"D" in Discipline

A short story written by my son the other day....

***

"D" in Discipline

Long ago, but not so very long ago, I was a kid.

"Discipline e abar D?", (Another "D" in discipline ?") my mother sighed every time. 

It was easy. All you had to do was stand as dumb as a dolmen, wait for people to share their piece of minds, a few crocodile tears and you'd be done with it.

"Discipline e abar D?"(Another "D" in discipline ?"), the lady sitting beside me sighed, admonishing her child. 

I looked up.

"Ei dada ke dekhecho? Kirom shanto?", (Look at him !! What a nice and quiet boy he is ?) she went on. 

The kid glanced at me. I glanced back. 

I tried saying something. I couldn't.

I smiled. I couldn't help it.

Maybe for the first time in his life, someone didn't have a problem with him getting a D in Discipline.

After a moment of silence, he smiled back.

***

Flight of a Goddess

Sunil was just another kid with a bright and happy face, abundant curiosity and enough energy to outlast all the elders in his family. Within a few days of joining kindergarten he was easily the most famous kid, with his constant pranks, quick learning skills and his winning smile, which made the teachers think twice before admonishing him for something.

He picked up his first pencil and started learning to write during Saraswati Puja that year. Saraswati, the goddess of learning and knowledge, was revered in his community, and one day each year, she was worshipped with much fanfare across the land. All students, teachers and those associated with academia, participated.

Things were fine till the first parent-teacher meeting. The teachers explained to his parents that he was the naughtiest kid since the dawn of civilization. And then things started to change… slowly, but surely. His parents, in their desperation to get him to conform, tried all things available – love, anger, punishment, limiting his friends, and so on… But Sunil’s free spirit reigned supreme.

About a year later he gained admission to a well-known school in the area albeit with a bit of persuasion from his parents and a hefty down payment. “You see, there are so many kids, and we take only the brightest...” was the common refrain across the four schools that rejected him !! His father kept wondering for years after that, how a school judged “brightest kids” among a bunch of bright and inquisitive, fidgety four-year-olds.  “Brightness” was linked to the down payment.

Four years later, Sunil began to suffer from pain in the lower back. It was diagnosed as being caused by the weight of his school bag. Most of his classmates had similar problems. His Mom started carrying his bag to and from school.

Sunil loved to play – simply running around with friends or hitting a ball with a bat or simply kicking it around … and that was the hardest thing to do !! If he wanted to play cricket, football, table-tennis or tennis, he had to enrol in a coaching camp or a class. If he wanted to simply run around and play catch, there were hardly a couple of kids available to play with. All the others were busy at this class or the other – drama, music, singing lessons, you-name-it.  He often asked his Mom, “Why does everything have to be a “study” ?”

During the early years, Sunil’s class performance was above par on all counts, except “attentiveness” and “not talking in class”. At one such parent-teacher meeting, his father asked the teacher, “Ma’am, these kids are sitting side-by-side in class for six hours a day, and two hundred days a year… And you expect them not to talk to each other at all ?” To the astonishment of everyone, the teacher answered, “Yes !!”

In class 5, he was asked to write an essay on a sudden unplanned holiday trip. He wrote about a sudden trip to Singapore along with his parents that he had undertaken the previous year. The teacher rejected his piece saying that she wanted real experiences not fantasy. It took his mother to come down to the school to explain that what he had written was fact. Sunil never could figure out what he had done wrong.

By the time he was in class 7, his marks began to falter, alarming his parents.  The class teacher suggested tuitions. And thus began a ritual – school, five days a week– tuitions, four days a week – music lessons, one day per week – cricket camp, two days a week;  there was simply no time to “play”. And his marks improved. His talent at field games and music flourished. But the goddess, Saraswati, had a worried frown.

That year they went on a holiday trip during the Puja break, touring parts of North India from Simla to Kulu-Manali and Delhi. By the time they returned, Sunil’s school had re-opened and he had missed two days’ classes. His father put in an application as a formality, stating that they had not been able to secure travel reservations in due time, causing Sunil to miss classes. The application was rejected by the Principal and his father was called. He was asked to put in a fresh application stating that Sunil was sick. It also had to be accompanied by a medical certificate !!  His father had no choice.  Sunil learned for the first time that one needs to “officially lie”.

In due time, he cleared his first High School Board exams with decent marks in the first division. But again no school would admit him in the Science stream at the Higher Secondary level. His parents repeated the cycle of his first admission – multiple school applications, multiple entrance interviews, and finally a hefty down payment for a seat.

Everyone advised his parents that Sunil should enroll for tuitions immediately, else he would not clear the two years of Higher Secondary level studies. His parent tried home tuitions – the first teacher made them buy seven books, taught for a couple of months and then disappeared!! He simply did not answer the phone thereafter. Those books were worthless – they had very little relevance to the course he was supposed to follow.  The next two teachers were highly erratic and did not even cover the first few lessons in the three important subjects. Sunil failed in all three at the half-yearly exams six months later.

As a stunned Sunil emerged with his report card from the school hall, his Maths teacher handed him a brochure, urging him to join the coaching center he owned. Most of his then current teachers taught there too. He did. The very next day.

The marks showed a dramatic improvement in the subsequent exams. The huge monthly pay-outs to the coaching center were working. Sunil was happy, but his parents were alarmed. They kept telling him to prepare for the Higher Secondary Board exams on his own. But where was the time ? School and tuitions consumed all the hours. Everything else went flying out the window.

The Higher Secondary Board exams were upon him in due time, followed by numerous competitive exams for admissions to different colleges. Once again, he scored decently, at the Board exams and in some of the competitive ones, but admission to a college was determined by yet another down payment.

Four years later he was a graduate, with a degree, and set out to make his place in the world. He carried a lot of angst and the irreverence for his teachers was almost total. He was what he had become in spite of them, not because of them.

It remains to be seen what kind of professional he will turn out to be.

***

Was Sunil a “good” student or a “bad” one ? Your guess is as good as mine.

***

There was a time, not very long ago, when teachers were revered as another set of guardians alongside the parents. They labored for the development and improvement of their wards. The wards, in turn, held them in awe throughout their lives.

There was a time, not very long ago, when acquiring knowledge was fun and challenging, when thirst for knowledge was supposed to be blessed by the goddess Saraswati, in all her manifestations.

There was a time, not very long ago, when those in academia viewed children as budding flowers, full of untapped potential. Mentoring was the order of the day.

All that is history.

Somewhere along the line, the goddess of learning had taken flight, taking with her the fun and frolic of Sunil’s youth and those of his peers.

The value system that she embodied lies in a shambles.

***

THE MECHANICAL FOREMAN

In the Indian industry of the 80’s, we had three categories of people in an organisation – workers, officers and foremen. I am not sure if you have had the fortune of coming across this particular breed in your career. They were a class apart – one that, I suspect, possibly evolved with the Industrial Revolution. My experience with them is confined to the construction and allied industries – I never had the fortune of meeting the factory variety.

Anyone who had put in a good twenty – twenty-five years in a company, was reasonably good at his work and could write or sign his name in English without tearing up the paper, was eligible to become a foreman. Background education was either absent or limited, or in most cases, suspect. But that was never a hindrance for them to propound theories on everything in life from astronomy to multi-vitamins.

There were some aberrations to this rule, of course – some who could not even write their own names, but good at their work, and survived with the help of a symbiotic relationship with the nearest manager.

They came in three flavors – dumb, not-so-dumb and smart.

The dumb ones slogged it out at work, spent the better part of their lives trying to be the perfect “yes-man” to whoever was the boss at the time, only to get promoted to the junior management grade –– which, if you ask me, was not a very good place to be in the first place, but something they learnt when it was too late. These foremen, very soon, found themselves doing the same jobs once again, but with an enhanced designation and reduced income. They then either retired, or died out of sheer boredom.

The not-so-dumb ones were essentially good speakers and had reasonably good analytical skills. The fact that they used those skills for all the wrong reasons is a different matter. They knew their job well, and knew how to advertise it better. Most of them were trade union leaders, and screwed up their own happiness regularly at three-year intervals, when the trade agreement negotiations came up.

These foremen-cum-union leaders, poor fellows, had to rough it out for three months, once every three years, to obtain a raise of, say, 15 to 30 paise per hour for the general masses and then claim a great victory, with celebration marches and all the works. When the new wage settlements were signed and sealed, sanity returned, and everyone could now goof off in peace, with all the work reserved for the overtime hours.

The smart ones were the lot on whose shoulders the company actually rested. Engineers came and went, like sparrows in search of food on a summer morning, but they remained – their years with the organisation (and not the work they did) adding to their personal value.

Back in those days there was a big gap between the “worker” class and the “management”, at least in concept and social perspective, if not in reality. These people straddled the divide like a colossus and enjoyed the best of both worlds. They had naturally higher salaries than most workers (and many engineers, too) and therefore their overtime earnings were like a small fortune each month. Then, they enjoyed all the little perks that junior managers had – the occasional car trip, access to telephone, and similar things. Some even had a small cabin erected at site for them. They never fell for that “promotion-to-the-management-grade” rubbish. The management, at the working level, relied on these men to deliver the day-to-day jobs and the general workers aspired to be like them at some point in future.

Most of them were “specialists” in something or the other and their “special skills” had almost a cult following. People wondered how they had acquired those skills without providential interference. They too, in turn, kept their “knowledge” a closely guarded secret and passed their expertise on to only one or two “carefully chosen” followers. Their skill areas were well-known, revered and respected and no one even dared to infiltrate the territories. No two foremen had the same territory or domain, either.

Remember, these were times l-o-n-g before insta-knowledge and expertise had been made so redundantly available by the Internet, Google and bullets on MS Powerpoint slides.

In many ways, they were the original “God’s Gift to Mankind” – an epithet that was later usurped by the software programmers of the IT era.

I shall talk about one such famous foreman.

***

This guy, a bespectacled Jurassic geezer with a toothy grin, was THE EXPERT at aligning electric motors and gear boxes set on a frame. If he was at site, he was the ONLY ONE (chosen by Providence, I presume) who would be doing the job. The fact that he averaged between six and ten hours to complete one set of alignments, was a trivial, very trivial, matter indeed.

He always moved around with two helper-cum-shishyas (almost everybody else had one) who carried his bags of special tools, and one welder / cutter with his own set of equipment (“shishya” – student). From him I learnt about the intricate, soul-stirring technologies known as the “Thou” and “Haoa Maar” (“Haoa” – air; “Maar” – hit or shot).

In case you are wondering, a “thou” is supposed to be one-thousandth of an inch. He took great pains to explain to me that my engineering degree was not worth the paper on which it was printed, if I did not understand the relevance of “The Thou” in industry. He was right. I did not. I did come across the word some time in college, but no, I never realised it was one of the pillars of civilisation. That abject surrender apparently endeared me to him and I was promptly adopted as the “third shishya” – never mind the fact that I was his “manager”.

He opened his bag of tricks and showed me little plates of varying thickness and explained how packing had to be used as a first step towards getting The Perfect Alignment for a motor-gearbox coupling. He even gifted me a “thou – gauge”. I was visibly impressed, but what I have never understood is how he managed to get his “thou-specific” alignments with packing plates that were several hundred “thous” thick.

After the motor and gear-box were placed on the frame and packing plates of different “thous” placed all around, the Master shook his head in disdain. The work was half-done. The Perfect Alignment could only be achieved through the intricate workings of the “Haoa Maar”.

This consisted of picking up a five or ten-pound hammer (“hamma” in his parlance) and swinging it in well-coordinated motion to hit a point a few feet away from the frame holding the offending motor-gearbox couple. The resulting vibrations Alone, could provide the Perfect Alignment. That is the concept of the “Haoa Mar”.

There were “Ek Haoa Maar”, “Do Haoa Maar” and many other subtle variations to the exercise. And you had to give a respectful time gap between each “maar”, to let all the vibrations die down. A difficult technology to master by any yardstick. That is what he told me. I agreed then and have remained in total agreement ever since.

Shishya no. 1 was ordered to start off with the haoa maar. He took a five-pounder and banged the steel structure a few feet away. “Arey-re-re !! Zyada ho gia !!! Ulta baju maar !! Pyar se !! Ek haoa, bas !!! (“Hey !! Too much !! Hit the other side !! With love !! Only one haoa – that’s all !!”)

A soft plonk ensued. “Ek aur !!.... “Nahi !! Abhi ulta baju do haoa de !!!..... (“One more !! No !! Now hit the other side with two haoa !!”)

And so the circus continued for a significant period of time. 

All that rattling of the steel structures attracted a small crowd of onlookers to watch the great Master at work. They could only watch in total silence. No one was allowed to even whisper. (As a shishya, I, of course, had the privilege to ask questions).

A few hours and some twenty or thirty “haoa mars” of different intensities later, the motor and gear-box set were transformed into a work of art – the Perfectly Aligned Couple.

How it came about remains a mystery to me to this day. No one could define the exact moment this was achieved, that is no one, except Him. Apparently those vibrations caused infinitesimal movements that Only He, with a million dioptres sitting on his nose, could gauge.

Putting the couplings on and bolting them up were jobs reserved for lesser mortals like his shishyas. After powering up, the smooth whine of the thingamabob was supposed to be the reward of a job well done.

Thus worked The Master, to the utter astonishment of the onlookers. And woes betide anyone who did the job any other way.

Long Live the Foreman !!!!!

*****

In Search of a Snowfall

I have harboured a long-time desire  to witness a snowfall. It made me go up to Auli – a Himalayan ski resort at an elevation of about 10,000 feet and sub-zero temperatures, in end December of 2010, only to witness snow coming out of snow cannons, for skiers who had booked slots a couple of years in advance. It was like tooth-paste on a mountain slope. 

I have seen “fallen snow” in so many places across the world, but never a snowfall. Thus when events finally made it possible for me to visit Canada during the last week of November the following year, I was thrilled. We were to go to Winnipeg (the city where Winnie the Pooh was born) to meet a customer. I read up some sites on Canada and started dreaming about snow and snowfalls…. I also borrowed some stuff from colleagues who had been there before – a monkey cap (yes, for the first time in my life !!!), gloves and a Papa Grizzly jacket. These jackets are meant for the Canadian winter and I can find no other expression to describe them…

The route was Kolkata – Dubai – Toronto and then a domestic flight from Toronto to Winnipeg.

The Dubai – Toronto leg was all of fourteen hours in an A380 aircraft – my first on that plane. (The A380 does provide one with a very different flying experience, but that is another story.)

If you lay the surface of the earth on a flat Euclidian plane, then the contours of the sunlit area form a parabola. (I do not know why that happens and if you can’t figure that out, ask Euclid – he was the fellow who said it…).

Our flight path to Toronto from Dubai followed this parabolic contour; one-side of the plane was always in the sun, the other in darkness. We flew straight up north from Dubai, over Iran, the Caspian Sea, the Russian plains,  then in a wide curve over Sweden, Norway, crossing the Norwegian Sea north of Iceland, past the southern tip of  Greenland, then over the Labrador Sea, Newfoundland and Quebec province, finally landing at Toronto.  We actually did not turn south – we went straight across the globe and Toronto came in our path. (That is where I guess Euclid gave up in sheer desperation and 3-D geometry was born…)

We flew above dense white clouds for the entire area from north of the Caspian Sea till the southern parts of Quebec province, I really could not see anything down below, except for a few frozen bodies of water amid green grass that were visible through some holes in the clouds over Newfoundland. The cloud cover slowly dispersed as we started our descent towards Toronto. All I could see were brown fields with grain waiting to be harvested…. The whole of the Canadian plains seemed to be divided into large rectangular plots in myriad shades of brown. Not a speck of snow anywhere.

We landed in Toronto around two in the afternoon on a Monday, where the outside temperature was a healthy eight degrees Celsius with a wind chill that made it seem like four. Got out of Terminal 1, had a smoke outside, took a sky-train to Terminal 3 for the next leg of our flight.

Snow ? Where was the snow ? And the cold ?

At Terminal 3, I met my first home-grown Canadian – she was the security person standing at the check-in counter. An elderly lady in police uniform, with a walkie-talkie; she asked if I had any liquids, explosives or firearms in my baggage…. Then looking at my sealed baggage still with the tags from the previous flight and my stunned expression, she burst out laughing. “I know it is silly, but I am still required to ask you that firearms question,” she said.

“And what if he says ‘yes’ ?” asked her colleague, another security officer, a tall lady with sparkling eyes. “Oh, then I would like to run and leave him to his designs,” said the first one, and we all burst out laughing. A far cry, indeed, from the typical security folks we come across in most airports of the world…

We took off for Winnipeg at around six in the evening. It was pitch-dark and I was unable to get a window-seat. The stewardess greeted us saying, “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the flight to Honolulu, Hawaii.”  There was a gentle chuckle from the crowd and then she explained that we would need to refuel at Winnipeg on the way…. Some more Canadian humor.

The air-hostesses were quite lady-like and smiling but after observing the calm insouciance with which they picked up pieces of heavy cabin luggage and swung them into the overhead lockers with one clean sweep after another, I decided against becoming too friendly with them. (I generally steer clear of visibly strong women given my delicate build, like a bottle-gourd on a diet – a survival skill honed through nursery-school skirmishes with female class-mates….)

As we were coming in to land at Winnipeg, I was thrilled to see snow everywhere…. The airport was covered in a white sheet of snow…. Wow !!!! They said that the outside temperature was minus eight degrees Celsius, with the wind chill taking it to minus fourteen !!! Aha !! I was beginning to feel happy finally. My colleague assured me that “snowfalls were round the corner"….

We got out of the airport terminal and had to walk to one corner of the building to have a smoke. By the time I lit up and had a couple of puffs, my ears had fallen off and I was wearing a couple of cold metal tubes in place of jeans. All the stuff I had brought from India for this weather was still locked up in the suitcase. About five or seven puffs later, the cigarette simply fell off my frozen fingers into the snow. We rushed into a taxi – and warmth, and reached our hotel some time later.

All hotels in Canada are non-smoking and “if someone spoiled your room by smoking, then they would charge you, as the room-owner, five hundred Canadian Dollars for operation cleanup”.  That meant every time we wanted to have a smoke, we would have to go out into minus fourteen degrees and do it. Pretty challenging thought, that. But the snow made all the difference – it had snowed over the weekend before we landed and everything was beautifully white.

I switched on the TV for weather forecasts and then my hopes began to fade. They said it would not snow in Winnipeg for the next few days. The next morning the temperature was around zero with the wind chill taking it to minus four. We went about our business and then for lunch at the “Concourse”….

All major buildings in downtown Winnipeg are connected by a vast network of underground tunnels that house supermarkets, post-offices, food courts and what-not; one does not need to go out into the wintry cold at all, unless one is going home. These are known as “Concourses”.

As we were chatting up some people from our customer’s office, my colleague mentioned that I was desperate to see a snowfall and one lady said, “How sad, the weather is unusually balmy for this time of the year..”

“Balmy ? Balmy !!! Balmy ???? The Webster English Dictionary says, balmy means mild, summer-like, warm.  At zero degrees, with a wind chill to make it minus four, she calls it “balmy” ? And then it dawned on me - she was speaking Canadian !!!! Definitely not English. But that cognitive Canadian balm was yet to embalm my conative Indian yearning…snow…??

For the next two days, the TV kept saying it was snowing here and there, all over the place – Johnson, Halifax, Polson, Bolson, His son, Her son, St. John’s, St. Peter’s and half of the apostles’ towns, but not in Winnipeg. The weather turned steadily warmer and the snow kept melting off the streets. On day three, we had walked for about a kilometer to the office and I was actually sweating. Yes. I. Was. Sweating. The Papa Grizzly jacket had become useless.

And just to let you know, while the rest of the world has snow, the Canadians have it in three flavours – flurries, snow and ice pellets. All those places around Winnipeg got their fill of flurries and pellets, while the snow kept melting off the streets of Winnipeg.

These Canadian weathermen, so unlike their colleagues at Alipore in Kolkata, are dreadfully accurate – I wished they got hit with ice pellets.

We took the plane out of Winnipeg and back to Toronto on Wednesday afternoon. The flat lands of Manitoba State, of which Winnipeg is the capital, were still covered in snow. And the flat lands around Toronto still had crops waiting to be harvested. Toronto was a “balmy” thirteen degrees with bright sunshine (that’s “balmy” in English not Canadian). As we planned to leave Toronto that Friday, the TV forecast snow for Winnipeg the following Monday. And snow for Toronto as well, the day after.

Having witnessed first-hand the early Canadian winter, I have decided not to believe anyone any more. Late November in Canada is just like late November in Kolkata. Only colder. And more windy.

Meanwhile, my search for a snowfall will have to wait some more – for another time, another place.

*** 

The Indian Tonsorium

For some reason, we Indians refer to barber shops as “saloons”, while for most people across the world, a saloon is a “watering hole” or a large hall for lounging around. Possibly an aberration of the word “salon”, but I leave that to the academics to figure out. I am sure all my Indian readers are familiar with the hair-cutting saloons found all over the country, from prime estates in the large cities to the remote villages in the far corners. Foreigners coming to this country need to know that if they want a haircut, they need to go to a “saloon”. A “barber’s shop” may be difficult to locate.

These saloons can be put into three broad categories : shops on the sidewalk, shops beside the sidewalk and shops above the sidewalk – in malls and bazaars.

The shops on the sidewalk – the most common – sport a mirror on a wall or a tree trunk, with four bricks wrapped in plastic for a seat. The Bengali nickname for it is “eentalian” saloon, “eent” being the Bengali word for “brick”. The upgrade from the “eentalian” variety is a rickety wooden chair or a rusted steel one. About those mirrors, the less said the better. Your reflection could take any shape or form. The Laws of Physics are severely tested.

The upmarket variety of these “eentalian” saloons have a plastic sheet tied to different parts of the immediate surroundings at different convenient levels to serve as an awning and protection against the sun and bird poop. One is expected to pay a premium for that.

The barbers at these shops can be considered experts at their trade, given the volume of customers they handle daily, though tonsuring seems to be the most visible and consummate art form.

If one enters the saloon beside a sidewalk – more often than not, a ramshackle hut made of corrugated iron sheets or bamboo screens called chatai, and covered with blue plastic sheets to keep out the rain and sun, one will immediately encounter a bewildering array of gods staring down at the potential customer. The intent, I presume, is to warn of things that will follow.

Apart from the regular offerings, these mid-range shops also offer the massage service. The massage comes in two varieties – head massage and body massage. The head massage typically begins with a gentle pinching and drawing out of the eyebrows, then moves to the ears, and finally the head. The hair is first pulled to the point where it is in danger of being ripped off, and then the head is pummelled with fists till the eyesight begins to blur. Then the fellow goes back to the neck and pinches it at different places, cutting off the blood flow to the brain at various times. The end game involves pulling the ears and eyebrows again, and wiping off the face with a towel that smells of so many things.

The body massage starts off with pinching the tender area between the neck and shoulders till the victim grimaces. Then the arms, one by one, are stretched, twisted and turned, fingers snapped and twisted, and the attention goes moves back to the neck. The poor fellow is asked to rest the head on the table in front, and the pummelling of the back begins. For a while, fists rain down till the area starts to become numb. Muscles are pinched and twisted, across the length and breadth of one’s back, interspersed with raining fists, till the barber himself is exhausted. Spondylitis, or any such ailment that the victim may have, goes for a walk, I suppose.

The more well-built the barber, the powerful and rigorous is the massage. If you opt for both the head and body massage, you will be wobbly on your feet for a while. And you need to pay at least Rupees forty or more, just to get beaten up in this fashion. Haircut and a shave, extra.

A word about those towels that are used. It is safest to visit the shops early in the morning because they typically wash the towels at night before going to bed. And you can draw the other conclusions.

Barbers have a special role in traditional Hindu society; all males, they are required to perform a variety of functions at births, deaths, thread ceremonies and weddings – roles defined by the ancient texts. Naturally therefore, the art is passed down from father to son and the profession runs through families for generations. Most of them take their profession as a “holy” one and try to deliver to the best of their abilities.

Of course, in the Indian context, a haircut is absolutely independent of one’s looks. It is a work of art by the barber.

What you get for free, however, at these saloons, is knowledge. Profound, deep insights into how to run the country or local government, control food prices or why India lost the last cricket match and cannot do well in football, even why sending satellites up constitute a waste of money for India. The more loquacious the barber, the wider the range of topics.

To get a haircut that matches with your facial structure or profile, you will need to go to the glitzy malls, where they will charge a hefty premium for showing you an album of past and present film stars and ask for your preference. The final output may or may not match with your desires, but that is not their fault – right ?

If you ask for a massage there, you will most likely get the same pummelling at three times the charge, because the place is air-conditioned. And there are fewer gods on the walls. Your choice.

Black 8 the Terrible

Like most students of our time, we had one year of compulsory Sanskrit classes. Nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that it left a deep and indelible mark on my mind, and perhaps in the minds of most of my class-mates as well…

It did not make literary geniuses out of us – nor did it actually enhance our vocabulary, because our mother-tongue – Bengali, had evolved from Sanskrit anyway. We did learn some new words for everyday things and the origins of some of the words we use everyday; the latter being an item of information that is perfectly useless for the rest of one’s useful life – unless one is bent on making a living out of origins of words; in which case one would die very early from hunger.

The contribution of that language course was in a completely different sphere. It trained us to have regular, consistently fearsome, nightmares – an experience that has served me well in later life – people now look upon me as the “fearless ’un”.

Don’t get me wrong – Sanskrit was not the cause – it was the teacher. This fellow, and I forget his name, was a glossy, ebony version of Mr. Weatherbee of Archie’s comics. A huge black 8 in spotless, white dhoti and kurta, with a smile that could curdle the blood of most boys just entering their teens.

He would come into class, carrying a bunch of moth-eaten books in one hand and a cane in the other, like some medieval warrior with a sword. He would carefully place the bunch of moth-eaten books on the table – but the cane would never leave his hand. One day it would be Sanskrit Literature, the next day, Grammar. Most of us were so confused by the routine that we carried both books to school anyways. Else, it was three lashes of the cane on the right hand for not having the correct book in class.

The literature class consisted of little Sanskrit stories told in a completely incomprehensible language, with unpronounceable words, sometimes joined together to make bigger unpronounceable words. We always wondered about those fellows of yore who had Sanskrit for a mother tongue. Those kids must have had a terrible time trying to tell their mommas in Sanskrit that they were hungry, because Sanskrit demands that one possess a perfect set of teeth and an acrobatic tongue coupled with about 10 Terabytes of cached memory to store all those noun and verb forms for instant access…. but that is not part of this narrative.

Our teacher would read the stories out aloud and translate into Bengali, spreading gentle smiles of comprehension all across the room. And then it would start. His eyes would wander all over the class and come to rest on the first unfortunate fellow of the day, who would be asked to read the passage just covered.

Two lashes of the cane on the calves if it didn’t sound like he was reading Sanskrit, (and it never did). We all wore “half-pants”(“shorts” in today’s parlance) in those days, and there was no protection…..  Then another student would be called up, then another, till someone was able to read something that sounded like Sanskrit. Most had a difficult time controlling the spit from flying out while endeavouring to pronounce properly.

The following day, in the Grammar class, the routine would be slightly different. The randomly selected first unfortunate fellow of the day would be called up in front of the blackboard and asked to recite some noun or verb table, with our man standing right beside him, cane pointing to the roof.  Halfway through the recitation, the inevitable goof-up would take place – and the poor student, merely Bengali-trained, would get tongue-tied.

And then believe me, here is what would happen – in slow motion. Mr. 8 would take three steps backwards, gently, ever so gently, lay his cane on the table, and haul our little Sanskrit criminal towards him by the collar. Then, with his right hand, he would take a large pinch somewhere around the tummy area of the boy. He would close his eyes, grit his teeth, and start twisting the piece of flesh he had between his fingers, saying, “Porishni keno ?” (“Why have you not memorized the piece ?”)

Our friend would wince, and slowly bend over till his head touched the table, unable to scream or speak……. They would stay in that position for a few seconds, before he thought it proper to release his grip. The story would be repeated for the next little criminal who could not recite the tables, and the next, and the next… Most of the times we forgot to recite out of sheer terror.

Rumour had it that he also taught at the girls’ school next door. I never found out what he did there.

The grammar book was called “…some… Upakramanika”….My impression about Vidyasagar, the author, was one of pure contempt. Did he not have better things to do ? Were we supposed to honour this fellow for unleashing pure, unadulterated terror in our lives ? All those hundred and twenty pages of that book posed some of the biggest challenges of our early teen years…. Not the desire to master the language in the way that V-fellow did, but to go through life with the sole objective of avoiding those lashes…….

In the process, all the “bhekam” (frogs) and “loshtrum” (stones) were finally confined to the dark recesses of our minds, to be invoked during nightmares, but never to see the light of the day again….

*****

Just as a few words of French thrown casually about in an English sentence tend to project a person as “erudite”, a few Sanskrit words do the same job for the average Indian, irrespective of the language he or she is speaking……. That is what I learned later in life.

The intellectuals of our society go about doing just that… a few Sanskrit words thrown randomly into a conversation or a poetry, and lo !! We have the perfect scholar in our midst.

……“Lyob Lopey Karmanadhikaraney Chaw”…… Haven’t the foggiest idea what that phrase means – it is all I remember from the Upakramanika, learned with lashes and pinches during our days under the reign of the “BLACK 8 the Terrible”.

Didi

The Bengali language has a lovely word for the elder sister : “Didi”.

***

The other day, I was lounging at the club canteen after a gym session, when a young girl, barely eight or nine years old, came up to the counter, her grandmother in tow. She obviously had gone for a swim, judging by her wet hair, and was probably very hungry.

They went over the menu pasted on the wall, with animated discussions on each item. The grandmother then said, “Take a couple of chicken sandwiches – I know you like them.”

The little girl said, “Why don’t we buy a plate of chicken momo ? You know how bhai likes them.” (Bhai means younger brother). 

The grandmother reasoned, “He is at home and probably not hungry. You need the food.” The girl was insistent and then they reached a compromise. She was more intent on buying something for her brother before she bought something for herself.

They bought a plate of chicken sandwiches and a plate of chicken momo – one to be eaten here and the other to be carried home. The little girl promised to share both – one with her grandmother and the other with her bhai.

Watching them, I could not help, but comment to the elderly lady, “All didis are like that.”

***

Yes… all Didis are like that – I have witnessed it time and again.