Upon the Recent Excitement on a Nobel Prize

I should like to remind Indians that Indian relevance is not reflected in the Nobel Prize. Indians, through centuries, have partaken, at individual levels, in herculean endeavours that are beyond ability of human understanding; and thus we have lived for untold centuries. The Nobel Prize Committee (God Bless its Collective Notions), in its warm, gilded, tail-coated splendour lives in an era whence it must equate Hinduism and Islam by the way of example in Divergent India and little criminal Pakistan; as if the bestowal of the Nobel Prize to a brave Pakistani girl does favour to Islam, or the other half of the prize, to a Hindu Indian, means anything at all to anyone, except the Indian Media. In all the basking glory and the learned dissertations, the coffee table bullshit and the outpourings from drawing room encyclopediae, has anyone pondered upon and asked as to what manner of monumentally irrelevant arrogance makes the Nobel Committee connect the Indian mandate and Pakistani reality in one breath?

Children are the future. We hold our world in trust for our children who are inheritors of tomorrow. Those that believe in this proposition will work by any means possible in preserving the glories of this world for our children, who will be men and women of tomorrow. They will do so without and in spite of Nobel Committees or the Nobel Prize; or Presidential Medals, Bharat Ratnas and Padma Bhushans of the world; without Freedom of Cities and inane interviews by a media which seems to have supplanted the advertising agency as a repository for the largest collection of deranged drunken morons that society would otherwise chuck out as impenetrable refuse. To those such as you of such persuasions, then, I raise a toast; I mean, a well toasted turd for all your efforts and effusions.

India is a nation. India’s only mandate has been in living in peace; as a land for all – of divergent religious persuasions and passions; of myriad languages, speeches, thoughts, dreams and aspirations. The Indian nation is rooted in that noble and eternal philosophy which grants equality to all as a natural state of being, and not as a charter dressed up with expensive signatures and bond paper – all preserved in a museum – an artefact which exists, in itself, as nothing more than a signature of man’s monumental social, moral and political ego. The world does not fear India’s rise. The world fears China’s advent and the world hates even the mention of Pakistan. Unity in the world is not achieved by yoking a horse together with a feral hyena; and this wisdom is obviously lost in a social club that finds continued relevance in the world by making a brand of a prize funded by the invention of the dynamite, and bestowed upon the so called “deserving”, just like Barak Obama, so as to remain oh, so, fucking relevant.

Let us awaken? Please? Let us not behave like emancipated niggers? Pretty-please? For where there is third party drawing room emancipation, the African or the Indian will never be known by their achievements, but merely as Niggers. Does the media and the intelligentsia understand this hypothesis? Is it understood by the so called pillars of our increasingly corporatised society, whose so called leaders hold positions that indicate no positive value, but solely the reflection of their corporation’s social-climb-calendars; and a sordid career line of “I-lick-yours-and-you-chew-mine”?

To be free is to be something so as to turn our environment into a heaven of equity. Freedom does not entail the right to do whatever the hell you want; in other words, freedom is not to be free without, but to be free to touch skies within. Yet, we persist in dredging depths as though treasure is to be found in the meanest and basest lowest common denominator; and such is the tragedy. The climb towards excellence is present in every individual human, whatever be his or her station. Yet, human institutions live not by excellence, but by the base, mean, and prejudiced perpetuation of the idea of excellence. The time for change is past. It is now the hour of action. And one would be grateful for tiny, tender mercies, if such actions also took seed in the core of such institutes like the Nobel Committee.

I am bloody done.

Some Reminisces & Hill Grange at Night

I was bad at studies. Or perhaps I should defer using the term bad and use “indifferent” instead. Or maybe I was just moody. There were many reasons for this. But the fact remains that I did not like the process of education; it did not appeal to me. I was introvert as a child; and I wished, more than anything else, to be left alone. This was impossible at home – for both my parents were inspired authoritarians and yet uninspiring educators. My relationship with them, especially during my childhood, was strained – more so with my father than with my mother. To cut a long story short, here I was, an uninspired student with nothing to look forward to except his books and knowledge gained from outer sources; a student whose school work all the while suffered because he found nothing really to look forward; and so, I was a very mediocre learner.

Matters came to a head in Class 8. Terminal examinations betrayed that something was indeed very wrong; and my mother descended in all urgency to find the source of error. It fell to Mr. Bhan to take her aside and give her a talking to. He explained to her that my chances for promotion to Class 9 were marginal given the present rate of my growth and my marks therein; Douglas Gonzalves, who taught us science, was almost equally forbidding. As a result of this, I was put into various tuitions both in school and outside of it; I believe that this, too, gave offence to many teachers in school, who thought that perhaps it would have served a better purpose had I not been taken out of their wing and placed in external coaching. But that is how it happened – and the only extra classes I attended in school were for Hindi and for French. Hindi tuitions were held early in the morning in Class 8C, on the first floor. My teacher was Mrs. Shaikh. For some reason, she was very fond of me; and while most students in regular class faced the sharp edge of both her tongue and the edge of her palm, I was spared, and indeed, often treated to words and gestures of kindness. Perhaps she understood my brooding silence; and my sense of alienation from my own existence.

My French coach was not Mrs. Pastakia, though she taught us French in class. On the contrary, it was Mrs. Padma Lama. She taught us singing in Class 8; she was authoritarian, disciplinarian and highly motivated; as well as being cynical and in possession of a deep understanding of human nature, and especially student failings. It is during attending her late tuitions after school where I was first exposed to Hill Grange at night; and even after 28 years, my adventures therein have left a deep, deep impression on me.

On days of NCC, my French tuitions started at about 5:10 in the evening. They often went up to 9. They ended usually otherwise at 8. On regular days, the classes were even longer; they begun just after 4 in the afternoon, and went up at times to the same stipulated time of conclusion. The venue was class 4C at the back of the school, adjacent to that odoriferous primary school toilet; the class was dimly lit, though not hard on the eyes; and in the quiet of these evenings, Mrs. Lama introduced me to the true scope of the French language. Mrs. Lama was strict; but she was also perfectly fair; and while infractions instigated her tongue into all manners of imprecations, work well done was greeted with a ready nod and sometimes even a short word of praise. Her praise meant a lot to me; and she, perhaps sensing that I was very timid, and needed motivation, very kindly took her Sunday afternoons off, before final examinations, to coach me in the intricacies of the French tongue. Her tongue was like a scorpion’s tail; and yet, I do not ever remember her hurting my feelings. She just did not cross into personal realms.

Her tuitions ended long after sundown; she lived close by in the “Sonarica Building”, off Peddar Road; I lived up Nepean Sea Road, adjacent to Simla House. Her journey home was a brisk and short walk. My journey was lonely, long, and tiring; when I entered home eventually, it was past the time to dine; and all I could do was to crash upon my bed – exhausted and quite numb. Yet, I looked forward to the journey home. Why? Because I took in the air of Hill Grange before my departure; and in that darkness of those evenings, Hill Grange was transformed from a busy bedlam beehive into a magical castle – filled with nameless and mysterious; yet joyous creatures and emotions of the dark.

In that primordial darkness lit by a faint glow, Hill Grange was like a puddle of blackness in the pool of light of Cumballa Hill and Peddar Road. Before leaving for home, I would often pause, in the darkness, anywhere in school; and I would take in the calm and absolute quiet of my surroundings. The new building would be dark; a bulb, however, would be burning forlornly above Mr. Pinto’s office, adjacent to the canteen. A lamp would also be burning on the first floor passage between the staff rooms and the class rooms further on; I mean the passage that eventually lead to Miss Kelly’s quarters. For reasons unknown then, but on introspection, probably for some inner calm and quiet, I would sometimes make my way up to the first floor or even the second floor to take in the darkness. Darkness on the second floor was near total, except for the puddle of light that fell out on the passage from within Mr. Reuben’s quarters. Peace was complete. I could listen to the blood ringing in my ears; and I shall never forget the sound of distant radio playing “Vividh-Bharati” programmes of the late evening. Sometimes this quiet would be interrupted by the clang of cutlery from the kitchens; perhaps I was also at times distracted by the smell of some heavenly dish being cooked therein; at other times the quiet was broken by the jangle of a telephone ringing in Miss Kelly’s rooms; there was also a far away sound of disjointed conversations – undoubtedly taking place between people happier than I was; but oh! The peace. The quiet. The calm!

At this time, the auditorium was like the surface of the moon, though a smoother one. It was half lit; and it was surmounted by the yawning darkness of the stage. The air would be fragrant with the smell of flowers; a shadow flying in that half light would reveal a stray bat seeking its dinner; a stray flutter in the leaves of a tree indicated late arrival at a crow’s nest. On top of the auditorium would be an immense and comforting blackness of the night sky; on a cloudless night, many stars shone forth their blessing onto me; and with their twinkle, made my darkness comforting to bear. I have never laid myself down on the floor of the auditorium to look at yonder stars and galaxies, far, far, and even further away; and I wish today I had done so. Perhaps I would have been rewarded with a timeless insight – wrapped in the embrace of my school, my sky, my stars and my own child like legacy that the passage of each moment created and left complete; and yet, undone.

The old building by my side, on these evenings, would be dark; but never forbidding. The wooden stairs that led to the first floor office of the old building often beckoned at me; and up these I sometimes climbed, surrounded by a magical half light, taking care so that I did not give myself away by the creak of my shoes on the ancient wood. There was an indescribable smell in the air then; of books and furniture cooling down after a hot day; of sap from jackfruit tree; of dried ink on blotting paper; of the remnants of perfume left behind by office bearers; and of the ethereal presence of students who had passed that way – nameless faces; the redolence of their hopes; the odour of their straining efforts; of their passage through the very fabric of existence; through the cusp of a lifetime; through the bosom of eternity.

Often, before I made my way down again, I would walk up to the threshold of my favourite room – the great Hall. It was at times illuminated by a single lamp; at other times, it would be dark – with a puddle of light falling on its threshold – from a light in the anteroom outside Miss Kelly’s room. At times the silence here would be broken by the urgent tinkling of a hand-bell; that was Miss Kelly as she summoned someone from the household staff to run a late evening errand.

The magic would be broken as realisation filtered through, invariably, that my home was elsewhere; and I had to make haste to depart. The walk down the slope was utterly lonely; yet, never has solitude seemed more welcoming, enveloping and comforting; never have I ever felt such a sense of belonging as I did then. To Hill Grange are dedicated my most enduring memories; and to this edifice, now silent and dark forever, must go so many experiences which have helped shape me and so many as you as the men and women we have all grown into.

Moments form up as seconds; seconds as minutes. Minutes roll into hours, which turn into days, weeks, years and decades. A child grows into another childhood; then, it grows into a man or a woman – it grows into Mankind. Memories are the only living record of this rite of passage – not only through life as we know it, but of existence, as it shapes us. And so it must be.