Corbett National Park

There was something about tigers in the newspaper today, about tigers and Tiger Reserves, that reminded me of the only time that I had been to a jungle. It was way back in 2003, I think, when we went to Corbett National Park. We had gone holidaying in Nainital and other nearby places, and Corbett was on our itinerary. I was really small then, and did not enjoy the beauty of nature much. So naturally, for  me the only object of anticipation was seeing wild animals, especially tigers.

It is strange how one’s mind stores odd snippets of many different events, and sometimes these events get jumbled up, and one talks about one incident when one is really thinking of something completely different. And then, one’s mind sometimes blends the memories of one event with memories of some other event, or of something one has read about or seen in movies, and then one has very vivid ‘memories’ of things that might not have happened to oneself at all! Whenever I think of our trip to Corbett, I visualize a very narrow and shallow rivulet with shoals of multihued fish swimming about in it. Now, I know that while entering the park in the jeep we had crossed a rivulet, but the shoals of fish are almost certainly figments of my imagination, borrowed from various shows on Animal Planet. But in spite of my conscious knowledge, this image of fish is strangely associated with Corbett in my mind!

There is another thing that I always think of in connection with Corbett. That is about my first experience of a sharp chilly wind. As I said, we were travelling in an open jeep. It was December, and the temperature must have been pretty low. My parents had packed me up in a lot of warm clothes. I remember wearing a sweater, a thick jacket, woolen socks, gloves, and a balaclava. Now, ever since childhood, I have suffered much more from heat than from cold. That day, as we entered the forest, I distinctly remember standing up (I was tiny enough then to be able to stand up unobtrusively in the jeep) and pulling off my balaclava, much to my mother’s horror, and grinning widely at the world in general with chattering teeth and watery eyes as the cold wind swept across my face. That is probably one of my best travel memories till date!

We had put up in a place called ‘Jhirna’. I hear that nowadays it has been turned into an expensive resort, but in those days there were just a few cottages and an elephant ride area there. There was an observation tower a little way off from the cottages, and I have a rather exciting memory of the place. My father, mother and I had gone to the tower during the day, which was a pleasant enough experience. But then, my father and I went there again in the evening. I remember looking down on the forest from the tower. It was an ocean of black, with the distant trees looking like oddly shaped human figures. It was twilight then, and the sky was red and black, and there seemed to be no living being around except the two of us. Now that I come to think of it, I think I enjoy that moment much more in retrospect than I did when it was actually happening. At that age, I was more in search of adventure than scenery. After spending some time there, we came down and headed back to the cottage, only to find that a group of men had come to look for us with sticks and lanterns. We later heard that that area was often visited by tigers and other wild beasts, so they had become scared and come to look for us!

The next day we went for an elephant ride in the jungle. Our elephant was a young female called Albeli. She was a very cheerful creature, and was also rather small for an elephant. Then of course, she was not a full grown beast. We climbed onto her back from a raised platform. I sat right behind the mahout. There was one thing that still pains me whenever I think of it. The mahout had a short iron fork with which he kept poking Albeli whenever she tried to be a little naughty. From my position I could see that just behind her head she had numerous small cuts which were obviously the result of this poking. My father says that being an elephant she probably didn’t even feel the cuts, but I feel angry whenever I think of it. Anyway, the ride in itself was lovely. At one point, the mahout told us that there was probably a tiger there a little way ahead, and did we want to go on? My father however told him to turn back; he later told us that since Albeli was a young elephant she might have become frightened on seeing a tiger, and that would certainly have been very unsafe for us! We had our ride and came back, and heard that during our absence a tiger had come and killed a deer a little way behind our cottage! Ah well, we probably weren’t meant to see a tiger that time!

We had another delightful experience with Albeli later that day. My father and I had bought a packet of biscuits, and we took it to the sheds where the elephants were kept. Albeli was there, and believe it or not, she was actually dancing, shaking her head and body in a rhythmic manner! She stopped when she saw us, and daddy started giving her the biscuits. She took them with her trunk and ate them swiftly, and an entire packet was over in the wink of an eye. Then my father told her that there was no more, and as if on cue, she resumed her dance exactly where she had left it, and no trained Kathak dancer could have displayed more grace than she did that day!

We stayed for a very short time in Corbett; I think it was just for one night and two days. But it was a lovely experience, and someday I hope to go back there and spend a much longer time, and this time hopefully, I’ll be lucky enough to catch at least a glimpse of the tiger, the King of the Jungle!

Is my generation insane?

A very sad thing happened this Monday morning; a classmate of mine passed away in a car accident along with her mother, her grandmother and her brother, while her father is admitted in the hospital, fighting for his life. She was not a close friend, but then we have been studying together for the last twelve years, so the incident horrified me. May their souls rest in peace forever.

Generally, I would not be writing about such a sad incident; this is not the kind of news that one bandies about. However, I read a comment in one of my father’s blogposts that hit me hard, and induced me to write about this. Another classmate, a boy, has commented on the post saying that some of his friends were joking and laughing over the accident, as if it were a funny and trivial issue!

The boy wrote in his comment that these boys either have no feelings at all or are confused about what they feel. I will go one step further and say that these boys are bestial. This though would be an insult to animals, since most animals try their best to save a brother in trouble, and often express grief at the death of a member of the  tribe. Jim Corbett has rightly said in one of his stories that if the laws of the jungle were prevalent among human beings, we would be living in a much more civilized and humane society. The boy also wrote about his Biology teacher who jokes about how accidents can help control the population explosion in our country, and says that one or two dying now and then is not a big deal. This really frightens me. In the primary classes we were taught to think of our teachers just like our parents. If I had parents who had such perverse and psychopathic thoughts, I would surely have lived in constant fear for my life. These people are parents too, and I always feel sorry for their children. These are the parents who convince their children that the only reason to be alive is to get marks and get admission in the IITs. And these are the parents whose children can laugh when they hear about a classmate’s death.

I am a member of the generation in question, but since my parents have gone against the herd and consciously brought me up with a different set of values, I often get nasty shocks at my classmates’ behaviour. A very common and seemingly unimportant thing that everyone has witnessed sometime or the other is how youngsters occupy the seats in public buses while the aged remain standing. I remember once a classmate and I were returning from a tuition, and we had both been lucky to get seats in a packed bus. Moments after we had sat down, an elderly couple entered the bus. The man had a bent back, while the woman was limping and was obviously in pain. I immediately vacated my seat, and looked at my classmate, expecting her to do the same. But she kept staring pointedly out of the window and did not budge before I actually told her to do so, and then only because she was afraid I would otherwise haul her off the seat, which I am physically quite capable of doing. She got up unwillingly, gave me a glare and turned away, muttering curses under her breath! Since I have spent such a long time studying in a girls’ school (and those are actually much nastier than a co-ed or a boys’ school; I do wish some more girls/women would have the guts to acknowledge that publicly) I can think of dozens of other such instances which show how frightening the minds of many of these people are. In fact, I would not like to stay alone in a house with a great majority of them for my own safety. There’s no saying what one of them could do to take ‘revenge’ for some imagined hurt or just for the fun of seeing someone else hurt.

So where exactly has society gone wrong to have brought up a generation of teenagers with such warped and retarded senses? We have Art of Living classes galore, and Value Education is compulsory in most schools. In spite of that, we have teenagers who have little or no moral sense and responsibility. In fact, given enough power, I am sure we have a number of potential Hitlers and Stalins amongst us! I know for one that many of them, the girls especially, will grow up to be the worst kind of parents whose only contribution to their children’s lives would be making them miserable.

I often discuss this issue with my father, and we wonder about where the real problem lies. One thing that both of us agree on is that these teenagers have been simultaneously spoiled rotten to the extreme and been subjected to endless irrational restrictions right from childhood. I have had a very different childhood, where my parents have treated me like an equal, and so I have been given the same freedom as well as the same duties and responsibilities that they have. Today, I am obviously very unlike most of my classmates in my likes and dislikes, tastes and preferences, hobbies, and my entire lifestyle is a puzzle to them. Many of my classmates have this idea that I have to live under military discipline and my parents run a concentration camp at home! Otherwise they simply cannot fathom how a teenager could NOT enjoy partying, shopping, gossiping and willingly do things like reading, housekeeping or studying! With the kind of mentality that most of these teenagers have, and the kind of marks- and looks-obsessed, unscrupulous environment that they have grown up in, it is little wonder that terrifying accidents get such disgusting reactions from them. I can now understand how the Romans could enjoy watching ‘games’ like chariot racing and gladiator fighting. People like to say “Nowadays the world is becoming so bad and ugly”, but in reality the world has always been like this, and people have always been saying the same thing, be it four hundred years ago, or a thousand. That’s my only consolation: only a tiny handful try to be different, always, everywhere.

However, there is no denying that good people are still around. While some boys felt like joking about the incident, another girl has organized a prayer-and-donation meet in an orphanage in the memory of the deceased this Friday afternoon. The girl is my classmate, and is someone whom I always took to be a typical senseless teenager. I must say I am pleasantly surprised. All I wish is that we had more people like her around. That would have made the world a much happier and more peaceful place. 

The Little Prince

[I have been trying to review this book ever since I read it more than a month ago. Somehow, it had turned out to be a very difficult task, so much so that I finally gave it up and simply wrote down whatever thoughts the book had brought to my mind. So this is not a review, strictly speaking; this is the rambling of a restless mind one quiet summer afternoon.]

This is a rather strange book. I have read quite a number of books, both children’s books and books for mature minds. But I cannot think of any book that is quite like The Little Prince. I cannot even decide whether to call it a children’s story or a book for grown-ups. I am sure the author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, in spite of being an adult himself, would have strongly objected to its being called a book for grown-ups. He has even dedicated the book to a grown-up, Leon Werth, “when he was a little boy”!

The day I read the book was the second day of dad’s admissions. It had been a very long day, and by the time it was nine in the evening, we were all dead-beat. I wanted to read something light, so I took The Little Prince out on a whim and curled up in bed with it. I had been expecting a funny and frivolous book, but right from the first page I could sense something very surprising; the author seemed to have turned society as we know it upside down. In his opinion it is the children who are the really deep and thoughtful entities in society, and the adults who insist on giving undue importance to petty and unimportant things!

The author starts the book by telling us how he had drawn a boa constrictor with an elephant inside it when he was six years old, and had asked the grown-ups whether the drawing frightened them, but they had all thought that it was an oddly shaped hat that he had drawn. He must have been a very unusual adult indeed, because right at the start he has made clear his low opinion of the average grown up. And this is a theme that he has continued to harp upon throughout the course of the story. He insists “Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them”!

The author, who has grown up to be an aviator, has had to crash land in the Sahara Desert as something has broken down in the engine of his plane. It is there that he meets the little prince, who seems to appear out of nowhere, and asks the author very gravely to draw   him a sheep. And strangely enough, the author does just that for him, as “when a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey.” That is the beginning of what goes on to become a deep friendship between the grown man and the strange child.

The story stretches over ten or eleven days, during which the author comes to know little by little the story of the little prince’s life. The little prince lives on a planet (the author thinks it is the asteroid B-612, though he acknowledges that any child would know such names and figures are of little consequence; it is the adults he is satisfying with this piece of information) which is so small that it is hardly any bigger than a house. He lives there with three volcanoes, and a haughty flower who thinks she is the only one of her kind. He used to live with his flower and watch many sunsets, because his planet is so small that the sun sets and rises numerous times each day. But the little prince was not happy, and wanted to travel around and see the universe. That was how his adventures began.

The author has memorably conveyed many essential lessons of life through the little prince’s adventures. He has also brought out some of the commonest weaknesses that grown-ups suffer from in the characters of the various people the prince meets on his travels. The price meets a king who loves to order people about and rule over people, and his only problem is that there are no subjects he can rule over in his tiny planet. Then the prince meets a conceited man who thinks everybody admires him, and then a drunkard who drinks so that he can forget how ashamed he is of drinking, then a businessman who counts stars all the time (‘stars’ here seem to me to be representative of money). The fifth planet the prince visits has a lamplighter whose plight is that he has to light his lamp and put it off 1440 times every day, as there are so many sunsets and sunrises in his tiny planet. Of all the people he has seen till then, the lamplighter is the only one whom the prince does not find ridiculous. The reason the prince gives for this is “he is thinking of something else besides himself.” The sixth planet has a geographer in it, who directs the prince to the earth.

Once the prince comes to the earth, he (and all of us readers along with him) learns some valuable lessons. He sees a garden of roses which look just like his own flower back home. He sees that she is not unique after all, and this leaves him dejected. Then he meets a fox, who makes him understand that his flower is unique because he had ‘tamed’ it, and was now responsible for it. The fox requests the prince to tame him. Here again, the author has said something wonderful: “One only understands the things that one tames. Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all readymade at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends anymore.”

The prince meets a railway switchman and sees the trains travelling up and down the  tracks. Here the author brings out another very true-to-life sentiment through their conversation. The switchman says that grown-ups are never satisfied with what they have, and are bored with life. Those travelling in the railway carriages are either asleep, or yawning. Only the children have their noses pressed to the windows as they watch the passing scenery. The prince replies “Only the children know what they are looking for.”

The part that has touched me the most is when the prince goes to the snake, who bites him so as to send him back to his own planet. Before going, the prince reassures the author that he will not be dying; he will only be leaving his body behind, as it is too heavy to carry home. This wonderful concept of ‘going home’ seems to take away a lot of the anxieties and miseries of human life. When one knows that death is just going back home after a long and tiring journey, one is able to face it without fear, and with anticipation even.

The line I found most memorable in the book was something that the fox told the prince: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” I understand now why my father keeps saying this was one of those books which changed his life forever. Somehow, I know that from now, I will be spending much more time and energy in looking at the ‘small and insignificant’ things of life. Maybe, one day I too will have a rose which will have tamed me, and which will be unique to me… 

Raindrops, raindrops, fall upon my window...

The rain is one of the most beautiful gifts of Nature, especially if it is unseasonal rain. A few days back we had a rather unexpected spell of rain here. I had been going around all morning that day with a gloomy face, and after the brief shower I could feel a marked improvement in my spirits. It was as if some invisible load had been lifted from my heart.

Last Wednesday the day had been cloudy right from the beginning. We did not think much of it; rain is the last thing that we expect in February. So we were really surprised to hear the roll of thunder sometime around seven in the evening. I kept thinking it was the sound of cars and furniture being moved around until I saw a flash of lightning through the window of the living room. And then came the rain. It was nothing extraordinary, just a drizzle. But for me it seemed to be a relief, from what I am not sure. Maybe I had just got fed up of the unending dryness all around me for the last few months. I was sitting there in front of the computer, drumming at the keyboard aimlessly, and then when I heard the first drops coming down, I simply ran to the balcony to feel the rain on my hands. The smell of wet mud that always drives me into fits of ecstasy was already there. Any other time of the year I would have stolen off to the terrace to get wet, but the evening was chilly, and getting wet in the rain was not a very pleasant prospect. Instead, I sat in the balcony watching the rain coming down to soothe the thirst of the dry earth, and memories of childhood flooded into my mind.

When I was a kindergartener most of my favourite games were related to splashing around in mud and water. The loner that I have always been, I preferred to go on these watery expeditions all by myself. After the rains a long stretch of puddles would be formed right in front of our house. As long as the sun was in the sky, I would sit in those puddles and make mud toys. At first my mother used to scold me for the soggy state that I got into, and the frocks I managed to spoil in the process. Later though she just resigned herself to the fact that I was not going to change my ways, and simply warned me not to stray into the road. Another game that I loved to play was jumping in the puddles and watching the ripples formed in the water. I remember once I had managed to induce a slightly older and very prim and proper friend of mine to step into the water. She had complied only after making me promise not to splash any water at her. Of course I had no intention of keeping my promise, and the moment she stooped to look closely into the puddle, I picked up a handful of the muddy water and threw it right at her face! I still laugh helplessly when I visualize the horrified expression on her face and her shrill voice screaming that I had spoiled her hair!

When we were in primary school, all of us loved to make paper boats. In fact, I used to return from school every day with at least five of those boats tucked into my bag. Whenever it rained, whether we were at home or at school, we would set afloat dozens of those boats and pretend to be dacoits and princesses on board ships going to distant lands in search of priceless treasures. We had such lovely times then, letting our imaginations run away with us. In fact, I think those were the days when my classmates’ creativity was at its peak. We made up impossible stories and lived them in our make-believe worlds, and found nothing absurd about them. Sometimes it started raining while we were playing with our boats, and then we would pretend that there was a cyclone and the ship was rocking helplessly on the sea, and all of us would pray that we may survive the night without being tossed overboard (this was during the time when the computer game called Sindbad was very popular and all of us had gathered some idea about life on sea from it. Also The Pirates of the Caribbean series had just begun, so we all loved to think of ourselves as future Jack Sparrows!).

But not all of my rainy memories are from primary school. Last year we had a long monsoon, and I spent many of those days getting drenched on the terrace or in the garden. I remember one day more clearly than others. It was a Sunday, and I had been studying all morning. So when the clouds overcast the sky and the rain came down in heavy showers, I ran down to the garden and stood barefoot in the soft grass, facing the sky and feeling the water running down my nose. I had been dancing around and enjoying myself for about five minutes when something like a little pebble fell on my foot. I looked down to see what it was, and to my delight it was a hailstone! By the time I had finished examining it, hailstones were falling in dozens. One the size of an egg fell right in front of me, and at that moment ma called me and asked me to get inside. By the time I had taken a bath and changed into fresh clothes I could hear the hailstorm raging outside. Later we heard that that evening there had been an unusual amount of hail, and some houses had broken window panes and tin roofs. My mother was certainly glad that she called me in when she did; none of us would have liked a big block of ice to fall on my head!

As is the rule of Nature, the most beautiful of her creations can sometimes become pretty troublesome, if not deadly. One day after school last year, those of us who travel by public bus found ourselves in a fix. There had been some accident, so no bus was running on the 8B route that afternoon. None of us carried a mobile, and we did not have enough money with us to book an auto, and the driver was very uncooperative and refused to lower his fare. To top all that, it had started drizzling. Anyway, I managed to call my father from a telephone booth, but he came to pick me up on the scooter, so my friends couldn’t go with me. The next day I heard from them that they had walked all the way to St. Xavier’s school in the heavy shower, getting drenched to the skin, where they had luckily been spotted by a neighbour who was in his car, and had managed to go home with him almost a hour and a half after school was over!

I have heard stories from my father about troubles caused by too much of rain. Once it had rained so much for so long in Durgapur that the river Damodar had flooded. For a day, it had become the largest river on earth, larger than even the Amazon! All the sluice gates of the Durgapur Barrage had been opened, and the area around it had become one gigantic lake, with people going around in boats! Another time he was travelling by train on a hot summer day, and standing at the door of the compartment enjoying the breeze. There was a cyclone, and the rest of the journey he continued to stand at the door freezing to the bone!

Still, I wish we had more of rain here in our place. My mother says that too much of rain makes her gloomy, and she doesn’t like dark cloudy days. But I enjoy myself very much indeed. Even when I am not getting wet, I love to hear the sound of the rain. It helps calm my mind. And in those moments I pity all my classmates who are so poor that they will never learn to savour the richness of Nature and all her different faces…

The Facebook Mania

These days, the ongoing craze among my friends is Facebook. Hardly one or two of my contemporaries do not have an account in Facebook, or ‘Fb’ as it is more popularly called over here. Those few who do not have accounts in Facebook are marked as ‘outdated’ and ‘uncool’. And if one is like me, who has an account but visits it once in four months, then one is termed ‘crazy’. Not that it bothers me much; I am called crazy for numerous other reasons anyway!

Whatever happens in school or in tuition classes, a post has to be made in Facebook. And in spite of an absence of word limit, only sms language should be used. “2day, we hd 2 free periodz in skul, yay!!!!!” is a very typical post. Other than that, whatever petty programs or fights take place, a Facebook post seems to be mandatory. Even the lack of activity, “Jaanish, aajke school e kichhu pora hoeni!!!” has to be posted. As for photos, the less said about it the better. My classmates seem to have this bizarre habit of taking the most awkward and senseless photos possible, and then uploading them on Facebook, only to be bombarded by a series of equally senseless and bizarre comments. Once when I had logged in after a goodly period of time, I had got a bit of a shock to find a group photo of a few of my friends from St. Xavier’s School for boys standing around holding up their pantaloons! That photo had fetched more than sixty comments!

All kinds of weird activities go on in Facebook. Most of my school friends seem to be ‘in a relationship’ with someone or the other in Xavier’s. However, when I ask them about their 'relationships' outside Facebook, they say that they are ‘single’! Both boys and girls together attend my father’s tuition. I have some friends there who are boys. They refuse to speak to me or even look at me when we meet each other, but the same boys send me messages saying “You seem to have forgotten me” on Facebook!

As for that strange business of ‘friend’ing someone, it goes right above my head. How can any Tom, Dick and Harry become your ‘friend’ just by sending a request on Facebook? But that is just what happens there. My classmates have hundreds of ‘friends’ on Facebook, fifty percent of whom they don’t know at all! There is an unwritten competition about who has the maximum number of friends, so most people will accept friend requests from just about everyone!

Facebook has become a worldwide sickness that affects not only teenagers with a lot of free time and nothing to do, but also people of their parents’ ages. Nowadays a number of advertisements feature parents communicating with their children through Facebook. One such advertisement shows a group of college goers who have just checked the latest update on Facebook where the mother of one of the boys has posted “Just made biriyani”! With this also comes the fact that the parents who say that reading books outside the prescribed syllabus is a waste of time do not seem to mind when their children spend hours doing absolutely nothing on sites such as this.

This being the situation everywhere, I am glad to say I have not been affected badly by this disease. As I said before, I have a Facebook account that I hardly ever visit. E-mails and notifications from Facebook are directed to the scrap box of my gmail i.d., and I get along very comfortably with this Facebook-free lifestyle. A few years back some classmates of mine had encouraged me to open a hoax account on Facebook because I was not thirteen yet at that time. The first month had seemed very exciting, but then my father had found out about the account and had forbidden me from using it. Then, sometime last year he told me I could open a Facebook account again if I wanted to. I opened my present one then, but the craze was already a thing of the past, and now it is all but unused.

I wish I could make at least one or two of my friends realize what a big waste of time Facebook is. There are so many other ways in which one could enjoy oneself. But they are determined not to listen, and since I realized that I was fighting a losing battle, I have stopped talking on this subject altogether.

On this subject, I would like my readers to take a look at this wonderful piece written by a newspaper writer called Chandril Bhattacharya. In fact, it was this piece of writing that induced me to write this post. Many thanks to Saikatda who sent this to baba. An advance apology to all my non-Bengali readers; I will not be able to translate this properly, so I am posting the original piece. Sorry!

My Trip to Shillong

A very happy new year everybody. It is amazing how fast yet another year has rolled by. Almost exactly a year ago, I was writing the post “Looking Back on 2010”. Today, I will not write the same thing for 2011. Rather, I will write a little about the lovely trip from which we returned not even a week ago. It was certainly a most wonderful experience. We went to a hill station almost three years later, and I do love the mountains. What is more, this time we went by air, and it was the first time for both ma and me.

We reached the airport at Dumdum by eight thirty. The entire process of checking in was over within forty minutes, and then we were upstairs in the waiting room for Gate 5. Baba was looking around the place, while ma and I found us seats. After we had settled down, baba called me, and showed me my life’s first aeroplane through a window. For some reason, I had this idea that planes are much larger than they really are. So what I saw looked more like a toy plane to me, and to be frank, I was  a bit disappointed. Our boarding time was ten thirty, and so we queued up and went out on the tarmac through the gate, and were asked to walk to our plane, an IndiGo Airbus A320 that was standing just beyond the building. Inside the plane, it was rather small, and the seats were cramp. But I had got a window seat, so that compensated for the slight discomfort with the leg space. I was quite relaxed then, but when the plane finally started to run along the runway, I got so hyperexcited about the jump, that I dug into my hands with my nails, drawing blood! Then the plane finally took off, and the blood momentarily drained from my brain, giving me a strange feeling of emptyheadednss. It took me almost five whole minutes to get back to normal, and though it does not sound like much, the feeling gave me a sense of unreality, and was not altogether a very comfortable sensation. Anyway, after that was gone, I was okay again, and other than the wonderful view of the azure sky, and another plane far away, it was a pretty uneventful ride, and in one hour we were in Guwahati. On the whole my first flight had been a success. We had had a clear sky and a splendid view of the ocean of clouds far below us which made me feel that I was in paradise, and a smooth ride, and what is more, our captain was a lady, so that is one thumbs up for my sex, because she did her job wonderfully, or so I felt.

The ride to Shillong was pleasant, and thankfully I did not have any problem during the ride, unlike many other times when I had suffered from constant dizziness. On the way we stopped for ten minutes at a place called Nongpo which is known for its pineapples. There I took a packet of freshly cut and spiced pineapples, and it was a great treat. We took almost six whole hours to reach the hotel though, while officially the ride should have taken just over three hours. There was a horrendous traffic jam outside the town, and it took us more than an hour to cover the last seven kilometers! The drivers did not seem to mind at all though, and like ours, most of them were busy listening to the radio in their cars. Afterwards our driver told us that this was what happened everyday, so no wander the drivers no longer seemed to notice the jams!

The hotel we checked into was called Hotel Broadway. It was a nice hotel, could also be called posh for its tariffs. I had found this hotel and booked it via the internet when our travel agent had been unable to find a suitable one. This was the first time that we had done internet booking, and it was a good choice. Though it was not really much colder than what it had been in Durgapur when we left, sitting for so long in the car had chilled us, and we were glad to find the heater on and hot running water to freshen up with. By the time the three of us were feeling a little refreshed it was already a quarter past seven. Our hotel was right in the heart of the town, in the area called Police Bazaar. We came out to look around the place a little, and I was surprised to find ourselves amidst a sea of humanity. Surprisingly, most of all the people in the bazaar area seemed to be young men and women in their early twenties. In fact in our entire trip I saw only a handful of school goers! The girls in Shillong seem to spend hours preening in front of the mirror every day. There was hardly anyone who did not look like a partygoer. The ‘in’ fashion at the moment seemed to be stiletto boots and overcoats on top of oh-so-skinny jeans, and hats and caps of all sizes and proportions, and a lot of red and yellow stilettos were also to be seen. The girls had converted their faces into makeup kits, and while some will certainly call them young beauties, to me they looked like artificial little dolls who were really too ashamed to show their real empty selves to anybody, and had taken refuge under a lot of flashy clothing. The market area was too crowded for our taste, so after a short exploration, we returned to the peace of our hotel, and by ten thirty, we had called it a day.

We had kept the next day for local sightseeing. We had already asked the hotel manager to arrange for a car for us. A car was waiting downstairs by the time we came down. Incidentally, Maruti cars are mostly used as taxis and hired cars in Shillong. Mostly the taxis are Maruti Alto, and some are WagonRs. The Alto is a very uncomfortable car, especially for tall people like me. I have huge feet too, and I was wearing walking shoes, so every time we had to come out of the car, they got stuck under the seats, and gave me a lot of trouble. But anyway, that did not deter me from enjoying myself. The first place we went to was called Elephant Falls. There were four falls there, and each exceeded the other in beauty. Thankfully the crowd was not too loud or ill mannered there, and it was a very pleasant visit. While coming out, we found a photography hut where one could put on traditional Khasi dresses and get one’s photo taken. Both ma and I dressed up there. The dress looks very complicated, but is not really so. But the jewelry they wear is very heavy. Ma asked them the price, and we were shocked to hear that each necklace was made of pure silver, and cost anything between ten and fifteen thousand rupees! The next place we visited was Shillong peak, also called Laitkor Peak, which had to be reached through a military cantonment. The view was wonderful there, and we got some excellent snaps there. It was afternoon already, and the next place we visited was called Lady Hydari Park, and that was inside the town once again. There was not much to see there, except a small zoo. There were bears, deer, birds, a leopard cat and a few species of apes. However, we found it very cruel, because the wild beasts had been kept in tiny cages, and hardly had any place to move about. No wonder one bear was sticking out its tongue and growling at all the spectators around its cage! Next on our agenda was a church. It was a beautiful place, and it was attached to a Loreto Girls’ School. It was built in traditional style, with tall windows with stained glass panes, and a huge painting of Our Lord. There were even two confessional boxes on two sides. The church had been decorated in the spirit of Christmas, and carols were being played in the background. It was a happy place. We wanted to visit a state museum next, but unfortunately it was closed for Christmas. The last place on our list was a lake called Ward’s Lake, but by the time we reached there, the driver told us to hurry up, telling us our time was up, though we had never been informed of exactly how much time we had. So after a quick look around the park we came away, determined to come another day, as the driver told us this was a ten minute walk from our hotel.

On the 25^th, we went to Cherrapunjee, which was once called the wettest place on earth, though that has now shifted to Mawsynram. To be very frank, Cherrapunjee seemed just okay to me. The ride was long, almost two hours, and since I was determined not to go to sleep, I got a little bored after an hour and a half. There were several viewpoints in Cherrrapunjee, and while all of the places were clean and pleasant, none offered the piercing, haunting beauty that takes one’s breath away in certain areas in the mountains. At one such viewpoint, another group of Bongs had come, and one man was angrily shouting at his wife because she had slipped and fallen down once. Evidently his main complaint was that his wife was wearing a pair of jeans, and since he knew he would sound absurd if he directly said so, he was looking for excuses to blame the jeans! Some people really never seem to grow up. In one of the viewpoints my mother bought a jar of local honey, which was orange flavoured and tasted unlike anything I had ever tried. That was certainly a good investment. Also, cardamom is very cheap there, as it is a local product. We get a huge packet for just ten rupees. The driver took us to a cave a little way off, which we did not enter, since all three of us are claustrophobic, and there was already a huge crowd queuing up for a trip. Then we had seen about all that there was to see in Cherrapunjee, and after being repeatedly told that we would have seen nature in her best if we had come just after the monsoons, we were driven back to Shillong.

The two days that followed were spent lazing around in Shillong. One morning we went for a boating trip in the Ward’s Lake, which was indeed very close to the hotel. We took many photographs there. The next morning my mother went shopping, while my father and I took a long, long walk in the hills. We walked for almost two and a half hours. Some of the roads we took, and one particularly called the Captain Clifford Nongbrum Road was very steep, and while the ascent left me breathless, coming down was unbelievably fast.  What we discovered was that none of the tourist spots were too far from the hotels, and there was really no need to visit them by car. And in any case, baba and I both feel that one cannot really feel the beauty of any place unless one explores it on foot. It was on this walk that my father told me how Jim Corbett used to walk from Kaladhungi to Nainital in the wake of summer every year. Really, those men certainly were made of different stuff!

The next day we left Shillong, with many good memories, and a well deserved rest. The ride back to Guwahati was once again pretty uneventful, but I cannot really say, as I slept almost throughout the ride! That day we went to the Kamakshya temple. The road went through the city of Guwahati, and the traffic was very bad, which made baba rather irritable. But anyway, we reached the temple, and ma was pleased to be able to offer her prayers to the deity. We reached the airport by three thirty, though our flight was due at six thirty. This time we were sent through an aerobridge to the plane, and I let baba take the window seat. As luck would have it, our captain was once again a woman, a Sweety Sylvester from Kerala. There was some bad weather, so the plane jerked a few times, giving me that lightheaded feeling again, but anyway, we went back to Kolkata all in one piece, and I was already completely used to, and even a little bored of the experience of flying.

Overall it was a very pleasant trip, and since I do not know when we will be able to go on a vacation next, I consciously enjoyed this trip wholeheartedly, and I hope all my future trips are as pleasant as this one. 

Solitude

Recently, I wrote an essay titled ‘Solitude’ for my English class in my father’s tuition. I got fairly good marks from baba for this essay. It was also an essay that I enjoyed writing, as it made me think. Here is the essay that I wrote:

            The dictionary tells us that solitude is ‘a state of being alone’. It is a feeling that seems to float like an ominous dark cloud on the lives of people, always eager to engulf their lives with gloom and despair. When given a choice, no person would choose solitude over company. Solitary confinement is the worst punishment that one can have to suffer. Solitude is like living death: this is the most common idea about solitude. However, in reality, solitude might sometimes turn out to be blissful.

            Imagine a beautiful sea shore. The waves are lapping gently on the beach. It is twilight, and a soft breeze is blowing over the water. Would you like to sit in such a place with a large number of noisy friends? Then again, think of the last time you tried to listen to a good song in the midst of a crowd. At such a time, you would have given anything to get a little time alone with your music. There was nothing that you detested more than the crowd around you. Or maybe, the day before the mathematics examination, when the only thing you wanted was to be alone with your revision in a room. In all these times, solitude turns out to be one’s dearest friend. Sometimes, people need to be alone just to unwind. At such times, all kinds of thoughts and feelings crowd one’s mind. That is the time for self-analysis and self-realization. One uses that time to sort oneself out, and try to understand one’s own heart. It is during such periods of solitude that flashes of inspiration may astound a person. A girl sitting alone humming softly may suddenly realize that she has an entire poem ready in her mind, waiting to be written down. The greatest masters of the world have almost always created their masterpieces in solitude.

            Contradictory as it may sound, you can enjoy solitude even when you are sitting in a large company. Completely self-engrossed people in all ages have been able to feel that they are alone with themselves amidst noisy crowds. However, it takes a great amount of discipline and dedication to reach that level of self-possession. We call those who have achieved this extraordinary, and revere them as great and holy men. Such solitude gives a person completeness, and he attains enlightenment.

            So we see that solitude is a very important part of life. One needs all kinds of experiences to live life fully, and the experience of solitude is an essential one. After all, it is in solitude that man can understand oneself, and with understanding comes growth.

I really do enjoy being alone. It is nice to be able to talk to yourself without having people staring at you and wondering whether you are completely nuts. Anyway, the activities that I enjoy doing the most cannot really be done in a group. Take reading, for example. Let alone serious, thought-provoking books, even light chick-lit cannot be read properly with friends. Reading is something that you have to do alone. It is not an experience that you can share. Even in literary clubs and places like that, people go and select their own books, and read quietly by themselves. Then there is watching movies. A movie hall is certainly not the best place to watch a good movie. The amount of noise and disturbance that goes on in a hall makes it nearly impossible to concentrate on the movie itself. In fact, I hardly ever go to the cinema to watch movies, and when I do, it is not so much for the movie as to spend some time with my friends. Watching the movie takes a backseat then.

As for enjoying nature, it is something that one can hardly ever do with people. Maybe a big reason for that is, nowadays most people cannot perceive the beauty of nature. That is why even when people go on holiday trips they choose places that have lots of hotels and restaurants, shopping malls and beauty salons, discos and nightclubs. Going for picnics with such people is indeed a tiresome thing. Even if they go to a beautiful place, they will shout, fight, dirty the surroundings, and come away without taking in even a little of the beauty of the scenery around them. When asked to recall the picnic, they will talk about everything other than the place they went to. This attitude of today’s population is actually a blessing to oddities like us who enjoy basking in the beauty and the serenity of their surroundings. My family and I love to pay occasional visits to a place called ‘Molan-Dighi’ outside Durgapur-proper. The road to this outlandish place is through Sal forests, and the traffic is not too thick there. People do not stop while passing by the forests, at any rate, so it is a comparatively quiet place. We enjoy the wholesome peace and solitude of the place, and so when we start feeling suffocated by the noise and overwhelming flow of humanity in the town, baba takes us to this enchanting little place, where we spend a blissful hour or two, each absorbed in our own little worlds in our heads, happily oblivious to the outer world. And sometimes, when I spend such idyllic hours of seclusion, I suddenly realize why Rabindranath Tagore has said, “Moha bishshe mohakashe Mohakalo majhe/ Ami Manobo ekaki bhromi bishshoye, bhromi bishshoye”…

Of greatness and the iPad

Steve Jobs, the chairman and former CEO of Apple Inc. is dead. He passed away yesterday. He was fifty six, and had been suffering from terminal pancreatic cancer.

Today, people are mourning worldwide over his untimely death. Many people (teenagers like me, and people of my parents’ age as well) who were not even sure about who Steve Jobs was till yesterday are talking about how much they loved him, and what a ‘great’ man he was, and how he had ‘changed the world forever’ with his contributions.

Let us see, Steve Jobs commercialized the PC, was the creator of the first computer animated movie (Toy Story), of the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad,  and other such gadgets. These were his ‘world-changing contributions’. These are the works that would make people remember him ‘forever’. The entire world is in tears today at his death. One of the greatest men of the 20^th-21st century has left us yesterday.

With all due respect to Mr. Jobs, I really cannot see what made him the ‘great’ man that people all over the world are mourning today. Okay, he invented the iPod, the iPhone, computer animated movies. So what? Is it really animated movies that define the cinema industry? I think not. Is living really impossible without an iPod or a smart phone? Look around you, and you will get the answer. So what exactly is this hype about?

iPods and smart phones are essentially playthings. They are not life saving gadgets, they do not contribute substantially to one’s character building process, they do not give us happiness in the true sense of the word (a century ago no one had heard about an iPod or a cell phone, and I am sure that people of the time did not all die of either boredom or sadness without them). So what do these gadgets really do? They are most used by halfwit teenagers who are biologically incapable of doing anything of a much higher intellectual level than pressing buttons. But just because these gadgets offer such people something to do in their idle hours, can these gadgets be tagged as ‘world changing’?

Okay, let me try and imagine a world that has not heard of computer animation and smart phones and iPads. What would it be like? Animation would still be there. Only the process would be more strenuous and require more direct human effort, that is, someone would have to draw the scenes with one’s own hands. Without Apple Inc to make iPads and iPods, many overworked and under-loved fathers would be saved from their children’s constant pestering to buy them the latest gadget that Apple has launched. With no iPods, fewer people would die on the roads and the railway tracks from having been too preoccupied with the music from their headphones to have heard the honking of the cars and the trains. Young adults who have just started earning a living would be less prone to spending the greater part of their income on the latest version of the iPad instead of on pressing family needs. Teenagers who think the world of themselves would feel slightly less compulsion to display how ‘cool’ and ‘in’ they are by flaunting their latest Apple gadgets. Students would employ their time better studying and waste a little less time playing on their smart phones with their numerous ‘apps’. In a nutshell, slightly less time and money would be wasted in everyone’s life. Of course, my generation has an inborn talent for finding out things that are completely worthless, but that can be used for ‘time-pass’, so there would have been other ingeniously devised gadgets that help you to waste time. But we can still hope that without so many of these ‘i-’ gadgets, we might have found some more people engaged in doing more useful things. Sports, dance, music, painting and reading, for instance...

I have an Apple iPod myself, presented to me a couple of years ago, but I can also say that owning it has not made any significant difference in my life. The cell phone I own also has many modern ‘apps’ and I use hardly one or two of them, but I get on very well indeed without utilizing all the ‘smartness’ of this ‘smart’ phone. Before I owned the iPod or the cell phone, I listened to music all right. I had the old Sony Walkman, and the older music player, and the sound they produced was good enough for me. Someone on Facebook seems to have said ‘we are what we are’ because of Steve Jobs. Now I have nothing against Mr. Jobs, but in no way can I say that either he or the gadgets he invented have contributed even 0.00001% in making me what I am today, or indeed, what my iPod-owning friends are today.

As for his being called a ‘great man’, I wonder. Even when I was much littler than I am now, I have heard much talk about great people in my family. My parents do not agree over everything, but when it comes to calling a person ‘great’, I cannot remember having ever seen them with different opinions. Afterwards, since I started developing my own mind, and started looking at the world with my own eyes, I drew my own conclusions. When I think of great people, names like Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Chanakya and Albus Dumbledore come to my mind. But then, I must remember that I live in a world where everything and everyone can become ‘great’. Michael Jackson was voted the greatest entertainer of all time, and Princess Diana was voted the greatest British personality over Shakespeare, Isaac Newton and Winston Churchill. Ah well…  


P.S. 24th October: I was sent this link by an anonymous commentator. I would appreciate it if people tell me their views on this article. I do not want to add any comment of my own here right now. And if Mr./Ms Anonymous is reading this, I'm sure you have a pleasant enough name, so you might as well use it while commenting on my blog. Otherwise, I will not publish your comments. Sorry!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

It has been weeks since the last installment of the Harry Potter movies was released, but I kept postponing writing the review out of sheer laziness. A day or two ago my father gently reminded me about how long ago we went to watch the movie, and so it sort of dawned upon me, and I finally pushed  myself to sit and write down the review that I have been framing in my head for so long today.

My father, a student of his and I went to watch the second installment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the first show of the second day. Daddy and I had been rather worried that we would not get the tickets if we did not reach the hall much before the show timing. But strangely enough, once the show had begun we found that far from being houseful, there were rows of empty seats in front of us!

  

This installment began from where the last part had ended, in Shell Cottage, at Dobby’s grave. For a while, Harry sat silently in front of the tiny grave. He then went inside the beautifully kept cottage of Bill and Fleur.  It was evident that in spite of the war going on outside, it did not affect the Cottage interior at all. Such minute details have made the movie very heart warming.

The next few scenes were done very beautifully. As Bellatrix Lestrange, the sadistic Death Eater and Lord Voldemort’s devotee, Helena Bonham Carter has always done well, but where she outdid herself was as Hermione disguised as Lestrange. Her first appearance as Hermione-disguised-Bellatrix was at Shelly Cottage itself, where Hermione had just had her Polyjuice Potion. The first thing that she asks on appearing in front of Ron and Harry was “Well? How do I look?”! It was one of the many sweet lines that the director has included in the movie. Helena played the part of Hermione-playing-Belllatrix splendidly. She walked clumsily, looked very awkward and completely ill-at-ease with herself. She even replied to a man who had wished her good morning in the Diagon Alley courteously, totally unlike what the real Bellatrix would do. As the book says, she aroused suspicion in the minds of people, and very soon everybody knew she was an imposter, and only Ron’s timely use of the Imperius Curse on the Head goblin of Gringrotts saved the day.

One of the most charming things about the movie is that the director has blended touches of humour in the most threatening and risky moments of the movie. When, after having retrieved Hupplepuff’s cup from the Gringrotts vault, Harry, Ron and Hermione had been deceived by Griphook their guide who had stolen the real sword of Griffindor and left them to die, and they had to find some way to escape from the bank, Hermione says very matter-of-factly that she has found a way to escape, though it is very risky. Then she jumps down on the dragon’s back, and urges Ron and Harry to follow suit, almost as if riding a dragon is the most normal thing in a wizard’s life. They free the dragon, which stretches its wings and flies out of the bank, destroying a major part of it. The dragon scene was well done overall, but I kept feeling that it had lost some of its grandeur of the fourth movie. Maybe that was because this dragon was a half starved and sickly dragon that had been forcefully chained in for protecting the vault…

In this movie, the director has concentrated on the Battle of Hogwarts, so by the ending of the first hour of the movie, Harry and his friends had apparated to Hogsmeade to try and sneak into Hogwarts by some means. However their landing in Hogsmeade had turned on the curfew alarm that had been set by the Death Eaters. They are rescued by Aberforth Dumbledore, Dumbledore’s brother, and with his help, they follow a secret tunnel through a picture of the Dumbledores’ sister’s, and come out in the Room of Requirements, where many students now seemed to live.

Here, the director has added some more of those quirky lines. After a huge applause that greeted Harry’s arrival, and the anticlimax when on seeing Ginny Harry just says “Hi”, the trio tell the people in the room “We have to find something, but we don’t know what it is, and where it can be found”! Then, as Snape addresses the students in the Great Hall and urges them to come up with any information they had of Harry’s movements that evening, Harry steps out of the group of students and says, “It seems despite your exhaustive defensive strategies, you still have a bit of a security problem, Headmaster.”!

The eeriest part of the movie was positively the voice of Voldemort that rang through the school. At first, one girl started screaming in the Hall, and then another. And then the cold and steely voice of Voldemort could be heard all through the Hall, asking for Harry and commencing the battle of Hogwarts.

From here began the thrilling part of the movie. The visual effects were very real; you could almost feel them happening to you. The preparations that were made to protect Hogwarts were portrayed very effectively. The simultaneous charm cast by the professors and some Order members formed a kind of milky white transparent globe around the castle, protecting it. Professor McGonagall used a powerful charm to call in all the statues of Hogwarts to form an army. After using the spell, she said with childish glee, “I have always wanted to use that spell.”

The scene after Harry’s first death, in King’s Cross Station with Dumbledore was painfully white and bright. The part of Voldemort’s soul that had been destroyed and was lying as a charred baby was pitiable, yet disgusting. It was at that point that Dumbledore tells Harry not to pity the dead. The last part, where Harry is about to return to the world of the living, he asks Dumbledore whether this was real, or it was happening his head. Then, in a very Dumbledore-ish fashion, Dumbledore says, “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”  However, here I feel it would have been much better if Richard Harris could have played the role of Dumbledore for the rest of the movies as well. I have always felt that Richard Harris was the real Dumbledore, not Michael Gambon, and that feeling came out strongly in me when Dumbledore said this line. This line, somehow, would have sounded much more real coming from Mr Harris...

The Battle has been portrayed on an epic scale, better than the original text, in fact. Characters like Neville and Luna and the Hogwarts Professors have been given their due recognition. The way that Neville cut off Nagini’s head was nothing short of grand. Snape’s death was cruel, but thankfully it was not shown in the movie. The scene where Hermione and Ron go to the Chambers of Secrets to get a Basilisk fang and destroy the Hupplepuff cup was not there in the book, where Hermione and Ron come and tell Harry that they have already destroyed it, but it was a very nice alternation. The part where Bellatrix dies in the hands of the gentle Molly Weasley is another scene to look out for, but the best of all is the duel between Harry and Voldemort. There is real fighting and dueling in the movie. Unlike in the book, this duel continues for quite some time, in which Harry gets repeatedly bashed by Voldemort, and finally throws himself and Voldemort off the roof of a tower. They land outside the castle entrance, where the final duel takes place. The Elder Wand cannot kill its master, and Harry being its true master his own wand overpowers it, and it flies out of Voldemort’s hand. Harry catches it deftly, and Voldemort’ own death curse affects him, killing him once and for all…

The next part is short, but touching. Harry moves through the Great Hall, where all the dead and the injured wait for him. There is a faint smile on the faces of all those who are alive. The dead are being mourned. Harry sees the bodies of Fred, Lupin, Tonks. On the other side, Neville and Luna sit beside each other, with a look of contentment identical on both their faces.

And finally, nineteen years later. It was a very nice way to end a great story. Harry and Ginny, Ron and Hermione see their children off to Hogwarts, some for the first time. Ron especially looks like a very satisfied family man. He has grown a paunch, and it looks like Hermione has been feeding him continuously for the last nineteen years!  Even Draco has come to see his son Scorpius off, and he even smiles at Harry and family! The train rolls off, with all the children waving their parents’ goodbye, and there begins the story of the next generation.

After the movie was over, I felt slightly incomplete, as if a part of me had ended with the movie. It was certainly a grand end of an era. For those like us, who have grown up with Harry Potter, a fan has nicely summed up this last movie in a letter of hers to the production team: “Goodbye Childhood". But for me, Harry Potter will go on forever. That is the beauty of good books and movies, I guess. Even after you have finished reading them or watching them, a part of them stays with you, your dear friend, forever.

To be knowledgeable...

A few nights ago my father showed me this. It is about people who have done great enough things for us to have heard about them, but for some reason we do not. It reminds me about what Rabindranath said about such things "Bipula e prithibir kototuku jani" (how little I know of this great wide world). While I was reading it, a thought kept nagging me at the back of my mind. I keep hearing from many mothers that the pressure of studies has gone up in leaps and bounds these days. Children these days have to study a lot more than their parents did. A mother, whose daughter has gone up to class one this year requested me to get the exercise books of any girl who had gone up to class two this year. She said that if she did not get the exercise books of any senior to help her, the little girl will not be able to cope with the 'work load' of the 'senior' class. After this conversation, I was too stunned to speak for a long time, but now that I look back on it, I realize that this mother is not at all exceptionally crazy. In fact, she was just one of the million other mothers around her who want their children to be 'educated'.

Indeed, when it comes to examination results, our generation does seem to be doing much better. There are so many more seven-pointers these days than there used to be at the time of our parents. Numerous students these days get a one point in English. Even students who did not get more than sixty five in school examinations can hope for at least a two point in ICSE. But when it comes to real knowledge, tested by quizzes and IQ tests, the results are pathetic. 

Even so-called 'brilliant' students who regularly come first in class cannot remember what they had learnt two years ago. Students of classes nine and ten cannot spell and do simple mathematical calculations in their heads without making a large number of mistakes. What a student of class four knew during the time of our parents a student of class eight may or may not know now. High school-goers cannot say their tables and their parts of speech correctly. Most students do not know any history other than the minuscule part that they have been instructed to learn by their schools, and that too only to get the marks. 

The only thing that is important is the number of 'excellent's in the report card. It is the only measure that would mark a student as 'studious' or 'well-informed'. It does not matter how the marks are obtained; whether anything is learnt or not. Cheating has become a daily affair. Everyone cheats from everyone else. And the parents don't seem to mind either, as long as cheating brings the desired marks. So much for the honesty of the students.

The idea of learning in the true sense of the word has become an obscure idea only to be pursued by the craziest of people. All that most people want from educational institutions are a few degrees that would help them to get some 'good' jobs. For girls, the situation is even worse. Studying in an 'English medium convent school' would increase a girl's demand in the marriage market. That is all that schools and colleges are worth; that is what most parents have drilled into the heads of their children nowadays.

Both parents and their children would get a nasty shock if it were to be declared just now that a lot of questions would come in the board examinations that would be from outside the few prescribed textbooks and would test the student's actual knowledge and awareness about the goings-on in the world around them.  Be that as it may, this might be the only way to make them really learn anything rather than just blindly mug up a few books and throw them up in the examination paper only to forget everything completely in the next instant. 

The list in that website was one about really little-known people, but I can confidently say that had I shown any of my classmates (or their parents, for that matter) a list of Hitler's most notorious officers or even the highest paid women in the world or any other such popular lists, they would have been as astonished and as uninterested as they would be with this list. This is the 'educational progress' that has been taking place everywhere. I am tempted to say that our ancestors (who were not so 'educationally progressive') were much better off intellectually and much more knowledgeable than we would be any time soon. Who knows, for them this list might even have been pretty well-known... indeed, my father said he recognized five of those people.

Admission Diary

After a long time, we are back to our old routines again. After almost fifteen days of very strenuous admission work, the long stream of anxious parents determined to admit their children in my father’s classes has slackened. We have once more started keeping our phones connected without getting eight calls an hour on average!

The last fifteen days, though really hectic, have also been very interesting. The process of admissions is usually eventful, but this year it has been even more so. This year was a doubly special batch; it was the admission session of my father’s silver jubilee batch, which also happens to be my batch! I found it pretty hard to believe that the classmates, the same ones with whom I had spent my thumb-sucking days were now in class nine, and I was admitting them! My parents said that they were feeling the same way about me; that the kid who used to go about in their laps was now getting admitted in daddy’s class! But the strangest feeling was when I went downstairs on the day for class eight admissions. It took me quite some time to digest the fact that the boys and girls standing in our garden with their parents were actually younger than me! Till now, I had been used to the idea that the students who came to enroll their names here for class nine were older than me. I was supposed to call them ‘dada’ and ‘didi’. Last year, they were my classmates, but this year, they were kids! In fact, watching them, I was reminded of a line from Harry Potter part five, when Ron, watching a stream of fresh-faced juniors at school, had commented with a bemused expression “These kids seem to be getting smaller every year”!

On 23^rd, the results of Carmel and St. Xavier’s were declared. I went to school by bus, but came back with a friend in her car. Anushua and Srimoyee had very kindly offered to help us during the admission period. Usually, dad’s older ex-students come to lend us a hand during admissions, but this time none of them could turn up. Instead, two of my friends came over. At first, both my parents and I were not really sure about how much they would be able to help. But very soon, all our fears were proved groundless. Both Anushua and Srimoyee were working deftly and confidently, and enjoying themselves a lot. I myself have been doing admission work for over five years now, so it is not particularly exciting for me any longer, but for my friends it was the first time, and they really made the most of it. In fact, had it not been for their help, we would not have been able to handle the first day’s crowd so smoothly and hassle-freely.

Like always, I had been a bit tense about what my report card would show, but as usual, nothing unexpected came out of it, other than a better-than-expected grade in Computer Applications, maybe! After we had gone through our report cards with mounting relief, both Anushua and I rushed back to her car to get home as soon as we could. Srimoyee was going home with her father. Afterwards, she changed into fresh clothes and came over to our house, got herself admitted, and then came out to help us. All the three of us are in the same batch. We had planned it that way, and that was a good thing too, as we are now in different sections in school, and see each other less often than we would have liked to.

In the beginning, only Carmel girls kept coming in a slow and steady rate. It was fun, and not very hectic, attending to our classmates in ones and twos. The rush started when the St. Xavier’s boys started coming. I have often wandered why these boys like to come in huge groups, and create a mess both for us and themselves, but for some obscure reason they do it every year. But this year the Xaverians outdid themselves. When the first of the lot started coming in, I went and sat under the large bokul tree just next to our gate. We had divided the job between ourselves in such a way that the people who came to get their names enrolled for class nine or those who wanted to get their children admitted in class eight came and spoke to me. The students of class nine were first sent to my mother, who with the help of my friends gave the candidates certain notices and forms, and sent them in to daddy’s room for the final step. Things went on more or less smoothly, and as always we came away with different kinds of experiences.

It is surprising how often adults behave like ten-year-olds. There was a time when almost fifteen pairs of guardians were waiting with their wards in the garden. A great number of them were people who wanted to admit their children in class eight. It was my job to get them to enroll their children’s names for class nine before I told them the date for class eight’s admission. At one point, a group of eight parents surrounded me for enrollment. It was a hot day, with the sun blazing down our necks, and everybody felt irritable. It turned out that all the eight parents were in a hurry, and they seemed convinced that I was intentionally working very slowly to trouble them. As a result, all the parents started telling me their child’s name, their address and other details all at once! When I asked them to come one at a time, they took offence and stood there grumpily. None of them seemed to be able to understand that I was working as fast as I could! Others came and started bargaining over the batch timings, as none of the four batches was convenient for them. This caused a lot of delay.

But there were also some very co-operative parents. A lady waited with her two sons for almost half-an-hour without complaining once. When I offered her my chair, she politely refused and said that I should go on with my work and not worry about her. Another group of parents came prepared with every requirement. They had even decided on the batch that they wanted before-hand, so they hardly took ten minutes to get admitted and leave without any mess.

We had to send almost half of the people to get their report cards photocopied, which made me wonder why I bother to tell the parents about all the requirements when they come to enroll their names in class eight. Most people did not seem to have heard a single thing that had been told to them the previous year. So this year, I did a lot less talking, and simply enrolled the names and told the parents about the probable fees. Since we would have to tell them everything all over again the next year, why do it now?

Along with all the people who came, my mother had to handle a continuous flow of phone calls. So when we came upstairs at twelve thirty, all five of us were dead beat. We took our baths, had some food, and all of us, including my friends fell asleep for two solid hours.

In the evening, my friends remained to help, while I had to go for tuition. When I came back at seven forty-five, they were still there. After I came back, both of them went home to Anushua’s place, from where Srimoyee’s father came and took her back. Back at our place, we attended to people till almost quarter-past-nine. There wasn’t so much of a rush during the evening, and things went on peacefully enough. By nine-thirty, we had packed up and locked up the house, and come upstairs for a long cold shower, a filling dinner and a cool bed. Thus ended the first day of admissions. After that, the days were not as hectic. People kept coming in a steady flow, but we could handle that well enough by ourselves. Then, on 2^nd April we had the admissions for class eight. There was going to be only one batch, and too many enthusiasts, so there was some unpleasantness, which we are all trying to forget. But all in all, this year’s admissions were peaceful and satisfying. I only hope that next year’s will be even more so, so that there won’t be any unhappy memories at all.

Looking back on 2010

A very happy new year to everybody. May this year be full of joy, happiness and warmth, and success. May all the painful past of the previous year be forgotten, and a peaceful future be looked forward to.

Every year, I feel strangely overwhelmed on these early days. Only, this year the feeling seems much more intense and sharp. It is just that time, which flies anyway, seems to have traveled in the speed of lightning… Days seemed to have been only about fifteen hours long last year. There has been so much to do, yet I have spent so much time brooding. I have tried to patch up all incomplete works of the year in the last few days, but have obviously been badly defeated. When I look back now, scanning the days right from the early wintry days of January last year, which was not all so different from what it is right now, to the last few days of December, I realize that so much has happened during the year. So many things have changed my life from what it had been two years back, though many of the events have been pretty inconspicuous. From last year, I have started travelling alone by bus to school, and to other short distances. I can understand how much having to let me go must have worried and pained my father, so I am grateful that he did. I rejoined karate classes, and have been enjoying them much more than I did the previous time. The centre is very close to my house, the teacher is nice, and added to that my having earned the orange belt and frequent praises; the experience could have been no better.

I have strengthened the bonds with some good old friends and managed to shake off some who were not so good. I have thickened my skin much more towards what people might say to me. I have understood the value of silence, and I positively talk much less now than I used to. I have also discovered with some shock that I enjoy long periods of solitude. I say that I was rather shocked to find this because when I was younger I used to start throwing a racket even if I were left alone for a very short time! I have watched some very good movies, and read some very good books. I am very happy to say that I have managed to make a very unlikely person start reading, and she is already starting to understand the magnetic pull of a good book. This can be counted as one of my successes of 2010! I have found a few like minded people who read and think and reflect. I would love to find many, many more such people, but I guess their number will always be restricted to a few. Ah well…

I have almost completed an entire year in school without too many complaints from my teachers and classmates. Some of my closer friends have been a bit bothered about my having become quieter, but nothing can be done about that. People do change. I have also had some very new and wonderfully exciting experiences. Some have been intensely personal, and could hardly have been any better than they already have been. The others have been less reserved. The best of those experiences have undoubtedly been the starting of this blog and my joining my father’s classes. Other than that, I have had the very sweet experience of keeping a dog at home, and the very heart-breaking experience of having to part with it as well.

I have experimented with quite a few things. Some have turned out to be utter fiascos, but others have come off well enough. Others still I have tried and failed, but have decided to try and try and try again until I do succeed, one such thing being trying to talk in a single language fluently and continuously without lapsing into another. Another is improving my hand-writing, and another is reading more Bengali books and forming a strong base in my mother tongue and its age old culture and heritage.

All in all, 2010 has been a fulfilling and eventful year. It has been a year that I have been able to spend without having to feel ashamed about too many things. When I look back, I have a happy, proud feeling. And the best I can really hope for in this new year is that when, another year later, I write a similar post again, I may be able to feel even prouder and happier with myself for my activities all this year round.