana, the gateways to the liberation of the proletariat across the World from capitalism and imperialism the World.
As the fighting continued along the Himalayas and the Chinese came rushing into Bomdi la, hardly a great military distance from Kolkata, in the compete darkness enforced in Kolkata in the evenings for fear of air strikes raids, I would shudder to think about approaching life of Indians as slaves again – this time not only of the Chinese but also their prodigy team - the mediocre brains of the largely half-educated, vocal chord and vocabulary strong, weak-to-compete, petty-bourgeoisie Indian communists. However, the war did not last long. The Chinese withdrew teaching the Indians a lesson: that Mao and Chou en Lai were much smarter than Nehru. It was morally depressing to any young Indian that Chinese did not merely outnumber us but were stronger than us to humiliate us. It was clear that the Indian National Congress Leaders were not yet competent enough to lead a Nation of India’s size. The Chinese connection to my life would thus be a great burden in future. Relieved with the unilateral withdrawal of the Chinese Dragon I would compose a parody and sing to my nephew : ‘Lal Tupi Chinara, dhoreche je Bayena, Bharater Mati chara R kichu Chi-na’ (The red cap-wearing Chinese have started demanding that nothing but Indian soil would satisfy them) after a hit song from a Bengali film for children (‘Lal Jhunti Kakatua…’) that was released around that time. But, I would see that the communists in West Bengal sensing that their time to liberate the proletariat from the clutches of capitalism had arrived. Soon, the communist struggle would make capital, capitalists, technology, industries and talent flee West Bengal. Our future as an economist to get employed had become bleak now. Generations of communists would arise in West Bengal with their religious belief based on the writings and lives of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Chairman Mao, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Min. Centuries of foreign slavery would make some Indians continue to borrow obsolete foreign ideas and ape foreigners: foreign invasion is no longer required to enslave Indians.
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