Second Boyhood

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My Father was the youngest of four brothers who lost their father pretty early. So, bringing up his three younger brothers fell on the shoulders of the eldest, the Shakespeare Scholar. He did his best and more. He wanted to make my Father an MBBS Doctor. But by the time my Father grew up, the family finances dried up and the Shakespeare Scholar lowered his sights and wanted to make my Father an Ayurvedic Doctor (it is somewhat like aiming for ITI instead of IIT). So, my Father was asked to take Sanskrit as his second language. But he was as averse to become a country doctor as I was to the IPS. So, he did his BA in Christian College, Madras and became an English Teacher, luckily for me.

But his training in Sanskrit made my Father a formidable Brahmin. Although he could himself perform all the family Pujas, like the Ganesh Puja and Saraswati Puja, tradition dictated that a Purohit has to be invited to do the honors; because it is supposed to be done by a professional whose livelihood depends on the free meal, a quarter-rupee coin as fees, and a couple of paan leaves and a half-betel-nut as sweeteners. But few Purohits liked the assignment, and were grumbling and grudging the invitation to our house as a necessary evil (like my Invigilation Duty), because my Father would be a task master and would not allow any shortcuts and would correct their pronunciation every once in a while and ask for a re-do, starting de novo.

It is like Pratik-sir engaging a Physics Home Tutor for his kid...not at all a congenial deal for gps...

When I grew up to Class VII, at the age of 9 (don't ask me how...I did a hop, skip and jump), my watchful Father felt that I would surely fail in math in every Class and would have to stop my British Education before leaving High School. So, he decided that he would take advantage of my Brahmin birth and make me a Purohit to make my frugal living (it would have been far more rewarding...Hyderabadi Purohits drive sedans and live in Duplex Mansions...with a lakeview; devotional zeal in performing religious rituals is directly proportional to standardized scamsize).

So, he invested a whopping One Whole Rupee and bought a slim abridged version of Amarakosham, the definitive Dictionary-cum-Thesaurus of Sanskrit. And one summer vacation, when every kid in the Village was spending 10 hours a day playing on the streets, he gave a ruling that he would let me out if and only if I recite one new Shlok everyday from that Book, starting from all the previous ones.

Got the insidious treachery?

I thought it would turn out to be my Amara-shokam. But the Age between 5 and 10 is precocious for any child, in the sense that kids are at their best at rote-learning if there is a lollipop dangled. So, by the end of the summer vacation, I got the entire frayed and frazzled booklet (of about 50 pages) by heart. And loved it too.

By the time I retired from IIT KGP, my Father left here long back for the hereafter, but left his Amarakosham imprint firmly on me. And I looked for that slim booklet in all markets in vain. The next best I could get was a 1000 page monster edition @ Rs 300. It was like looking for a swimming pool and buying the whole of Hussain Sagar Lake:

http://www.google.co.in/imgres?imgurl=http://www.eface.in/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/hussain_sagar_lake_hyderabad_india_photo.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.eface.in/hussain-sagar-lake-hyderabad-india/&h=348&w=770&sz=116&tbnid=cqpGSgFPgDm0lM:&tbnh=54&tbnw=120&zoom=1&docid=1rX3NM2IaBeFHM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ggFZT__ZJYHorQew4LzzCw&ved=0CEEQ9QEwAg&dur=731

But I bought it and kept it aside for a rainy day. Which happened to be today, not exactly a rainy day, but Holi-day. As I started scanning the shlokas one by one, a sense of deja vu pervaded, since every shlok sounded so familiar that I almost saw myself reciting them standing by my Father's easy chair, arms folded and tucked in their irrespective armpits.

The book is a marvel. And I noticed that every Bengali name of my generation is plucked straight from it. Take for instance the aliases of the Moon:

"Himangshu, Chandrama, Chandra, Indu, Kumudabaandhava, Vidhu, Sudhangshu, Shubhrangshu, Oshadhisha, Nishapati, Abja, Jaivatruka, Soma, Glau, Mriganka, Kalanidhi, Dwijaraja, Shashadhara, Nakhatresha, Kshapaakara"

My Guide, SDM's name is there; not to speak of a Tamil Media Tycoon.

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Shreemati 420

The other day I bought the first wristwatch of my life spending my 'own' money. I had bought many for my mother, sisters, wife and son. My first (second-hand Favre-Leuba) watch was gifted to me by my Father when I got that job at IIT KGP. It served me for almost 2 decades. Then IIT KGP gifted me (along with other veterans) a Titan Day-Date watch when I completed 25 golden years of 'service' there. Which served me for another 2 decades. When it went irreparably (and inconsolably) down, my son gifted me one bought in the US. It went phut the other day and the local Showroom Man said that repairing it would cost more in money and time than buying a new one. So, I bought then and there a local khachchra watch for Rs 500 only from his collection-box, with a one-year warranty. The chap adjusted the time and the strap for me and asked me to run. I drove back to my apartment and saw by chance that it did not move a second since its 'time' was adjusted; and drove back within an hour to the Dealer, who checked it, said 'sorry', and replaced it with a new one of the same khachchra brand. The Sales Girl was peeping intently and I asked her to read the time that was set for my rejected watch placed by the Dealer in her hand.

She read, "4. 20"; and blushed...


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