Saturday, September 29, 2007

LOST CHANCE TO TEACH

He was sitting there on the dining table wearing his green woolen shirt when I reached home from the college in the afternoon.

Father was to come back from Delhi by the morning flight which reaches here at 9. But the flight got delayed. I had to go to the college. When I came back having finished teaching, I found him sitting on the dining table, brooding. He looked darker somehow. His face lit up upon seeing me. But the joy that was always there on his face when he came back home was absent. I sat opposite him, started eating my lunch, and we got talking.

“So, how was the conference?” I asked.

He was a numismatist (someone who divines history by reading coins), an epigraphist (one who reads inscriptions), a Sanskritist, and a historian dealing with ancient India. One of his pet problems – one that had received his attention for decades – was that of the Aryans. How does one view Aryans? Did they come from outside to India? Or were they basically from India and diverged out from here? Or were they everywhere and so neither did they come from anywhere or go anywhere? Or, is it that ‘Arya’ was a cultural title and no implications of a race should be read in it? Splendid problem to think about.

“Was good.” Was his succinct and subdued reply and I immediately understood that something was wrong. This is not like him, I thought. Normally, you just have to ask about the conference and his exuberance propels a torrent of words out of his mouth. Whether you understand or not, whether you care or not, he is not going to stop till he has dried up all the thoughts that have been welling up inside his mind. He was passionate about his subject you see. He was single minded and right from his waking moment of the day till he lay down to sleep, research problems were the only thing occupying his mind. I suspect that the night brought more coins and more inscriptions in his dreams.

I eat lunch silently waiting for him to tell me more. He does not. Instead, he just tells me about which other people he met while in Delhi. He tells me that there was a lot of fog out there in Delhi and that was the reason his flight got delayed. He also tells me that he is tired. Tired! In the afternoon? That is not my father. He is never tired. He may be 67, but tiredness is something that he has never expressed, not in the afternoon at least. There is definitely something off beam here. I decide to probe and probe directly.

“So what discussions took place in the conference?’ I ask. This is a more involved question – I am asking now about the details. And he comes out clean.

“I think I should quit this subject. It is now out of my range. I have suddenly no locus standi here.” He says and he is very sad in saying this. It is as if a dear relationship has broken and he has to move out of the house when he has no desire to.

“Quit?” I ask and my incredulity must have shown. “I mean I don’t understand. After a lifetime of reading and researching and writing and lecturing on the subject, you think you have no locus standi in the subject.”
“Yeah,” he says. It has all been hijacked by the geneticists now. The geneticists called the shots in this conference. And that is right too. They say that they can compare genes of the bones that we have dug up, compare the genes in them to the present day population in India and abroad and find out just who were these Aryans. Our theories have no meaning for them. They come from an alien discipline and make all our efforts of decades look utterly meaningless. They have no knowledge of the intricacies of history and yet they think they can tell us just who the Aryans were.

“I mean, I have no complaints. This is natural and genetics has power where Archaeology does not. What was galling was that I did not understand their arguments at all. I have no knowledge of genetics. If only I could understand the basics of this, I would have no cause of quitting. I can then combine my knowledge of history and the understanding of genetics and move on. But I think it’s too late for that now. And, anyhow, genetics is science and I am not a science man. So……” His voice trails. His face becomes darker. So that is what it is, I thought. Now I am a person who understands genetics. If I teach him, will he be able to pick it up? He has no background of science. He is old. But on the other hand, he is sharp, he can grasp things well. May be he will be able to pick up the things quicker than I think.

“Why don’t I teach you enough genetics for you to understand the drift of the geneticists in the conferences?” I volunteer. And I am pleased by the effect that this one sentence has. His face lights up suddenly, the excited man is back. The shoulders are no longer drooping.

“You think it is possible? You think I will be able to pick that stuff up fast enough? It is science after all.” He asks. But there is more hope in the questions than anxiety or doubt.

“I think so. I think if we sit down together a few hours a day, a week will see you understanding most of the stuff that you need. And then, if there is something that you need on top of that from time to time, you can fall back on me and I will explain that.” I say, taking the classical teacher approach – encourage, motivate, even when you may have doubt yourself. It is astounding how often and how quickly miracles are achieved by this approach.

“I think I would like to have some tea,” is what he says in reply to this. That means that he is happy and would like to converse more now. Tea is the liquid around which we have always talked, argued, sparred with our ideas.

I know things are back to normal.

But then right after the tea, he says he feels sleepy. Must be the tiredness owing to lack of sleep yesterday night and the delay at the airport in the morning and all of that. He goes over to the bedroom and sleeps. I go upstairs to my study.

I cannot shake the feeling that something else is wrong too.

X X X

At the dining table for the dinner, he is radiant. Ecstatically he announces to all, “Avinash is going to teach me genetics!”

The fare before him is something that he can drool over. Parathas stuffed with bathua (Pigweed or lamb’s quarters, cooked like spinach and tasting similar to it). He loves them. I hate them. But today I do not protest. I have seen him in a pensive mood before. This mood actually takes him over quite often. He is most chirpy and happy in the morning just after he wakes up. We are opposites in this matter. I am like my mouth is still sleepy though I may have woken up. I am like my words are cold blooded and need warming before they can get out of my mouth. He is like everything wakes up when he does. I remember my irritation with him in the morning. He would like to chat me up and I would like to have him shut up. And since you don’t tell your father that, I am irritated. Then he sits down at the dining table for the tea and opens up the newspaper and the pensive mood starts to spread over him. Sometimes the things darken beyond just being pensive. He loves to read of politics. Politics is never positive in our nation. The news therefore darkens his mood. It is better when he comes out with an acid comment. If he does not, the thing clouds his mind. Then you see him as pensive but he is actually going cold inside with pessimism. I have seen him pensive with a coin in his hands. His eyesight is not good. So often he calls me or my mother and asks, “Do you thing this drawing is of an elephant or is it a horse?” Not that he cannot make a difference between the two animals. It is just that the ancient Indian coin makers often did not bother about the shapes of animals and so one thing looked like other. I have seen him pensive with a book in his hands, his tongue touching the upper palate of his mouth, his hand busy with the big toe of his foot that he has pulled up on the sofa. But today’s pensive mood was different. It was tinged with an unfathomable sadness – something that I have never observed in all the years I have lived with him, not even when I flunked one of the most crucial exams, not even when my grandfather died, not even when my grandmother died, not when he underwent a retina operation which threatened to steal his eyesight, not even when he suffered a bad paralytic stroke and took a whole year recovering the full function of his limbs and there was the specter that he would never be able to use his hand to write his books.

I have also never seen him so tired in the afternoon that he would wish to go to sleep.

So I do not protest.

I gulp down the bathua parathas to quench the hunger. He eats them slowly with evident relish and quenches the taste buds. He talks about the Arya problem now. He gradually reveals what happened in the conference that he could understand. He talks about his own speech. He is now relieved – he knows that he will be taught genetics and so he does not have to think of quitting the field that has become so dear to him.

“Shall we begin tomorrow?” he asks.

“Yes, why not?” I reflect his eagerness.

We talk awhile and he says he wants to go to bed a bit early. He says that it is better to do so since he would want to be fresh and receptive tomorrow for the genetics lesson. But that cannot be the case. I know him more than that. Happiness would make him read more, talk more. He is really tired.

One more thing that I have been noticing for almost a year now. He is still wearing his woolen shirt. Agreed that he really likes this shirt. Agreed that it is winter. But in Nagpur, and that too so early in winter, the temperatures rarely plummet so much that you have to wear warm clothing. And then all his life he has been a person who has weathered winters wearing just a vest. He has always found it strange that people find it cold in Nagpur during winters when the temperature hardly dips below 13o C. Lately however, the things have changed. The neighbor’s young son wears a vest even in the winters and works in the garden. He finds that strange now. “Only when he catches a cold will he understand,” is what he says when he looks at him.


X X X

“Avi!”

This one word, a loving diminutive of my own name, uttered sharply with more stress on “A”, is the scar that so many of my childhood dreams bear. He woke me up at 4.30 sharp in the morning. All his childhood he had studied in a Gurukul where you wake up at 4 in the morning and start with your morning chores and then spend the “Brahma Muhurta” (the hour of Brahma, the best time to study as per Hindu culture) studying. He liked the discipline of that system and wanted me to abide by the same. Agreed that he made that concession of a half hour. But it was not enough for me. So, get up I would, take up a book I would, but lapse into sleep with the book on the table. Eventually, after many of the dreams died premature death, it was mutually agreed that I should wake up at least at 6. This has become a habit and I get up at 6 always no matter how late or early I sleep.

So, when in the morning, this same diminutive is uttered at 5 by my wife, I wake up all groggy, confused and angry. My wife is standing besides the bed, still in her nightwear.

“The bell,” is all she says. In an instant I know something is wrong.

My wife and I stay on the first floor while my parents occupy the ground floor. Over the years an arrangement has been perfected – whenever they need us, they just have to ring a bell which sounds upstairs. One bell for myself and two bells for my wife. A bell so early in the morning only announces trouble.

I throw off the sheets and go downstairs. My mother is at the door and her eyes tell me that there is something wrong.

“Your father,” she says. “Just take a look. He came back earlier than usual from his morning walk and is not feeling well.”

He is lying on the drawing room divan. And although there is a bit of morning chill, he is bathed in sweat. The green woolen shirt is still on his torso. Even at this time I have not the slightest of the inkling what is to happen to this green shirt. On his face you can read the spelling of pain and the alphabets are in the upper case. To my queries, he tells me that he has pain in the chest and that too to the left. I then ask him the most important question I can think of.

“Are you feeling breathless,” I ask.

Years ago, just after marriage, I had started feeling pain in my chest on the left hand side. I was mortally afraid that my heart had gone weak at this early stage in life. So, one day I asked a physician whom I knew very well to take an ECG. The guy told me that there was no need. However, I insisted and told him about the pain. He had a good laugh at my expense, told me that if I could not find a better use for my money, he would oblige. He took an ECG, showed the result to me and told me that you have spondilitis. Later, he confirmed the diagnosis. Once this was done, he told me, “If you are going to have a heart attack, it is not just the pain you will feel. You will be breathless too.” This is exactly what I remember and ask.

He nods. He does not speak because even speaking makes him breathless. I take instant decision. No ambulance. That will be too late in arriving. I take the car out. I make him sit in a chair and then slide the chair out to the car. I make him sit inside. My mother sits at the back and we move without wasting time. I decide to take him to a physician who has been treating him and knows his case history. My mother has brought a homeopathic medicine with her and she gives it to him. It is the homeopathic version of nitroglycerine. We are merely five minutes out of our house when he tells me, “Why do we not just go back? I am feeling quite right now. Besides, I have to complete the Presidential Address that I have been writing for the last two days. There are several important things that I want to mention in this. Precious time will be lost in the hospital.”

I am firm and tell him that he has to see a doctor.

“But yesterday too at the airport I had the same feeling. I became okay in just about 10 minutes. It is the same thing again. I think it is indigestion. Why don’t we turn back?”

I continue driving and he continues to fret over his Presidential Address. So he had a mild heart attack at the airport yesterday morning too is all I think. We arrive at the doctor. I find immediately that I have brought him to the wrong place by the inefficiency that I see. But it is too late. The doctor has arrived, has checked his blood pressure, has moved on to take his ECG. After the whole thing is over, he says, “It is heart. His BP is low, just 100 by 50. But at the most it will develop into an angina. No need to worry. We will admit him now for observation. He should be able to go back by the evening.” Whether he is telling me this just to sort of pacify me I do not know. If he is doing that, he does not need to. I am quite hard at these things.

He is admitted. He is on his bed with strict instructions to lie down and not to speak. But he is telling my mother how important his presidential address is! All his life he has been an academic and on his sick bed too he cannot stop being one, incorrigibly being one. I cannot describe my emotions about this. I am concerned, yes. But I am proud too – what a father to have. When ordinary people would be concerned about what will happen to them, he is concerned about his presidential address and the new things he is going to present and about his thoughts regarding certain coins that surfaced just some days before! I want to tell him to stop talking. But the other part of me is too weak to say this, too glad to have a father who can be so obsessed with his work.

I ask my mother to go home and bathe and then come again at a later time. I tell her that the doctor himself does not think that this can turn out to be any serious. She does not want to go. But she yields to my practicality.

X X X

In the afternoon, his dead body is brought home. I bring my mother home in my car.

The body is made to lie in the drawing room. It has to be prepared for cremation. My friends, colleagues, the priest, his students, his colleagues, everyone who is connected in whichever way to him, arrive. I have to bathe him and then give him new clothes. But the green woolen shirt won’t come off his body. There is a slight swelling around the torso and it is difficult to get the shirt open. I have half a desire to tell the priest to leave it be – he so loved this short, it will not be wrong if he takes it away with him. But I bring a pair of scissors and cut the shirt open. Other preparations are done and the body is cremated in the evening.

When I come back home, things are silent. I do not know how to console my mother. Oh there are other people around. But there presence is a blur behind which her tears only wait. I cannot weep because I have to support her and console her.

Since then, I have never wept – the moment has passed. I have only thought and thought.

The man was greedy for knowledge. He hated death. But not because he would die. The problem was like this:

“What is the meaning of learning so much, hoarding so much in your mind, and then dying off? I mean, it would be okay if you died provided that in the next birth you start from where you ended the last time around. That does not happen and it is cruel.”

The man was greedy for knowledge. He would read practically everything. At the age of 63, when most people have already quit most of their activities, he learnt computers and then learnt how to go online and read up things in his subject that were available. All his papers after that were submitted to journals electronically and online. This also meant irritation for me. Every 10-15 minutes the bell would go and I had to rush downstairs.

“I don’t know what happened to the file I was writing. I had saved it but I cannot find now.”

Suppressing my irritation from being interrupted in my own work, I would search for the file. “What was the name of the file?” I would ask. “I have forgotten,” was quite often the reply. Now, I mean, can you beat that? He does not remember the name of the file and he wants me to find that! So I would ask what the contents were and then mount a search based on content. Often I would find the file in an unrelated folder.

“What is this file doing here?” You think I asked this question? You are wrong. He would be the one asking it of me. I mean, come on, I should have been the one asking it.

Sometimes files went entirely missing – no trace at all. And he would not agree that he had failed to save them. It was always the computer that was playing some mischief. So, two bit “experts” were very often called to set the computer right.

At other times it would be some problem with the internet. Some other time about diacritical marks – Sanskrit words creep in when you are writing about history. So he got installed a special software that allowed him to work more easily. When troubles with the use of this software arose, it was double trouble for me. I knew nothing about this software and was supposed to troubleshoot whenever he landed himself into a soup!

All through I troubleshooted for him, taught him a few things about computers and working online, using a word file, other programmes that make life easy. But most of the time I did this with irritation at the back of my mind from having been interrupted in my own work.

There was only one time that I agreed to teach him with a lot of pleasure. I loved him you see and could not see him down like that just because genetics was intruding upon his own area.

But that chance was lost so quickly and so suddenly.

May be, just because it was such an ardent desire in him, he will be born again with all the knowledge intact in his mind and will start from there. If so, he will have to learn genetics all by himself.

I lost the chance to teach him genetics and send him prepared to the next birth.

9 comments:

moodyfoodie said...

really moving......i dont know what else to say!

Anonymous said...

thats exactly the way i feel when my father interrupts me in my work n wants me to help him out. his eyes glow with pride when i explain him things n make his job easy.......its a great feeling to teach someone who has taught you d most important lessons of your life.my parents r worlds best parents n i luv them..........

Unknown said...

You leave me speechless.......i am really touched.......

Unknown said...

I am left speechless!
Beautiful.........

Anonymous said...

i have no words to express d feeling, after reading dis......it"s really really touching....

Unknown said...

really touching....

Unknown said...

Really touching...

Unknown said...

really dont know what to say............
i found myself crying while reading this.

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