Evaluation

The latest (January 17) issue of Desh magazine carries a short story by Seema Ray titled Mulyayan (evaluation). It hit me somewhere very deep, for reasons which will become apparent when you read the summary given below.

A professor of physics in contemporary Kolkata who was also a successful private tutor is now retired, a widower who lives alone, with only a devoted old maidservant for company. He is financially comfortable, but even his grown up children live far away. He rediscovers an old pupil, Arpan, who had never been a ‘bright student’ in the conventional sense – couldn’t ‘crack’ the joint entrance test to become a doctor or engineer (the teacher had once urged Arpan’s father not to ‘waste money’ on the boy, since he was patently not good enough) – and has now opened a mobile phone shop in the neighbourhood, but is doing well, albeit on a small scale. Arpan turns out to be very respectful and useful in many different little ways, so that mashtarmoshai gradually begins to look forward to his company and rely on his help, even to the extent of being driven by him to the wedding of another ex-student. Arpan resents but quietly bears with his teacher’s constant boasting about how many ‘successful’ students he has produced, in terms of how well they are doing in their respective careers, in India and abroad. It is only after Arpan saves his life following a cardiac arrest by rushing him to hospital and taking care of many other incidental needfuls, at some cost to himself and without having any obligation whatever to do so while most of his ‘brilliant’ old boys and girls cry off with the excuse of being busy and far away – even the daughter flies in well after the crisis is over – that he has a change of heart. As he tells Arpan, he’s going to start tutoring again, but this time he will take especial care of the weak and slow learners.

I am ashamed to say that my generation of teachers and parents and the one immediately preceding it – I know hundreds of them personally and closely – is directly responsible for creating a whole generation of ‘successful’ monsters, and like this mashtarmoshai we find out to our great chagrin how deep and deadly our failure is only when we are finally lonely and helpless. We needed to make far more Arpans than all those doctors and engineers without souls and consciences that we have managed to produce instead. I haven’t, of course, been able to change things much; I am very small fry – but as everybody who knows me and my life’s work will aver, it has been my personal jihad lifelong that I shall not be one more parent and teacher of that sort. Indeed, I have been hated, feared, abused, ridiculed and as far as possible isolated by folks of these two generations precisely because I have lived and preached against the established zeitgeist. I shall not have to learn this particular lesson so late in life. And maybe it is because I refuse to boast about anything concerning my old boys and girls except the sort of human beings they have become that so many stay away, knowing that they will never be able to get one good word about themselves from this Sir’s mouth, no matter what their JEE rank was, what position they work in and where, and what size their paycheques are… we need real men, said Vivekananda, everything else will take care of itself. No no, we decided instead, we only need legions of technicians. Let us see how much longer this country needs to realize who was the fool.