The Super Ph.D.
Politics is the art of the possible. Look what becomes possible then, when the new VC is a purely political appointment. He feels slightly perturbed by the fact that he doesn’t have a Ph.D. His first move comes when a function is organised to felicitate his appointment.
“People say Meghe (his surname) is not a Ph.D.,” he pauses for effect here. Looks around like a lion surveying the jungle. “But Meghe is superPh.D. After all, he has known poverty!” Most teachers clap. For some these are words dripping with wisdom. For some others, it is a matter of etiquette. A leader delivers a punch-line. One has to clap.
The VC is now ensconced in his office. His next move comes quickly. It is in the form of a show-cause notice to all the heads of the departments and it packs more punch.
Are you in a position to certify that every single copy of all the journals that you receive in your department has been read completely by all the teachers and research scholars in the department? If not, show-cause why the subscription to these journals should not be stopped.
Etiquette also demands that every single letter of your leader be treated with respect and replied to even more respectfully, even if it may not deserve it. Most heads replied that it was neither possible nor desirable for every single member to read every single journal completely. They agreed that they were in no position to certify what the VC had demanded to be certified. They did not tell him that people read articles surrounding their interests in the journals and not the whole journals. They did not tell him that he did not know anything about research and as such should not bother others who did. Etiquette. Protocol. Respect for authority. All the virtues. All the virtues that clothe cowardice.
The VC allowed the subscriptions to lapse. The heads got into a huddle. But they had to be careful. There were some among them who were rumoured to be informers. There were no protests. The journals didn’t come. Research in all departments got crippled. And still there was no protest. We are great people. We do not give up our culture so easily. If our culture teaches us respect for authority, that is what the authority will get. It doesn’t matter in the least whether those in authority deserve it or not. Should it?
Cally
Another VC comes. This one is, physically also, very small. One only has to keep a flower vase in front of him to hide him completely from the audience in any function. Problems arise only when he rises to deliver the speech. Right now, he is reading a speech. The function is to mark the opening of a new department of biotechnology.
`The current decade belongs to biotechnology,’ he says reading the speech that, no doubt, has been prepared by someone else, ` and the next century will belong even more to this nascent field. It is my ardent hope that our country becomes biotechnology,’ here he turns the page, fumbles, and then continues, `cally rich.’ He goes on with the next sentence.
`Cally? What is cally?’ asks someone in the audience.
`He means “biotechnologically”. Only “cally” is on another page and the hyphen connecting it to “biotechnology” on the previous page. The idiot cannot connect it.” his friend advises.
That’s right. When there is a disconnect between academics and those governing academics, such pygmies rise and address the audience.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
I WANT MY CHILDREN TO GET OUT OF THIS NATION
I am a father of two children, both just out of adolescence and pursuing their bachelor’s degree. Both my children are better than average, and both want to live in India and work here. I, however, want them to move out and stay away for the rest of their lives or at least the better parts of their lives.
This is not what I have always wanted for them. I am also a teacher, teaching biochemistry to college students for the past twenty years. The last class that I engaged for all outgoing batches till last year was about telling them what this country has done for them as far as their education was concerned and just why they should return to India after a few years abroad. I am also proud to say that a huge number of my students went abroad to the best of the institutes and, more importantly, returned to work and to give to India whatever they can. From last year I have stopped telling them this. Instead, I now tell them to go out and stay out! And that is exactly what I wish for my own children.
What has changed for me to shift stance one hundred and eighty degrees? Let us see.
What is happening at Agra and Gohana today? Just recall what happened at Rajasthan just a few months ago. Recall what happened at several towns in Vidarbha as a repercussion to Khairlanji murders a month or so before that. Recall what happened at Delhi and then in several major cities a few months back in response to the government’s debatable proposals for compulsory reservations to OBCs in the cream of the Indian institutions.
I am not going to raise your standard questions repeated ad nauseum by the media personalities and the emotional inanities of the reporters of the electronic media where even couplets and full poems come handy to push a point. Ghalib, Iqbal, Meer, Firaq, Sarveshvar Dayal Saxena all come handy to establish the point that these reporters want to make. When even rationality has taken a back seat it is just too much to expect discussion on a trend that is obviously developing. I have grown so disgusted with the entire coverage that I have virtually stopped watching news on TV except for hearing the headlines.
What is happening in Gohana today? A ‘dalit’ has been murdered. That is indeed bad. Murder of any young person, regardless of caste, is bad. But since when have we started reacting to a murder in a manner that more deaths take place? In the media, this is a murder of a dalit by people belonging to other castes. But is it certain that a dalit was killed because he was a dalit? If he was killed because of some other matter which did not involve bias against his caste, is the media correct in branding it a muder of a dalit? Does such branding not anger people of the same caste and spill the protest over to other towns and villages? Is media not responsible in such cases? Are the dalits right in protesting in this manner everytime the slightest atrocity seems to have been committed? I am not saying that atrocities are not committed. That will be turning a blind eye to something that is unpardonable and does happen. What I am asking and what I believe the people and the media should ask is whether it is correct to hold entire cities to ransom everytime even a slight perceived atrocity is committed? Are these not the questions all of us should be asking ourselves? More so the media people and the politicians?
Forget Gohana. May be I am utterly wrong in seeing it the way it should be seen and may be it is really a dalit’s murder by upper caste people just because he was a dalit. Let us discuss Agra. Four people of one religion were killed when a badly driven truck overran them. There was a festival on the day and these youths were going back home having attended a function. When such an event happens, it is always sad and tempers do run high. In my own city I have seen people getting hold of the truck, burning it down, catching hold of the driver and beating him to pulp, blocking that road not allowing the bodies to be taken away for postmortem and cremation and generally protesting against the state of the roads, the rash driving and such things. But I am yet to see a whole city held to ransom over such an incident. I am yet to see petrol pumps, shops, other trucks which have done nothing, motorcycles, scooters, other establishments being burnt down because a few persons have been killed in an accident. Agreed that all 4 persons in Agra belonged to one single religion. But everyone who dies in an accident belongs to one religion or other. And, have there never been accidental deaths previously on a festival day? Do you think that the anger of people of any religious community boils over spontaneously to such an extent that an entire city burns and all work comes to a standstill? It can happen, it happens all the time, but not over accidental deaths. Violence and arson on this scale over accidental deaths can only be engineered. And yet, is the media asking this question? If it is, I have not seen, heard or read them asking this question. Are politicians talking constructively over this? No. It can be a politically wrong question to ask what with everyone bothered about the minority votes and one party bothered about the majority votes. But since when has the media started bothering about what is politically correct?
What happened at Khairlanji in Vidarbha? Although there are whispers that the muders of dalits in that village were actually a result of long standing land dispute, it is more or less agreed that these people were murdered because of caste reasons. I do not want a debate over this and I agree that this was what happened because it does happen even in an India which is far more educated and is supposedly living in the 21st century. What I want to talk about is the method in which protests were made. First of all the protests were made months after the episode occurred so that one cannot even in their wildest imagination call them spontaneous and therefore due to genuine public ire. Then again, the protests occurred in cities and towns far removed from the place where the incidence occurred. On top of all this, stones were pelted at people’s residences without any rhyme or reason. But what was most scaring was that we, and many people like us, knew the night before where the attacks will take place the next day! The plan was hatched at different places and the news filtered from there to us so that we could warn several of our students beforehand to not to venture in those localities that day! Business stopped, movement stopped and nothing got achieved. What did the media do? Nothing, except accentuating the caste angle. Should they not have talked about the planned nature of the attacks?
What has Arjun Singh done in this recent past? Does anyone in his right mind think he has acted to the benefit of any caste in this nation? Is it that all so called OBCs are deprived of chances? I do not think so. I know many OBCs who are very highly educated for generations now and quite rich too. And the portion of such OBCs is not miniscule. Was it not undue haste on the part of Arjun Singh? Was it not only right to have collected the figures of OBCs truly deprived and then to have acted if at all any action was needed? What was his reply to the meritorious students whose agitation was spontaneous? Was his reply not of a tone that reflected scant regard for merit? Did his action and the poor and predictable response of all parties ever hungry for all kinds of votes not divide Indians on the caste basis further? What did the media do?
Okay. Let me come from a different angle. Let’s forget the politicians and the media. What are the academicians doing? Should they not at least write about these things. Should they not protest against the methods of these protests and the attempt by the Indian parliamentarians to divide the nation? Should they not take some symbolic action which hurts where it counts?
Finally, should we not be asking these questions seriously? Should the media not be doing something about this? Where has the media of Ramnath Goenka’s caliber gone? Is it that they too have learnt the security of political correctness and want to hide in that cocoon for obvious benefits? Have the profits become so important, the TRPs so important, the government favour so important that all responsibilities can be shrugged off? There is a lot at stake. Will we allow all the recent progress and the promise of future progress to be sacrificed at the altar of ill advised actions such as these?
If this is what it is to be, I cannot at least be a liar. I cannot tell my students to return to India and work for it. I may as well ask them to waste their lives. If science can be served by them better living in other nations, so be it. If India does not want to benefit from the merit and creativity of its youngsters, so be it. I want my children – biological and otherwise – to get out of this nation!
I have stopped taking that last class.
This is not what I have always wanted for them. I am also a teacher, teaching biochemistry to college students for the past twenty years. The last class that I engaged for all outgoing batches till last year was about telling them what this country has done for them as far as their education was concerned and just why they should return to India after a few years abroad. I am also proud to say that a huge number of my students went abroad to the best of the institutes and, more importantly, returned to work and to give to India whatever they can. From last year I have stopped telling them this. Instead, I now tell them to go out and stay out! And that is exactly what I wish for my own children.
What has changed for me to shift stance one hundred and eighty degrees? Let us see.
What is happening at Agra and Gohana today? Just recall what happened at Rajasthan just a few months ago. Recall what happened at several towns in Vidarbha as a repercussion to Khairlanji murders a month or so before that. Recall what happened at Delhi and then in several major cities a few months back in response to the government’s debatable proposals for compulsory reservations to OBCs in the cream of the Indian institutions.
I am not going to raise your standard questions repeated ad nauseum by the media personalities and the emotional inanities of the reporters of the electronic media where even couplets and full poems come handy to push a point. Ghalib, Iqbal, Meer, Firaq, Sarveshvar Dayal Saxena all come handy to establish the point that these reporters want to make. When even rationality has taken a back seat it is just too much to expect discussion on a trend that is obviously developing. I have grown so disgusted with the entire coverage that I have virtually stopped watching news on TV except for hearing the headlines.
What is happening in Gohana today? A ‘dalit’ has been murdered. That is indeed bad. Murder of any young person, regardless of caste, is bad. But since when have we started reacting to a murder in a manner that more deaths take place? In the media, this is a murder of a dalit by people belonging to other castes. But is it certain that a dalit was killed because he was a dalit? If he was killed because of some other matter which did not involve bias against his caste, is the media correct in branding it a muder of a dalit? Does such branding not anger people of the same caste and spill the protest over to other towns and villages? Is media not responsible in such cases? Are the dalits right in protesting in this manner everytime the slightest atrocity seems to have been committed? I am not saying that atrocities are not committed. That will be turning a blind eye to something that is unpardonable and does happen. What I am asking and what I believe the people and the media should ask is whether it is correct to hold entire cities to ransom everytime even a slight perceived atrocity is committed? Are these not the questions all of us should be asking ourselves? More so the media people and the politicians?
Forget Gohana. May be I am utterly wrong in seeing it the way it should be seen and may be it is really a dalit’s murder by upper caste people just because he was a dalit. Let us discuss Agra. Four people of one religion were killed when a badly driven truck overran them. There was a festival on the day and these youths were going back home having attended a function. When such an event happens, it is always sad and tempers do run high. In my own city I have seen people getting hold of the truck, burning it down, catching hold of the driver and beating him to pulp, blocking that road not allowing the bodies to be taken away for postmortem and cremation and generally protesting against the state of the roads, the rash driving and such things. But I am yet to see a whole city held to ransom over such an incident. I am yet to see petrol pumps, shops, other trucks which have done nothing, motorcycles, scooters, other establishments being burnt down because a few persons have been killed in an accident. Agreed that all 4 persons in Agra belonged to one single religion. But everyone who dies in an accident belongs to one religion or other. And, have there never been accidental deaths previously on a festival day? Do you think that the anger of people of any religious community boils over spontaneously to such an extent that an entire city burns and all work comes to a standstill? It can happen, it happens all the time, but not over accidental deaths. Violence and arson on this scale over accidental deaths can only be engineered. And yet, is the media asking this question? If it is, I have not seen, heard or read them asking this question. Are politicians talking constructively over this? No. It can be a politically wrong question to ask what with everyone bothered about the minority votes and one party bothered about the majority votes. But since when has the media started bothering about what is politically correct?
What happened at Khairlanji in Vidarbha? Although there are whispers that the muders of dalits in that village were actually a result of long standing land dispute, it is more or less agreed that these people were murdered because of caste reasons. I do not want a debate over this and I agree that this was what happened because it does happen even in an India which is far more educated and is supposedly living in the 21st century. What I want to talk about is the method in which protests were made. First of all the protests were made months after the episode occurred so that one cannot even in their wildest imagination call them spontaneous and therefore due to genuine public ire. Then again, the protests occurred in cities and towns far removed from the place where the incidence occurred. On top of all this, stones were pelted at people’s residences without any rhyme or reason. But what was most scaring was that we, and many people like us, knew the night before where the attacks will take place the next day! The plan was hatched at different places and the news filtered from there to us so that we could warn several of our students beforehand to not to venture in those localities that day! Business stopped, movement stopped and nothing got achieved. What did the media do? Nothing, except accentuating the caste angle. Should they not have talked about the planned nature of the attacks?
What has Arjun Singh done in this recent past? Does anyone in his right mind think he has acted to the benefit of any caste in this nation? Is it that all so called OBCs are deprived of chances? I do not think so. I know many OBCs who are very highly educated for generations now and quite rich too. And the portion of such OBCs is not miniscule. Was it not undue haste on the part of Arjun Singh? Was it not only right to have collected the figures of OBCs truly deprived and then to have acted if at all any action was needed? What was his reply to the meritorious students whose agitation was spontaneous? Was his reply not of a tone that reflected scant regard for merit? Did his action and the poor and predictable response of all parties ever hungry for all kinds of votes not divide Indians on the caste basis further? What did the media do?
Okay. Let me come from a different angle. Let’s forget the politicians and the media. What are the academicians doing? Should they not at least write about these things. Should they not protest against the methods of these protests and the attempt by the Indian parliamentarians to divide the nation? Should they not take some symbolic action which hurts where it counts?
Finally, should we not be asking these questions seriously? Should the media not be doing something about this? Where has the media of Ramnath Goenka’s caliber gone? Is it that they too have learnt the security of political correctness and want to hide in that cocoon for obvious benefits? Have the profits become so important, the TRPs so important, the government favour so important that all responsibilities can be shrugged off? There is a lot at stake. Will we allow all the recent progress and the promise of future progress to be sacrificed at the altar of ill advised actions such as these?
If this is what it is to be, I cannot at least be a liar. I cannot tell my students to return to India and work for it. I may as well ask them to waste their lives. If science can be served by them better living in other nations, so be it. If India does not want to benefit from the merit and creativity of its youngsters, so be it. I want my children – biological and otherwise – to get out of this nation!
I have stopped taking that last class.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
OUR FIRST TRIP TO BANDHAVGARH: THE FIRST MORNING IN JUNGLE
All through our visits to the jungles over these past eleven years or so, there is a sort of record that we have created: The very first trip we take inside the jungle we see a tiger and the same is true for the last trip. My friends who have been as mad about the jungles as we are and have been going to the jungles more frequently are jealous of us because the same thing does not happen to them. May be it happens to us because we do not go to the jungle to see just the tiger – we love everything that the jungle has to offer, the flora, the fauna, the ambience, the smells and the sounds. Or may be it happens to us because we have been plain lucky and that this luck will vane as all good times come to an end. Whatever, we are happy while it lasts. This first trip to Bandhavgarh was no different as far as this pattern was concerned.
We were wiser this time around from our earlier experience of the Kanha winter. Wiser in a manner that city-dwellers are, not wise as far as the jungle is concerned. We had taken some thermal clothing with us and felt secure wearing it. Maitreyi, however, is a girl in her own league – she was still shivering and had covered herself with whatever was available till only her eyes were visible in the face. There was a long queue of jeeps in front of the entry gate and guides and tourists were busy filling up the forms and paying money to obtain entry passes. This is one disadvantage of coming to a jungle during the Christmas holidays – it is the busiest season and so you have to pay extra tariffs at the hotels and pay higher charges for entry and then suffer from a crowd of tourists inside the jungle. You have to move to the remote parts if you crave the silence of the jungle. There is another irritating aspect that one has to put up with – the dust blown by the jeeps in front of you. Unless you cover your head with a scarf or a cap, fine dust settles in your hair and by the time you get out, you are a dirty red head.
The sun was just rising when our guide returned with the entry card and our jeep moved. The guard opened the barrier and we moved in. Slightly ahead, we turned left and moved into the densest fog I have ever experienced. You could not see anything just 3-4 feet away! For the city-dwellers, very new to the jungle, this is a potential thrilling point. There can be a tiger sitting just about 5 feet away from you and you wouldn’t even see it! Having been to the jungle so many times since that day, we can laugh at that thrilling notion that we entertained that day. First and foremost, we have come to understand one thing – the tigers do not make a move so early. Most of the times that we have observed tigers in the morning trip, it has been well after 7 and before 9. Secondly, a tiger is not going to rest on the pathway itself when it hears a jeep approaching – it will take cover much before. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule that you make. Tigers can come out virtually at any time morning or night – they are as unpredictable as human beings. Tigers do rest on the dusty pathway – their body marks are visible as you drive through the jungle. But overall, the likelihood of a tiger resting on the pathway just 5 feet away from you at just around 6 AM on a winter morning is next to nil.
As the sun came out and gradually gained confidence, the veil of fog lifted and lying before us was a jungle so different from Kanha that all the distance from Nagpur seemed utterly worthwhile. If Kanha was a gentle melody, Bandhavgarh was a music that experimented with the absolute high and the absolute low pitch. The terrain was mountainous interrupted by meadows and small stretches of flat land. The Sal trees were abundant along with bamboo. There were Indian ghost trees in all their white glory, Kusum and several other colorful trees. Even the flat lands were not entirely flat. Sudden low ridges rose from nowhere at all. Also, it was colder.
There is nothing much to write about how we spotted the tiger. As we moved on, around 9 AM, from a distance we saw about 10 jeeps collected at a single spot. Our driver too headed to the same spot. The terrain was mountainous and we gained and lost the sight of the jeeps below us. Then as we turned round a bend, we came to the melee of jeeps and there, walking on the ridge alongside the path, was a full grown male tiger. I cannot say that I enjoyed the sight. While the tiger was wonderful, the jeeps were moving all the time along with the tiger and also antagonistic to each other to secure for their clients the best possible view. There were tourists with cameras connected to long telescopic sights trying to get the tiger as close as possible. Many of these were obviously rich and arrogant. Their loud voices and insolence almost completely drained the pleasure for me. Also, the jumbled up voices, the cries of children, the shouts of elders, the loud conversation between the drivers and the guides and the ecstatic shouts of several mothers to their children to watch the great beast as if they needed these to see the thing, created an environment that is no different from any tourist place in any city of the overpopulated India. I watched the tiger because there was nothing else to do but my heart was not in it. Also, getting to see a tiger without tracking it from the alarm calls of frightened animals and from the pug marks does not hold any charm for me. Maitreyi and Udayan were too young to think on these lines but today, when they have grown up, the excitement of tracking or the possibility of the great beast very nearby due to the sounds from the jungle beyond or because of the fresh pugmarks can be seen on their faces quite plainly. All these elements were missing and that reduced the pleasure considerably.
The tiger moved off and became invisible and jeeps dispersed almost immediately and the silence ruled again. More differences became obvious now. The guides in kanha are far better. They want to show you as many things as possible. In Bandhavgarh, once you have seen the tiger, you are expected by the guides to lose all interest. We did but not because we were not interested in the other things. We did because of the attitude of the guide.
The landscape in Bandhavgarh is more varied as compared to Kanha, the flora may also be more diverse, but the faunal diversity is much more in Kanha. There is an abundance of birds there which we did not get to see in Bandhavgarh. Also, the phenomenal number of deer and the variety of species of deer was also something that we did not see in Bandhavgarh.
Having said that, there was one thing that we experienced in Bandhavgarh that we had not in Kanha. But about that I will write in the next post on this issue.
We were wiser this time around from our earlier experience of the Kanha winter. Wiser in a manner that city-dwellers are, not wise as far as the jungle is concerned. We had taken some thermal clothing with us and felt secure wearing it. Maitreyi, however, is a girl in her own league – she was still shivering and had covered herself with whatever was available till only her eyes were visible in the face. There was a long queue of jeeps in front of the entry gate and guides and tourists were busy filling up the forms and paying money to obtain entry passes. This is one disadvantage of coming to a jungle during the Christmas holidays – it is the busiest season and so you have to pay extra tariffs at the hotels and pay higher charges for entry and then suffer from a crowd of tourists inside the jungle. You have to move to the remote parts if you crave the silence of the jungle. There is another irritating aspect that one has to put up with – the dust blown by the jeeps in front of you. Unless you cover your head with a scarf or a cap, fine dust settles in your hair and by the time you get out, you are a dirty red head.
The sun was just rising when our guide returned with the entry card and our jeep moved. The guard opened the barrier and we moved in. Slightly ahead, we turned left and moved into the densest fog I have ever experienced. You could not see anything just 3-4 feet away! For the city-dwellers, very new to the jungle, this is a potential thrilling point. There can be a tiger sitting just about 5 feet away from you and you wouldn’t even see it! Having been to the jungle so many times since that day, we can laugh at that thrilling notion that we entertained that day. First and foremost, we have come to understand one thing – the tigers do not make a move so early. Most of the times that we have observed tigers in the morning trip, it has been well after 7 and before 9. Secondly, a tiger is not going to rest on the pathway itself when it hears a jeep approaching – it will take cover much before. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule that you make. Tigers can come out virtually at any time morning or night – they are as unpredictable as human beings. Tigers do rest on the dusty pathway – their body marks are visible as you drive through the jungle. But overall, the likelihood of a tiger resting on the pathway just 5 feet away from you at just around 6 AM on a winter morning is next to nil.
As the sun came out and gradually gained confidence, the veil of fog lifted and lying before us was a jungle so different from Kanha that all the distance from Nagpur seemed utterly worthwhile. If Kanha was a gentle melody, Bandhavgarh was a music that experimented with the absolute high and the absolute low pitch. The terrain was mountainous interrupted by meadows and small stretches of flat land. The Sal trees were abundant along with bamboo. There were Indian ghost trees in all their white glory, Kusum and several other colorful trees. Even the flat lands were not entirely flat. Sudden low ridges rose from nowhere at all. Also, it was colder.
There is nothing much to write about how we spotted the tiger. As we moved on, around 9 AM, from a distance we saw about 10 jeeps collected at a single spot. Our driver too headed to the same spot. The terrain was mountainous and we gained and lost the sight of the jeeps below us. Then as we turned round a bend, we came to the melee of jeeps and there, walking on the ridge alongside the path, was a full grown male tiger. I cannot say that I enjoyed the sight. While the tiger was wonderful, the jeeps were moving all the time along with the tiger and also antagonistic to each other to secure for their clients the best possible view. There were tourists with cameras connected to long telescopic sights trying to get the tiger as close as possible. Many of these were obviously rich and arrogant. Their loud voices and insolence almost completely drained the pleasure for me. Also, the jumbled up voices, the cries of children, the shouts of elders, the loud conversation between the drivers and the guides and the ecstatic shouts of several mothers to their children to watch the great beast as if they needed these to see the thing, created an environment that is no different from any tourist place in any city of the overpopulated India. I watched the tiger because there was nothing else to do but my heart was not in it. Also, getting to see a tiger without tracking it from the alarm calls of frightened animals and from the pug marks does not hold any charm for me. Maitreyi and Udayan were too young to think on these lines but today, when they have grown up, the excitement of tracking or the possibility of the great beast very nearby due to the sounds from the jungle beyond or because of the fresh pugmarks can be seen on their faces quite plainly. All these elements were missing and that reduced the pleasure considerably.
The tiger moved off and became invisible and jeeps dispersed almost immediately and the silence ruled again. More differences became obvious now. The guides in kanha are far better. They want to show you as many things as possible. In Bandhavgarh, once you have seen the tiger, you are expected by the guides to lose all interest. We did but not because we were not interested in the other things. We did because of the attitude of the guide.
The landscape in Bandhavgarh is more varied as compared to Kanha, the flora may also be more diverse, but the faunal diversity is much more in Kanha. There is an abundance of birds there which we did not get to see in Bandhavgarh. Also, the phenomenal number of deer and the variety of species of deer was also something that we did not see in Bandhavgarh.
Having said that, there was one thing that we experienced in Bandhavgarh that we had not in Kanha. But about that I will write in the next post on this issue.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
WHY I STOPPED MEDITATING
If you see an ass standing right in the middle of a busy road, one leg pulled slightly up, neck down, oblivious of blaring horns or the busy traffic trying to get around it and getting irritated in the process, do not think that it is deep in meditation although that is exactly what it looks to be doing in the first glance. It is actually sleeping and just being a complete ass.
That is also why I have stopped all attempts at meditating. Most of the times I go to sleep just a few minutes into the attempt and wake up completely refreshed and feeling guilty at the same time.
But the real trouble arises when I don’t fall asleep. This is what happened the last time I tried to meditate:
Deep inhalation …… retain the breath inside for sometime ……. Slow exhalation …. Deep inhalation….. retain the breath inside for sometime ……. Slow exhalation …. Deep inhalation ….retain the breath inside for sometime… exhale saying Ooooommmmmmmmm ………. Inhalation ….. Ooooooommmmmmmm ………. The goddamn management cannot do this to me….. Ooooooommmmmm……… The next time he says that, I am gonna get him, the bastard …….. Ooooommmmm ……. What does he think of himself? ……No no, this not the way to go, I am supposed to be having pleasant thoughts …… Oooooooommmmmmm ……. Ooooooooommmmmmm …….. think of Kanha forest … you love that and those thoughts will be pleasant …… Ooooommmm …. There are hills all around ….. I am sitting in Kishori’s jeep ….. Oooooommmmm …… The jeep is descending from Digdola part of the forest …. Wow … the scenery is breathtaking ….. Oooooommmmm….. there is the Sonph meadow visible in the distance ….. Ooooommmmm…….. how serene it looks ……… Ooooommmm……….. sqeak…… sqeeeeeeeeeeeeeek….. goddamn Kishori ….. why does he not do something about his brakes ….. for the past 4 years they have been like this ….. Ooooommmmmm……… if there is an alarm call, you can’t hear it over this din ……. Oooooommmmmm …. And his teeth ….. all tobacco stained …. Never sit near him ……… his breath must be foul …. Take a deep breath ….. Ooooommmmm …. Shit ………… the guy has been having gas trouble ……. Never sit behind him either ……. Ooooommmmmm ……… you must change your driver the next time you visit Kanha …. Oooommmmmm…… it’s useless to go in his jeep …….. Oooommmm …IT’S USELESS TO MEDITATE.
A voice says you can’t give up like that. Try again. “If at first you don’t succeed, try again!” that is how the poem went from your English textbook in the 8th standard. So, try again.
Ooooommmmm……. Oommmmmm ……….. Oooommmmmmm ………. “If at first you don’t succeed, try again!” ……Ooooommmmm ….. “If at first you don’t succeed, try again!” ………. Ooooommmm …… “If at first…” Pathak sir’s voice repeating the poem again and again …….. Ooooommmmm ….. the guy beat me up so bad ….. Ooooommmm …. What did he think of himself? …….. Ooooommmm … if he was so bloody good, what was he doing teaching high school …… Ooooommmmm …… My back hurt for three days after that thrashing I received … oooommmm . Ssallla, idiot, …….. AVINASH, STOP BEING AN ASS. GET UP. DON’T TRY MEDITATING AGAIN, EVER!
That is also why I have stopped all attempts at meditating. Most of the times I go to sleep just a few minutes into the attempt and wake up completely refreshed and feeling guilty at the same time.
But the real trouble arises when I don’t fall asleep. This is what happened the last time I tried to meditate:
Deep inhalation …… retain the breath inside for sometime ……. Slow exhalation …. Deep inhalation….. retain the breath inside for sometime ……. Slow exhalation …. Deep inhalation ….retain the breath inside for sometime… exhale saying Ooooommmmmmmmm ………. Inhalation ….. Ooooooommmmmmmm ………. The goddamn management cannot do this to me….. Ooooooommmmmm……… The next time he says that, I am gonna get him, the bastard …….. Ooooommmmm ……. What does he think of himself? ……No no, this not the way to go, I am supposed to be having pleasant thoughts …… Oooooooommmmmmm ……. Ooooooooommmmmmm …….. think of Kanha forest … you love that and those thoughts will be pleasant …… Ooooommmm …. There are hills all around ….. I am sitting in Kishori’s jeep ….. Oooooommmmm …… The jeep is descending from Digdola part of the forest …. Wow … the scenery is breathtaking ….. Oooooommmmm….. there is the Sonph meadow visible in the distance ….. Ooooommmmm…….. how serene it looks ……… Ooooommmm……….. sqeak…… sqeeeeeeeeeeeeeek….. goddamn Kishori ….. why does he not do something about his brakes ….. for the past 4 years they have been like this ….. Ooooommmmmm……… if there is an alarm call, you can’t hear it over this din ……. Oooooommmmmm …. And his teeth ….. all tobacco stained …. Never sit near him ……… his breath must be foul …. Take a deep breath ….. Ooooommmmm …. Shit ………… the guy has been having gas trouble ……. Never sit behind him either ……. Ooooommmmmm ……… you must change your driver the next time you visit Kanha …. Oooommmmmm…… it’s useless to go in his jeep …….. Oooommmm …IT’S USELESS TO MEDITATE.
A voice says you can’t give up like that. Try again. “If at first you don’t succeed, try again!” that is how the poem went from your English textbook in the 8th standard. So, try again.
Ooooommmmm……. Oommmmmm ……….. Oooommmmmmm ………. “If at first you don’t succeed, try again!” ……Ooooommmmm ….. “If at first you don’t succeed, try again!” ………. Ooooommmm …… “If at first…” Pathak sir’s voice repeating the poem again and again …….. Ooooommmmm ….. the guy beat me up so bad ….. Ooooommmm …. What did he think of himself? …….. Ooooommmm … if he was so bloody good, what was he doing teaching high school …… Ooooommmmm …… My back hurt for three days after that thrashing I received … oooommmm . Ssallla, idiot, …….. AVINASH, STOP BEING AN ASS. GET UP. DON’T TRY MEDITATING AGAIN, EVER!
KANHA: SUMMER VS. WINTER
Most of the time we have visited the jungles, we have done so in the winters. We love winters. But then that has not been the only reason for our winter trips. The reason is more practical – I have Christmas holidays during that time, my children too had their winter holidays coinciding with Christmas holidays while they were in School and Kakoli can take leave. The jungle winters are harsher than the city winters, especially when the city in question is Nagpur. But we have come to love even these winters however harsh they may be.
One of my friends always goes to the jungle in summers. The reasons are simple. First, winters are too much for him. Secondly, everyone will tell you that you spot the animals, including the tiger, more easily during summer. There is a paucity of water and so the animals have to move and that is why you spot them easily and in more numbers. For us these reasons have no meaning because we love winters and have been exceptionally lucky to have witnessed scenes that more seasoned tourists have not seen.
Therefore, when this friend of mine persuaded me to go with him to the Kanha National Park in the summer, I was quite excited. First and foremost, I wanted to see how the jungle looks in the summer. Secondly, I was not going out with my wife. And changing the partner is always exciting even if it be of the same sex (do not get dirty ideas in your mind now).
The things were different right from the word go.
First things first. This was mid-May. The month that you associate with heat that singes you and even the morning sun spews fire. When we entered the forest early in the morning, it was cool. So cool in fact that you could have worn a light sweater.
The jungle was not dry. Kanha is a mixed jungle predominantly of Sal and Bamboo. None of these dry off in the summer. There were a few trees that were dry but that was all. The rest of it was green. But the green was not van Gogh green – it was a shade much lighter, as if a very little yellow had been mixed in it by the artist. There was the dark yellow of the Amaltas in full bloom that you do not see in the winters. The grass looked like the hair of an ultramodern girl – blond edges to the brunette mass. The air was lighter and dryer and went easily down your trachea. The winter smell was completely gone and a smell that sat lightly in your lungs had replaced that. The dust of the road was loose and flew behind us more lightly and farther hazing out the scene behind us.
But the surprise was the festival of sounds. The winter jungle is quiet. If there are sounds, they are mostly of the jeeps moving around, or the human sounds of the excited tourists or of the birds that are happy all year round. But even from where we were staying, I could here loud, piercing sounds right early in the morning. Since I had never heard these sounds before, I was at a loss for what they were. The guide had been with me countless times in earlier trips and so thought that I was quite knowledgeable. He kept his own counsel. I had to ask him and then he seemed to understand that this was the first time I had been out in the summer. These were the rutting calls, he informed me. Rutting calls of the deer stags. Rutting calls of Barasingha. These were different from each other and within minutes I could tell the difference. Right from the morning, these animals were busy announcing to their females that their current hormone levels were quite high. That they were in the mood. This was the biggest contrast from the winter jungle.
This particular summer, there were hordes of Bison to be seen almost everywhere. The guide told me that this is not a summer phenomenon. It is just this summer that you are seeing so many near the roads. But we were exceptionally lucky. The barking deer, which so shy and elusive in the normal circumstances, had decided that they wanted us to see them. We saw so many and at such close quarters that all the books and all the descriptions of their shyness in them appeared to be a pack of lies.
The summer eventually becomes evident. In winters you can roam about in the open jeep even in the afternoons. By 10 Am, however, we felt that the heat was enough for us to start back towards the gate.
Back at the resort, it was still cool in the shade of the large Halda tree in front of the canteen where we ordered a beer each and sat sipping and enjoying the view. This done, we thought, we should wash and then come back for lunch.
The resort has half the rooms air-conditioned and the other half air-cooled. In these other rooms, noisy desert coolers are fitted outside one of the windows. Their bottom tray is always kept full of water. As we walked back, we saw a langur going towards the rooms. When we turned the corner we saw something that you do not see in the winter. The langur was sitting on the edge of the bottom tray and was drinking water from it.
It is definitely true that they are our ancestors. Like us, these langurs find out perfectly relevant but unmeant uses for things that have been designed for a completely different purpose.
One of my friends always goes to the jungle in summers. The reasons are simple. First, winters are too much for him. Secondly, everyone will tell you that you spot the animals, including the tiger, more easily during summer. There is a paucity of water and so the animals have to move and that is why you spot them easily and in more numbers. For us these reasons have no meaning because we love winters and have been exceptionally lucky to have witnessed scenes that more seasoned tourists have not seen.
Therefore, when this friend of mine persuaded me to go with him to the Kanha National Park in the summer, I was quite excited. First and foremost, I wanted to see how the jungle looks in the summer. Secondly, I was not going out with my wife. And changing the partner is always exciting even if it be of the same sex (do not get dirty ideas in your mind now).
The things were different right from the word go.
First things first. This was mid-May. The month that you associate with heat that singes you and even the morning sun spews fire. When we entered the forest early in the morning, it was cool. So cool in fact that you could have worn a light sweater.
The jungle was not dry. Kanha is a mixed jungle predominantly of Sal and Bamboo. None of these dry off in the summer. There were a few trees that were dry but that was all. The rest of it was green. But the green was not van Gogh green – it was a shade much lighter, as if a very little yellow had been mixed in it by the artist. There was the dark yellow of the Amaltas in full bloom that you do not see in the winters. The grass looked like the hair of an ultramodern girl – blond edges to the brunette mass. The air was lighter and dryer and went easily down your trachea. The winter smell was completely gone and a smell that sat lightly in your lungs had replaced that. The dust of the road was loose and flew behind us more lightly and farther hazing out the scene behind us.
But the surprise was the festival of sounds. The winter jungle is quiet. If there are sounds, they are mostly of the jeeps moving around, or the human sounds of the excited tourists or of the birds that are happy all year round. But even from where we were staying, I could here loud, piercing sounds right early in the morning. Since I had never heard these sounds before, I was at a loss for what they were. The guide had been with me countless times in earlier trips and so thought that I was quite knowledgeable. He kept his own counsel. I had to ask him and then he seemed to understand that this was the first time I had been out in the summer. These were the rutting calls, he informed me. Rutting calls of the deer stags. Rutting calls of Barasingha. These were different from each other and within minutes I could tell the difference. Right from the morning, these animals were busy announcing to their females that their current hormone levels were quite high. That they were in the mood. This was the biggest contrast from the winter jungle.
This particular summer, there were hordes of Bison to be seen almost everywhere. The guide told me that this is not a summer phenomenon. It is just this summer that you are seeing so many near the roads. But we were exceptionally lucky. The barking deer, which so shy and elusive in the normal circumstances, had decided that they wanted us to see them. We saw so many and at such close quarters that all the books and all the descriptions of their shyness in them appeared to be a pack of lies.
The summer eventually becomes evident. In winters you can roam about in the open jeep even in the afternoons. By 10 Am, however, we felt that the heat was enough for us to start back towards the gate.
Back at the resort, it was still cool in the shade of the large Halda tree in front of the canteen where we ordered a beer each and sat sipping and enjoying the view. This done, we thought, we should wash and then come back for lunch.
The resort has half the rooms air-conditioned and the other half air-cooled. In these other rooms, noisy desert coolers are fitted outside one of the windows. Their bottom tray is always kept full of water. As we walked back, we saw a langur going towards the rooms. When we turned the corner we saw something that you do not see in the winter. The langur was sitting on the edge of the bottom tray and was drinking water from it.
It is definitely true that they are our ancestors. Like us, these langurs find out perfectly relevant but unmeant uses for things that have been designed for a completely different purpose.
A SALUTE TO THE BISHNOIS
Salman Khan is now behind the bars till he is bailed out to the relief of Katrina Kaif, Salim Khan, Sallu’s dear and suffering mother, his brothers, and a lot of idiotic (to say the least) fans. In an age when eyewitnesses go hostile or develop sudden amnesia at the drop of a few greenbacks, the resilience of Bishnois of Rajasthan is commendable and gladdens my heart. A salute to you and your spirit.
Having said that, I would like to talk about what is being shown in the electronic media and written in the print. The worst part is the views of the fans. Most of these are necessarily young. If they represent the opinion of the new generation, then I must say I have to revise my positive opinion of this generation considerably. The arguments can be split into two parts. Let us see what these are.
1. Sallu is being jailed for killing just a blackbuck/deer
Just a blackbuck? First and foremost, it is not just a deer/blackbuck. You are talking of an endangered animal here. At a time when most educated nations have a large movement for conservation of the biodiversity and for conserving the environment in general (entire green parties have emerged in the political life of these nations) these young fans of the brawny star are demonstrating their utter callousness about the issues that must be dear to their hearts.
Alright. Let’s not argue from this point. May be we are insensitive to the environmental issues. Did Salman Khan not know that hunting these animals (why these blackbucks, you can’t even hunt a deer which is just a deer) is illegal and a punishable offence? If he did not, he is a bumbling idiot and if he did, he is a criminal.
While on this point, personally to me, a blackbuck is far more beautiful than Salman Khan.
2. If you can’t punish criminal politicians, why are you punishing our dear Sallu? Let him go Scot free just like Shibu Soren and countless others. Law is being partial here and blah de blah…blah…
To all of you who give this argument, I have this to say:
Let someone kill your mother/spouse/child (God forbid that happens; this is just an example) and let that someone be punished by law. Then, my dear Sallu fans, shout till you are hoarse for this criminal to be released just because Shibu Soren has been freed.
Think of this and please, confine your stinking breaths to the tenements of your mouths!
Having said that, I would like to talk about what is being shown in the electronic media and written in the print. The worst part is the views of the fans. Most of these are necessarily young. If they represent the opinion of the new generation, then I must say I have to revise my positive opinion of this generation considerably. The arguments can be split into two parts. Let us see what these are.
1. Sallu is being jailed for killing just a blackbuck/deer
Just a blackbuck? First and foremost, it is not just a deer/blackbuck. You are talking of an endangered animal here. At a time when most educated nations have a large movement for conservation of the biodiversity and for conserving the environment in general (entire green parties have emerged in the political life of these nations) these young fans of the brawny star are demonstrating their utter callousness about the issues that must be dear to their hearts.
Alright. Let’s not argue from this point. May be we are insensitive to the environmental issues. Did Salman Khan not know that hunting these animals (why these blackbucks, you can’t even hunt a deer which is just a deer) is illegal and a punishable offence? If he did not, he is a bumbling idiot and if he did, he is a criminal.
While on this point, personally to me, a blackbuck is far more beautiful than Salman Khan.
2. If you can’t punish criminal politicians, why are you punishing our dear Sallu? Let him go Scot free just like Shibu Soren and countless others. Law is being partial here and blah de blah…blah…
To all of you who give this argument, I have this to say:
Let someone kill your mother/spouse/child (God forbid that happens; this is just an example) and let that someone be punished by law. Then, my dear Sallu fans, shout till you are hoarse for this criminal to be released just because Shibu Soren has been freed.
Think of this and please, confine your stinking breaths to the tenements of your mouths!
Friday, August 24, 2007
HARSHAL PUNIYANI AND HIS METAL PINS
I know a boy called Harshal Puniyani. He has been a student with me for the past 2 years. He is a boy that people of my generation should not like. He has a pierced lower lip and wears a metal object in that silly hole. I am told by many of his friends that there are other holes too which I do not know of and there are other metal objects there too! Why should one mutilate ones own body only to put foreign objects in it, especially when one does not belong to the fair sex where this madness is allowed, beats me completely. It is irrational, stupid, silly. That is what I think. For Harshal, the things may be the other way round. It may also be that for people of his generation, this is what signifies “cool”.
No previous generation likes the next generation. To them, the younger generation is a symbol of callousness, frivolity of attitude, unethical behavior, and disregard of rules that have become sanctified over centuries. The youth knows the attitude of their elders. So it rebels. Actually, youth must rebel. For every movement, rebellion against anything and everything being one such movement, there must be a symbol or a group of symbols. The frequency with which the foreign metal objects are getting embedded in the flesh of the males of the young generation makes me believe that this silly thing is the symbolism that the youth has chosen.
So for Harshal, these metal objects may be a way of wearing his rebellion on his sleeves (lower lip? Other places?).
Harshal also does not study much. His grades are nothing to write home about. I have a lurking suspicion in this regard too. Over the two years I have gradually come to a conclusion that he is actually quite intelligent and only his apathy for study keeps him from improving his grades. Or, is it that this too is his way of rebellion? Rebellion against the idiotic system of judging students’ ability by his/her capacity to mug up particular portions and vomit them in the examinations.
But for all the metals in his body, he is particularly well behaved with his elders. No rebellion here. When his friends are in need, he is the person they remember. Also, he has gone out of the way many times to help them. A perfect gentleman then.
It is the Harshals of this world that tell me not to recoil at the sight of the otherwise repugnant piercings. It is Harshal who reinforces my utter belief in the capability of younger generation to take things forward from here and take them forward well. It is he and the likes of him who tell me that symbolism of rebellion will change with generations and will be as repugnant to the older generation as the previous symbols, but that these are just symbols. They are doing just the same that I did when I was a part of the younger, rebellious generation. And I am good, am I not?
No previous generation likes the next generation. To them, the younger generation is a symbol of callousness, frivolity of attitude, unethical behavior, and disregard of rules that have become sanctified over centuries. The youth knows the attitude of their elders. So it rebels. Actually, youth must rebel. For every movement, rebellion against anything and everything being one such movement, there must be a symbol or a group of symbols. The frequency with which the foreign metal objects are getting embedded in the flesh of the males of the young generation makes me believe that this silly thing is the symbolism that the youth has chosen.
So for Harshal, these metal objects may be a way of wearing his rebellion on his sleeves (lower lip? Other places?).
Harshal also does not study much. His grades are nothing to write home about. I have a lurking suspicion in this regard too. Over the two years I have gradually come to a conclusion that he is actually quite intelligent and only his apathy for study keeps him from improving his grades. Or, is it that this too is his way of rebellion? Rebellion against the idiotic system of judging students’ ability by his/her capacity to mug up particular portions and vomit them in the examinations.
But for all the metals in his body, he is particularly well behaved with his elders. No rebellion here. When his friends are in need, he is the person they remember. Also, he has gone out of the way many times to help them. A perfect gentleman then.
It is the Harshals of this world that tell me not to recoil at the sight of the otherwise repugnant piercings. It is Harshal who reinforces my utter belief in the capability of younger generation to take things forward from here and take them forward well. It is he and the likes of him who tell me that symbolism of rebellion will change with generations and will be as repugnant to the older generation as the previous symbols, but that these are just symbols. They are doing just the same that I did when I was a part of the younger, rebellious generation. And I am good, am I not?
WHAT IF BJP AND CONGRESS JOIN HANDS?
For more than 7-8 years now I have been airing this thought to my acquaintances. Why can't BJP and Congress join hands and create a coalition? First and foremost, it will be free of the smaller and often disruptive elements. Secondly it would mean the end of secular/pseudosecular debate which has no meaning and no substance. No party in this nation is secular or communal. Each party has a different brand of communalism or secularism. Each party champions the cause of this or that religion in the name of secularism, each party plays vote-bank politics in the name of secularism and each party succeeds in stoking the fires of hatred and strengthening the hands of religious dons whose interest is in keeping the populace backwards so that their business continues unabated. What we need is a coalition that realizes that the true probelms to be addressed are economic in nature. The BJP has always had a liberal outlook as far as economy is concerned and Mr. Manmohan Singh and a few others in Congress have shown their mettle already in this area. In fact, Manmohan Singh has been the progenitor of the entire reforms process.
The effects of such a combination would be:
1. Cooling down of communal fires.
2. Faster economic development.
3. Stabler governments.
4. The persistently coughing communist comrades will be kept out and will not be able to hold the entire nation to ransom.
5. In the long term the nation may even be able to get out of the stranglehold of the Gandhi family.
There will be one bad effect of such a combination:
Life will become rather boring for us passionate political arguers. Currently, it is such a hot and worthy and steamy way of passing time, getting excited, calling others by bad names and feeling great about it. All that would vane and we would be very sad indeed by its passing.
So, what do you think?
The effects of such a combination would be:
1. Cooling down of communal fires.
2. Faster economic development.
3. Stabler governments.
4. The persistently coughing communist comrades will be kept out and will not be able to hold the entire nation to ransom.
5. In the long term the nation may even be able to get out of the stranglehold of the Gandhi family.
There will be one bad effect of such a combination:
Life will become rather boring for us passionate political arguers. Currently, it is such a hot and worthy and steamy way of passing time, getting excited, calling others by bad names and feeling great about it. All that would vane and we would be very sad indeed by its passing.
So, what do you think?
Sunday, August 19, 2007
OUR FIRST TRIP TO BANDHAVGARH: I
Reaching There
The first time we visited Bandhavgarh was in 1997. Kakoli, the two kids (Maitreyi is my daughters name; she was 10 and Udayan, my son, was barely 8 years of age) and I went to this National Park which is much farther off compared to Kanha. We did not even know the route properly and went to Bilaspur by train. From Bilaspur we wanted to take a taxi all the way to bandhavgrah. I did talk to a few taxi drivers but rejected their offers since Kakoli did not like the look of them. I have to admit that Kakoli overall is a better judge of human beings than yours truly. After talking to people at the railway station we decided to take a train to Shahdol. I do not like train travel and therefore was loathe doing it. Also, I love travel by a car and so was fretting and fuming about Kakoli’s decision. But this I did internally. There are two reasons for this. First of all I like to be taken as an accommodating husband (internally I may be just as good as any other husband!). Secondly, Kakoli does not take it kindly if you oppose her decision (call me henpecked!).
But the train ride proved to be good against all my assumptions. First of all it was a passenger train. These trains are to be hated because they pause for a long time at every small station. This one did too. But the terrain through which it progressed was so beautiful, you did not mind the slow progress at all and as time went on my nerves were calmed and I got lost in the beauty of the surroundings. Secondly, it brought an assortment of passengers from all stations. Many of these passengers wore very colorful dresses and they were lost in their own conversations which revealed their simplicity of thinking (I did eavesdrop). One rather interesting passenger boarded the train at a station.
Right from the beginning there was something odd about this passenger. I looked up at him and then again and then yet again and just could not understand just what was striking me as odd. The fellow was very fair and rather feminine by the texture of the skin and the cut of the face. But many males are effeminate. That couldn’t have struck me as odd. The guy had a bushy moustache. But that is not at all odd – I myself sport one. The guy took out a potli (a small cloth bag) and brought out a few eatables and started eating. Even the manner in which he ate was quite dainty, more like a female. For the life of me, I just could not guess what was gnawing at my mind about this person. About 5-6 stations later he disembarked. As the guy got up I noticed that he was wearing a rather gaudy red sari. HE WAS WEARING A RED SARI! It was not a he. It was a she and she had a bushy moustache. God! One male character and you are fooled enough to take the whole package as male – the power of the moustache.
We reached Shahdol at around 3 PM. It was quite difficult to get a taxi from there to Bandhavgarh. In fact nobody knew of Bandhavgarh! Gradually we found out that the name of the village is Tala and people know about Tala but not Bandhavgarh. We got a taxi after about an hour. The road was bad. The travel jarring. Eventually it was about 9 PM that we reached the MPTC resort. It was winter and it was freezing. The manager at the counter was gulping down a highball and there were quite a few people in front of the desk. We talked to the guy, showed him our reservation papers and were taken to a cottage that was situated at the farthest point of the resort.
The resort was not what it is today. There has been fresh construction and several new rooms have been created. However, the serenity of the past is lost at the cost of accommodating more tourists. But back then, when we reached the cottage, it was quite isolated. We bathed, and almost immediately dressed to go for dinner. The way to the restaurant was quiet and dark with dim lamps at the ground level to show you where you walked and to bring to light any serpent or other creatures. My children huddled together. My daughter does not like cold and she complained a bit. The son is the other way round; he loves winters and the harsher they are, the better. I and Kakoli are more or less like him.
The dinner was not so good. Although I must admit that if you give me a drink or two, the pain of bad dinner is not felt so much. There was one saving grace though. The waiter realized that we had not liked the food. He came over asking what was it that spoiled the experience is. My son and daughter enthusiastically explained to him how they want the things. From the next day, the things improved considerably.
After the dinner we got out into the open. The sky was dark but laden with sparkling stars. The air had the fresh quality that is there in winters and especially so in the jungles. We took a short walk till we came to a wicket gate. There were instructions there that one should not venture beyond this gate. We normally abide by the rules. In this one instance though we broke the rule and walked through that gate. We knew that it could be dangerous. Also, come to think of it, it was downright foolhardy to do that. But we did for god knows what reason. We walked for about 200 meters before we thought we should retrace our way. The jungle was getting too dense and we could not see our way beyond. So we retraced our steps back.
Just how foolhardy our action was became clear the next day. Talking to workers in the resort over lunch, we were told,
“Sahib, do not go beyond that gate. Previously, just a year back, there was no boundary enclosing this resort. But leopards and some herbivores used to come over right up to the cottages. So we enclosed this in barbed wire fencing. The gate is a part of the fence. A few months back, a leopard got caught in the barbed wires just besides the gate. Some employees come through that gate – that is why the gate is there. These employees report seeing leopards quite frequently in the area near the gate.”
The first time we visited Bandhavgarh was in 1997. Kakoli, the two kids (Maitreyi is my daughters name; she was 10 and Udayan, my son, was barely 8 years of age) and I went to this National Park which is much farther off compared to Kanha. We did not even know the route properly and went to Bilaspur by train. From Bilaspur we wanted to take a taxi all the way to bandhavgrah. I did talk to a few taxi drivers but rejected their offers since Kakoli did not like the look of them. I have to admit that Kakoli overall is a better judge of human beings than yours truly. After talking to people at the railway station we decided to take a train to Shahdol. I do not like train travel and therefore was loathe doing it. Also, I love travel by a car and so was fretting and fuming about Kakoli’s decision. But this I did internally. There are two reasons for this. First of all I like to be taken as an accommodating husband (internally I may be just as good as any other husband!). Secondly, Kakoli does not take it kindly if you oppose her decision (call me henpecked!).
But the train ride proved to be good against all my assumptions. First of all it was a passenger train. These trains are to be hated because they pause for a long time at every small station. This one did too. But the terrain through which it progressed was so beautiful, you did not mind the slow progress at all and as time went on my nerves were calmed and I got lost in the beauty of the surroundings. Secondly, it brought an assortment of passengers from all stations. Many of these passengers wore very colorful dresses and they were lost in their own conversations which revealed their simplicity of thinking (I did eavesdrop). One rather interesting passenger boarded the train at a station.
Right from the beginning there was something odd about this passenger. I looked up at him and then again and then yet again and just could not understand just what was striking me as odd. The fellow was very fair and rather feminine by the texture of the skin and the cut of the face. But many males are effeminate. That couldn’t have struck me as odd. The guy had a bushy moustache. But that is not at all odd – I myself sport one. The guy took out a potli (a small cloth bag) and brought out a few eatables and started eating. Even the manner in which he ate was quite dainty, more like a female. For the life of me, I just could not guess what was gnawing at my mind about this person. About 5-6 stations later he disembarked. As the guy got up I noticed that he was wearing a rather gaudy red sari. HE WAS WEARING A RED SARI! It was not a he. It was a she and she had a bushy moustache. God! One male character and you are fooled enough to take the whole package as male – the power of the moustache.
We reached Shahdol at around 3 PM. It was quite difficult to get a taxi from there to Bandhavgarh. In fact nobody knew of Bandhavgarh! Gradually we found out that the name of the village is Tala and people know about Tala but not Bandhavgarh. We got a taxi after about an hour. The road was bad. The travel jarring. Eventually it was about 9 PM that we reached the MPTC resort. It was winter and it was freezing. The manager at the counter was gulping down a highball and there were quite a few people in front of the desk. We talked to the guy, showed him our reservation papers and were taken to a cottage that was situated at the farthest point of the resort.
The resort was not what it is today. There has been fresh construction and several new rooms have been created. However, the serenity of the past is lost at the cost of accommodating more tourists. But back then, when we reached the cottage, it was quite isolated. We bathed, and almost immediately dressed to go for dinner. The way to the restaurant was quiet and dark with dim lamps at the ground level to show you where you walked and to bring to light any serpent or other creatures. My children huddled together. My daughter does not like cold and she complained a bit. The son is the other way round; he loves winters and the harsher they are, the better. I and Kakoli are more or less like him.
The dinner was not so good. Although I must admit that if you give me a drink or two, the pain of bad dinner is not felt so much. There was one saving grace though. The waiter realized that we had not liked the food. He came over asking what was it that spoiled the experience is. My son and daughter enthusiastically explained to him how they want the things. From the next day, the things improved considerably.
After the dinner we got out into the open. The sky was dark but laden with sparkling stars. The air had the fresh quality that is there in winters and especially so in the jungles. We took a short walk till we came to a wicket gate. There were instructions there that one should not venture beyond this gate. We normally abide by the rules. In this one instance though we broke the rule and walked through that gate. We knew that it could be dangerous. Also, come to think of it, it was downright foolhardy to do that. But we did for god knows what reason. We walked for about 200 meters before we thought we should retrace our way. The jungle was getting too dense and we could not see our way beyond. So we retraced our steps back.
Just how foolhardy our action was became clear the next day. Talking to workers in the resort over lunch, we were told,
“Sahib, do not go beyond that gate. Previously, just a year back, there was no boundary enclosing this resort. But leopards and some herbivores used to come over right up to the cottages. So we enclosed this in barbed wire fencing. The gate is a part of the fence. A few months back, a leopard got caught in the barbed wires just besides the gate. Some employees come through that gate – that is why the gate is there. These employees report seeing leopards quite frequently in the area near the gate.”
SCENES FROM THE INDIAN ACADEMIA: III
Pompeii
The Library Committee meeting is on. Fifteen teachers, the Principal, the Librarian and the Assistant Librarian are sitting around four small tables hastily joined together and concealed beneath one double-bed sheet. The male teachers in this committee are reluctant members. Actually, they are the leftovers. The more influential ones have got themselves on the Sports Committee. Not that sports is a consuming interest. But the sports committee is known to provide a sumptuous lunch after the meeting. And that, of course, is of consuming interest. The members of the library committee have to do with a few measly samosas. The interest they show is then, naturally, commensurate with the niggardly fare they are getting.
The meeting is brought to order and copies of last year’s minutes are distributed around the table. The members glance at them casually and then put the sheets down.
“Shall we take the minutes as read?” asks the Principal.
Everyone nods assent.
“Then someone should propose them and another one should second,” advises the Principal.
This is promptly done.
“Any other business?” the Principal again.
There are a few voices now. The old teacher from political science argues about subscribing to one more health magazine. It is very good, he emphasizes. Other teachers suppress smiles; everyone knows that the gentleman is growing old and is besotted with quite a few health problems. More health magazines mean an increased chance of finding home-remedies to his health problems.
Then someone says, “What about the dust? Something should be done about the dust.”
Everyone looks at the woman who has said this. She is young and obviously has just been appointed.
“Yes. What about the dust Ms. Joseph?” encourages the Principal.
“There is so much dust on the books. Layers upon layers of it. Every time I pick up a volume, I get a bout of sneezing not to mention spoiling my clothes. Something must be done about it.”
There is a general agreement on this issue. The teacher of microbiology reminds that germs use dust as vehicles. Concern is voiced about the health of the teaching staff. Questions are asked. Is the library not cleaned periodically? Are the books not dusted regularly? How does the dust get in? Are the windows not kept closed? Does the library own a vacuum cleaner?
The librarian has the answers. The library indeed gets cleaned every now and then. The books are not dusted because some lecturers had voiced fear a decade or so ago about the possible damage to the books if they were to be dusted by people who didn’t love books. The windows are always closed and no, no pane is missing. And no again, the library does not have a vacuum cleaner. And yes, as to how the dust gets in, the dust is very fine and such dust can enter even if the windows have been nailed permanently.
What he forgets to mention is the fact that layers upon layers of fine dust can get deposited only when the books have not been disturbed for months/years on end. The history teacher should know. Pompeii, with everyone dead, with no one left to care, got shrouded under successive layers of dust. The botany, zoology, geology, teachers should know. An organism dead at a place where no one disturbs the body will become fossilized under layers and layers of fine dust.
The Library Committee meeting is on. Fifteen teachers, the Principal, the Librarian and the Assistant Librarian are sitting around four small tables hastily joined together and concealed beneath one double-bed sheet. The male teachers in this committee are reluctant members. Actually, they are the leftovers. The more influential ones have got themselves on the Sports Committee. Not that sports is a consuming interest. But the sports committee is known to provide a sumptuous lunch after the meeting. And that, of course, is of consuming interest. The members of the library committee have to do with a few measly samosas. The interest they show is then, naturally, commensurate with the niggardly fare they are getting.
The meeting is brought to order and copies of last year’s minutes are distributed around the table. The members glance at them casually and then put the sheets down.
“Shall we take the minutes as read?” asks the Principal.
Everyone nods assent.
“Then someone should propose them and another one should second,” advises the Principal.
This is promptly done.
“Any other business?” the Principal again.
There are a few voices now. The old teacher from political science argues about subscribing to one more health magazine. It is very good, he emphasizes. Other teachers suppress smiles; everyone knows that the gentleman is growing old and is besotted with quite a few health problems. More health magazines mean an increased chance of finding home-remedies to his health problems.
Then someone says, “What about the dust? Something should be done about the dust.”
Everyone looks at the woman who has said this. She is young and obviously has just been appointed.
“Yes. What about the dust Ms. Joseph?” encourages the Principal.
“There is so much dust on the books. Layers upon layers of it. Every time I pick up a volume, I get a bout of sneezing not to mention spoiling my clothes. Something must be done about it.”
There is a general agreement on this issue. The teacher of microbiology reminds that germs use dust as vehicles. Concern is voiced about the health of the teaching staff. Questions are asked. Is the library not cleaned periodically? Are the books not dusted regularly? How does the dust get in? Are the windows not kept closed? Does the library own a vacuum cleaner?
The librarian has the answers. The library indeed gets cleaned every now and then. The books are not dusted because some lecturers had voiced fear a decade or so ago about the possible damage to the books if they were to be dusted by people who didn’t love books. The windows are always closed and no, no pane is missing. And no again, the library does not have a vacuum cleaner. And yes, as to how the dust gets in, the dust is very fine and such dust can enter even if the windows have been nailed permanently.
What he forgets to mention is the fact that layers upon layers of fine dust can get deposited only when the books have not been disturbed for months/years on end. The history teacher should know. Pompeii, with everyone dead, with no one left to care, got shrouded under successive layers of dust. The botany, zoology, geology, teachers should know. An organism dead at a place where no one disturbs the body will become fossilized under layers and layers of fine dust.
SCENES FROM THE INDIAN ACADEMIA: II
Lecturers do not indulge in research
Scene 1
Two lecturers are discussing how to fill up the `self-appraisal’ form. Filling of this application form was made compulsory by the University Grants Commission for the sake of promotions to higher scales.
“What to write under `publications?’”
“Did you publish anything last year?’
“No.”
“Neither did I.”
“Shall we leave it blank then?”
“No. Write NA.”
“NA…..um …Not applicable.”
“Yeah. That’s what you say when you have nothing to write under a given column.”
The two should have consulted other lecturers on how to fill up the column in question. The following is a sample of the items used by the others.
`Five letters to the editor.’ Details of the newspapers and the dates.
`Four letters to the editor. One more has been communicated and is under consideration.’
`Three stories.’ This entry belongs to a teacher of physics.
`Next year!’
Now, that is a promise.
Scene 2
A fellow lecturer comes back from the US after a year’s post-doctoral research. The following are the queries he faces from the other teachers.
“How many?”( In Hindi, `many’ can be masculine or feminine. Here, it was feminine.)
“You must have brought some Playboys and Penthouses. Yes?”
“An ipod you must have brought. What else?”
The poor fellow fields the questions as best as he can. Playboys and Penthouses, he has brought with him. In fact, they were the first things that he snatched from the bookstore, his curiosity being inflamed from years of hearing about these magazines. iPOD and other goods, well he has never had any interest in such things. As for “how many?”, his answer is a rueful shake of his head. Who knows he is telling the truth or not. But no one is ready to believe him. Even today, the Clintons and the Lewinskys only serve to emphasize the archetype of USA that is so deeply embedded in the mind of the average Indian. So when someone goes there to do research, it is very difficult for us to believe that he is going to do research.
The poor fellow gets away from the clutches of these gentlemen and heads towards his own department where a lady teacher is sitting at the table. Her bulk makes obvious what her priorities in life are.
“What did they give you to eat there?’ she asks. And this is the only question she will ever ask of him in all their years together!
Ph.D. is the end of research
An overheard conversation between two teachers
“Oh. You are still doing research? I thought you had done Ph.D. Long back.”
Not all the teachers are like these. Some read enough to stay abreast of the latest developments in their fields. Some actually apply for grants and do research. You can easily find out from the staff room talks who these few people are. They take part in the normal bonhomie for a few moments and then, as if by some magnetism, huddle together ignoring the raucous talk bubbles all around them. Often they talk of some interesting development. More often though, they criticise the state of education and the lack of seriousness and the time-serving attitude of their fellow teachers. Quite a few of these will fall by the wayside in the next few years. Criticism is such an easy incentive for doing nothing!
One of those who fell by the wayside quite a few years ago, but whose conscience is yet to be blunted by being a member of the majority group, has a very insightful observation to make. “When I was appointed as a lecturer here, I used to think a lot about whether I was suitable for this job. That question I have never been able to answer. But whether I am suitable for this job or not, I know now that this job is suitable for me.”
Scene 1
Two lecturers are discussing how to fill up the `self-appraisal’ form. Filling of this application form was made compulsory by the University Grants Commission for the sake of promotions to higher scales.
“What to write under `publications?’”
“Did you publish anything last year?’
“No.”
“Neither did I.”
“Shall we leave it blank then?”
“No. Write NA.”
“NA…..um …Not applicable.”
“Yeah. That’s what you say when you have nothing to write under a given column.”
The two should have consulted other lecturers on how to fill up the column in question. The following is a sample of the items used by the others.
`Five letters to the editor.’ Details of the newspapers and the dates.
`Four letters to the editor. One more has been communicated and is under consideration.’
`Three stories.’ This entry belongs to a teacher of physics.
`Next year!’
Now, that is a promise.
Scene 2
A fellow lecturer comes back from the US after a year’s post-doctoral research. The following are the queries he faces from the other teachers.
“How many?”( In Hindi, `many’ can be masculine or feminine. Here, it was feminine.)
“You must have brought some Playboys and Penthouses. Yes?”
“An ipod you must have brought. What else?”
The poor fellow fields the questions as best as he can. Playboys and Penthouses, he has brought with him. In fact, they were the first things that he snatched from the bookstore, his curiosity being inflamed from years of hearing about these magazines. iPOD and other goods, well he has never had any interest in such things. As for “how many?”, his answer is a rueful shake of his head. Who knows he is telling the truth or not. But no one is ready to believe him. Even today, the Clintons and the Lewinskys only serve to emphasize the archetype of USA that is so deeply embedded in the mind of the average Indian. So when someone goes there to do research, it is very difficult for us to believe that he is going to do research.
The poor fellow gets away from the clutches of these gentlemen and heads towards his own department where a lady teacher is sitting at the table. Her bulk makes obvious what her priorities in life are.
“What did they give you to eat there?’ she asks. And this is the only question she will ever ask of him in all their years together!
Ph.D. is the end of research
An overheard conversation between two teachers
“Oh. You are still doing research? I thought you had done Ph.D. Long back.”
Not all the teachers are like these. Some read enough to stay abreast of the latest developments in their fields. Some actually apply for grants and do research. You can easily find out from the staff room talks who these few people are. They take part in the normal bonhomie for a few moments and then, as if by some magnetism, huddle together ignoring the raucous talk bubbles all around them. Often they talk of some interesting development. More often though, they criticise the state of education and the lack of seriousness and the time-serving attitude of their fellow teachers. Quite a few of these will fall by the wayside in the next few years. Criticism is such an easy incentive for doing nothing!
One of those who fell by the wayside quite a few years ago, but whose conscience is yet to be blunted by being a member of the majority group, has a very insightful observation to make. “When I was appointed as a lecturer here, I used to think a lot about whether I was suitable for this job. That question I have never been able to answer. But whether I am suitable for this job or not, I know now that this job is suitable for me.”
SCENES FROM THE INDIAN ACADEMIA: I
Policies shaping up Indian academics themselves need to be shaped up properly. But as long as we have people like Arjun Singh lording over the HRD ministry, that will never be get done and, conversely, the things will get worse from here onwards. A lot can be written about what is wrong with Indian academics and you will still not be able to write enough and bring to the fore the malaise that plagues it. I have been a teacher, teaching undergraduates and postgraduates for more than two decades. I have seen the system from the inside and am one of several who have served and continue to serve the system. So, rather than lamenting and being another bore who indulges in lamenting, I think it is better to write juicy little snippets that bring to the fore this malaise. That way, it is interesting for people to read and that way even smaller ills that plague the system will be exposed. There will be a series of these snippets. But mind well, while enjoying reading these, do not forget the seriousness of the issue at hand.
Correct
I walk into the NEERI library and request the librarian to allow me to refer to a journal.
`Do you have a letter from your employer?’ she asks apathetically.
`No. But I am a lecturer,’ I show her the ID card.
She takes the card but doesn’t look at it. `That is all very well. But you will have to bring a letter of request from your principal.’
`But ma’am I would require just about an hour. Only that much and no more, ’ I persist.
`I am sorry. But that’s the rule. We can’t allow anyone to just walk through.’
`But I am not anyone. I am a lecturer. And well, several of my students work here. One of them is even doing Ph.D. under me,’ I am trying hard to shrug off the `anyone’ label and am not succeeding at all by the look on her face - she looks as if she is trying hard to suppress a belch.
`That is all very well. But you will have to get a letter from your employer.’
`I have to go back then?’ It’s not a question. I am actually trying to appeal to her good sense, to her sense of empathy for an academic turned back without getting anything for his troubles.
`I am afraid, yes,’ she decrees. No empathy here.
Next day I approach the principal. She hears me out patiently. `You get a letter typed on my letterhead. I will sign it,’ she says. So magnanimous of her.
I hurry over to Ms. David and write out in a legible hand what I want to get typed. It reads as follows:
To,
The Librarian,
NEERI,
Nagpur.
Dear Madam,
Dr. Avinash Upadhyay , a lecturer in this college, may please be allowed to consult the NEERI library for a period of six months. The college will feel obliged if he is extended all the services that the library normally provides its readers.
Thanks.
Principal
XYZ College
`Come after two hours and collect it,’ Ms. David says pointing her hand to the enormous pile of paper indicating she is very busy.
Two hours later I collect the letter and take it to the principal. On her face is something that makes me wonder whether she has an ulcer in her alimentary canal. She reads the letter and frowns.
`No. No. This won’t do at all. What is this “please” and this “obliged?” I am the principal. I am not going to request a librarian. No. This won’t do. Look here, Upadhyay, you come after an hour and I will have the letter ready. The correct letter,’ she waves her hand; I am dismissed.
I loiter around. Talk to other lecturers. Smoke a cigarette. Drink a cup of tea. Kill time and hunger since it is past lunch time and I can’t go home yet. The I go back and the principal hands me over the letter, the one which is correct. It reads as follows:
TO WHOM SO EVER IT MAY CONCERNS
Dr. Avinash Upadhyay, who a lecturer (biochemestry) in our esteemed college, wish to consult a few libraries for which we have no objection and he is not overlooking his classes or practical classes therefore the question of objection do not arise.
For notice of librarians.
The Principal.
I decide not to visit the library after all. With such a correct letter to present, who would?
Everything around here is correct. The Librarian is correct - she is going by the rules. The principal is correct - is she not greater than the librarian? The letter, well it is correct- did not the principal herself say so? With everything so very correct, it is very surprising that academic matters suffer.
While we are talking about libraries, here is a wonderful rule that our University has ( many other Universities complement ours in this regard, or so have I heard) : a student who registers for Ph.D. will receive eight library cards entitling him to borrow eight books at any given time while a lecturer in a college affiliated to the University will get only two! So if you are a Ph.D. guide to a student, you will get only two cards and your student will get eight. After all, research must get priority, shouldn’t it? It is also an implicit admission on the part of the University that its lecturers do not indulge in research. Another interpretation of the rule can be that research means doing Ph.D. and that once this degree is achieved, research, for that individual at least, is over. Take the interpretation you like best.
Both are true!
Correct
I walk into the NEERI library and request the librarian to allow me to refer to a journal.
`Do you have a letter from your employer?’ she asks apathetically.
`No. But I am a lecturer,’ I show her the ID card.
She takes the card but doesn’t look at it. `That is all very well. But you will have to bring a letter of request from your principal.’
`But ma’am I would require just about an hour. Only that much and no more, ’ I persist.
`I am sorry. But that’s the rule. We can’t allow anyone to just walk through.’
`But I am not anyone. I am a lecturer. And well, several of my students work here. One of them is even doing Ph.D. under me,’ I am trying hard to shrug off the `anyone’ label and am not succeeding at all by the look on her face - she looks as if she is trying hard to suppress a belch.
`That is all very well. But you will have to get a letter from your employer.’
`I have to go back then?’ It’s not a question. I am actually trying to appeal to her good sense, to her sense of empathy for an academic turned back without getting anything for his troubles.
`I am afraid, yes,’ she decrees. No empathy here.
Next day I approach the principal. She hears me out patiently. `You get a letter typed on my letterhead. I will sign it,’ she says. So magnanimous of her.
I hurry over to Ms. David and write out in a legible hand what I want to get typed. It reads as follows:
To,
The Librarian,
NEERI,
Nagpur.
Dear Madam,
Dr. Avinash Upadhyay , a lecturer in this college, may please be allowed to consult the NEERI library for a period of six months. The college will feel obliged if he is extended all the services that the library normally provides its readers.
Thanks.
Principal
XYZ College
`Come after two hours and collect it,’ Ms. David says pointing her hand to the enormous pile of paper indicating she is very busy.
Two hours later I collect the letter and take it to the principal. On her face is something that makes me wonder whether she has an ulcer in her alimentary canal. She reads the letter and frowns.
`No. No. This won’t do at all. What is this “please” and this “obliged?” I am the principal. I am not going to request a librarian. No. This won’t do. Look here, Upadhyay, you come after an hour and I will have the letter ready. The correct letter,’ she waves her hand; I am dismissed.
I loiter around. Talk to other lecturers. Smoke a cigarette. Drink a cup of tea. Kill time and hunger since it is past lunch time and I can’t go home yet. The I go back and the principal hands me over the letter, the one which is correct. It reads as follows:
TO WHOM SO EVER IT MAY CONCERNS
Dr. Avinash Upadhyay, who a lecturer (biochemestry) in our esteemed college, wish to consult a few libraries for which we have no objection and he is not overlooking his classes or practical classes therefore the question of objection do not arise.
For notice of librarians.
The Principal.
I decide not to visit the library after all. With such a correct letter to present, who would?
Everything around here is correct. The Librarian is correct - she is going by the rules. The principal is correct - is she not greater than the librarian? The letter, well it is correct- did not the principal herself say so? With everything so very correct, it is very surprising that academic matters suffer.
While we are talking about libraries, here is a wonderful rule that our University has ( many other Universities complement ours in this regard, or so have I heard) : a student who registers for Ph.D. will receive eight library cards entitling him to borrow eight books at any given time while a lecturer in a college affiliated to the University will get only two! So if you are a Ph.D. guide to a student, you will get only two cards and your student will get eight. After all, research must get priority, shouldn’t it? It is also an implicit admission on the part of the University that its lecturers do not indulge in research. Another interpretation of the rule can be that research means doing Ph.D. and that once this degree is achieved, research, for that individual at least, is over. Take the interpretation you like best.
Both are true!
MY TEACHERS: V
Pappu: My Cousin and Sex Educator
Every summer I used to travel to Guna in company of my parents. My grandparents lived in that village and it was there that my summer vacation was spent regularly. I had friends over there – Titu who lived in the house to our right, Bina, Manju and Diggi, who lived in the house right in front of us. The walls dividing the houses were low and as one climbed the stairs to go over to the mezzanine floor, after the 5th stair, one could look over the wall into the foyer of the adjacent house. The houses were on both sides of a narrow lane. The sewers were open. As you stepped out of the house, there was one stair and then you stepped into the lane. Below that stair ran the sewer which was continuous from the first house in the lane and actually came from beyond that house from the main street. So whatever got washed upstream came flowing through the sewer and the last house could see the remnants from several houses and shops upstream. That in itself could be a nine pastime – sit on the door of your house with you legs resting on the out step and watch for the scum flowing in the sewer and find out what the others were doing and what they had to eat last night. Of course it smelled horribly and there were flies. But unencumbered by any knowledge of even the term unhygienic, it was not bothersome.
This summer was different from the other summers. Two of my cousins, Pappu and Guddu had also come over and there was real fun. Pappu was 5 years older to me and Guddu was my age. So it was with Guddu that I bonded better. Pappu was not only older, he was a bully of whom we were afraid. He could twist our ears for faults we did not know we had committed and could slap us too. So we avoided him. He smelled of cigarettes and used to go to the only movie theatre that was there in the village. Therefore he was to be respected.
There were several volumes of Mahabharata in our house. This was a wonderful thing. The text pages were interspersed liberally with plates illustrating characters and events described in the epic. So one could see Arjuna, Bhima, Draupadi, Duryodhana and Dushasan, scenes from the war, and several paintings of Krishna. One volume had many plates where Apsaras were illustrated. Apsaras are very beautiful and sexy girls who dance in the court of Indra in the heaven and cohabit with him. In the plates, the illustrations did justice to the famed beauty of Apsaras. They were clad in the scantiest of clothes with just a bra-like top and very tightly worn dhoti which accentuated the shape of the thighs and the hips. The torso was completely naked except for the brief top and the navel could be seen. To tell you the truth, we did not understand the significance of breasts and hips till that point in our age. But our curiosity was just getting ignited about these differences between boys and girls – just that much.
One evening when Guddu and I opened the Apsara illustrations volume to ogle at the paintings, we were rather surprised. A wheat-grain like tiny object had been drawn on each of the paintings just below the navel and just above the place where the dhoti started. What was that we didn’t understand. But I remember that we giggled at the additions. While we were still giggling, Pappu walked in and before we could stop, he caught us up by the ears and twisted the pinnae. We cried out in pain.
“So, you scoundrels, you have mutilated grandpa’s Mahabharata, hain! And what audacity, what have you drawn here, hain? Don’t you feel ashamed of yourselves, hain?”
We were all red in the face trying to free ourselves from the bully while simultaneously trying to make him understand that we were not the guilty ones. We pleaded with him to leave us alone and that the culprit must be someone else. But the guy held on to our ears and took us to where our mothers were sitting. There he told them that we had fallen into bad company and the evidence of it was in the inside room. He took us back into the room now accompanied by our mothers. Once inside, he encouraged them to look at the plates depicting the now wheat-grain sporting Apsaras. A look of horror came onto the faces of both mothers. After this, the remaining punishment was met out by them. They harassed us by their questions. They wanted to know how much did we know and what did we mean by showing our knowledge this way. They kept on enquiring about the source of our knowledge. It didn’t do that we protested about our lack of knowledge or lack of guilt as far as the wheat-grain adornment of the paintings was concerned. We were then locked up in the inner room. This was really bad because this room was very dark and the only switch was at a height we couldn’t reach. We were very frightened and started banging the door. After about an hour, there were voices outside. Our mothers commanded us to promise that we would not do the dastardly thing again. Although we had protested earlier about the accusation, this time we meekly promised to be good. That was necessary to get out of the darkness that held potential for god knows what kind of perils. We were allowed out of the room but our guilt was now confirmed.
Two days later Pappu asked us about the thing again. We started weeping now imagining that the whole thing would now be repeated again. But he calmed us down and told us that it was actually he who had done the thing. Armed with this revelation, when we started getting up to tell our mothers the truth about the whole thing, he reminded us that it wouldn’t be any good for we had admitted to the guilt already. Also, he would not own up the thing in front of them.
“Is it not enough that I am admitting it to you?” he asked. That was true, he did not have to admit it.
“I am admitting this so that I can tell you about certain realities. You kids are growing up, you should know about bigger things in life,” he said.
Now we were curious. Who doesn’t like to grow up? Besides, once we were educated by this big brother, we could go out and, in our turn, pass the wisdom to the others of our age. That way we would assert the right of seniority over them by dint of our superior knowledge.
“What you think are wheat-grains, are actually vaginas.” He told us conspiratorially. Actually he used the Hindi slang word for vagina. His voice was a whisper and our ears were totally tuned to that. We knew that we were being made party to the big secrets of adulthood.
“What, you don’t know their use?” he asked feigning astonishment over our lack of knowledge. “They use it to pee of course. You see the slit? The water comes out of that.”
In the afternoon when we went out and told the big secret to our friends, they poured a lot of cold water over our egos. They already knew that! Gradually we found out that they all had sisters and had seen them peeing. So they knew.
Soon it was time to go back to our respective towns. But almost in a matter of days after we came back, Pappu also came to Nagpur. I got educated further.
“Do you know how your were born?” He asked.
“Yeah, I came out of my mother,” I said. “Everyone does.”
“No, you fool. Who put you there inside your mother? You know that?”
I was stumped. I admitted I didn’t know that.
“You have that tube with which you pee, don’t you?” He asked, beginning education.
“When you will put that tube inside the vagina of a girl, a baby will get inside her!” he revealed.
I felt like puking. Yuck. Why ever would I put it inside the vagina of any girl? That is a dirty thing to do. Urine comes out of that place. No, no. This guy was joking. But he told me that there is another hole there where you put it. But it still appeared yucky.
Next day, I was sitting with Kalusingh karki on the mound of sand outside the school where some construction activity was going on. I told him about the revelation that had been made yesterday. His jaw dropped and seconds later, he asked me, “You mean, our fathers put those things into our mothers and that is how we got made?”
I told him that this yucky thing had kept me awake half the night and that I was not certain it was right. But there was enough here to make us investigate. It was impossible to ask any of our teachers. We would be severely beaten up. Who to ask? Kalu said that he knew of a bully in his locality. He was very worldly-wise fellow and he would know. So we went to him with hearts beating wildly. We found this boy called Bhuri. And Kalu straight away put the whole situation before him.
“Ha ha ha ha…. Ha ha ha ha..” the guy couldn’t stop laughing. When he did, he asked, “You mean you do not know how things are? In which class do you study?”
“Fifth,” we said as if we were ashamed of the fact.
“Hah! Fifth. And you still don’t know? I knew of this right then in the 3rd and then I left school.” Bhuri said indicating that we were real dimwits. He then told us that what we had been told by Pappu was indeed correct. We were crestfallen with the confirmation that we were both made in that ugly manner. And yet, there was this odd sensation of having accomplished something – the feeling that you get when you acquire some knowledge that is hitherto unknown.
“Avinash,” Kalu said while we were walking back after the school was over, “What if you feel like urinating when your tube is inside that?” That was the fundamental doubt that was plaguing him.
“May be you take it out, urinate, and then put it back for the time required to make a baby.” I said, speculating.
“No, no. I mean what if you urinate inside?” Kalu persisted.
I didn’t know the answer.
“Why don’t we ask Pappu?” Kalu suggested.
We found Pappu smoking behind a thick tree near the garden. He blew smoke in our faces when Kalu put the question to him.
“This is a wonderful question, he said,” and Kalu looked very proud of himself.
“You should not do that. You should hold your urine. But then if you can’t and pee inside, the child that is born has acne all over the face.” Pappu revealed.
“Karade,” Kalu said.
“What?” I asked, not understanding the meaning. Karade was a classmate of ours and had a bad case of acne. HE HAD A BAD CASE OF ACNE!
“My God!” I said.
At this point the things were rather good in school. Fifth class is middle school. So when I came to fifth, the teachers were all new and my previous reputation had not come with me to the new class. And my performance in the first few tests was very good and so I had claimed back my position in the elite group of which Kalu was also a part. The teachers were all quite happy with me again. For once, better times reigned at home too because my father was happy that I was doing well in school. My mother was happy that her son was proving himself.
Next day, during the recess, several of us were sitting on the sand mound and munching on tidbits and talking. As the conversation progressed, I picked up an argument with a friend. Things started heating up. Suddenly, Karade jumped into the argument on my friends’ side. Kalu joined my side. The things became very heated and at one point Karade told us that we were good for nothing kids and that our parents must be pigs. This cut me up and I said
“Now, don’t let me reveal something about you. That won’t serve you at all.” I looked at Kalu and he was looking at me.
“What do you have to reveal?” Karade asked. “You have nothing.”
“Your father peed into your mother’s vagina,” I told him loudly so that the others could hear.
“And that is why you have so many pebbles growing on your face,” Kalu finished off the matter.
In the next moment, a brick appeared in Karade’s hands and before we could understand, there was blood on Kalu’s forehead and he was lying unconscious on the ground. There was a lot of commotion. The girls’ group which was standing at some distance saw this. Some of them started weeping. Some others rushed to the teachers and Mr. Poddar came out with a cane in his hands. First things first. Some water was sprinkled on Kalu’s face. Bit by bit he became conscious. He was then taken for first aid by the peons who had also assembled there. Mr. Poddar found out that it was Karade who had thrown the brick. He caught him and took him to the Principal.
As the next class started, a peon stood at the door. He whispered something. The class teacher told the class that there was an emergency and he would be going to the Principal with Kalu and me and that the class will not make noise while he was out.
When we went inside the Principal’s office, Karade was standing there and on his face was a smirk.
“What did you say to Karade?” Shouted the Principal at us.
We did not say anything. But when the question was repeated, I told him the whole thing and also the sources from which our wisdom had been received. When this was over, the sentence was passed. Karade was set free and he smiled. We were severely beaten up by the Principal and reprimanded. We were made to take an oath which went something like this:
“I will pay full attention to studies.”
“I will read only the text books
and such books as suggested
by the teachers from time to time.”
“I will not read any literature
that is of a corrupting nature.”
“I will not talk to bad boys.”
“I will not indulge in curiosities
that are not proper for my age.”
We were made to repeat this oath ten times. After this we walked back to the class with Mr. Verma, our class teacher.
Once in the class, Mr. Verma pronounced us bad boys and asked other students to not to play with us. I had become a front bencher. But I was stripped of this right and was asked to go back to the back-benches. The same fate befell Kalu. Kalu fought with me because he thought I was the root of this whole thing. We fell out for some time. My reputation went back to normal, i.e., that of a boy good for nothing.
The back benchers received us with enthusiasm. But the girls shunned me completely. They lay a lot of stock by the teachers. Even the girl who was my neighbor and who used to walk back home with me from the school, refused to be with me. Soon she gossiped with other girls of the locality and the other girls also started shunning me. Conversely, I became a hero with the boys of the locality and, as a repayment for the acceptance, spread the wisdom among them. A whole movement to get to the bottom of the truth erupted henceforth and we spent considerable time in educating ourselves about sex.
Every summer I used to travel to Guna in company of my parents. My grandparents lived in that village and it was there that my summer vacation was spent regularly. I had friends over there – Titu who lived in the house to our right, Bina, Manju and Diggi, who lived in the house right in front of us. The walls dividing the houses were low and as one climbed the stairs to go over to the mezzanine floor, after the 5th stair, one could look over the wall into the foyer of the adjacent house. The houses were on both sides of a narrow lane. The sewers were open. As you stepped out of the house, there was one stair and then you stepped into the lane. Below that stair ran the sewer which was continuous from the first house in the lane and actually came from beyond that house from the main street. So whatever got washed upstream came flowing through the sewer and the last house could see the remnants from several houses and shops upstream. That in itself could be a nine pastime – sit on the door of your house with you legs resting on the out step and watch for the scum flowing in the sewer and find out what the others were doing and what they had to eat last night. Of course it smelled horribly and there were flies. But unencumbered by any knowledge of even the term unhygienic, it was not bothersome.
This summer was different from the other summers. Two of my cousins, Pappu and Guddu had also come over and there was real fun. Pappu was 5 years older to me and Guddu was my age. So it was with Guddu that I bonded better. Pappu was not only older, he was a bully of whom we were afraid. He could twist our ears for faults we did not know we had committed and could slap us too. So we avoided him. He smelled of cigarettes and used to go to the only movie theatre that was there in the village. Therefore he was to be respected.
There were several volumes of Mahabharata in our house. This was a wonderful thing. The text pages were interspersed liberally with plates illustrating characters and events described in the epic. So one could see Arjuna, Bhima, Draupadi, Duryodhana and Dushasan, scenes from the war, and several paintings of Krishna. One volume had many plates where Apsaras were illustrated. Apsaras are very beautiful and sexy girls who dance in the court of Indra in the heaven and cohabit with him. In the plates, the illustrations did justice to the famed beauty of Apsaras. They were clad in the scantiest of clothes with just a bra-like top and very tightly worn dhoti which accentuated the shape of the thighs and the hips. The torso was completely naked except for the brief top and the navel could be seen. To tell you the truth, we did not understand the significance of breasts and hips till that point in our age. But our curiosity was just getting ignited about these differences between boys and girls – just that much.
One evening when Guddu and I opened the Apsara illustrations volume to ogle at the paintings, we were rather surprised. A wheat-grain like tiny object had been drawn on each of the paintings just below the navel and just above the place where the dhoti started. What was that we didn’t understand. But I remember that we giggled at the additions. While we were still giggling, Pappu walked in and before we could stop, he caught us up by the ears and twisted the pinnae. We cried out in pain.
“So, you scoundrels, you have mutilated grandpa’s Mahabharata, hain! And what audacity, what have you drawn here, hain? Don’t you feel ashamed of yourselves, hain?”
We were all red in the face trying to free ourselves from the bully while simultaneously trying to make him understand that we were not the guilty ones. We pleaded with him to leave us alone and that the culprit must be someone else. But the guy held on to our ears and took us to where our mothers were sitting. There he told them that we had fallen into bad company and the evidence of it was in the inside room. He took us back into the room now accompanied by our mothers. Once inside, he encouraged them to look at the plates depicting the now wheat-grain sporting Apsaras. A look of horror came onto the faces of both mothers. After this, the remaining punishment was met out by them. They harassed us by their questions. They wanted to know how much did we know and what did we mean by showing our knowledge this way. They kept on enquiring about the source of our knowledge. It didn’t do that we protested about our lack of knowledge or lack of guilt as far as the wheat-grain adornment of the paintings was concerned. We were then locked up in the inner room. This was really bad because this room was very dark and the only switch was at a height we couldn’t reach. We were very frightened and started banging the door. After about an hour, there were voices outside. Our mothers commanded us to promise that we would not do the dastardly thing again. Although we had protested earlier about the accusation, this time we meekly promised to be good. That was necessary to get out of the darkness that held potential for god knows what kind of perils. We were allowed out of the room but our guilt was now confirmed.
Two days later Pappu asked us about the thing again. We started weeping now imagining that the whole thing would now be repeated again. But he calmed us down and told us that it was actually he who had done the thing. Armed with this revelation, when we started getting up to tell our mothers the truth about the whole thing, he reminded us that it wouldn’t be any good for we had admitted to the guilt already. Also, he would not own up the thing in front of them.
“Is it not enough that I am admitting it to you?” he asked. That was true, he did not have to admit it.
“I am admitting this so that I can tell you about certain realities. You kids are growing up, you should know about bigger things in life,” he said.
Now we were curious. Who doesn’t like to grow up? Besides, once we were educated by this big brother, we could go out and, in our turn, pass the wisdom to the others of our age. That way we would assert the right of seniority over them by dint of our superior knowledge.
“What you think are wheat-grains, are actually vaginas.” He told us conspiratorially. Actually he used the Hindi slang word for vagina. His voice was a whisper and our ears were totally tuned to that. We knew that we were being made party to the big secrets of adulthood.
“What, you don’t know their use?” he asked feigning astonishment over our lack of knowledge. “They use it to pee of course. You see the slit? The water comes out of that.”
In the afternoon when we went out and told the big secret to our friends, they poured a lot of cold water over our egos. They already knew that! Gradually we found out that they all had sisters and had seen them peeing. So they knew.
Soon it was time to go back to our respective towns. But almost in a matter of days after we came back, Pappu also came to Nagpur. I got educated further.
“Do you know how your were born?” He asked.
“Yeah, I came out of my mother,” I said. “Everyone does.”
“No, you fool. Who put you there inside your mother? You know that?”
I was stumped. I admitted I didn’t know that.
“You have that tube with which you pee, don’t you?” He asked, beginning education.
“When you will put that tube inside the vagina of a girl, a baby will get inside her!” he revealed.
I felt like puking. Yuck. Why ever would I put it inside the vagina of any girl? That is a dirty thing to do. Urine comes out of that place. No, no. This guy was joking. But he told me that there is another hole there where you put it. But it still appeared yucky.
Next day, I was sitting with Kalusingh karki on the mound of sand outside the school where some construction activity was going on. I told him about the revelation that had been made yesterday. His jaw dropped and seconds later, he asked me, “You mean, our fathers put those things into our mothers and that is how we got made?”
I told him that this yucky thing had kept me awake half the night and that I was not certain it was right. But there was enough here to make us investigate. It was impossible to ask any of our teachers. We would be severely beaten up. Who to ask? Kalu said that he knew of a bully in his locality. He was very worldly-wise fellow and he would know. So we went to him with hearts beating wildly. We found this boy called Bhuri. And Kalu straight away put the whole situation before him.
“Ha ha ha ha…. Ha ha ha ha..” the guy couldn’t stop laughing. When he did, he asked, “You mean you do not know how things are? In which class do you study?”
“Fifth,” we said as if we were ashamed of the fact.
“Hah! Fifth. And you still don’t know? I knew of this right then in the 3rd and then I left school.” Bhuri said indicating that we were real dimwits. He then told us that what we had been told by Pappu was indeed correct. We were crestfallen with the confirmation that we were both made in that ugly manner. And yet, there was this odd sensation of having accomplished something – the feeling that you get when you acquire some knowledge that is hitherto unknown.
“Avinash,” Kalu said while we were walking back after the school was over, “What if you feel like urinating when your tube is inside that?” That was the fundamental doubt that was plaguing him.
“May be you take it out, urinate, and then put it back for the time required to make a baby.” I said, speculating.
“No, no. I mean what if you urinate inside?” Kalu persisted.
I didn’t know the answer.
“Why don’t we ask Pappu?” Kalu suggested.
We found Pappu smoking behind a thick tree near the garden. He blew smoke in our faces when Kalu put the question to him.
“This is a wonderful question, he said,” and Kalu looked very proud of himself.
“You should not do that. You should hold your urine. But then if you can’t and pee inside, the child that is born has acne all over the face.” Pappu revealed.
“Karade,” Kalu said.
“What?” I asked, not understanding the meaning. Karade was a classmate of ours and had a bad case of acne. HE HAD A BAD CASE OF ACNE!
“My God!” I said.
At this point the things were rather good in school. Fifth class is middle school. So when I came to fifth, the teachers were all new and my previous reputation had not come with me to the new class. And my performance in the first few tests was very good and so I had claimed back my position in the elite group of which Kalu was also a part. The teachers were all quite happy with me again. For once, better times reigned at home too because my father was happy that I was doing well in school. My mother was happy that her son was proving himself.
Next day, during the recess, several of us were sitting on the sand mound and munching on tidbits and talking. As the conversation progressed, I picked up an argument with a friend. Things started heating up. Suddenly, Karade jumped into the argument on my friends’ side. Kalu joined my side. The things became very heated and at one point Karade told us that we were good for nothing kids and that our parents must be pigs. This cut me up and I said
“Now, don’t let me reveal something about you. That won’t serve you at all.” I looked at Kalu and he was looking at me.
“What do you have to reveal?” Karade asked. “You have nothing.”
“Your father peed into your mother’s vagina,” I told him loudly so that the others could hear.
“And that is why you have so many pebbles growing on your face,” Kalu finished off the matter.
In the next moment, a brick appeared in Karade’s hands and before we could understand, there was blood on Kalu’s forehead and he was lying unconscious on the ground. There was a lot of commotion. The girls’ group which was standing at some distance saw this. Some of them started weeping. Some others rushed to the teachers and Mr. Poddar came out with a cane in his hands. First things first. Some water was sprinkled on Kalu’s face. Bit by bit he became conscious. He was then taken for first aid by the peons who had also assembled there. Mr. Poddar found out that it was Karade who had thrown the brick. He caught him and took him to the Principal.
As the next class started, a peon stood at the door. He whispered something. The class teacher told the class that there was an emergency and he would be going to the Principal with Kalu and me and that the class will not make noise while he was out.
When we went inside the Principal’s office, Karade was standing there and on his face was a smirk.
“What did you say to Karade?” Shouted the Principal at us.
We did not say anything. But when the question was repeated, I told him the whole thing and also the sources from which our wisdom had been received. When this was over, the sentence was passed. Karade was set free and he smiled. We were severely beaten up by the Principal and reprimanded. We were made to take an oath which went something like this:
“I will pay full attention to studies.”
“I will read only the text books
and such books as suggested
by the teachers from time to time.”
“I will not read any literature
that is of a corrupting nature.”
“I will not talk to bad boys.”
“I will not indulge in curiosities
that are not proper for my age.”
We were made to repeat this oath ten times. After this we walked back to the class with Mr. Verma, our class teacher.
Once in the class, Mr. Verma pronounced us bad boys and asked other students to not to play with us. I had become a front bencher. But I was stripped of this right and was asked to go back to the back-benches. The same fate befell Kalu. Kalu fought with me because he thought I was the root of this whole thing. We fell out for some time. My reputation went back to normal, i.e., that of a boy good for nothing.
The back benchers received us with enthusiasm. But the girls shunned me completely. They lay a lot of stock by the teachers. Even the girl who was my neighbor and who used to walk back home with me from the school, refused to be with me. Soon she gossiped with other girls of the locality and the other girls also started shunning me. Conversely, I became a hero with the boys of the locality and, as a repayment for the acceptance, spread the wisdom among them. A whole movement to get to the bottom of the truth erupted henceforth and we spent considerable time in educating ourselves about sex.
Friday, August 17, 2007
MY TEACHERS: IV
Mr. Parate
Class 4 – my behavior, in the eyes of the class teacher Mr. Parate, had become completely wayward. According to him I deliberately solved those problems which he had not given, deliberately wrote lines that he had not written on the board. I found this strange. But who could argue with a teacher whose face looked completely pugnacious. His face was small, roundish with a small crop of disheveled hair on the top and the lips and the nose were slightly pushed out. That gave the appearance of the snout of a bulldog. Moreover, the entire face was full of pockmarks from an earlier pyrrhic victory over chicken pox.
He used to beat me everyday for doing homework that he had not given in the first place! How strange; why would any kid waste his time doing wrong homework especially when that much time got deducted from playing in the fields? This taught me a few lessons and from these lessons came out a few deductions:
1. Time spent in getting caned (2 canes on each palm, Mr. Parate’s standard): 1 minute.
2. Total time spent getting caned over the day (7 periods per day): 7 minutes.
3. Total time spent doing homework on average: 2 hours.
Ergo: If the punishment for not wasting 2 hours away from play was just 7 minutes, why do any homework at all? The moment this postulate came to my mind, I stopped doing homework once for all. The punishment remained the same and I became a happy kid. Gradually my palms hardened and my attitude toughened. The world became a better place to live in.
My image though took a severe beating. From a promising kid I went to a pure nincompoop. Gradually a different scenario evolved which pained me but I had become a hardened traveler (for appearances) of the road I had chosen. There was no turning back now. The new scenario became a routine and went something like this.
Mr. Parate enters the class. He puts down the copybooks and the book that he is carrying. He puts the cane down on the table. He then takes out a handkerchief from his right pocket and wipes his glistening forehead – the only part of the face not invaded by the chicken pox. He folds the handkerchief with all concentration as if that was a life and death matter. This done, he speaks:
“Avinash Upadhyay, stand up.”
I stand up. He picks up the cane and walks towards me.
“Hold out your hands.”
I thrust my hands out.
Four times the cane swishes and impacts the outstretched palms. He then walks back. Halfway through to his desk, he stops. Almost as an afterthought, or may be to just confirm and so absolve himself of any guilt, he asks:
“I am sure you have not done the homework.”
“No sir,” I say dutifully. He nods his head and tells himself “I told you so.” He goes back to his desk. “Sit down,” He issues the final command.
I close my hands. Put them in my pockets and sit down. I am smiling to show to the entire class my defiance. Inside I am crying. I am now branded wayward. I do not want to be branded such. But it is too late now and I have to travel this road putting up a brave front.
“It is better to get the first things done first, class. Now that the thing is done, let us turn towards some study. Avinash, it is up to you whether you want to participate in the action now.”
This last sentence completed the routine that followed day after day, each day. And this last sentence was the worst punishment I have ever received. It completely cut me up from inside. It made me cry from a million eyes I didn’t even know existed. And all the tears were acrid. They burned all my insides. They made holes in me so deep they reached my soul.
Lately things had not been good on other fronts too. I have fallen out with my earlier gang which consists of the elites in the class. I have a new set of friends – all of them truant; one of them smokes and that is a brave thing to do. They steal money from their parents and even go out and have snacks in the restaurant opposite the school.
Three students sat together per bench. My friend who sat beside me, Bhupinder Singh, a Sikh who was fair to the extent of being transparent and who was rather pudgy so that you felt you were shaking hands with a mollusk, had not been behaving like a friend. He refused to let me look into his copybook to see what he was copying from the board. Every time I tried to peep, he would tell me that he was disturbed by that. “Why don’t you look at the board and copy like I do?” He would ask exasperated. I couldn’t understand his behavior. He was doing this even when I had stolen a few imported pen nibs from my father’s drawer and given one to him just out of friendship when he had broken his nib and was afraid that he would be scolded at home. I admit that I used to look a lot into his copybook but that was because I couldn’t properly see what was written on the board. I had to narrow my eyes to very narrow slits before the letters on the board made some sense. There is a limit to how long can you narrow your eyes like that. The eyes get tired.
I told him I will put some rose water into my eyes and the things will be alright but for now he must allow me to look into his copybook. My mother was a big votary of rose water, Every time I told her my eyes were tired and that there were big hazy circles around the street lights, she would ask me to put rose water in my eyes. Lately I had been very tardy in doing this. That must have been the reason for my present plight.
Then came the exam. Mr. Parate wrote out a few math problems on the board and asked us to copy those and solve within the period. Bhupinder refused to let me peep. So I narrowed my eyes and copied whatever I saw and solved the problems. When the result came the next day, Mr. Parate asked me to come up front. I went and received a double-dose of canes and was handed over the answer sheet. As I turned, he gave a mighty whack with his hands on my back. That almost sent me sprawling to the floor. I somehow maintained my balance and gave the class a smile and walked back to my seat.
“And get your answer-sheet signed by your father tomorrow,” He said to my back.
That was bad. I had looked at my answer-sheet and had found out that I had scored a perfect zero out of a possible twenty. I am going home to get beaten up by my father.
When I reach home, I am downcast. Somehow I summon up the courage and give my father the answer-sheet and look at the ground. I would welcome if it opened up and gobbled me up like Sita. My father looks at the sheet, looks at me, looks at the sheet and then beats me up. When his anger is drowned in my sobs, he picks up the sheet and goes through it. Then he says something that gets me right up and besides him to look at the sheet.
“But all the answers are correct! How could you get a zero? You should have got twenty! I am coming to your school tomorrow and meeting your teacher.”
Next day he comes and meets him. When I go home, my father is waiting for me.
“You get ready now. We are going to a doctor. You should have told me before. May be I should have guessed.”
Two days later, I am standing on the balcony outside the doctor’s 3rd floor office staring out into the beautiful world. In front of me is the big signboard saying “ESSO” in big, red letters. I can see it quite clearly and the much smaller letters beneath it. No need of any rose water to see so well. The significance of a minus 5 correction for my eyes right in the beginning is lost upon me. My father is worried as he talks to the doctor; I am happy. I know I will be able to see the things on the board quite clearly and that would be the end to my bad performances. I can join back my original gang of top students and will be able to break the ostracism they have placed on me owing to my slipping grades.
I go to school next day brimming with confidence and pleasure. My friends see me.
“Chashmuddin (derogatory for one with specs),” one of them gives a cat call. They poke fun at me. “He is a blind boy,” another one says.
“Now he can see where he is urinating. All these days he was urinating on his boots,” it’s a silly joke but they all laugh.
The class begins. Mr. Parate enters. “Avinash Upadhyay, stand up.”
He comes up with the cane.
“I have done homework, sir.” I blurt out, not willing to be caned.
He stops. He looks at me. “You think you are smart if you have done homework just one day in all these days? Put out your hands.”
I do as commanded. There is no choice. Four times the cane swishes. He goes back. There is no brave smile on my lips. For the first time it is difficult the hold the acrid tears. Before I know and can stop it, the tears come welling out of my eyes and I am standing there, in front of the whole class, and weeping stupidly. My specs are all wet and the tears are collecting at the bottom of the glasses. Through that I see distorted images of all my classmates looking at me and of Mr. Parate. The optical distortion makes them all appear like monsters.
“Your eyes have glasses now. Get some glasses for your brains too.” That one is from Mr. Parate. That is a good punch line, I must admit.
It is back to business as usual. I have to be a bad boy. I cannot transgress that label any more.
Class 4 – my behavior, in the eyes of the class teacher Mr. Parate, had become completely wayward. According to him I deliberately solved those problems which he had not given, deliberately wrote lines that he had not written on the board. I found this strange. But who could argue with a teacher whose face looked completely pugnacious. His face was small, roundish with a small crop of disheveled hair on the top and the lips and the nose were slightly pushed out. That gave the appearance of the snout of a bulldog. Moreover, the entire face was full of pockmarks from an earlier pyrrhic victory over chicken pox.
He used to beat me everyday for doing homework that he had not given in the first place! How strange; why would any kid waste his time doing wrong homework especially when that much time got deducted from playing in the fields? This taught me a few lessons and from these lessons came out a few deductions:
1. Time spent in getting caned (2 canes on each palm, Mr. Parate’s standard): 1 minute.
2. Total time spent getting caned over the day (7 periods per day): 7 minutes.
3. Total time spent doing homework on average: 2 hours.
Ergo: If the punishment for not wasting 2 hours away from play was just 7 minutes, why do any homework at all? The moment this postulate came to my mind, I stopped doing homework once for all. The punishment remained the same and I became a happy kid. Gradually my palms hardened and my attitude toughened. The world became a better place to live in.
My image though took a severe beating. From a promising kid I went to a pure nincompoop. Gradually a different scenario evolved which pained me but I had become a hardened traveler (for appearances) of the road I had chosen. There was no turning back now. The new scenario became a routine and went something like this.
Mr. Parate enters the class. He puts down the copybooks and the book that he is carrying. He puts the cane down on the table. He then takes out a handkerchief from his right pocket and wipes his glistening forehead – the only part of the face not invaded by the chicken pox. He folds the handkerchief with all concentration as if that was a life and death matter. This done, he speaks:
“Avinash Upadhyay, stand up.”
I stand up. He picks up the cane and walks towards me.
“Hold out your hands.”
I thrust my hands out.
Four times the cane swishes and impacts the outstretched palms. He then walks back. Halfway through to his desk, he stops. Almost as an afterthought, or may be to just confirm and so absolve himself of any guilt, he asks:
“I am sure you have not done the homework.”
“No sir,” I say dutifully. He nods his head and tells himself “I told you so.” He goes back to his desk. “Sit down,” He issues the final command.
I close my hands. Put them in my pockets and sit down. I am smiling to show to the entire class my defiance. Inside I am crying. I am now branded wayward. I do not want to be branded such. But it is too late now and I have to travel this road putting up a brave front.
“It is better to get the first things done first, class. Now that the thing is done, let us turn towards some study. Avinash, it is up to you whether you want to participate in the action now.”
This last sentence completed the routine that followed day after day, each day. And this last sentence was the worst punishment I have ever received. It completely cut me up from inside. It made me cry from a million eyes I didn’t even know existed. And all the tears were acrid. They burned all my insides. They made holes in me so deep they reached my soul.
Lately things had not been good on other fronts too. I have fallen out with my earlier gang which consists of the elites in the class. I have a new set of friends – all of them truant; one of them smokes and that is a brave thing to do. They steal money from their parents and even go out and have snacks in the restaurant opposite the school.
Three students sat together per bench. My friend who sat beside me, Bhupinder Singh, a Sikh who was fair to the extent of being transparent and who was rather pudgy so that you felt you were shaking hands with a mollusk, had not been behaving like a friend. He refused to let me look into his copybook to see what he was copying from the board. Every time I tried to peep, he would tell me that he was disturbed by that. “Why don’t you look at the board and copy like I do?” He would ask exasperated. I couldn’t understand his behavior. He was doing this even when I had stolen a few imported pen nibs from my father’s drawer and given one to him just out of friendship when he had broken his nib and was afraid that he would be scolded at home. I admit that I used to look a lot into his copybook but that was because I couldn’t properly see what was written on the board. I had to narrow my eyes to very narrow slits before the letters on the board made some sense. There is a limit to how long can you narrow your eyes like that. The eyes get tired.
I told him I will put some rose water into my eyes and the things will be alright but for now he must allow me to look into his copybook. My mother was a big votary of rose water, Every time I told her my eyes were tired and that there were big hazy circles around the street lights, she would ask me to put rose water in my eyes. Lately I had been very tardy in doing this. That must have been the reason for my present plight.
Then came the exam. Mr. Parate wrote out a few math problems on the board and asked us to copy those and solve within the period. Bhupinder refused to let me peep. So I narrowed my eyes and copied whatever I saw and solved the problems. When the result came the next day, Mr. Parate asked me to come up front. I went and received a double-dose of canes and was handed over the answer sheet. As I turned, he gave a mighty whack with his hands on my back. That almost sent me sprawling to the floor. I somehow maintained my balance and gave the class a smile and walked back to my seat.
“And get your answer-sheet signed by your father tomorrow,” He said to my back.
That was bad. I had looked at my answer-sheet and had found out that I had scored a perfect zero out of a possible twenty. I am going home to get beaten up by my father.
When I reach home, I am downcast. Somehow I summon up the courage and give my father the answer-sheet and look at the ground. I would welcome if it opened up and gobbled me up like Sita. My father looks at the sheet, looks at me, looks at the sheet and then beats me up. When his anger is drowned in my sobs, he picks up the sheet and goes through it. Then he says something that gets me right up and besides him to look at the sheet.
“But all the answers are correct! How could you get a zero? You should have got twenty! I am coming to your school tomorrow and meeting your teacher.”
Next day he comes and meets him. When I go home, my father is waiting for me.
“You get ready now. We are going to a doctor. You should have told me before. May be I should have guessed.”
Two days later, I am standing on the balcony outside the doctor’s 3rd floor office staring out into the beautiful world. In front of me is the big signboard saying “ESSO” in big, red letters. I can see it quite clearly and the much smaller letters beneath it. No need of any rose water to see so well. The significance of a minus 5 correction for my eyes right in the beginning is lost upon me. My father is worried as he talks to the doctor; I am happy. I know I will be able to see the things on the board quite clearly and that would be the end to my bad performances. I can join back my original gang of top students and will be able to break the ostracism they have placed on me owing to my slipping grades.
I go to school next day brimming with confidence and pleasure. My friends see me.
“Chashmuddin (derogatory for one with specs),” one of them gives a cat call. They poke fun at me. “He is a blind boy,” another one says.
“Now he can see where he is urinating. All these days he was urinating on his boots,” it’s a silly joke but they all laugh.
The class begins. Mr. Parate enters. “Avinash Upadhyay, stand up.”
He comes up with the cane.
“I have done homework, sir.” I blurt out, not willing to be caned.
He stops. He looks at me. “You think you are smart if you have done homework just one day in all these days? Put out your hands.”
I do as commanded. There is no choice. Four times the cane swishes. He goes back. There is no brave smile on my lips. For the first time it is difficult the hold the acrid tears. Before I know and can stop it, the tears come welling out of my eyes and I am standing there, in front of the whole class, and weeping stupidly. My specs are all wet and the tears are collecting at the bottom of the glasses. Through that I see distorted images of all my classmates looking at me and of Mr. Parate. The optical distortion makes them all appear like monsters.
“Your eyes have glasses now. Get some glasses for your brains too.” That one is from Mr. Parate. That is a good punch line, I must admit.
It is back to business as usual. I have to be a bad boy. I cannot transgress that label any more.
Friday, August 10, 2007
MY TEACHERS: III
Mrs. Talegaonkar
My class teacher for the 3rd standard. I was still counted among the better students having been among the top 4 of the 2nd standard. So the things were still good for me as far as she was concerned. I was hardly ever beaten up by her even though my behavior had already started turning away from the ideal.
She must have hailed from a village background. That was very evident in the way she dressed up. The ladies of the city wore the sari in a particular manner. But Mrs. Talegaonkar wore it the way the village women do. In Marathi it is called Kashta. It is more like the way men wear dhoti. Dressed this way, a slit is present between the sheets on both sides and if you are not careful, or if you have not worn it correctly, quite a bit of your thigh gets exposed every time your legs part a bit more. That happened quite frequently with her. Her thighs were quite dark and I did not like looking at them.
Her pronunciation was that of a villager’s and that made things awkward. Her face was awkwardly angular and when she got angry and started beating up a student, her face looked really cruel. More than this I do not remember anything about her. She did not leave any impression on me.
My class teacher for the 3rd standard. I was still counted among the better students having been among the top 4 of the 2nd standard. So the things were still good for me as far as she was concerned. I was hardly ever beaten up by her even though my behavior had already started turning away from the ideal.
She must have hailed from a village background. That was very evident in the way she dressed up. The ladies of the city wore the sari in a particular manner. But Mrs. Talegaonkar wore it the way the village women do. In Marathi it is called Kashta. It is more like the way men wear dhoti. Dressed this way, a slit is present between the sheets on both sides and if you are not careful, or if you have not worn it correctly, quite a bit of your thigh gets exposed every time your legs part a bit more. That happened quite frequently with her. Her thighs were quite dark and I did not like looking at them.
Her pronunciation was that of a villager’s and that made things awkward. Her face was awkwardly angular and when she got angry and started beating up a student, her face looked really cruel. More than this I do not remember anything about her. She did not leave any impression on me.
MY TEACHERS: II
Mrs. Deooskar
I loved this teacher. She was my class teacher in the 2nd standard. Since I was perceived as a student with real promise, she coached me extra, sometimes at my home too, so that I could excel even more. She understood my needs right from the word go. I hated maths without being bad at it. It was mostly arithmetic at that stage. But I refused to solve the problem because they seemed uninteresting to me. She realized that I needed a story, a reason, to be perceived behind anything to get interested. So, each problem was presented as a story and some solution was needed to take the story to the next stage. I would solve each problem almost greedily and with amazing speed so impatient for the story to move ahead! She was always decently dressed. As far as I remember, she was good looking too. But that could be wrong – a child who is only 5 years old does not have a real concept of beauty at that stage. I think she was tall too. But that image could also be because she was so slender. Till a couple of years back she was alive – I do not know whether she is still alive. When I saw her a few years back, she was a very old woman, still slender and still, to me, good looking.
If all my teachers were like her, School would have been the most lovable place.
I loved this teacher. She was my class teacher in the 2nd standard. Since I was perceived as a student with real promise, she coached me extra, sometimes at my home too, so that I could excel even more. She understood my needs right from the word go. I hated maths without being bad at it. It was mostly arithmetic at that stage. But I refused to solve the problem because they seemed uninteresting to me. She realized that I needed a story, a reason, to be perceived behind anything to get interested. So, each problem was presented as a story and some solution was needed to take the story to the next stage. I would solve each problem almost greedily and with amazing speed so impatient for the story to move ahead! She was always decently dressed. As far as I remember, she was good looking too. But that could be wrong – a child who is only 5 years old does not have a real concept of beauty at that stage. I think she was tall too. But that image could also be because she was so slender. Till a couple of years back she was alive – I do not know whether she is still alive. When I saw her a few years back, she was a very old woman, still slender and still, to me, good looking.
If all my teachers were like her, School would have been the most lovable place.
MY TEACHERS: I
I was a student of the famous Somalwar High School of the city. This used to be (and to a certain extent still is) a merit producing factory – by merit one means the students earning a position in the merit list of the State Board, this should not be mixed up with real merit. Since it produced so many merit students and since the admissions to the professional courses such as medicine and engineering was solely on the basis of marks, many of the alumni of this school are today doctors and engineers. There is little doubt that many of the alumni must have very good memories of their schooling days and must feel cheerful thinking of the good old Somalwar High School.
For me, the things are otherwise. I hated the School from the bottom of my heart. There were many reasons for this. First and foremost I found it against fun. It came in my way of enjoying life. The teachers, most of them, were big bores. Some of them were dictators. The main motivational tool that they possessed was the cane. The School had already lost all charm for me, the day I outgrew the fear of the cane, the School lost the only restraint it could have had upon me. The only thing which made me continue to go to School regularly was the formidable academic reputation of my father who was a numismatist and epigraphist of international repute and the love that my mother showered upon me. I did not want to hurt my parents and so I continued attending the School regularly without learning anything.
I hated my teachers back then. I do not do so anymore. When you grow up you find out many things about life and your judgment of people is then rarely based on just a single facet of their lives. So, as I grew up and found out more about the condition in which our teachers lived, the kind of mindset of which they were a product and therefore could not help the way they acted, the real good intentions they had in their heart for us, the ambitions that they nurtured for us, and, at least according to their own parameters, did the best possible for us so that we grew up as better people economically and morally, my hatred for them vanished completely. They tried their best – only I did not love them for that and found their methods repulsive.
I am going to write on many of my teachers. I am not going to hold back anything from these descriptions. The pictures presented are as I viewed them then. The idea is not to hurt their memories. I am only being truthful to my own self and recreating the image I formed of them in my mind while I was a student.
Mr. Umathe
He was our teacher in the 1st standard. He was a diminutive, darkish colored, bespectacled man who initiated us into the alphabet, the numerals and the basics of mathematical calculations.
His method was to walk into the class and occupy the chair which was on a raised platform. Throughout the day he would remain rooted to the chair rarely rising from it when the use of the blackboard became unavoidable. The class was divided into two neat rows of desks and benches leaving a clear aisle in between the rows. On one side sat the boys and on the other the girls. His chair and table were placed neatly in between the two rows.
But the thing that he concentrated upon throughout the day was chewing the betel nut. This was the variety called the chikkan supari because inside the mouth it became slightly sticky. His tongue and the teeth were the most artistic organs he possessed because he could sense the shape of the invisible betel nut with these. His method was to chisel and carve the betel nut in a manner that it remained a perfect sphere of gradually diminishing size all the while that it was there in his mouth. His tongue and teeth deftly judged and decided which part of the betel nut to chip and how much of it to be chipped so that it remained a perfect sphere. His mouth worked and worked and worked at it. All this while we were busy in the task of repeatedly writing the alphabet a hundred times or the tables a hundred times and so on.
The second artistic activity that he had honed to perfection was demonstrated when the need to speak arose. When this happened, his lips would pucker into a perfect circle, the spherical betel nut would be pushed to the middle of this circle and then the tongue, acting as a bolt in a gun, would give it one quick but measured jab. Before this happened though, he would point his lips upwards. The wet, sticky sphere, when it came out, darted upwards, carved a parabola and then descended onto his table. The table was old fashioned – it had two shallow pits on both the sides for filling the ink. So measured were his actions that the spherical betel nut would descend cleanly into the left side pit and stay there. Afterwards, the speech over, the sphere went back to the moist cave of his mouth to get further reduced in size and to land back into the pit when the need to speak arose again. Very rarely did his tongue misjudge the pressure required. When this happened, the sphere would land in the aisle and roll to a distance. When it came to rest, the boy besides whom it had come to rest was expected to pick up the sticky ball and deposit it into the pit where it should have landed in the first place. This task occasionally fell upon me also. I would use the thumb and the tip of the forefinger to pick up the sticky, glistening thing and wipe the fingers on the seat of my pants afterwards. To him it did not matter that the thing was moist and quite bit of dirt from the aisle must be sticking to it – he put it back in his mouth.
This is the only thing I remember of this man, my first teacher.
For me, the things are otherwise. I hated the School from the bottom of my heart. There were many reasons for this. First and foremost I found it against fun. It came in my way of enjoying life. The teachers, most of them, were big bores. Some of them were dictators. The main motivational tool that they possessed was the cane. The School had already lost all charm for me, the day I outgrew the fear of the cane, the School lost the only restraint it could have had upon me. The only thing which made me continue to go to School regularly was the formidable academic reputation of my father who was a numismatist and epigraphist of international repute and the love that my mother showered upon me. I did not want to hurt my parents and so I continued attending the School regularly without learning anything.
I hated my teachers back then. I do not do so anymore. When you grow up you find out many things about life and your judgment of people is then rarely based on just a single facet of their lives. So, as I grew up and found out more about the condition in which our teachers lived, the kind of mindset of which they were a product and therefore could not help the way they acted, the real good intentions they had in their heart for us, the ambitions that they nurtured for us, and, at least according to their own parameters, did the best possible for us so that we grew up as better people economically and morally, my hatred for them vanished completely. They tried their best – only I did not love them for that and found their methods repulsive.
I am going to write on many of my teachers. I am not going to hold back anything from these descriptions. The pictures presented are as I viewed them then. The idea is not to hurt their memories. I am only being truthful to my own self and recreating the image I formed of them in my mind while I was a student.
Mr. Umathe
He was our teacher in the 1st standard. He was a diminutive, darkish colored, bespectacled man who initiated us into the alphabet, the numerals and the basics of mathematical calculations.
His method was to walk into the class and occupy the chair which was on a raised platform. Throughout the day he would remain rooted to the chair rarely rising from it when the use of the blackboard became unavoidable. The class was divided into two neat rows of desks and benches leaving a clear aisle in between the rows. On one side sat the boys and on the other the girls. His chair and table were placed neatly in between the two rows.
But the thing that he concentrated upon throughout the day was chewing the betel nut. This was the variety called the chikkan supari because inside the mouth it became slightly sticky. His tongue and the teeth were the most artistic organs he possessed because he could sense the shape of the invisible betel nut with these. His method was to chisel and carve the betel nut in a manner that it remained a perfect sphere of gradually diminishing size all the while that it was there in his mouth. His tongue and teeth deftly judged and decided which part of the betel nut to chip and how much of it to be chipped so that it remained a perfect sphere. His mouth worked and worked and worked at it. All this while we were busy in the task of repeatedly writing the alphabet a hundred times or the tables a hundred times and so on.
The second artistic activity that he had honed to perfection was demonstrated when the need to speak arose. When this happened, his lips would pucker into a perfect circle, the spherical betel nut would be pushed to the middle of this circle and then the tongue, acting as a bolt in a gun, would give it one quick but measured jab. Before this happened though, he would point his lips upwards. The wet, sticky sphere, when it came out, darted upwards, carved a parabola and then descended onto his table. The table was old fashioned – it had two shallow pits on both the sides for filling the ink. So measured were his actions that the spherical betel nut would descend cleanly into the left side pit and stay there. Afterwards, the speech over, the sphere went back to the moist cave of his mouth to get further reduced in size and to land back into the pit when the need to speak arose again. Very rarely did his tongue misjudge the pressure required. When this happened, the sphere would land in the aisle and roll to a distance. When it came to rest, the boy besides whom it had come to rest was expected to pick up the sticky ball and deposit it into the pit where it should have landed in the first place. This task occasionally fell upon me also. I would use the thumb and the tip of the forefinger to pick up the sticky, glistening thing and wipe the fingers on the seat of my pants afterwards. To him it did not matter that the thing was moist and quite bit of dirt from the aisle must be sticking to it – he put it back in his mouth.
This is the only thing I remember of this man, my first teacher.
TWO SCENES
Two scenes, both in different jungles, will remain permanently etched in my mind for all the time that I live. There is nothing dramatic about any of these scenes. There was no movement in the first and no sound either; the second one at least has some sound bytes associated with it. I never take a camera with me and so there are no pictures either. Not that any camera could have captured how I saw the scenes and what my mind perceived. Only words can paint a picture and create an imagery that can carry the beauty across.
Oh! To Die Like That!
There are very few writers that I have loved reading as much as Hemingway. And there is one story by this great writer that I have never been able to shake off – The Snows of Kilimanjaro. It is a dark little story that left me feeling utterly desolate. It is about a failed writer who has had an injury in an African jungle and has developed gangrene and is dying because no medical attention is available. While dying he reminisces and all recollections revolve around scenes and events and feelings that he could have written about and did not, and could not. He passes into delirium and the hallucination is a white blaze that is the flat snow-laden peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. He dies without expression of his creative abilities. The story sort of presaged Hemingway’s own death. He committed suicide in a fit of depression because he was unable to express a feeling the way he wanted to. I could not shake this story off – it is just too bad to walk off the stage without having sung your song.
We were in Bandhavgarh National Forest and the year must have been 1997, the month December, probably the Christmas day. It was an evening trip and a very successful one at that. We had spotted a tiger walking upon a ridge at very close quarters and the view must have lasted for at least 10 minutes, may be more. A host of other animals were also spotted. All this had happened around 5 in the evening. We were tracing our steps back and heading back towards the gate so that we could reach it before sunset. The terrain was hilly. The sun was now just skimming the horizon and there was a reddish haze in the sky.
The jeep turned left and the road started rising steeply. At the top of the rise was a bamboo thicket and behind it was the dying sun invisible from where we were. As we climbed, the sun became visible behind the thick veil of the bamboo stems and leaves. Bamboo rarely grows singly. There are at least 50-60 plants growing clustered together. As they rise, they all bend away from each other giving the illusion of a huge vase that diverges from a narrow base. Bamboo flowers once in 10-12 years and dies immediately after flowering. This one had flowered and was now deep in the embrace of death. Leaves at different levels were in different stages of drying up. As we came abreast of it I asked the driver to stop. The setting orange ball was behind the tree and each leaf interpreted the light in a different hue. The top leaves reflected a different color and those in the middle a different one. Leaves at the same level reflected the same color but different shades of it. The colors had a glimmer from the slight moisture still left within the leaves and so there was sparkle to the entire spectacle that made it difficult to look at for a long time. It was as if the tree had burst out in a glory of creativity in its last effort at it. As if there were a thousand lyrics written all at once, a thousand shades brought into the same picture seamlessly, an expression that never was in its long life, only the stress of looming death had suddenly coalesced all the talent into creating a brilliant imagery. The tree was walking off the stage of life but not before choreographing a stunning death dance. Oh! To die like that!
Scene II: Tranquility
Kanha. God how I love this jungle! This was a morning trip in mid-May, the month that we associate with killer heat. It was cool in the jungle almost making us miss a sweater! It must have been around 8’O clock and the sun had risen 45o in the sky. We took a turn and a whole vista opened up before us. To our left was a vast glade. There were very few trees and the grass growing was a lighter shade of green. A huge tree had fallen across and was in an advanced stage of drying. Perched atop the thick main stem that was almost horizontal was a peacock. There was no other animal in the glade. In front of us, about 50 feet away and slightly to the right was an Amaltas (Cassia fistula linn.) that had a thick, rich yellow inflorescence against a green background of its leaves. The yellow was made richer by the slanting sun rays. There was just enough brightness to the sun so as to make the scene brilliant, to confer a glint to the slight dew on the grass. There was no heat as yet. There was an utter absence of any sound. And then the peacock sang its sonorous song – pheooon….. pheeeoooonnnn! The song set to the background of the bright yellow of Amaltas was about tranquility. We stayed there till the song lasted gulping down with our eyes the melody of the colors and with our ears the quietude of the song. I have never been to a more peaceful place than this in my entire life and never have felt so serene. I have tried to visit the same place again and have not relived the same scene ever.
Oh! To Die Like That!
There are very few writers that I have loved reading as much as Hemingway. And there is one story by this great writer that I have never been able to shake off – The Snows of Kilimanjaro. It is a dark little story that left me feeling utterly desolate. It is about a failed writer who has had an injury in an African jungle and has developed gangrene and is dying because no medical attention is available. While dying he reminisces and all recollections revolve around scenes and events and feelings that he could have written about and did not, and could not. He passes into delirium and the hallucination is a white blaze that is the flat snow-laden peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. He dies without expression of his creative abilities. The story sort of presaged Hemingway’s own death. He committed suicide in a fit of depression because he was unable to express a feeling the way he wanted to. I could not shake this story off – it is just too bad to walk off the stage without having sung your song.
We were in Bandhavgarh National Forest and the year must have been 1997, the month December, probably the Christmas day. It was an evening trip and a very successful one at that. We had spotted a tiger walking upon a ridge at very close quarters and the view must have lasted for at least 10 minutes, may be more. A host of other animals were also spotted. All this had happened around 5 in the evening. We were tracing our steps back and heading back towards the gate so that we could reach it before sunset. The terrain was hilly. The sun was now just skimming the horizon and there was a reddish haze in the sky.
The jeep turned left and the road started rising steeply. At the top of the rise was a bamboo thicket and behind it was the dying sun invisible from where we were. As we climbed, the sun became visible behind the thick veil of the bamboo stems and leaves. Bamboo rarely grows singly. There are at least 50-60 plants growing clustered together. As they rise, they all bend away from each other giving the illusion of a huge vase that diverges from a narrow base. Bamboo flowers once in 10-12 years and dies immediately after flowering. This one had flowered and was now deep in the embrace of death. Leaves at different levels were in different stages of drying up. As we came abreast of it I asked the driver to stop. The setting orange ball was behind the tree and each leaf interpreted the light in a different hue. The top leaves reflected a different color and those in the middle a different one. Leaves at the same level reflected the same color but different shades of it. The colors had a glimmer from the slight moisture still left within the leaves and so there was sparkle to the entire spectacle that made it difficult to look at for a long time. It was as if the tree had burst out in a glory of creativity in its last effort at it. As if there were a thousand lyrics written all at once, a thousand shades brought into the same picture seamlessly, an expression that never was in its long life, only the stress of looming death had suddenly coalesced all the talent into creating a brilliant imagery. The tree was walking off the stage of life but not before choreographing a stunning death dance. Oh! To die like that!
Scene II: Tranquility
Kanha. God how I love this jungle! This was a morning trip in mid-May, the month that we associate with killer heat. It was cool in the jungle almost making us miss a sweater! It must have been around 8’O clock and the sun had risen 45o in the sky. We took a turn and a whole vista opened up before us. To our left was a vast glade. There were very few trees and the grass growing was a lighter shade of green. A huge tree had fallen across and was in an advanced stage of drying. Perched atop the thick main stem that was almost horizontal was a peacock. There was no other animal in the glade. In front of us, about 50 feet away and slightly to the right was an Amaltas (Cassia fistula linn.) that had a thick, rich yellow inflorescence against a green background of its leaves. The yellow was made richer by the slanting sun rays. There was just enough brightness to the sun so as to make the scene brilliant, to confer a glint to the slight dew on the grass. There was no heat as yet. There was an utter absence of any sound. And then the peacock sang its sonorous song – pheooon….. pheeeoooonnnn! The song set to the background of the bright yellow of Amaltas was about tranquility. We stayed there till the song lasted gulping down with our eyes the melody of the colors and with our ears the quietude of the song. I have never been to a more peaceful place than this in my entire life and never have felt so serene. I have tried to visit the same place again and have not relived the same scene ever.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
KING VULTURE
In a previous post I happened to mention the King Vulture and described the creature a bit. Just after the visit to Bandhavgarh that I described, we happened to visit Kanha. It was there that we got to snap a few photographs of the Beautiful creature in full flight. The camera was a borrowed digital one. But as I promised, I am planning to buy a good camera soon. Meanwhile, enjoy these photographs from the borrowed unit.
Kakoli was not there on this trip. Present with me was another guy, equally jungle mad, Prakash Zanwar.
In one of the photos you can clearly see that the beak portion is red. Otherwise the bird is completely black with the underside of the plumage having a bit of white.
There was no other vulture around except this one. And this one kept hovering over a particular spot hidden from our view in the dense jungle. Obviously some dead animal - a kill? We tried out best to capture the glory even as it was in full flight. We are not much as photographers. But the results - whatever they are - are for you to see and enjoy.
Kakoli was not there on this trip. Present with me was another guy, equally jungle mad, Prakash Zanwar.
In one of the photos you can clearly see that the beak portion is red. Otherwise the bird is completely black with the underside of the plumage having a bit of white.
There was no other vulture around except this one. And this one kept hovering over a particular spot hidden from our view in the dense jungle. Obviously some dead animal - a kill? We tried out best to capture the glory even as it was in full flight. We are not much as photographers. But the results - whatever they are - are for you to see and enjoy.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
NEVER GET MARRIED TO DHARMA
One of my students got married sometime ago. She was a wonderful student and her thought process was quick as a reflex. It should not have become a problem with her, but since all her batchmates were getting married one by one, marriage did become a problem weighing down like a rain-laden cloud upon her mind. I saw her growing morose by the day. Lost was the vivacity, the quick flash of smile, and the chutzpah that comes naturally to people with high intelligence. Therefore when I saw the original nature back on her face one day, I knew that she would tell me about her marriage before long. In fact, it took just a few hours.
"Sir, there is some news," she said.
"Oh!" I looked askance giving her no indication I had read something off her face.
"If things go right, I will be marrying soon."
She then went on to tell me how the parents had talked to a particular family and how she had talked to the boy etc. etc. Before long, the marriage was solemnized. She left the town to settle where the hubby worked. Recently, she was back for a few days and we got talking.
"So, how is the married life?"
"Uh.uh." She said.
That is no response from a newly married lady. So I probed without making it too obvious. What came out was a story.
"You know Sir, when I was a student here, there was a guy called Dharma in our class."
"Yeah!" I said seemeing to remember the boy.
"He was a big buff for table-tennis. He was always in search of someone to play the game with. Only, everyone seemed reluctant to play with him."
I remembered the guy quite clearly now.
"I didn't understand why no one wanted to play with him. But it became clear to me after I watched him play a game with another friend. Dharma had a simple philosophy to the game - return the ball to the opponent's side without much fanfare. That is exactly what he always did - just retun the ball." Her eyes were now lost in remembrance.
"I mean, you spin it this way or that, play a great shot, give the ball a top spin - whatever - Dharma would return the ball back without any emotion in his face or in his bat! Neither the eyes, nor his body, nor the hand holding the bat, ever showed any animation. Only, the ball was back to the other side.
"This can't go on very long. The other guy lost patience, grew angrier by the moment, tried everything that he knew of and yet the ball was back on his side of the net without losing its innocence. You see, the other guy always lost not only the patience and the game but the will and desire too, to engage in any other game with Dharma."
"But where is this leading us?" I asked completely bewildered by the direction of the conversation.
"Actually Sir, it is quite straightforward. My hubby is the Dharma of conversation. I mean, you can tell him anything... ANYTHING AT ALL! and the answer would be a monosyllable - yes, no. Then you start getting more irritable and animated because of the irritation. So you raise your voice, so you say many things you normally wouldn't and so on and so forth. And the reaction would be the same - yes, no."
"You see Sir, I many times get this feeling like I should climb a very tall tree, stand on the very tip of it, and loud and clear shout to all and sundry 'NEVER GET MARRIED TO DHARMA!"
"Sir, there is some news," she said.
"Oh!" I looked askance giving her no indication I had read something off her face.
"If things go right, I will be marrying soon."
She then went on to tell me how the parents had talked to a particular family and how she had talked to the boy etc. etc. Before long, the marriage was solemnized. She left the town to settle where the hubby worked. Recently, she was back for a few days and we got talking.
"So, how is the married life?"
"Uh.uh." She said.
That is no response from a newly married lady. So I probed without making it too obvious. What came out was a story.
"You know Sir, when I was a student here, there was a guy called Dharma in our class."
"Yeah!" I said seemeing to remember the boy.
"He was a big buff for table-tennis. He was always in search of someone to play the game with. Only, everyone seemed reluctant to play with him."
I remembered the guy quite clearly now.
"I didn't understand why no one wanted to play with him. But it became clear to me after I watched him play a game with another friend. Dharma had a simple philosophy to the game - return the ball to the opponent's side without much fanfare. That is exactly what he always did - just retun the ball." Her eyes were now lost in remembrance.
"I mean, you spin it this way or that, play a great shot, give the ball a top spin - whatever - Dharma would return the ball back without any emotion in his face or in his bat! Neither the eyes, nor his body, nor the hand holding the bat, ever showed any animation. Only, the ball was back to the other side.
"This can't go on very long. The other guy lost patience, grew angrier by the moment, tried everything that he knew of and yet the ball was back on his side of the net without losing its innocence. You see, the other guy always lost not only the patience and the game but the will and desire too, to engage in any other game with Dharma."
"But where is this leading us?" I asked completely bewildered by the direction of the conversation.
"Actually Sir, it is quite straightforward. My hubby is the Dharma of conversation. I mean, you can tell him anything... ANYTHING AT ALL! and the answer would be a monosyllable - yes, no. Then you start getting more irritable and animated because of the irritation. So you raise your voice, so you say many things you normally wouldn't and so on and so forth. And the reaction would be the same - yes, no."
"You see Sir, I many times get this feeling like I should climb a very tall tree, stand on the very tip of it, and loud and clear shout to all and sundry 'NEVER GET MARRIED TO DHARMA!"
AN EVENING NEXT TO A KILL
“Hamari aaj ki trip yahin khatam ho gayi hai.” (“Our trip has ended here today.”) I told the driver and the guide in a tone that told them that the decision was final. “We will remain here till it is time to get out of the gate.”
We, I and Kakoli (my friend and wife), were in Bandhavgarh National Forest. The day was 23rd of December 2006. The time must have been around 3.30 PM. The situation was promising and that is why the decision to stay put.
There are two National Forests in Madhya Pradesh that we have visited so far – Kanha and Bandhavgarh. We keep going to Kanha every so often – so much so that the Joke among our friends is, “Hey, it must have been more than two months since you have been to Kanha – the tigers there must be missing you by now!” It is nearer to Nagpur and, actually speaking, we are in love with that jungle. Bandhavgarh is farther up north and one only reaches here by late evening having started from Nagpur early in the morning. Both jungles are mainly Bamboo and Sal (Shorea robusta) but Kanha has more Bamboo thickets. If one leaves these two trees out, Bandhavgarh has a more mixed forest than Kanha. Bandhavgarh is very hilly and Kanha less so. But Kanha has more diversity of animals. There is never a dull moment there – some animal or bird always vying for your attention while you are in the jeep driving the rough, dusty lanes. The guides in Kanha are just wonderful and those in Bandhavgarh are just another occupant of the jeep (there are exceptions). But if you want to see the tigers, you must come to Bandhavgarh. You see the Kings in Kanha too. But the tiger density is much higher in Bandhavgarh and chances of spotting the Royalty that much more.
We had taken a trip in the morning too. While passing through a remote area of the forest, we had come across a kill. We thought it was a wild buffalo. But our guide told us it was a domestic one which must have been let in by the villagers to graze in the richer pastures of the protected jungle. The guide further added that it must be a kill of a tigress that lived in this particular area and that it had two cubs. The allotted time in the forest was getting over so we had to retrace our steps back in order to get to the gate in time.
When we went in again for the evening trip, we requested the driver to move towards the kill. The kill was still at the same place and had not been disturbed at all – not even by the tigress. The oddest thing was that the kill was out there in the open just a meter or so away from the dirt road on which our jeep was standing. There was no tree or bush nearby and nothing was done to conceal the kill at all. This is not what the tigers do with their kill. They drag it away from any region where it is likely to be disturbed. They conceal it well so that it is not visible from the air to the eagles and vultures which will otherwise devour it when the tiger is away. It must ideally be also concealed from other land-dwelling predators who don’t mind stealing someone else’s kill. But this kill was lying out in the open inviting any and all sundry predators that chanced to spot it. And there was ample proof that other predators had indeed spotted it. But still it was a kill of a tigress alright. There were the telltale marks – the neck had been twisted, the tooth marks were too at the neck; the tail had been ripped off (tigers begin eating after removing the tail).
On both sides of the road was clear meadow (see diagram). There were not many trees. The meadow on both sides of the road extended along the road for almost 300 meters. At both ends of this 300 meter clear stretch was dense jungle. The kill was about 100 meters from one end of this stretch and 200 meters from the other. We were standing right besides the kill, our jeep pointing in the direction where the jungle stood 200 meters away. The nearest tree on our right in the meadow was something like 20 meters away from the road. And on this tree were perching something like 70-80 vultures. The tree on our left was slightly farther off. On this tree too there were vultures but much less in number than the tree on the right. Obviously, they were waiting to swoop down for a party.
The air was still. Not a leaf moved. But the whole environment was expectant. And ours was the only jeep there.
It was at this juncture I told the driver to stop and that our trip had ended for the day. For the rest of the allowed time inside the national park (till sunset) we had decided to stay put there and take a chance that the tigress will come to its kill. The calculations in my mind were simple. What if the tigress decided to stay off till sunset? That would have been normal, you see. We still would not be losers. There were vultures atop the two trees waiting patiently. They were sure to come down from their high perches to gorge themselves. In that case there would be a fight between their ranks for the juicy morsels and that would be every bit worth watching – well not as much as watching a tigress coming to the kill but almost as much. We had seen such a fight between vultures in Kanha sometime back.
One of the funkiest things in Kanha is the canteen that is situated right in the heart of the Jungle! When we had first come to Kanha and came face to face with this stark human intrusion into the otherwise natural environs, we thought the very idea despicable. At 9 AM in the morning there is such a hustle bustle here – a large throng of tourists enjoying hot alu-pakoras or bread-pakoras with hot tea to go along and jet black crows swooping down on the dustbins in search of leftovers. But I must admit that in the freezing winters of Kanha, these hot snacks are more than welcome. With time we have come to think that this does not disturb the general ambience of the jungle at all. You move away from this place and 100 meters down the road neither can you see the place nor hear the people (at least the sound is not audible to human ears).
One summer morning we were just moving away from this canteen. The time must have been around 10 AM. We took a turn and there was a large clearing in the jungle to our left. In this clearing was a large piece of meat which we could not make out clearly what it was from the distance. There were already around 15 vultures fighting to get a piece from that chunk. And more vultures were arriving from all directions. All three species of the vultures commonly found in Kanha – the white-backed vulture, the long-billed vulture and the rare King vulture were present here. The ranks went on swelling and very soon a fight broke out. These monstrous birds fight with their beaks, with their talons and with their wings. What is breathtaking is their fight with each other with their wings half extended. We watched this a long time till our backs burned from the summer sun. Very late, when we couldn’t stand the heat, did we move off. The fight continued even as we left. This is the fight that we hoped would soon ensue where we were standing in Bandhavgarh and would be our reward even if the tigress failed to make an appearance.
Nothing, nothing at all, happened for the next fifteen minutes. The vultures kept sitting where they were. No new bird or animal arrived on the scene. There was no breeze and not even a blade of grass moved. And then another jeep bearing around 5-6 tourists arrived. Our hearts sank.
It is a religion in National Parks that if a jeep is observed to be stationary at a place for longer than a few minutes, the other jeeps in the vicinity too converge there to investigate – may be a tiger has been spotted. It is impossible therefore to be alone at a place for more than a few moments. And the moment there is a crowd, the shy animal(s) make themselves scarce. So, the moment this jeep arrived, our hearts sank because we knew that several more will gather around now. The occupants were a bit noisy. “Yahan kya hai? What’s there at this place?” The guide showed them the kill and told them it must have been a tigress that killed the buffalo. The fellows decided to wait it out like us. Soon another jeep arrived and then yet another and yet another. In a matter of next five minutes around 20-25 jeeps assembled on the road on either side of the kill. There then ensued a rivalry between drivers and guides and each jeep started making maneuvers trying to secure the best spot to view the tigress on the kill whenever the tigress arrived. Dust flew from the tires and there was a haze in the evening sun. More than that, there was noise from people and from the jeeps. We thought the chance gone – the tigress would never arrive in such a situation.
Our guide said otherwise. “None of these jeeps is going to stay here more then the next 5-10 minutes. Sir! They don’t have any patience. Just don’t worry. They will go away and there is ample time still remaining. At the most there will be just two jeeps left after some time. That is alright.”
Whether we believed him or not, we had no choice. We stayed put. Then one of the jeeps started and left. Another minute and another jeep went. Gradually, the road cleared. Soon ours was the only jeep that remained. Good. Human nature. Everyone wants to see a tiger. But to achieve something one must be constantly active. To sit still in order to achieve something is a gift that we have forgotten.
At 4 PM (we think) a crow arrived on the scene. It flew over the kill, went past it, turned back, went over the kill again and then alighted on the nearest tree on our left. From there it watched the kill for a few minutes and then swooped down on it. Just as it was to settle down on the kill it seemed to change its mind and flew over it and went to the tree on our right. The black bird alighted at a small vacancy between two white-backed vultures.
“Why are the vultures not coming to the kill?” I asked the guide. It was more a loud musing than a question.
“Probably the tigress is hiding nearby,” the guide offered.
“From their position on the tree, the vultures may be able to see the tigress while we are oblivious of its presence.” That was Kakoli coming up with a possibility. The guide nodded his head.
The crow dived down again and this time sat on the shoulders of the kill. It craned its neck in either direction and then sank its beak into the kill where there was a tiny tear in the flesh. It kept picking up tiny bits of flesh from the kill and gulping them down. A few minutes of this and it flew away. A curious thing happened now. Size is respected in the jungles. So you would expect that the crow is duly afraid of the vultures. This crow flew to the tree on the right, alighted on a branch and shoved a wing at the nearby vulture which duly moved slightly away giving berth to the smaller bird. The crow now shoved the other wing at the vultures sitting on the other side and this one too yielded space! We had never thought this possible. Perhaps the vulture respected the bird which had showed the courage to appropriate a bit of the kill belonging to the king of the jungle!
The crow now flew away to the tree farther away on our right. When it came back, it had a companion with it. Both crows settled on the kill and both began eating. Even while this went on a King vulture made an appearance on our left. It flew low over the kill and went away. Like the crow, it returned again and perched on the tree to our left. A king vulture, in spite of its name, is actually much smaller than the other vultures. But it looks every bit a king. It has a red beak in an otherwise black head. The wings too are black but the underside can be white. This contrast of dark colors gives it some character which the other vultures just don’t possess even though they are bigger.
The crows flew away after having filled their gizzards with as much as they could. The King vulture flew again only to alight on the other tree. It kept repeating the same flight path, kept reconnoitering, but did not seem to have the pluck to come to the kill.
It was getting late now. It must have been almost 5 in the evening. At 5.30 we would have to make a move because one had to be at the gate before 6 and this part of the jungle was on the other side of the gate (we did not know then that there was another gate from which we could move out and that gate was quite near; this gate is called the Lohadi gate and eventually this was the gate that we got out from). Neither had the tigress come nor had we seen the vultures fighting over the kill.
And then the King vulture lunged down at the kill. It sat there exactly where the crow had sat and began tearing the flesh. A moment or so later, the vultures on the tree to our right stirred. One of them flew and dived down on the kill. Then the second, then the third and in no time, the entire kill was invisible. All over it, the wings flapped and then began a fight that we will not forget in a hurry. It was every bit the same as the one we had observed in Kanha but this one we were observing from a ringside seat. It is almost as if we could feel the air stirred by their angry wings on our cheeks.
A sambhar deer gave an alarm call from the dense jungle to our right on the far side. There is a resonant quality to this sound and goes something like dhank! You can hear it even from a kilometer or so away. We knew that the tigress had made a move. A second alarm call came. The very air was now charged. Our limbs went dead, eyes peeled to the place from where the alarm calls were coming. And out came a jeep from that side. Shit! Now the tigress will take longer in coming if at all it did.
“Dushyant Kumar,” said the guide.
“What?” I asked irritated.
“Dushyant Kumar. He is a naturalist. I had told you that only one more jeep will remain here with us. Well this is the jeep I was talking about. He was not to let go of such a chance. He has patience like you people and he knows and takes his chances.”
The jeep stopped alongside with us.
“The tigress is coming along that side… we just saw it fleetingly.” Dushyant Kumar said.
“We heard the alarm call,” I said curtly.
“Why don’t we move back slightly? That would be better. Otherwise the tigress may not break cover,” This was the naturalist’s suggestion and we found merit in it. We moved back about 50 meters.
The vultures were still at the kill, fighting over it, trying to tear it when one got hold of it momentarily before it was displaced by another from the ranks. The sambhar gave vent to its fear again – dhank! Then two, three alarm calls came in succession, each more accentuated in their urgency. From the corner of our eyes we detected movement at our far right just out of the jungle on that side and about 50 meters away from the road and 200 or so meters from the kill.
There are two things about the tiger that have always surprised us no matter how many times we have seen them now at close quarters. You would think that with the black stripes on the dark yellow coat that this majestic animal wears it would be visible rather easily. Not so. In fact these very colors make it so beautifully camouflaged in the dry yellow and bark black of the jungle that it is hardly visible until it makes a movement. And then too it takes a trained eye to spot it. Secondly, if you miss seeing it at first, the next instant you see it out in the open as if materialized from the soil beneath it and it would dart away as suddenly too. It would seem not real then but an apparition. This is even more so with leopards. That is the reason why so many more people actually get to see the tiger than get to see the leopard. Because these animals are so well camouflaged, your guides tell you that for every one tiger that you see in the jungle, 10 have seen you!
The tigress was moving towards the kill. It probably could not bear to see the vultures degrading its kill. It broke cover now and made a sudden rush towards the kill and we were grateful that we had moved slightly away. And then while running it jumped and then again and once again! In three great jumps it arrived ON the kill. All through while running and during the three jumps the tail was raised and taut. And it was angry. The moment it arrived on the kill there was a rush among the vultures to get away. These tertiary predators ran, there was a veritable stampede and then they rose into the air – all of them almost all at once. The tigress stood on the kill and looked angrily all around. Its tail was still up. It looked at us, looked down at the kill, looked at the vultures which were now flying higher, looked at us, looked at the kill. It was a remonstration as well as an assertion that the kill was rightfully hers. Its gaze now fixed upon us.
“Why don’t we move a little forward?” I murmured.
“It is angry sahib. You don’t know what it will do if you make a move.”
“Nevertheless, why don’t we, just an inch may be then another,” It could have been highly foolish of me to think that way at that moment. But I wanted to see an angry tigress from as close a quarter as could be.
The tigress was still staring at us and its tail was still up. It had not as much as touched the kill so far. Probably it was in no mood to eat – it had only come to claim it back from the vultures. And with the vultures gone, it now probably wanted us gone too.
“Let’s move ahead slowly,” this from Dushyant Kumar, the naturalist. And with this, his jeep moved and so did ours.
We watched the tigress with a mixture of awe, and fearful expectation as to what it would do now. Would it charge? They rarely charge at humans but such things are not unheard of either.
We inched ahead. As we moved, a look of hesitation crossed the tigress' face. It looked down at the kill and then looked at us; then again down at the kill and then at us. We kept moving. As we came almost abreast of it and when our hearts thudded in our breasts, the tigress moved – away from us and the kill. A sigh escaped my mouth. The tigress retraced its steps and went back from where it had come. We kept on moving slowly and watched it till it disappeared into the overgrowth.
We kept on moving, crossed the entire meadow, and as we came to that part of the road passing between the dense jungle, to our right we saw the sambhar which had given the alarm call. It was standing between two dense bushes, its body taut with tension, its eyes fixed in the direction in which the tigress had gone, its rather short tail turned completely up and showing the white underneath it. Then it gave another alarm call. We kept on moving because we had to be at the gate before sunset. But this was another treat for us – we had heard the alarm call several times but had never seen a sambhar actually engaged in calling.
(It’s a pity that we did not have a camera with us. But we never take one. We have so far believed that it is best to capture the scenes on the magnetic tape of our minds. But since this scene, we have decided to buy one just so that others can watch what we have.)
We, I and Kakoli (my friend and wife), were in Bandhavgarh National Forest. The day was 23rd of December 2006. The time must have been around 3.30 PM. The situation was promising and that is why the decision to stay put.
There are two National Forests in Madhya Pradesh that we have visited so far – Kanha and Bandhavgarh. We keep going to Kanha every so often – so much so that the Joke among our friends is, “Hey, it must have been more than two months since you have been to Kanha – the tigers there must be missing you by now!” It is nearer to Nagpur and, actually speaking, we are in love with that jungle. Bandhavgarh is farther up north and one only reaches here by late evening having started from Nagpur early in the morning. Both jungles are mainly Bamboo and Sal (Shorea robusta) but Kanha has more Bamboo thickets. If one leaves these two trees out, Bandhavgarh has a more mixed forest than Kanha. Bandhavgarh is very hilly and Kanha less so. But Kanha has more diversity of animals. There is never a dull moment there – some animal or bird always vying for your attention while you are in the jeep driving the rough, dusty lanes. The guides in Kanha are just wonderful and those in Bandhavgarh are just another occupant of the jeep (there are exceptions). But if you want to see the tigers, you must come to Bandhavgarh. You see the Kings in Kanha too. But the tiger density is much higher in Bandhavgarh and chances of spotting the Royalty that much more.
We had taken a trip in the morning too. While passing through a remote area of the forest, we had come across a kill. We thought it was a wild buffalo. But our guide told us it was a domestic one which must have been let in by the villagers to graze in the richer pastures of the protected jungle. The guide further added that it must be a kill of a tigress that lived in this particular area and that it had two cubs. The allotted time in the forest was getting over so we had to retrace our steps back in order to get to the gate in time.
When we went in again for the evening trip, we requested the driver to move towards the kill. The kill was still at the same place and had not been disturbed at all – not even by the tigress. The oddest thing was that the kill was out there in the open just a meter or so away from the dirt road on which our jeep was standing. There was no tree or bush nearby and nothing was done to conceal the kill at all. This is not what the tigers do with their kill. They drag it away from any region where it is likely to be disturbed. They conceal it well so that it is not visible from the air to the eagles and vultures which will otherwise devour it when the tiger is away. It must ideally be also concealed from other land-dwelling predators who don’t mind stealing someone else’s kill. But this kill was lying out in the open inviting any and all sundry predators that chanced to spot it. And there was ample proof that other predators had indeed spotted it. But still it was a kill of a tigress alright. There were the telltale marks – the neck had been twisted, the tooth marks were too at the neck; the tail had been ripped off (tigers begin eating after removing the tail).
On both sides of the road was clear meadow (see diagram). There were not many trees. The meadow on both sides of the road extended along the road for almost 300 meters. At both ends of this 300 meter clear stretch was dense jungle. The kill was about 100 meters from one end of this stretch and 200 meters from the other. We were standing right besides the kill, our jeep pointing in the direction where the jungle stood 200 meters away. The nearest tree on our right in the meadow was something like 20 meters away from the road. And on this tree were perching something like 70-80 vultures. The tree on our left was slightly farther off. On this tree too there were vultures but much less in number than the tree on the right. Obviously, they were waiting to swoop down for a party.
The air was still. Not a leaf moved. But the whole environment was expectant. And ours was the only jeep there.
It was at this juncture I told the driver to stop and that our trip had ended for the day. For the rest of the allowed time inside the national park (till sunset) we had decided to stay put there and take a chance that the tigress will come to its kill. The calculations in my mind were simple. What if the tigress decided to stay off till sunset? That would have been normal, you see. We still would not be losers. There were vultures atop the two trees waiting patiently. They were sure to come down from their high perches to gorge themselves. In that case there would be a fight between their ranks for the juicy morsels and that would be every bit worth watching – well not as much as watching a tigress coming to the kill but almost as much. We had seen such a fight between vultures in Kanha sometime back.
One of the funkiest things in Kanha is the canteen that is situated right in the heart of the Jungle! When we had first come to Kanha and came face to face with this stark human intrusion into the otherwise natural environs, we thought the very idea despicable. At 9 AM in the morning there is such a hustle bustle here – a large throng of tourists enjoying hot alu-pakoras or bread-pakoras with hot tea to go along and jet black crows swooping down on the dustbins in search of leftovers. But I must admit that in the freezing winters of Kanha, these hot snacks are more than welcome. With time we have come to think that this does not disturb the general ambience of the jungle at all. You move away from this place and 100 meters down the road neither can you see the place nor hear the people (at least the sound is not audible to human ears).
One summer morning we were just moving away from this canteen. The time must have been around 10 AM. We took a turn and there was a large clearing in the jungle to our left. In this clearing was a large piece of meat which we could not make out clearly what it was from the distance. There were already around 15 vultures fighting to get a piece from that chunk. And more vultures were arriving from all directions. All three species of the vultures commonly found in Kanha – the white-backed vulture, the long-billed vulture and the rare King vulture were present here. The ranks went on swelling and very soon a fight broke out. These monstrous birds fight with their beaks, with their talons and with their wings. What is breathtaking is their fight with each other with their wings half extended. We watched this a long time till our backs burned from the summer sun. Very late, when we couldn’t stand the heat, did we move off. The fight continued even as we left. This is the fight that we hoped would soon ensue where we were standing in Bandhavgarh and would be our reward even if the tigress failed to make an appearance.
Nothing, nothing at all, happened for the next fifteen minutes. The vultures kept sitting where they were. No new bird or animal arrived on the scene. There was no breeze and not even a blade of grass moved. And then another jeep bearing around 5-6 tourists arrived. Our hearts sank.
It is a religion in National Parks that if a jeep is observed to be stationary at a place for longer than a few minutes, the other jeeps in the vicinity too converge there to investigate – may be a tiger has been spotted. It is impossible therefore to be alone at a place for more than a few moments. And the moment there is a crowd, the shy animal(s) make themselves scarce. So, the moment this jeep arrived, our hearts sank because we knew that several more will gather around now. The occupants were a bit noisy. “Yahan kya hai? What’s there at this place?” The guide showed them the kill and told them it must have been a tigress that killed the buffalo. The fellows decided to wait it out like us. Soon another jeep arrived and then yet another and yet another. In a matter of next five minutes around 20-25 jeeps assembled on the road on either side of the kill. There then ensued a rivalry between drivers and guides and each jeep started making maneuvers trying to secure the best spot to view the tigress on the kill whenever the tigress arrived. Dust flew from the tires and there was a haze in the evening sun. More than that, there was noise from people and from the jeeps. We thought the chance gone – the tigress would never arrive in such a situation.
Our guide said otherwise. “None of these jeeps is going to stay here more then the next 5-10 minutes. Sir! They don’t have any patience. Just don’t worry. They will go away and there is ample time still remaining. At the most there will be just two jeeps left after some time. That is alright.”
Whether we believed him or not, we had no choice. We stayed put. Then one of the jeeps started and left. Another minute and another jeep went. Gradually, the road cleared. Soon ours was the only jeep that remained. Good. Human nature. Everyone wants to see a tiger. But to achieve something one must be constantly active. To sit still in order to achieve something is a gift that we have forgotten.
At 4 PM (we think) a crow arrived on the scene. It flew over the kill, went past it, turned back, went over the kill again and then alighted on the nearest tree on our left. From there it watched the kill for a few minutes and then swooped down on it. Just as it was to settle down on the kill it seemed to change its mind and flew over it and went to the tree on our right. The black bird alighted at a small vacancy between two white-backed vultures.
“Why are the vultures not coming to the kill?” I asked the guide. It was more a loud musing than a question.
“Probably the tigress is hiding nearby,” the guide offered.
“From their position on the tree, the vultures may be able to see the tigress while we are oblivious of its presence.” That was Kakoli coming up with a possibility. The guide nodded his head.
The crow dived down again and this time sat on the shoulders of the kill. It craned its neck in either direction and then sank its beak into the kill where there was a tiny tear in the flesh. It kept picking up tiny bits of flesh from the kill and gulping them down. A few minutes of this and it flew away. A curious thing happened now. Size is respected in the jungles. So you would expect that the crow is duly afraid of the vultures. This crow flew to the tree on the right, alighted on a branch and shoved a wing at the nearby vulture which duly moved slightly away giving berth to the smaller bird. The crow now shoved the other wing at the vultures sitting on the other side and this one too yielded space! We had never thought this possible. Perhaps the vulture respected the bird which had showed the courage to appropriate a bit of the kill belonging to the king of the jungle!
The crow now flew away to the tree farther away on our right. When it came back, it had a companion with it. Both crows settled on the kill and both began eating. Even while this went on a King vulture made an appearance on our left. It flew low over the kill and went away. Like the crow, it returned again and perched on the tree to our left. A king vulture, in spite of its name, is actually much smaller than the other vultures. But it looks every bit a king. It has a red beak in an otherwise black head. The wings too are black but the underside can be white. This contrast of dark colors gives it some character which the other vultures just don’t possess even though they are bigger.
The crows flew away after having filled their gizzards with as much as they could. The King vulture flew again only to alight on the other tree. It kept repeating the same flight path, kept reconnoitering, but did not seem to have the pluck to come to the kill.
It was getting late now. It must have been almost 5 in the evening. At 5.30 we would have to make a move because one had to be at the gate before 6 and this part of the jungle was on the other side of the gate (we did not know then that there was another gate from which we could move out and that gate was quite near; this gate is called the Lohadi gate and eventually this was the gate that we got out from). Neither had the tigress come nor had we seen the vultures fighting over the kill.
And then the King vulture lunged down at the kill. It sat there exactly where the crow had sat and began tearing the flesh. A moment or so later, the vultures on the tree to our right stirred. One of them flew and dived down on the kill. Then the second, then the third and in no time, the entire kill was invisible. All over it, the wings flapped and then began a fight that we will not forget in a hurry. It was every bit the same as the one we had observed in Kanha but this one we were observing from a ringside seat. It is almost as if we could feel the air stirred by their angry wings on our cheeks.
A sambhar deer gave an alarm call from the dense jungle to our right on the far side. There is a resonant quality to this sound and goes something like dhank! You can hear it even from a kilometer or so away. We knew that the tigress had made a move. A second alarm call came. The very air was now charged. Our limbs went dead, eyes peeled to the place from where the alarm calls were coming. And out came a jeep from that side. Shit! Now the tigress will take longer in coming if at all it did.
“Dushyant Kumar,” said the guide.
“What?” I asked irritated.
“Dushyant Kumar. He is a naturalist. I had told you that only one more jeep will remain here with us. Well this is the jeep I was talking about. He was not to let go of such a chance. He has patience like you people and he knows and takes his chances.”
The jeep stopped alongside with us.
“The tigress is coming along that side… we just saw it fleetingly.” Dushyant Kumar said.
“We heard the alarm call,” I said curtly.
“Why don’t we move back slightly? That would be better. Otherwise the tigress may not break cover,” This was the naturalist’s suggestion and we found merit in it. We moved back about 50 meters.
The vultures were still at the kill, fighting over it, trying to tear it when one got hold of it momentarily before it was displaced by another from the ranks. The sambhar gave vent to its fear again – dhank! Then two, three alarm calls came in succession, each more accentuated in their urgency. From the corner of our eyes we detected movement at our far right just out of the jungle on that side and about 50 meters away from the road and 200 or so meters from the kill.
There are two things about the tiger that have always surprised us no matter how many times we have seen them now at close quarters. You would think that with the black stripes on the dark yellow coat that this majestic animal wears it would be visible rather easily. Not so. In fact these very colors make it so beautifully camouflaged in the dry yellow and bark black of the jungle that it is hardly visible until it makes a movement. And then too it takes a trained eye to spot it. Secondly, if you miss seeing it at first, the next instant you see it out in the open as if materialized from the soil beneath it and it would dart away as suddenly too. It would seem not real then but an apparition. This is even more so with leopards. That is the reason why so many more people actually get to see the tiger than get to see the leopard. Because these animals are so well camouflaged, your guides tell you that for every one tiger that you see in the jungle, 10 have seen you!
The tigress was moving towards the kill. It probably could not bear to see the vultures degrading its kill. It broke cover now and made a sudden rush towards the kill and we were grateful that we had moved slightly away. And then while running it jumped and then again and once again! In three great jumps it arrived ON the kill. All through while running and during the three jumps the tail was raised and taut. And it was angry. The moment it arrived on the kill there was a rush among the vultures to get away. These tertiary predators ran, there was a veritable stampede and then they rose into the air – all of them almost all at once. The tigress stood on the kill and looked angrily all around. Its tail was still up. It looked at us, looked down at the kill, looked at the vultures which were now flying higher, looked at us, looked at the kill. It was a remonstration as well as an assertion that the kill was rightfully hers. Its gaze now fixed upon us.
“Why don’t we move a little forward?” I murmured.
“It is angry sahib. You don’t know what it will do if you make a move.”
“Nevertheless, why don’t we, just an inch may be then another,” It could have been highly foolish of me to think that way at that moment. But I wanted to see an angry tigress from as close a quarter as could be.
The tigress was still staring at us and its tail was still up. It had not as much as touched the kill so far. Probably it was in no mood to eat – it had only come to claim it back from the vultures. And with the vultures gone, it now probably wanted us gone too.
“Let’s move ahead slowly,” this from Dushyant Kumar, the naturalist. And with this, his jeep moved and so did ours.
We watched the tigress with a mixture of awe, and fearful expectation as to what it would do now. Would it charge? They rarely charge at humans but such things are not unheard of either.
We inched ahead. As we moved, a look of hesitation crossed the tigress' face. It looked down at the kill and then looked at us; then again down at the kill and then at us. We kept moving. As we came almost abreast of it and when our hearts thudded in our breasts, the tigress moved – away from us and the kill. A sigh escaped my mouth. The tigress retraced its steps and went back from where it had come. We kept on moving slowly and watched it till it disappeared into the overgrowth.
We kept on moving, crossed the entire meadow, and as we came to that part of the road passing between the dense jungle, to our right we saw the sambhar which had given the alarm call. It was standing between two dense bushes, its body taut with tension, its eyes fixed in the direction in which the tigress had gone, its rather short tail turned completely up and showing the white underneath it. Then it gave another alarm call. We kept on moving because we had to be at the gate before sunset. But this was another treat for us – we had heard the alarm call several times but had never seen a sambhar actually engaged in calling.
(It’s a pity that we did not have a camera with us. But we never take one. We have so far believed that it is best to capture the scenes on the magnetic tape of our minds. But since this scene, we have decided to buy one just so that others can watch what we have.)
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