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During my 14 bachelor years at IIT KGP, I was prone to homesickness in the long summer vacations.
I had two homes then. One the classrooms of IIT and the other the house at Gudur which my Father bought and my mom renovated after his retirement. They and my six sisters made my other home.
The train journey from KGP to Gudur was 36 long hours with Vizagh as its midpoint. After I boarded the Janata Express at KGP, I was missing KGP for the first 18 hours. And seeing the Vizagh platform, I used to revive like a withering flower in rain, for I had spent 7 of my inglorious years there by the sea beach. Then on I would be thinking of my Gudur Home, parents, sisters, fun and frolic; and good food for a change.
On the return journey, I was missing it all for the first 18 hours, and after Vizagh, I would be raring for KGP and its students. KGP without her students is like a ghost-town and better avoided.The best time to visit KGP is first week of April around Good Friday...all the huge trees are in bloom then and the road is a carpet of red, violet, yellow and blue flowers. And there is a chance of thunderstorms and hail.
Marriage cured my homesickness as it did my many other sicknesses. It so happens that my wife never had a home till she married me...she was not brought up by her parents but left from infancy in the custody of her itinerant widowed grandfather whose own kids were being brought up by his widowed younger sister. And soon after her marriage my wife became a true homemaker. Wherever I was she treated it as her home.
We had two years of English in our 4-year B. Sc. (Hons) at AU. Our teacher of poetry was a beautiful young lady (D-i-L of our Registrar). She was so good-looking that her classes overflowed with students who had no business to be there. And the regulars like us were shoved to the backbenches. The class was never less than 120 strong.
And she taught us many classic poems like Kubla Khan and the Odes of Keats and Shelley. But for the fact that we had to mug up the things and write original criticism of them, the course was a great love affair. I agree with RKN that exams in Literature should be abolished, lock stock and barrel.
And this morning I woke up recalling a few lines of Keats. As is well-known, Keats was forlorn and died at 26 of tuberculosis. His 'Ode to the Nightingale' begins with:
"My heart aches..."
And in its luxurious stanzas he lists all his sicknesses ;-)
Booze-sickness, Love-sickness, Moon-sickness, Flower-sickness, Death-sickness, and mentions the Homesickness of Ruth:
Some of these words after appropriate morphing form part of the Christian Wedding Vows. Of course it is the husband to which these vows are addressed and not the M-i-L...
Englishmen ruled India for two hundred years but with little love for the land. They were always homesick and whenever they had a day or two of Calcutta's so-called winter, with fog mixed with smoke from the chulhas and a little rain, they pined for the Home Weather and ordered fish & chips & ale.
And this is how Victorian London winter-fogs were:
http://www.victorianlondon.org/weather/fog.htm
During my 14 bachelor years at IIT KGP, I was prone to homesickness in the long summer vacations.
I had two homes then. One the classrooms of IIT and the other the house at Gudur which my Father bought and my mom renovated after his retirement. They and my six sisters made my other home.
The train journey from KGP to Gudur was 36 long hours with Vizagh as its midpoint. After I boarded the Janata Express at KGP, I was missing KGP for the first 18 hours. And seeing the Vizagh platform, I used to revive like a withering flower in rain, for I had spent 7 of my inglorious years there by the sea beach. Then on I would be thinking of my Gudur Home, parents, sisters, fun and frolic; and good food for a change.
On the return journey, I was missing it all for the first 18 hours, and after Vizagh, I would be raring for KGP and its students. KGP without her students is like a ghost-town and better avoided.The best time to visit KGP is first week of April around Good Friday...all the huge trees are in bloom then and the road is a carpet of red, violet, yellow and blue flowers. And there is a chance of thunderstorms and hail.
Marriage cured my homesickness as it did my many other sicknesses. It so happens that my wife never had a home till she married me...she was not brought up by her parents but left from infancy in the custody of her itinerant widowed grandfather whose own kids were being brought up by his widowed younger sister. And soon after her marriage my wife became a true homemaker. Wherever I was she treated it as her home.
We had two years of English in our 4-year B. Sc. (Hons) at AU. Our teacher of poetry was a beautiful young lady (D-i-L of our Registrar). She was so good-looking that her classes overflowed with students who had no business to be there. And the regulars like us were shoved to the backbenches. The class was never less than 120 strong.
And she taught us many classic poems like Kubla Khan and the Odes of Keats and Shelley. But for the fact that we had to mug up the things and write original criticism of them, the course was a great love affair. I agree with RKN that exams in Literature should be abolished, lock stock and barrel.
And this morning I woke up recalling a few lines of Keats. As is well-known, Keats was forlorn and died at 26 of tuberculosis. His 'Ode to the Nightingale' begins with:
"My heart aches..."
And in its luxurious stanzas he lists all his sicknesses ;-)
Booze-sickness, Love-sickness, Moon-sickness, Flower-sickness, Death-sickness, and mentions the Homesickness of Ruth:
"Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn"
We had Ruth's story in our Class VIII and that was the first time we met with exotic names of people and places. Briefly her story is this:
When there was famine in Bethlehem, Naomi and her husband shifted to Moab. And got their two sons married to Orpah and Ruth. Unfortunately all the three ladies got widowed. And then Naomi wanted to return to her people in Bethlehem and advised her D-i-L's to return to their parents' places. Orpah left but Ruth declined to leave her M-i-L high and dry and insisted she would accompany Naomi wherever she went. Both returned to Bethlehem penniless and had to subsist on the corn Ruth gleaned in the fields of a landowner, Boaz. By and by Boaz fell in love with penniless Ruth and married her happily, with Naomi's blessings. They got King David as a grandson.
This ought to be a lesson to all D-i-Ls.
The words of Ruth entreating Naomi to let her accompany her to Bethlehem are some of the most lyrical in the Holy Bible (the parts I read):
“Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.”
Some of these words after appropriate morphing form part of the Christian Wedding Vows. Of course it is the husband to which these vows are addressed and not the M-i-L...
Englishmen ruled India for two hundred years but with little love for the land. They were always homesick and whenever they had a day or two of Calcutta's so-called winter, with fog mixed with smoke from the chulhas and a little rain, they pined for the Home Weather and ordered fish & chips & ale.
And this is how Victorian London winter-fogs were:
The winter-fogs of London are, indeed, awful. They surpass all imagining; he who never saw them, can form no idea of what they are. He who knows how powerfully they affect the minds and tempers of men, can understand the prevalence of that national disease—the spleen. In a fog, the air is hardly fit for breathing; it is grey-yellow, of a deep orange, and even black at the same time, it is moist, thick, full of bad smells, and choking. The fog appears, now and then, slowly, like a melodramatic ghost, and sometimes it sweeps over the town as the simoom over the desert. At times, it is spread with equal density over the whole of that ocean of houses; on other occasions, it meets with some invisible obstacle, and rolls itself into intensely dense masses, from which the passengers come forth in the manner of the student who came out of the cloud to astonish Dr. Faust. It is hardly necessary to mention, that the fog is worst in those parts of the town which are near the Thames.
Max Schlesinger, Saunterings in and about London, 1853
http://www.victorianlondon.org/weather/fog.htm
Update
Sailaja is back from Nellore.
And if Sailaja comes, can Ishani be far behind?
- Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep,
- And can't tell where to find them;
- Leave them alone, And they'll come home,
- Wagging their tails behind them.
...Posted by Ishani
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