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In March 1957, at the age of 13+, I sat for my School Leaving Exam from my Village, Muthukur.
And left it forever...
It was a watershed of sorts. First the arrival of the confusing teens. Then leaving once for all my home and Village and Father and Mother and umpteen sisters and friends to unknown places and unknown people and unknown landscapes and unknown cultures.
That home-sickness persists till today as Saswat once said is apparent as a constant background music in all my blogs.
To put it in a nutshell (literally and figuratively), while I was beat up on a daily basis during my school life, I was never humiliated. Then on it has been the other way round for a lost decade till I settled down in the Faculty Hostel at IIT KGP which has been much more than home and heaven...where I got respect and affection which any reader of my booklets would say I miss even today.
Anyway, since my Village didn't have College, I was whisked away to a small town, Nidubrole, where there was a college recently opened up and where my Shakespeare Uncle was invited as a Principal.
While white hot sand had been my good earth during my school life, in the College it was as different as chalk from talk. I am told that our great painter-tainter who had to die abroad after living a broad life here used to sport no footwear and loved Mother Earth's direct touch and feel...he might have felt that footwear is a prophylactic hindrance for the conjugal bliss of direct contact with earth.
I agree with him wholeheartedly because sand is ok...it heats up and cools down quickly and all it needs is some practice and one learns how to walk on hot sand like a cat or a camel...just float on it...
But my College was situated in a rural setting quite unlike our seaside Village. It lies in one the of the most fertile lands in AP. And for miles around our College we saw fields and fields of rice, tobacco, sugarcane, and cotton. In fact the soil is what is termed Black Cotton Soil. The donor of our College which carries his name had donated four or five acres of his land in this greenery.
And the town gets the advancing monsoon as well as the retreating one. With the result that there is rain for more than half the year, unlike the two months at Muthukur. That changes the lifestyle completely. Open air games or any other games for that matter are out of question. During the rainy season no one, neither students nor teachers, can reach the College well-dressed. The soil is all sumptuous clay. So, if you wear chappals or boots and try to walk, your feet along with your footwear get bogged down in the wet soft gummy clay, and step after step is like an elephant stuck in a swamp.
And your white pants turn as black as the soil.
If you ride a pushbike with mudguards, the clay glues into the space between the tyre and the mudguard and the bike won't move. So, you remove the mudguards as a nuisance. And then you know what happens to the back of your shirt....mud spatters all over it due to the centrifugal force (or is it centripetal....depends on the frame of reference); inertia and momentum you learn in the class are at work all together. You reach College with designer backs...
How do the black patches look?
Ask Polonius and Hamlet:
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In March 1957, at the age of 13+, I sat for my School Leaving Exam from my Village, Muthukur.
And left it forever...
It was a watershed of sorts. First the arrival of the confusing teens. Then leaving once for all my home and Village and Father and Mother and umpteen sisters and friends to unknown places and unknown people and unknown landscapes and unknown cultures.
That home-sickness persists till today as Saswat once said is apparent as a constant background music in all my blogs.
To put it in a nutshell (literally and figuratively), while I was beat up on a daily basis during my school life, I was never humiliated. Then on it has been the other way round for a lost decade till I settled down in the Faculty Hostel at IIT KGP which has been much more than home and heaven...where I got respect and affection which any reader of my booklets would say I miss even today.
Anyway, since my Village didn't have College, I was whisked away to a small town, Nidubrole, where there was a college recently opened up and where my Shakespeare Uncle was invited as a Principal.
While white hot sand had been my good earth during my school life, in the College it was as different as chalk from talk. I am told that our great painter-tainter who had to die abroad after living a broad life here used to sport no footwear and loved Mother Earth's direct touch and feel...he might have felt that footwear is a prophylactic hindrance for the conjugal bliss of direct contact with earth.
I agree with him wholeheartedly because sand is ok...it heats up and cools down quickly and all it needs is some practice and one learns how to walk on hot sand like a cat or a camel...just float on it...
But my College was situated in a rural setting quite unlike our seaside Village. It lies in one the of the most fertile lands in AP. And for miles around our College we saw fields and fields of rice, tobacco, sugarcane, and cotton. In fact the soil is what is termed Black Cotton Soil. The donor of our College which carries his name had donated four or five acres of his land in this greenery.
And the town gets the advancing monsoon as well as the retreating one. With the result that there is rain for more than half the year, unlike the two months at Muthukur. That changes the lifestyle completely. Open air games or any other games for that matter are out of question. During the rainy season no one, neither students nor teachers, can reach the College well-dressed. The soil is all sumptuous clay. So, if you wear chappals or boots and try to walk, your feet along with your footwear get bogged down in the wet soft gummy clay, and step after step is like an elephant stuck in a swamp.
And your white pants turn as black as the soil.
If you ride a pushbike with mudguards, the clay glues into the space between the tyre and the mudguard and the bike won't move. So, you remove the mudguards as a nuisance. And then you know what happens to the back of your shirt....mud spatters all over it due to the centrifugal force (or is it centripetal....depends on the frame of reference); inertia and momentum you learn in the class are at work all together. You reach College with designer backs...
How do the black patches look?
Ask Polonius and Hamlet:
Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius: By th' Mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.
Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.
Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet: Or like a whale.
Polonius: Very like a whale.
RKN has this to say about the relation between the two in his essay, The Sycophant:
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"...The sycophant's genius lies in showing a feeling that is not his own but his master's. He cannot assume any colour of his own. His survival depends upon his capacity to take on the hue that his master is likely to assume at any given moment.
I quote this (dialogue between Hamlet and Polonius) because it seems to me a masterpiece of sycophancy, although Polonius has perhaps other aims, such as wanting to humour a madman, in making himself so agreeable...."
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Dear Sir,
ReplyDeleteThis particular piece reminds me of a short animation film (12 min) with no dialogue! Sir, please have a look at it --
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lk5Rjaor6g
I hope you will like it.
Thanx! The flick is great! The chap looks like Popeye in his old age.
ReplyDeleteYes Sir!! I agree with you!! :)
ReplyDelete