My India 1 - 1950-55

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It just happens that Free India and I grew up together, more or less, and are now in our sweet Sixties.

We both have been through much; both ways....agony and ecstasy.

But tragedy is in the realm of the 'personal'; at the 'Universal' level, the whole scheme, if any, is but a farce. The latest joke I read about the Universe was in DC where its Science Reporter seriously commented that CERN is about to 'trap' the 'God Particle'. Maybe God Himself!

As I was saying, we both had been through much. If we leave aside bitterness as non-productive, our story is on the verge of the ludicrous.

That is how I want this series to be; let us see.

One of the most diverting and unseemly sights I saw during my Schooling (1950-55) was that of a cock-fight. The thing was illegal even then; so we had to go to a remote corner to witness this event amidst adults who I could see were going stark mad for no apparent reason. I didn't then know that 'money' was to change hands.

In retrospect, whenever I now think of Indo-Pak Events, (cricket or war), I recall that one and only cock-fight I ever saw.

The two most important things in this early part of my life were: 'school and play'. Nothing else much happened in our seaside village. Since there was no 'current', all activities were confined to the daytime. Kerosene was costly and rationed, so the village shut shop by 7.30 P M; except during exams season, when we were woken up at 5 A M and asked to 'study' by the lone 'hurricane' lantern ringed by 4 of us, fighting for light, turning it this way that way to avoid the shadow of the 'vertical columns'.

India became a Republic just then. All this meant for us was an additional holiday for School apart from Gandhi Jayanthi and Independence Day. But the flip-side of this was that we still had to go to School, where my father, the HM, tried hard to hoist the flag, supposed to rain down rose petals; but somehow or other it never worked smoothly, and the SPL (School Pupil Leader) had to sort of climb up and untie the tricky knot physically, much to the embarrassment of the Drill Teacher and amusement for us kids, watched by the HM with a scowl appropriate for the dignity of the occasion.

My father took up the 'reigns' of this School with the mandate to upgrade it from a Middle School to a High School and make it the Best in the District, as a model for others.

But we were shifted from the other school just when the Quarterly Exams were starting. With the result that the 'portions' covered by the two didn't match. The day I was admitted to this new school happened to be the day of our math exam. The Teacher, I remember only had one feature on his face, viz. a Soda-Water-Bottle-thick lenses set in a hard plastic frame. Clearly a short-sighted old man.

The next day, he announced the marks, in descending order. And came to my script the last: a Perfect Zero. He glared through his glasses, looked at my unfamiliar face, thought it was a new wayside bumpkin and started teasing me and showing me up to the others in a most diverting way, reading answer after blessed answer aloud. All the jokes were on me. This was most embarrassing even for an otherwise sportive kid. Then he came to the name on the script and tarried: the surname is unique and matched with the HM's: 'Gurram' (meaning 'Horse'). If it were not the HM's surname, he would have had a 'go' at it too (much horseplay was in his mind). But, he suddenly fell silent and 'dismissed' the Class: 'Gave them Games'.

He then walked me silently to the Assistant HM and pleaded with him to arrange a 'supple' for me in view of my extenuating cicrs. I remember the supple was mush easier, but I don't think I did much better, math being a bugbear for me from then till now.

Talking of math, for the first 3 years of my schooling, every night after the math exam, I was beaten black and blue by my father for getting most of the answers wrong. He seemed a wizard to me because, he could do all the problems in my Question Paper 'mentally' without pencil and paper. And declared that all my answers were wrong, and only 'part-marking' could make me pass. All the questions in those three years were about what RKN called the 'interminable transactions' of 'Profit and Loss', and 'work and men', 'work and time', 'time and speed', and such goofy things which required the ill-fated Rule of Three which sometimes went awry and upside down, very like the nasty 'Markownikoffs Rule' I had to mug up in Organic Chemistry much later, which had to all purposes, more exceptions than the Rule, so what is that Rule for? They would then say it is only a 'Rule' (of thumb) and not a Law, unlike Newton's Law (which they didn't know goes phut under our very noses on our very Earth because it 'spins' awfully and calls for vexed pseudo-forces, with Newton's own Ice-Pail thing which to this day no one ever could resolve in toto).

Any way, in my fourth year, I was expecting the usual 'stick' on the night of my math exam. But when my father had a peek at it, he took a deep breath and let it go, posing as if he was in a hurry to get on with his own 'paper-correction'. I learned by and by that from that year onwards I had only 'algebra' and no more 'arithmetic'. And it turned out that my father had only 'General' math in HIS school days instead of 'Composite Math' and things like Quadratic Equation and much lesser evils were 'devils' for him.

For the next 3 years I breathed free...it turned out that I was a wizard in Algebra. And, later on I taught my father how the vexed 'arithmetic' problems could easily be solved by algebra without recourse to all sorts of 'imagination' which my father claimed I lacked but he had.

But he took one and only one 'Private Class' for me at home in English; and I never looked back.

On fine Sunday morning when he was sipping his coffee and I was about to 'scamp' he ordered me to fetch my pencil and note book, and bade me sit down by his side on the floor. And then he drew some sort of a heavy Table with columns and rows, much like what we would now call a Matrix. And took as simple a word as 'eat' and 'conjugated' it. There were 3 broad Tenses (present, past and future, with two sub-divisions in future for 'shall' and 'will'). And four categories in each; 'Indefinite, Continuous, Perfect and Perfect-Continuous'. And for every entry, there were two 'Voices' (Active and Passive). I don't know... you reckon, it should be about 30 odd inflections in all for the simple 'eat'.

I was just fascinated. Then on, I didn't have to learn any grammar in my school, at least.

When in my second year, our beautiful but not so bright Mam was teaching a lesson, an upstart student pointed out a 'printing mistake' in the text book, where it had an unnecessary extra: 'had' as in 'had had'. Mam duly ordered everyone to scratch out the extra 'had'. I softly objected and gave her my gyan about Perfect Tense of 'have'; and our Mam instantly ordered all students to 'de-scatch' it.

First victory in the English Class Room.

Six years later, an even more beautiful Mam at our University, holding a Class of 120 ogling students lifted her hands poetically Heavenwards dwelling on the Bard, saying "Books in running brooks, Tongues in tress, ahem, Tongues in trees , ahem....". And from the front bench I softly prompted, 'Sermons in stones'. She looked at me thankfully and completed the Bard's lines with a flourish.

But then on, I had her smiling but tough passages for 'Annotation' in public when MY turn came.

Thank you HM for teaching me English, and Algebra that you left scrupulously alone!


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