Only for cows

My hundreds of boys and girls never cease to amaze me. I was threatening them with dire consequences if they didn't study hard enough, saying I'd seek their parents' permission to keep them in my house and entirely under my supervision for a month or two, and send them back vastly improved. And I said I'd look after everything, from diet to potty habits to exercise to following strict work routines. When they expressed curiosity about the diet, I mentioned that among other things, they would have to eat a lot of fresh green vegetables. To which someone muttered 'amra goru naa ki' (are we cows or what)?

What does that say about their parents' ideas regarding matters of nutrition? Remember, too, that all these parents are highly educated...

12.12.12, December 21st and all that

A news item in one of the several Sunday papers I read informed me on the 9^th that there’s an ongoing craze worldwide for doing something special on 12.12.12  (and most particularly at 12:12 hours on that ‘special’ day) – that is to say, tomorrow – eating at a fancy joint, buying a car or a house, or even having a baby! The simple reason being that such a triple-barrelled date is never going to come again anytime this century.

As though it makes the slightest difference to anything at all. The world is being swamped by people as bored as they are mindless, and dying all the time for some new sensation – anything at all would do, the stupider the better…

And of course, the faint possibility that, courtesy medieval Mayan astronomers, the world just might end on the 21^st is apparently lending the whole thrill a very special edge. Even the Australian prime minister has been publicly spoofing about it. Heaven help us.

Dumb rich kid

Read this story, then just look at the face in the photograph. 

What sort of people can 'admire' a creature like this simply because he was lucky enough to get rich for a while?

Minds like empty rooms

In his comment on my earlier post titled I am not alone in saying what I do, Nishant Kamath mentioned Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird (it makes me wince to think there are people in the world who don't know that and don't care), now 86, saying 'Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books' (People like J. K. Rowling, Shilpi, Abhirup and I hope a few million others around the world will understand what she means, Nishant, the full import of it that is...)

Harper Lee only ever wrote one book in her whole life. It has been voted as the greatest novel of the 20th century. I shall not go into superlatives - they have been so incredibly cheapened that they don't really mean anything any more anyway - but I sometimes say that the world is divided between those who have read (and loved-) To Kill a Mockingbird and those who have not. It is good to have someone like that on one's side as one fights the forces of enveloping darkness. Minds like empty rooms. Let's not forget the phrase. Some day decades or centuries hence, when some people try to figure out just why men became slaves of machines and were forced into underground dungeons to live like blind worms (see the concluding pages of H. G. Wells' The Time Machine), they might discover that the rot started when people in the mass stopped reading books, and their minds became like empty rooms.

Investment bankers!

We've been joking about investment bankers in the other blog. You might also care to read an earlier post titled 'Monkeys in Armani suits' there. And here is another collection of investment banker jokes that many people are sure to enjoy.

I am not alone in saying what I do!

The following is a translation of the top editorial in today’s issue of Anandabazar Patrika, Bengal’s premier newspaper. The translation is mine. I am sorry I lost the link to the original; if someone can locate it, please send it over.

The worship of  the small

A seventeen-year old in Britain has just invented an ‘application’ which can break up any item of news into three short paragraphs. All the ‘flab’ would be trimmed off. Nick D’Aloisio is already being hailed as a computer wizard, tycoons are coming forward to help fund the happy commercial birth of his revolutionary brainwave. This invention satisfies a very common and evident desire of contemporary  society – learn it quick, say it in short, let me know at once. The custom of drastically summarizing all kinds of reading material has already become widespread. In the west, classical literature is being sought to be presented to today’s youth in highly abridged form: the Bible is being peddled in drastically culled summary, and Shakespeare in sms-text. People these days habitually type ‘lol’ in emails when they want to laugh out loud; nobody says I just saw Dilwale Dulhaniya ley jayenge, because DDLJ does the job.

We want that a movie should last no longer than an hour and a half; cricket matches should be concluded in twenty overs, and textual essays limit themselves to a single line if possible. As an explanation, it is said that people ‘have too little time’ these days. The pace of life has accelerated greatly; nobody can afford to give too much time to any one thing. Most people take this assertion for granted. But what does it mean? Are humans working much harder than before, is the national product increasing exponentially, are people giving far less attention to recreation than to clearing files? Or is it that people these days spend most of their time checking worthless email and text messages, playing endless games on their mobiles, visiting all kinds of useless sites (entirely unconnected with the work at hand) on the internet, wandering about shopping malls, or idly surfing channels on TV? Has mankind’s workload increased, or has a vast vista of trivial engagements opened up? In fact, the means of ‘entertainment’ have multiplied so explosively and the insane urge to enjoy them all at once has become so rabid that men cannot concentrate for long on anything any more. Lack of attention has always been a problem for many; today people have found a very powerful excuse for never cultivating the kind of self-discipline and reflective ability that is absolutely essential in order to learn or do something really well. He was always eager to finish Tagore’s huge novel, but so much ‘work’ came his way in the shape of nonstop net surfing and channel surfing that he could never go beyond  the first page. Couldn’t some kind soul make a four-line synopsis of Gora for this unfortunate, and make a name for himself by providing millions with instant enlightenment?

Wily manipulators with an eye for the main chance have always been ready with enticing games to make money out of lazy dilettantes in  the mass. They do not criticize the age, they only want to make money out of the hordes of ignorant fools who define the age. It is a stupid and arrogant joke to claim to be able to reduce every item of news to three little paragraphs regardless of the importance of its substance, the sophistication of its argument and the quality of its writing style. This joke has thrilled a society which demands to understand an epic by reading the blurb on the book jacket. But this kind of shortcut insults both the serious journalist and the mindful reader. The collective which does not recognize it as an insult need only be contemptuously called h.l. – no point typing the whole word ‘hopeless’ to describe it (the original Bangla says hobha for hotobhagyo)

A word of thanks

I noticed today that 'The Warlock' has recently enlisted as the 95th member here, and I welcome him. We have known each other for only a short while, and that too only via the internet, but I have grown to like him, and - though he writes sparingly - his blog is listed in my blogroll (on the bemused blog), because he writes sensibly and well. I shall be glad to hear from you now and then here, Warlock!

God in heaven!

Talking about coarse and mindless, go to google images, type in the key words "82-year old fashion models" and look at the results. 

Just watching the scene

'Things in West Bengal and other parts of India are coming to such a pass that there is no guarantee that even an "educated" person will honour the unwritten codes of conduct in public life.' Not my words, but those of today's editorial in my newspaper. Good to see, at least, that other people have noticed what I have been carping about for a long time, and even considered it necessary to comment unhappily on the situation.

Without actually changing context, here is what I read on the T-shirt of a pupil today: 'If you see your ex with someone else, don't bother, because our parents have taught us to give away our used toys to those who are less privileged.' That is of course meant to be a joke, I understand. But don't jokes say a great deal about whether or not we are living in civilized times?

Then again, what can you expect in an age when the world can go gaga even over something as coarse and mindless as Gangnam style (have you read the lyrics in English)?

Fifty shades of nightsoil

Abhirup has been urging me to comment on the ongoing global phenomenon of 50 Shades of Grey for a long time. I won't: I consider it infra dig. But he has supplied me with a cartoon that says virtually all I wanted to say, so I have pasted it here (you might want to zoom out in order to read the text clearly...)

If you still can't read the text, try this link. And you can also go to google images and find out more stuff of the same sort by typing in the key words '50 shades of grey cartoons'.  I am frankly delighted that women all over the world, by buying the books by the tens of millions, have openly admitted just what they are like, as the man in the above cartoon says to his wife.

Places best avoided

Look up this blogpost.

I sometimes feel this world is not a happy place to live in at all, and maybe ignorance is indeed bliss.

Going around New York City

The only time I was in the United States - that was in the summer of 1991 - I made a three day stopover in New York on my way back home. I put up with an Indian friend who was then a medical intern in a city hospital. The apartment was on West 42nd Street, I think, or maybe 62nd (these are the kind of details I am beginning to forget now), very close to Central Park. My friend's idea of showing me round the Big Apple was to take me by subway to Jackson Heights: the unique aroma of incense mixed with stale urine and paan hanging heavily in the air told you from far away that it was the Indian enclave. He was eager to show me the shops and the temples, where lots of well-heeled Indians had made large endowments: golden idols, heavy jewellery, marble filigree work, that sort of thing. It was on my persuasion that he agreed to visit places like the Guggenheim Museum and Broadway and Times Square, and climb to the top of the Empire State Building (if I had known what was going to happen to the World Trade Center in a decade's time, I might have chosen to visit one of the Twin Towers instead).

It was later on, over mugs of beer on the last evening, that my friend sheepishly admitted that though he had lived in New York for four years, he'd probably never have seen the sights had it not been for my visit...

On hacks, once more

One thing I found out long ago about journalists (one of my reasons for quitting, besides poor pay, irregular hours and too much time wasted on the kind of people we call faltu in Bangla) is that though they make a living out of pointing out everybody's faults and weaknesses, they are by and large - even the pettiest cub reporter, not just high-and-mighty editors of international newspapers and TV channels - very houmourless and self-important people, precisely the sort who throw stones at others' glass houses all the time but get furious if a few pebbles are occasionally hurled at their own (so here's a link to the kind of jokes about them that everybody except they themselves should enjoy). You hear far more doctors and lawyers making fun of their own kind than you'd hear journalists (and, as I never tire of pointing out, anyone with the remotest connection with a media house flaunts the tag these days, even those who are no more than ad copywriters, subeditors or basically stringers who are allowed to cover nothing more substantial than models doing the catwalk). Just watch how self-righteously they scream when anyone says something sane about putting some reasonable restrictions on their sacred 'right' to pry, provoke, prevaricate, concoct, exaggerate and vilify: power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot through the ages, as a British statesman once famously said! Suggest that every Tom, Dick and Harry does not constantly need to be told disgusting and trivial home truths about high government officials and celebrities (where they buy their underwear, whether they religiously kiss their wives and kids good night every night), or that journalists themselves might have lots of skeletons in their cupboards, and they loudly predict the return of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.

But if you want to get them really angry, tell them they slaver for the kind of wealth, power and fame they are always criticizing, but they neither have the stomach nor the talent to make it on their own as tycoons and even doctors, lawyers, corporate managers and some teachers do, so they feed on scraps in the same fashion as lampreys cling to sharks. And this also I have noticed: those who frequently invoke the names of Daniel Pearl or P. Sainath to tell the world what a noble profession they are in rarely, if ever, choose to follow in the footsteps of those stalwarts. (P.S.: For those who don't know, Pearl wasn't even a hero by choice, he just happened to be abducted and murdered, and that, cruel as it sounds, did infinitely more for his reputation than any journalistic work he had ever done! It's quite like Stephen Hawking, who'd have been about as much of a pop-celebrity as Murray Gell Mann but for his debilitating handicap)

Abhirup sent two very interesting links in his comment on the post titled 'Journalistic ethics'. You might also try this and this before making up your own mind about whether this is the right career for you. 

odd tags

Why indeed? And why do police officers sometimes have surnames like Lawless and Coward, while diplomats are named Crooks, and surgeons Slaughter or Savage?

Trolls banished!

I didn’t know (or maybe I did, but I was pushing forbearance to the limit!) it was so easy to cut out the crude and the ignorant, the cowardly and the feckless on the internet. All I did recently, after years of tolerating trolls and assorted monsters masquerading as commentators on my blogs, was to block anonymous posts and put up a warning to say that all strangers must submit their email i.d.s for verification before their comments are published – and the most vulgar, irrelevant and stupid comments (from the sort of barely humans that can’t or won’t read what I have written, couldn’t conduct a reasoned argument to save their lives, and wouldn’t know the difference between good manners and barbarism if they were hit on their heads with it, yet have all the time in the world to tell me again and again how much they hate – read envy – me) stopped coming at once!

I am a happy man now, in the sense that a man can be happy if he loves his pretty little garden and has at last learnt to shut the gate against intruders who would come in only to pee or trample on his flower beds, because that’s all they can do to ‘express themselves’…in this context, the literate and cultured few among my readers might want to look up this little essay. Apes, I’m sorry, but I’ve got no lollies for you…

Our kind of patriotism

Aren't most Indians exactly like that? Sometimes a picture is still worth a thousand words!

Thanks to Saikat Chakraborty for sending it to me.

Biking around at 77!

My dear old boy Arnab Chakraborty sent me this link, surmising - quite rightly - that I'd be interested.

I take my hat off to this sprightly old/young man, going strong at 77 still. Brought back to mind the Canadian surgeon I heard about once, just about the same age, who earned millions over eleven months a year, and went off holidaying in January without fail to work/enjoy himself as a ski-instructor (and skiing is one of the most physically challenging sports, too...)

Do the white (and maybe also black-) men just have something in them that we don't? I already feel so old sometimes, though I still exercise, and many people assure me I don't look my age. Suppose I survive up to 77, would I have the strength, pluck and enthusiasm to carry on like Simon Gandolfi? I sincerely hope so. No point living too long otherwise.

Service with a smile

I had an interesting experience last night. Ever since I quit journalism, I have steered clear of politicians, but of course every now and then you have to rub shoulders with them... and so I turned up at my (newly-elected) local councillor's office with a request for a certain piece of paper that only some elected public official can issue. Nothing very important, and certainly not a 'special favour' of the sort that requires bending rules and things like that, but as everyone knows, in this country ordinary people without 'connections' are apt to be harassed and fleeced by the netas and babus for no fault of their own. So it was a very pleasant surprise to have my work done in a jiffy, and that too in a very courteous manner - for once, it didn't sound like a hollow joke when the man behind the desk said 'We're here to serve you'. If this is the way they are ensuring that I will vote for them next time round, why, I wish them godspeed. They didn't even charge a penny (it would have been perfectly okay to ask for fifty rupees, or at least ten, if only to cover establishment, stationery and such other costs). I came home reflecting on how little our vast, creaky, unwieldy and free public services are appreciated, while we rave starry-eyed about private hospitals and schools and hotels and malls which charge us the earth for every little thing right and left.  There is much that is wrong with our country, not least in areas that most of us never care to think about...

Fun in the dark

We went through what the media is touting as the 'world's worst power outage' ever over the last two days (mercifully in the locality where I live, there was one power cut that lasted six hours in the daytime and another hour and a half in the evening; bearable enough by Indian standards, since the taps didn't run dry). The event has already spawned a number of good jokes; the one I liked best being that it happened because Rajnikanth was charging his mobile phone...

'Journalistic ethics'!

I had promised in my last post to give a glimpse into the world of journalism, as I have seen it. I could cite a lot of hilarious (or disgraceful) incidents from my own direct experience, but for now let two incidents suffice, things that happened within the last decade in my own town.

Several years ago, some outgoing girls had gathered in their school (very well known hereabouts) to bid farewell to one another. Girls being girls, they had to do something ‘exciting’, so many of them had brought over their old shirts and told one another to write parting messages on them with indelible ink. Naturally they were ‘expressing themselves’ by screaming their heads off, until it attracted the attention of the irate headmistress, who confiscated many of these offending shirts and sent the whole class out of the campus, telling them to go directly home. Next day some of the papers carried the news that a lot of schoolgirls had been stripped by the authorities and sent home déshabillée!

Then there was this fracas among parents and staff in the school where I had once worked, a few years ago. There was some angry talk, a lot of abuse was bandied about freely, and one or two staffers were pushed around… nothing much really. Many of these boys came to my tuition, and I heard the details from them. What is relevant here is that they had heard some journos prodding them to spill the beans about what was going on in the school, with the following words… tora kichhu bolbi, na amrai baniye baniye likhe debo (are you going to talk, or shall we make it all up ourselves)?

From long personal experience (my family has been in close touch with the media world for more than thirty years now) I know that this is the norm rather than the exception (remember the posto I mentioned in the last post?) So much for lofty ethical standards.  This is the reason that what you get if you google 'News of the World scandal' comes as no surprise, at least to the likes of me. No profession more deserves to be told ‘physician, heal thyself’…I think it was Desmond Doig, a celebrity journo himself, who famously said about Mother Teresa that she never read newspapers, so she knew better than most just what was going on in the world!

[My strategy seems to be paying off. The last post has attracted 500-odd visits within a week. However, I am waiting for more comments here, and the members count topping the 100-mark]

P.S.: If you are a complete stranger and are commenting here for the first time, start with a short self-introduction, specifically mentioning your age. I expect the same good manners on the internet as in the outside world: courtesy is a must, especially if you are someone far junior. That's orthodox Indian tradition, and I am a very orthodox person in these matters. If I am old enough to be your father or teacher, you will use language that is appropriate for your own father or most respected teacher. Otherwise, stay away...

What happened in Guwahati?

[Nothing in this post should be construed to mean that I have the slightest sympathy for people who gang up to harass, abuse, hurt and humiliate the weak – by which I mean not only young girls but children, old people of both sexes, the disabled, the ill and even the lone man against the mob… we too easily forget that young girls are not the only victims of abuse! A lot of people of the type who are now up in arms in defence of this girl find it quite right and enjoyable to beat a petty thief to death or close if he is unlucky enough to get caught: I have seen this again and again with my own eyes]

The more I read up on the net (click here and here) about what happened that night in Guwahati, the more I smell something very, very fishy.

For one thing, the so-called video looks much less like a genuine molestation scene than a grotesque pantomime in slow motion: in this age of the uncouth and the absurd, courtesy kinky cinema and mindless ad flicks, surely most sane readers will agree that much weirder things can be ‘arranged’? This suspicion grows strong when one sees how quickly politicians have got into the mutual mudslinging act, how the police still haven’t picked up the main accused, and how the National Commission for Women seems at a loss about what to do (this evening I heard it has recommended that the government ‘rehabilitate’ the girl with a job. For god’s sake!)

Secondly, molesters rarely allow themselves and their dastardly act to be filmed for the record at length – unless the whole thing is premeditated for a purpose (Amitabh Bachchan has asked in his blog how a TV crew was so promptly on the spot). I have been on the news beat (real news, not covering models doing the catwalk or launching new brands of shampoo), and I know that the far commoner reaction is to take away the camera and beat up the man behind it.

Thirdly, ‘assaulted and molested for half an hour before she was rescued by some passers-by’? How could a girl be assaulted and molested in public for half an hour? And who were these ‘passers-by’ who then rescued her? Were they a bigger mob, or armed policemen, or a few braveheart do-gooders? What took them so long, and how did they persuade the ‘molesters’ to let the girl go?

Fourthly, some reports say the girl was a minor: so what was she doing in a pub? Why did they throw her out only when she couldn’t pay? It even seems she had been brawling drunkenly on the street with some of her friends, and it is some of these ‘friends’ who then turned on her (some are even saying that one of these friends was the reporter who told the cameraman to start shooting; the fellow has resigned from his job even before formal charges have been brought against him!). What kind of people did she choose as friends? Everybody is screaming about her rights and how they have been violated – what about some talk of responsibility? What kind of responsibility did this girl take for her own safety? What kind of parents let their 17-year old kid out for a night on the tiles? Why don’t people who want that kind of ‘fun’ – no matter whether they are young or old – calmly accept the fact that it goes with certain kinds of risks? Nobody accuses ‘society’ of neglect or abuse when a bungee-jumper dies because the rope broke!

And finally, all this talk about how journalists were involved, and what they should and shouldn’t have done fills me with deep disgust. Any honest reporter admits in private that ninety per cent of what they are accused of is true: they are only concerned with finding or actually creating sensation, because that alone sells, and that alone is what ultimately matters. In the newsroom we talked about posto – slang (in those days, I don’t know what it is now) for concocted or grossly embellished news, and how most of our pages were routinely filled with such stuff.  I shall narrate just two fairly recent incidents here, both in Durgapur. But let’s keep that for the next post… 

So what am I missing here? Those who have been following the unfolding story more closely, would they care to enlighten me? Catcalls, wolf-whistles, lewd remarks, surreptitious groping in buses, yes (disgusting as all that is), but girls are not as a rule suddenly molested on city streets by gangs, else all the hundreds of girls who have been coming alone to my classes for years would have stopped coming long ago. Why did this happen? And what really happened? 

Sayan and Rashmi's blog

My old boy Sayan and his wife Rashmi have started their own blog. 

I should like all my readers to visit them, become members, and write sensible and encouraging comments every now and then.

Also, though only 85 people have become members of this blog as yet, I know that far more people visit (the number of members on the other blog is now 275). So how about cheering me up by joining the members' list? It's not a crime. Go on, it takes only a minute...

Only Man is vile

The evil that men do lives after them,

The good is oft interr’d with their bones…

(Shakespeare, Julius Caesar)

There were these parents of an ex-student who had come over for a chat, and they happily and gratefully recalled the time they spent when their daughter was a pupil here. I do not like to boast, but it made me feel good to see how well they remembered all the ‘special’ favours that the girl and her friends had been treated to as a matter of course – things that were special only because they had neither expected nor got the same treatment at any other tutor’s: a large, well-lit and airy room to study in rather than a dingy garage, a clean toilet always available, filtered water to drink, medicines whenever someone felt ill, our own clothes for them to change into when they came in from the rain dripping wet, the meals upstairs when some child was hungry, the assurance that the kids were safe indoors with us when a parent couldn’t help being late in picking them up, the punctuality which made things hugely convenient for them and their parents alike, the stories they heard, the games they played, the movies they watched, the quizzes they enjoyed, the countless jokes they laughed over, the meticulous correction and commentary on homework, the habit of disciplined regular work well within deadlines, which, if picked up here, helped them to do better in all subjects, the books they borrowed to read, the new vistas opened up of so many things they had never even heard before, things which came in tremendously useful later in life, whether they were taking a vocabulary test or participating in a group discussion or an impromptu writing contest, even at university level or while entering working life…

I told them that the real wonder was not that I did all this, but that they remembered still, long after my immediate utility was exhausted, and had even bothered to come over to thank me for it. I am not ungrateful to Providence: certainly for years and years lots of ex-students and parents have spoken well of me; nothing else can explain why such big numbers come over unfailingly to enroll with me at the start of session after session, despite all my failings, all the outbursts of temper, all the scathing remarks, all the worst that the scandal-mongers have spread. What makes me wonder is that so few people thank me directly for what they have got from me (even over the phone or the internet), and also that there is a sizeable number of people who, after having enjoyed and benefitted from everything good that I did for them, have decided, once they found out that I had maybe one fault or two, that I was an entirely forgettable person, or not a nice man to know. And this is not peculiar to someone like me: titans all through history have faced the same weird treatment from the people. One fault or shortcoming discovered (you know, Gandhi had sexual urges for women other than his wife!!!), and all the great and good about them is instantly forgotten. Talk about selective memory. Which is why I tell everybody that to praise someone is infinitely harder than to abuse. Anybody can speak ill of you, however noble you might be, and however petty and despicable a character he might have himself. It is hard to live long and not become a misanthrope. I think it was in this frame of mind that the poet wrote of a beautiful natural landscape ‘where every prospect pleases/ and only Man is vile’!

A 'forgetful' nation

In this front-page news item in yesterday's newspaper, I read that 'forgetful' Indians have left behind Rs. 60 crores worth of hand luggage at various airports in the country over the last four years.

Although the reporter has blamed 'stress' and 'multi-tasking' and that sort of 'in' garbage, the psychologist he took the trouble to consult has hit the nail on the head: 'People all over the world forget things but we Indians more so, as we are (by breeding-) less organized'. 

I guess that that explains an awful lot of things about why this country is so messed up. From pupils 'forgetting' things that they have been told a hundred times over to people having accidents on the road because they 'forget' to give the right signals to doctors 'forgetting' to write detailed case histories before prescribing medicines... 

Powerless in Washington, D.C.

Read this. In the capital city of the world's most powerful nation, citizens are beginning to find out what misery means, misery of a sort that virtually all Indians are only too familiar with. 

What makes for 'excellence'?

The photograph below was taken in front of a lavatory in one of the most elite educational institutions in this country, one of our 'centres of excellence'. Comment unnecessary.

Pretended interests

Looking up this news item I have been quietly laughing for some time. Now that studying the 'arts' (as they are called in India) is beginning to pay good money - via advertising, journalism, law, management and suchlike - a lot of high scorers in the plus-two level examinations are making a beeline for them at the time of college admissions. One more open secret publicly revealed: in India it has always been about money and comparative ease of landing jobs, period. No question of personal interest in any subject/career. As I have been saying for donkey's years, if suddenly tomorrow millions of parents and their kids heard that studying history or painting was paying much more than engineering and far more jobs were available, the IITs would be emptied, and nobody will go around saying 'I too am deeply interested in science' any more...a lifetime of teaching has taught me very well how many are really interested in science, or any other academic subject for that matter.

Without comment

The above is a sample of what teachers are doing with the English language all over India.

My thanks to Saikat Chakraborty for sending me the picture.

'Loved ones far away'

P. G. Wodehouse once wrote that in order to be happy all a man needs is a Pekinese dog, a swimming pool at home, and loved ones far away. Can any cynic beat that? It bears reminding ourselves what Aristotle really said was that children and teenagers apart (merely because they cannot feed themselves, nothing more), man is not a ‘social’- but a political animal, who invariably bickers and fights and even kills whenever he is caught up in large groups, and has discovered politics as a safety valve to avoid constant and large scale killing of his fellow men, simply because he can’t put up with them for very long. Otherwise, he depends on circuses of one sort or another to keep him forgetful of his plight, whether they be weddings or shopping malls or cricket and football or casinos or drunken orgies…but those of course, serve only men who do not think.

Gems of howlers

This one again is for those who can relish humour in Bengali. A retired schoolmaster is reminiscing over the gems of howlers he had collected over a long career. click and zoom on the print...

Orangs and iPads

The right gadget has at last found the right kind of user: see this newspaper editorial.

The trouble with names

I have heard of legendary teachers who can match names and faces of old boys almost instantaneously, decades after they last met, and while I marvel at such tremendous feats of memory, I don’t really pity myself for not being able to do as well. For one thing, as I tell my current pupils in class, only the very good and the very naughty leave any strong impressions at all; the rest, unless they make an effort to keep in touch, are quickly forgotten. There’s a broom in my mind that does the sweeping out automatically, every season. Didn't somebody say you have to keep forgetting in order to keep learning?

For another, people don’t help matters by sending children with the same names to my classes again and again. I have long lost count of all the Subhadips, Sayans, Arnabs, Ayans, Joydeeps, Anirbans, Arghyas and Abhirups I have dealt with, and likewise with the Ankitas, Ananyas, Anweshas, Sushmitas, Shreyas, Sagarikas and Gargis. It helps if they have uncommon names, so I don’t easily forget the Jayastus and Jias and Brahmis and Diptokirtis, Dibyanjanas, Sponditas and Koussis – though some of these have been entirely forgettable or worse except for their names…

I wish they’d make a law that in every municipality, only one newborn child will be allowed to be named Ananya in any one year (to think it means ‘unique’, too!). At least, they could ring me up saying ‘Sir, I am Ananya of the 1991 batch’: that might help to ring a faint bell.

Budding genius

Here's the latest gem I picked up while marking an essay written by a 15-year old who is supposed to be 'good in science'... Stephen Hawkins is the world's greatest astrologer.

No comments...

Strange are the ways of abuse!

I often muse aloud in class about the oddities of language, especially when it comes to invective and abuse. When a Bengali is irritated with someone's obduracy, he says "kochupora khao", though there is nothing harmful or disgusting about that particular humble vegetable, especially if it is cooked well (by the way, google could not translate 'kochu' for me: will somebody help?) And shuorer bachchha (offspring of a pig) is supposed to be even harsher than son of a bitch, although most of us love piglets and dogs, or at least see nothing very hateful about them. Nobody considers son of a lion an insult, though (and the expression is little used anyway), and nobody calls another son of a squirrel or something like that. Does anybody have a theory about this?

Will India finally conquer English, then?

Oh, wow, the visit counter has crossed the 30,000 mark without my noticing it! That means a goodly number of people are reading this blog, too. It's  a pity that comments are few and far between. I guess most visitors just come to this page, get their daily laugh or grin or grimace, and then leave, without bothering to let me know what they felt about it. I wish some would share a few laughs now and then...

By the way, how do you carry on teaching English in a country where a college prof says something is called 'bizarre' because it makes a 'bizz-ing' noise, and a schoolteacher says 'I have two daughters and both are girls'? And only this afternoon I saw an astrologer advertizing 'gnyaan-tips' on TV. I kid you not.

Matrimonial howlers

Going through the matrimonial columns of the newspapers is one of our hilarious pastimes on Sunday afternoons. Apart from the fact that it tells us a great deal about how petty, greedy, foolish, habit-bound and generally cussed people actually are behind all their workaday pretensions, they are always good for a few belly laughs. Here’s a tiny selection of ads from today’s edition of Bartaman:

The girls usually always call themselves fair-skinned, pretty, ‘homely’ and ‘convent-educated’, of course  (no matter how dark, ugly, unpleasant and dumb they might actually be) and almost universally seek grooms who are dah/ih/sho. cha (daktar/engineer/sorkari chakurey), no matter whether they look like apes and behave even worse. But here are some that really take the cake. One prospective groom touts the fact that he is a teetotaler (seems to be his only virtue), declares that he hardly earns anything, and that he’s willing to marry anybody, just so long as his father in law puts him up permanently (a ghorjamai: he’s quite candid about it). Another who is 45 declares that he looks no older than 37, and touts his Rs. 26,000 a month clerkship in a government aided school as though that’s as good as being a millionaire playboy. Yet a third who by his own admission makes just about Rs. 3000 a month (I paid my driver more than that!) generously says that he will ‘accept’ any bride, so long as she is willing to keep him in her father’s house. A girl in her mid-30s who proudly announces she has studied upto class three is looking for an ‘established’ groom.

After we had stopped hiccupping with laughter, my wife, daughter and I thought it would be nice to write down some such ad for me, if I were to put myself on the marriage market again (did I tell you that a couple of years ago the rumour had gone around that I was divorced, and I had started receiving lucrative offers for a second marriage already?) Both of them insisted I'd be deluged with requests...

'I always do!'

It is said of Lord Chesterfield (of the letters fame) that he was ready with brilliant put-downs for people who were rash enough to try verbal jousts with him. Once he was walking along a narrow footpath, daintily avoiding the muddy street, when he saw an old adversary coming towards him in the opposite direction. He waited patiently for the other to make way for him, but the latter only snarled ‘I never accommodate a scoundrel’. With a bow and a smile, the peer replied ‘But I always do!’ and stepped into the puddle.

I have always had a weakness for smart ripostes, and this is one I cannot stop admiring. How polished, how spontaneous, and how utterly devastating can a man be! How much more civilized than what most of today’s youngsters would or could do, brought up with the manners of the mastodons they see on TV wrestling shows! And imagine how long the victim must have smarted with helpless rage under the rebuke…

Giggling girls

All teachers have idiosyncrasies which pupils love to note, mimic and remember long after all their teaching has been forgotten. I have my own share of them. Frowning when the girls, as is their wont, were giggling away to glory among themselves in class, I asked ‘Who laughs over nothing at all?’ and they replied on cue, without a shade of embarrassment, ‘Madmen and chimpanzees!’ as they had heard me observe a hundred times. I recalled a teacher in their school, long retired, who used to say ‘These girls can fall off their benches tittering if they see a leaf fall…’

And the thought struck me that when you see women – who were girls ten or twenty years ago – on the roads, they almost invariably wear grim and forbidding expressions, as if they are disgusted with the world, and cannot think of anything that could make them smile, leave alone laugh. The contrast is so sharp that I wonder many more people don’t notice and comment on it. Why does it happen? I have a little theory of my own. Since overdoing anything is the surest way to grow sick of it, maybe the grimness of adult life comes in reaction to all the hysterical, mindless giggling through teenage? Maybe we should laugh a little less when we  are young so that we can go on laughing now and then all through life?

beware the praise of the multitude

I remember an incident from the life of Sir Winston Churchill. He was leaving a packed hall after receiving thunderous applause for a rousing speech, and a hurrying reporter asked 'Sir, doesn't it make you feel good to see that so many people come to hear you and clap for you?' 'Of course it does', shot back the great man, 'but then I remind myself that the crowd would have been three times as large if I were going to be hanged'. That's mankind for you.

Whenever I sense the danger of becoming swollen-headed to see how many people are crowding into my house and how frantic they are to get their children admitted to my tuition and how lavish they are with their praise and their purses, I remember those immortal words from a master spirit, and I am sober again... I recommend Browning's poem The Patriot  very strongly to my readers. I can't do better myself than repose all my faith in the stirring last lines: 'tis God shall repay/ I'm safer so.

Admission-time bloopers

I am in the middle of the annual admission season, and every year all sorts of weird things happen during this time, some annoying, some surprising, some plain hilarious. I wish I could have recorded all the funny ones on video and uploaded them on YouTube: I'm sure it would have become a runaway hit. People would be amazed and abashed: 'Is that what we look and sound like in public?' Folks have started crying when I told them I couldn't take in any more kids; others have insisted that I should just take in their child and then shut the doors, and yet others gone away with the firm impression that I am a very arrogant person, refusing to understand why I keep the numbers within manageable limits...

In their distracted hurry, folks do and say strange things. One has carried away the notebook which I gave him to write down the details of his child - name, address, phone number and stuff - another has left his own slippers behind and walked away in another's. Some have, after going faithfully through the entire admission process and even paying the fees, asked 'Sir, what do you teach?' I could go on and on.

One of the common misunderstandings was repeated this week. Since people were flooding in to get admitted to the class 9 batches, I had assumed (through a foolish oversight: I should have known better) that this boy, too, had come for the same reason. After he had been admitted, I was beginning to tell his parents the rules (I don't even trust them to read and understand the contents of the printed notices I give them, so I repeat verbally), the mother suddenly blurted out 'But he's in class 10 now!' Neither parents nor son had bothered to tell me, maybe because I, being clairvoyant, was simply supposed to know by looking at his face. I immediately corrected the error, of course, but imagine how lost and confused the poor kid must have felt if he had turned up and found that he was attending a class full of his juniors!

Bury two

A lawyer was accosted by his colleagues and asked to subscribe ten pounds (dollars?) to arranging the funeral of a fellow professional. He at once fished out some money from his pocket and exclaimed, 'Is it that cheap to bury a lawyer? Here's twenty pounds: go ahead and bury two!'

Some ascribe this mordant (and self-mocking) witticism to the great Irish legal luminary John Philpot Curran; others to someone equally likely, Abraham Lincoln himself. The only other famous (ex-) lawyer I know of who spoke about his professional brothers in the same vein was Mohandas Gandhi.

Knowing the teaching profession as I do, I daresay that in a similar situation, I'd probably come up with the same remark, despite knowing it won't be original...

The things that matter

I heard this doggerel in Bangla when I was still a boy, and like so many other things that seemed really interesting at first blush, it has stuck permanently in my memory.  Hari hey, dinobondhu, tumi amar babar bondhu/ hoy tumi dyakha dao, noy kichhu poysha dao,  the country poet says: “Lord, you are my dad’s old friend, y’know/ show yourself to me, or do give me some dough”.

Having lived and seen and thought a long time, I marvel at how this anonymous philosopher got his priorities just right, and with what sublime simplicity he has expressed them.

If you see God, you’ve got everything. Till then, it’s best to have some money.

It’s like the wag said about the American credo: In God we trust. With everyone else, we prefer cash…

Want to get rich quick? Avoid college

The British businessman Simon Dolan has written in this month’s issue of Reader’s Digest that if you want to make good money, going for ‘higher education’ would probably be a costly waste of time. Doctors and lawyers need college degrees; those who want to make it big in business don’t – certainly not fancy management degrees which cost the earth and teach you little about how to make money in the real world. Dolan’s words should count: he’s worth a hundred million pounds himself, and has drawn attention to other hugely successful college dropouts like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Richard Branson.

We in India could draw up a goodly list ourselves, I guess, with Dhirubhai Ambani right there at the top. So these are my views exactly. You want to make real money (and don’t tell me doctors and engineers make serious money!), trust on native intelligence, hard work, willingness to take big risks and learn from experience – and get into business as soon as you leave high school. If you are even moderately lucky, all your doctor and engineer friends will be envying you by the time you are 35, and maybe asking you to give them jobs.

If, on the other hand, you belong to the (vanishingly small-) tribe of people who value learning for its own sake, because next to doing good to your fellow man it is the grandest pursuit, don’t let thoughts of how much money you are going to make deter you from studying whatever you really love, whether it is history or physics or some fine art. Go for it.

And God have mercy on your doctor and engineer friends, who will miss out on both counts in the end, neither making much money nor finding out how much fun life can offer to the bold and fancy-free...

masterji, my kid's getting married, please come!

Why do the parents of ex-students who have never once contacted me for years after they left my classes come over to invite me to their children's weddings, and actually expect me to honour the invitation? Can anybody tell me? I should so like to know. 

Cat out of the bag

The cartoon on the business page of my newspaper today shows some executives of the sales division of a large company saying to one another: 'We don't need smarter products, we just need dumber customers.'

So now it's official. That is how we keep our economies growing and civilization progressing. Gold plated WCs, personality enhancing pills, phones with 66,000 apps, banks which offer 'relationships', $10,000 pens which give you a special status in the eyes of other morons like you, coaching classes that will make Edisons, Curies and Fords out of every idiot kid, anything will do.

Just so long as the customer is dumb enough.

A future for 'stillness'?

“Around the same time I noticed that those who part with $2,285 a night to stay in a cliff-top room at the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur pay partly for the privilege of not having a TV in their rooms; the future of travel, I’m reliably told, lies in ‘black-hole resorts’ which charge high prices precisely because you can’t get online in their rooms…”

I read the above lines in a recent and very timely article written by the expatriate writer of Indian origin, Pico Iyer, and sent over to me by an ex-student yesterday. Some other people are apparently also looking at the future, and thinking along the same lines as I do: heartening news. Do let me know what the article meant to you.

'relationships'

I found this wonderful reading because I have suffered at the hands of this strange breed of creatures (I won't call them humans-) who are titled 'relationship managers' in smart banks nowadays. I hope my readers will be forewarned. 'Relationships' mustn't be cheapened. The word is sacred...

Rising star

There's a 13-year old moron who has scribbled on the cover of his homework book "I'm a hot guy with a cool attitude". From what I have found out about him, he's neither very intelligent nor very studious, and pathetically lacking in the GK and worldly wisdom that I should consider appropriate for his age. He thinks, for instance, that you need to be 'brilliant' to get through the West Bengal Joint Entrance examination, and that they teach engineering at the 'prestigious' Presidency College in Kolkata. 

If I know something of the career trajectories of creatures like this, he will be working at Rs. 20-30,000  a month for TCS or Infosys in ten years' time, or if he's very lucky he'll have a slightly better job at a public sector enterprise such as NTPC or SAIL or SBI, and his mother would preen about how well-'established' her son is, and look for a bride whose dad would be willing to cough up at least Rs. 50 lakhs as dahej.

Any comments?