To Gift or not to Gift - 4

**********************************************************************************************************

One pleasant rainy evening, during my schooling at Muthukur, my mother mentioned that she got married when she was 12. 

Her father was then in the British India Revenue Service and since he was scared to get his daughter married with pomp and show, he kept it a quiet hush-hush affair. I asked her why. She told me that the Sarda Act got passed just then and her pappa was afraid he would lose his job and may be jailed too. Apparently this Sarda Act prohibited child marriages prevalent in India then. The minimum marriageable age for girls got suddenly escalated to 14 (from 3), and to 18 for boys. Father passed the test though....he was all of 20 and was just out of college at Madras and was doing his B Ed at Rajamundry.

I was intrigued by this Sarda since it happens to be the name of my mom too. I concluded that the Sarda Act must have been named anonymously for a stricken girl...like the Nirbhaya Act now.

Twenty years later, when I was taking roll call in the Second Year Physics Lab at IIT KGP, I discovered an Om Prakash Sarda among the students...very much male and a smart diminutive lad. He happened to be in my viva group and so the first question I asked him teasingly was if he had heard of Sarda Act. And he was delighted to answer that question since no one had asked it in his Patel Hall Orientation:

"Yes, sir! He is my great-grandfather"

I left it at that since there was no Google then. Just now I found that the mover and shaker of this Act was one Rai Sahib Harbilas Sarda.  I can't find much more about him. There is a wiki page for him which however said:

"This page has been deleted"

There is a book though of his speeches and writings.

Anyway, my mother was seen off to join her husband when she attained the mature age of 14 and Father landed a job as a teacher. For all of 5 years after they started living in (legally) they were childless. And my granny was worried sick if her youngest son would have none to look after him in his old age...she didn't have to worry...mother compensated Father with 7 issues starting when she was 19 and ending at 34. And they gave them half a dozen grandkids and an equal number of great-grandkids so far.

During that five-year dry spell soon after mom's marriage, her two younger brothers and two younger sisters kept her and her hubby company at their home. Father gladly welcomed them and got his wife's two brothers admitted to his school in their crucial fifth and sixth forms.

The younger one went on to do his MBBS and MD and grew to be a renowned physician winning all sorts of prizes in the Andhra Medical College at Vizagh. As a return-gift to his teacher-brother-in-law, he offered to keep me and my didi in his house while I was at the Andhra University doing my physics and didi her MBBS at his alma mater, 20 years later.

Four decades later, in 1994, when Father died at Gudur in his own home after retiring from the school there, having led a full life of 80 years, this MD Uncle of mine, who himself retired just then, attended the10th day rituals at Gudur in fond memory of his benefactor. 

While leaving the place, he slipped Rs 1000 in crisp Rs 100 notes into my pocket. And said that this money was meant as his donation to the Gudur High School where Father worked for all of a decade before retiring. And he wanted me to meet the then HM and ask him to place a chair in his school in Father's name. 

I was bewildered since the only Chair I knew was the one instituted by SAIL at the Metallurgy Department of IIT KGP and there was a lot of hoopla about the Chair-Professor's credentials. 

But after a discreet inquiry, my MD Uncle revealed that he meant a wooden chair to be kept in the office of the HM with Father's name inscribed behind it in white paint. 

I then recalled the comic verse of Oliver Wendell Holmes that described an oak chair that was donated by a parson to the Harvard College with some innocuous conditions in his will...and how it landed its recipients in a monstrous debt a century later:

    God bless you, Gentlemen!  Learn to give
    Money to colleges while you live.
    Don’t be silly and think you’ll try
    To bother the colleges, when you die,
    With codicil this, and codicil that,
    That Knowledge may starve while Law grows fat;
    For there never was pitcher that wouldn’t spill,
    And there’s always a flaw in a donkey’s will!

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2013/12/donkeys-will.html

Anyway, I met the HM of Gudur High School with my Uncle's proposal. And he shooed me off saying:

"No Room! No Room! Give CASH!"

But I was reluctant to give him cash since that was not the wish of my Uncle and I was afraid the cash would be spent on tea and biscuits in Teachers Meetings.

I then recalled that there was another flourishing private school at Gudur owned by another student of Father who was the leading doctor at Gudur and loved Father so much that he treated him, his wife, kids, grandkids and great-grandkids for free at his huge hospital.

So I wrote to my Uncle that I would prefer that the Rs 1000 be kept as a fixed deposit in a bank and the interest accrued be used to gift a book to the best outgoing student of this private school in its Anniversary Function. 

And Uncle liked the idea.

But there was no time for me to fix the money in the bank and so I kept the money with myself and the first book that I bought with its provisional interest was the 'Brief History of Time'. And I passed it on to Uncle with a suitable Certificate Blank having the names of Father and himself. He read that book and was mighty pleased.

On my next visit to Gudur, I met the Owner-Doctor of the school with this book and explained to him what to do with it. He was pleased and asked me to hand over the Rs 1000 to him and that he would add his own Rs 1000 and fix the 2000 in the SBI of Gudur and donate a suitable book to the deserving student every year, in Father's name.

Problem solved to the satisfaction of all parties...Phew!

A decade later, I myself retired and started blogging at Hyderabad and telling tall tales of my school life at Muthukur to my wife and son. And they wished to see the place on one of their frequent visits to Nellore where Ishani was a just-born.

So one afternoon we landed up in the Lady HM's office at the Muthukur School a good 50 years after I left it. The HM was pleased but asked:

"What purpose?"

And I told her that my son would like to donate Rs 1000 to the school library funds in his granpa's name, and my wife would like to gift Rs 500 each to the best boy and girl in English in Class XII, on the spot. And the HM scanned her records and announced that the best boy in English was Shaik Nijamoddin and the best girl, Padma Priya.

Unfortunately Padma Priya was absent that day and so her Rs 500 was left with the HM, but Nijamoddin was available and was summoned to the HM's Office by the HM's Peon. 

He came in trembling but left mighty pleased:

 

*********************************************************************************************************