I am fascinated by lives of Gouri Deshpande and Amrita Pritam. As like every man’s fantasy to be a 'husband' of an interesting woman, I would rather want to be Teruo of Gouri’s and Imroz of Amrita’s. A solace outside their established, standardised set of principles generally termed as marriage. Ever since I’ve come to know them, I am amazed to realise the clarity of thought they achieved and guts it entailed to follow in what they believed.
If I idolise these relationships and still want to be little practical in not going against tide, then what conclusions can I draw out of their lives. One is that being just a friend always works with whom you share your life, on other side taking up the roles of husband or wife over the individual self does not work:( One can take this as an extreme selfishness, but what Gouri or Amrita wanted at the end of the day - was to express themselves completely- which is so difficult otherwise.
I also try to look from Teruo’s or Imroz’s point of view. How he must have felt to be able to be with such strong women. Who gave and who received among them and what? I know it’s a typical question coming out of my patriarchal mind-set, where man is supposed to be strong and his woman is expected to carry his tantrums above all. How a man must be feeling to be at receiving end!! :)
I consider myself as one among ‘mango people’, trapped in some questions of life, constantly moving up and down, getting happy and unhappy with successes and failures. Unlike these ladies.. They questioned each and every norm put by society. I can’t imagine the amount of energy they must have had, so as to undergo opposition against all. I count their spiritual clarity is as much as that of Sri Sri Ravishankar or Dalai Lama. They are of equal magnitude but on opposite sides. Dalai Lama has enough chances to get a Nobel Peace but not to Gouri-Amrita, as it is not awarded to someone who established peace within oneself (and also to us by allowing us to go through their lives, how much we could learn and earn out of it), but to those who showered peace on 'others'. I would like to start a foundation giving awards to such men-women, anybody with funds to build in corpus?
How have they helped me building as a person. Reading them at first, made me go my head upside down. I found everything written, controversial?? Some of the questions rose against present societal order; especially between man-woman relationships were not as contemporarily practiced. I thought they are very selfish, what matters to them is their own needs. They are unnecessarily questioning the social fabric, which being right, running successfully all over! Had I not come across experiences in and around my own life, it was quiet impossible to relate with what is being written by them. One fine day, when you brush with the reality, things falling separately under you come together, and that collage convince you the necessary existence of Gouri-Amrita! When realised, it helped me to be non-judgmental towards looking at incidences, people. And also to question every norm, before I follow it or reject it.
Earlier, I had always afraid of divorce and to the worst out-of-marriage relationship!! How could one fall back out of marriage, it’s such an auspicious institution(!). But today I believe, like any other break-offs between parents-sons, girlfriend-boyfriends, two friends, why can’t it happen between husband and wife. Out-of-marriage relationship could have a friend outside ‘marriage’. I can accept that today, yeah it’s possible because it’s so natural! I know if I re-write this piece over period of times, my views would have further changed, hopefully more evolved than before!
Most of our energies have so far gone to curb what could be just natural, decent and so much important.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Beautiful World of the Backbenchers
Here I am posting one interesting article by Manu Joseph. The title itself says it all. Excuse me sir, for not taking your permission, but I hope you won’t mind for a colleague of yours…at the backbench.
Beautiful World of the Backbenchers
Times of India 13 Apr 2008, Manu Joseph
The most foolish description of youth is that it is rebellious. The young do wear T-shirts that say Rebel or Che or Bitch. But the truth is that the youth, especially in this country, is a fellowship of cowards. It lives in fear. Fear of life, fear of an illusory future. The perpetual trauma of the forward castes is inextricably woven into this fear. And what Arjun Singh's successful reservation campaign has denied them is the right to a secured but ordinary life, a life that comes with scoring 98 percent in the board exams, a life that goes like this: Engineer-MBA-anonymous. You can argue that this route is better than sociology-salesman-anonymous. But that will be to focus unduly on the ordinary among the cowards. The real tragedy concerns the extraordinary cowards. Great writers, painters, musicians and athletes who are lost forever to what are moronically called, 'the professional courses'. Instead of pursuing their talents they are, right now, in dark gloomy tutorials preparing for entrance exams, fatally infected by objective type questions. The angle between tangents drawn from the point (1,4) to the parabola y^2=4x is? The angst of the types who score over 95 percent also fills me, and several lakhs like me, with wicked joy. I was the 75 percent type. It was not pleasurable to be so in Madras of the eighties. I grew up in Kodambakkam where Telugu film directors, who wore white shoes, kept their beautiful mistresses; and Anglo Indian girls in skirts, who did not have hair on their legs, and all of whom I now remember only as Maria, walked to Fatima Church. But a large part of my formative years were spent in a Brahmin housing society called Rajaram Colony where fathers were all clerks and mothers were housewives. Rare working women had the same aura as divorcees. I was special because I was a Christian, and the transitory relatives of my neighbours, when they learnt my religion, would speak to me in English.
Many of my friends were periodically thrashed with belts by their fathers when the miasmic green report cards came home. Once, I heard the cries of a boy who had scored just ninety percent in a maths monthly test. Another form of punishment was heating a stainless steel serving spoon and inflicting minor burns. It was called, 'soodu'. My parents never hit me for my marks though my report cards were inspiring. My mother beat me up occasionally for political reasons – every time her mother-in-law came visiting. Apparently, according to a rustic Malayalee way of life, thrashing the kids was a hint to the in-law that it was time to leave. Those days, the legends of Rajaram Colony were our seniors who had entered the IITs, or as a consequence, had gone to America to study further. Their names were taken with reverence. When they visited home, they left a trail of whispers. And when they deigned to play cricket with us, we observed closely how they bowled and how they batted. Because they knew everything. It was already decided in every household, except mine, that the boys will go to IIT, a certainty just like their sisters will do BSc Nutrition. And so my friends began their furtive preparation when they were not yet thirteen. They began to score higher and higher at school. And they began to look at me as an unfortunate freak, not only because they thought they were brighter but also because I said I wanted to become a journalist. They scored better than me in English too. (Once in an English test, when asked the opposite gender of ram, almost every one in my class, astonishingly, knew the answer was ewe. I wrote, 'Sita'). I did always claim a higher creative status and often entertained the backbenchers, who were chiefly sons of illiterate parents, by calling my Brahmins friends, "curd-rice muggers". In the school I had slowly gained a reputation as a poet and some sort of a stand-up comedian. But as I approached the 12th standard, I was not the hero anymore of the juniors. That honour drifted to a brilliant boy, the first ranker who once used to play the tabla and did not touch the instrument anymore because he was preparing for IIT's Joint Entrance Exam. (A few years later, I would meet him on the campus of IIT Chennai. He would tell me that he will not go to America. "Because, you see, with transcendental meditation, you can sit here in Madras and visit any country in the world". He was serious. Now, he is a banker in San Francisco).
Meanwhile, in the Rajaram Colony, I observed that older Brahmin boys who had, somehow, fared poorly in the 12th standard and had to suffer the humiliation of pursuing BSc walked in the perpetual mist of guilt and embarrassment. They took to smoking and drinking, and 'sighting' – the disreputable art of looking at girls. They stared at a future in Eureka Forbes. I eventually moved out of the Colony to another such fiendish place but kept in touch with my childhood friends. The distance between us, however, grew. They did not really want to see me. I was a distraction in their preparation "for life". There was nothing they could talk to me about, nothing they could share, like their latest JEE sample test scores or the traits of the teachers at Brilliant Tutorials. On my part, I began to find them unhappy and bleak. Once, they were fresh and eager. Like me, they wanted to play cricket forIndia. Some were interested in music, some even attempted novels. Now, they were zombies in the trance of a whole material world that was just one entrance exam away. Eventually, almost all of them scored in the high nineties in the 12th standard exams. One made it to the IIT. The others prepared to go to second rung engineering colleges in humid melancholic towns. But they still thought they were more victorious than me because I had got 75%, a misfortune that their parents could not believe would visit someone who had two hands and one head. Worse, I told them that I was going to do a BA in English Literature. At that time, people did not think you were gay because you wanted to do literature. But they still did not understand why a male would do such a thing. They asked me if I was alright, if I could reconsider, if some maternal ornaments could be sold for the good cause of capitation fee. Some days, I think of those boys from another time. They are mostly bankers in America now and, I imagine, partly responsible for the subprime crisis. They are in the glow of the life that they had so dearly sought. But somehow I feel that their sisters, who eventually pursued what they wanted to, have more interesting lives. Also, occasionally I hear that some IITian or the other is returning to the art that he had originally loved. And is making up for the time he has lost because he could crack the toughest questions in the world but could not answer in time the class teacher's annual question, "What do you want to become in life?"
Beautiful World of the Backbenchers
Times of India 13 Apr 2008, Manu Joseph
The most foolish description of youth is that it is rebellious. The young do wear T-shirts that say Rebel or Che or Bitch. But the truth is that the youth, especially in this country, is a fellowship of cowards. It lives in fear. Fear of life, fear of an illusory future. The perpetual trauma of the forward castes is inextricably woven into this fear. And what Arjun Singh's successful reservation campaign has denied them is the right to a secured but ordinary life, a life that comes with scoring 98 percent in the board exams, a life that goes like this: Engineer-MBA-anonymous. You can argue that this route is better than sociology-salesman-anonymous. But that will be to focus unduly on the ordinary among the cowards. The real tragedy concerns the extraordinary cowards. Great writers, painters, musicians and athletes who are lost forever to what are moronically called, 'the professional courses'. Instead of pursuing their talents they are, right now, in dark gloomy tutorials preparing for entrance exams, fatally infected by objective type questions. The angle between tangents drawn from the point (1,4) to the parabola y^2=4x is? The angst of the types who score over 95 percent also fills me, and several lakhs like me, with wicked joy. I was the 75 percent type. It was not pleasurable to be so in Madras of the eighties. I grew up in Kodambakkam where Telugu film directors, who wore white shoes, kept their beautiful mistresses; and Anglo Indian girls in skirts, who did not have hair on their legs, and all of whom I now remember only as Maria, walked to Fatima Church. But a large part of my formative years were spent in a Brahmin housing society called Rajaram Colony where fathers were all clerks and mothers were housewives. Rare working women had the same aura as divorcees. I was special because I was a Christian, and the transitory relatives of my neighbours, when they learnt my religion, would speak to me in English.
Many of my friends were periodically thrashed with belts by their fathers when the miasmic green report cards came home. Once, I heard the cries of a boy who had scored just ninety percent in a maths monthly test. Another form of punishment was heating a stainless steel serving spoon and inflicting minor burns. It was called, 'soodu'. My parents never hit me for my marks though my report cards were inspiring. My mother beat me up occasionally for political reasons – every time her mother-in-law came visiting. Apparently, according to a rustic Malayalee way of life, thrashing the kids was a hint to the in-law that it was time to leave. Those days, the legends of Rajaram Colony were our seniors who had entered the IITs, or as a consequence, had gone to America to study further. Their names were taken with reverence. When they visited home, they left a trail of whispers. And when they deigned to play cricket with us, we observed closely how they bowled and how they batted. Because they knew everything. It was already decided in every household, except mine, that the boys will go to IIT, a certainty just like their sisters will do BSc Nutrition. And so my friends began their furtive preparation when they were not yet thirteen. They began to score higher and higher at school. And they began to look at me as an unfortunate freak, not only because they thought they were brighter but also because I said I wanted to become a journalist. They scored better than me in English too. (Once in an English test, when asked the opposite gender of ram, almost every one in my class, astonishingly, knew the answer was ewe. I wrote, 'Sita'). I did always claim a higher creative status and often entertained the backbenchers, who were chiefly sons of illiterate parents, by calling my Brahmins friends, "curd-rice muggers". In the school I had slowly gained a reputation as a poet and some sort of a stand-up comedian. But as I approached the 12th standard, I was not the hero anymore of the juniors. That honour drifted to a brilliant boy, the first ranker who once used to play the tabla and did not touch the instrument anymore because he was preparing for IIT's Joint Entrance Exam. (A few years later, I would meet him on the campus of IIT Chennai. He would tell me that he will not go to America. "Because, you see, with transcendental meditation, you can sit here in Madras and visit any country in the world". He was serious. Now, he is a banker in San Francisco).
Meanwhile, in the Rajaram Colony, I observed that older Brahmin boys who had, somehow, fared poorly in the 12th standard and had to suffer the humiliation of pursuing BSc walked in the perpetual mist of guilt and embarrassment. They took to smoking and drinking, and 'sighting' – the disreputable art of looking at girls. They stared at a future in Eureka Forbes. I eventually moved out of the Colony to another such fiendish place but kept in touch with my childhood friends. The distance between us, however, grew. They did not really want to see me. I was a distraction in their preparation "for life". There was nothing they could talk to me about, nothing they could share, like their latest JEE sample test scores or the traits of the teachers at Brilliant Tutorials. On my part, I began to find them unhappy and bleak. Once, they were fresh and eager. Like me, they wanted to play cricket forIndia. Some were interested in music, some even attempted novels. Now, they were zombies in the trance of a whole material world that was just one entrance exam away. Eventually, almost all of them scored in the high nineties in the 12th standard exams. One made it to the IIT. The others prepared to go to second rung engineering colleges in humid melancholic towns. But they still thought they were more victorious than me because I had got 75%, a misfortune that their parents could not believe would visit someone who had two hands and one head. Worse, I told them that I was going to do a BA in English Literature. At that time, people did not think you were gay because you wanted to do literature. But they still did not understand why a male would do such a thing. They asked me if I was alright, if I could reconsider, if some maternal ornaments could be sold for the good cause of capitation fee. Some days, I think of those boys from another time. They are mostly bankers in America now and, I imagine, partly responsible for the subprime crisis. They are in the glow of the life that they had so dearly sought. But somehow I feel that their sisters, who eventually pursued what they wanted to, have more interesting lives. Also, occasionally I hear that some IITian or the other is returning to the art that he had originally loved. And is making up for the time he has lost because he could crack the toughest questions in the world but could not answer in time the class teacher's annual question, "What do you want to become in life?"
Monday, July 27, 2009
Thakur Sir
It was a Sunday morning. We; my parents, my sister and me all were in deep sleep after returning from the Ganesh festival at our native place Murud Janjira, the house bell rang. My father saw it and came rushing to me saying “Thakur Sir!!” I bounced up like a spring not knowing what to do now?? All of us woke up from there and rushed inside the room, got freshen up and came infront of Sir. Instead of scolding me of missing Sunday Coaching of Seventh Scholarship class, Sir scolded my parents, saying if the parents can’t control their sleep then it is foolish of me to expect it from their 12 year child. This incidence is imprinted not only on my mind but even my parents can’t let it go. That’s Thakur Sir.
APJ Abdul Kalam, former President said in Ignited Mind, to have one primary teacher makes a deep impact on one’s life. I was extremely lucky to have one in the form of Thakur Sir. I have learnt a lot from him, without him actually preaching all that.
Discipline: Sir is the first disciplined fellow came to my life. I was and am still much unorganized, not to-the-core-punctual, doing many things simultaneously, absent-minded etc. But at every point Sir is completely opposite to me. Initially I used to be late in the class especially when I had to come early. Somewhere at time I learned that best way to be on time for a chap like me is to reach early! If you have missed homework, then you will be punished not by bitting but by non-cooperation, putting you aside. There is hardly anything disheartening than this if you have slightest of self-worth in you. It worked with me many times. It took me later on many years to actually value the importance of discipline almost 15 years, but I know what it is and how it could build or kill you. The knowledge acquired that time, was useful for me to develop my mathematical abilities. I could get through State Talent Search, National Talent Search –interview just by the basics gotten through at early times.
Self-lessness: They say they don’t make people like this anymore. I mean, everybody wants money, who does not? Nowadays private coaching classes are the highest earning revenue models. But Sir took a free of charge seventh scholarship classes of us. As the anecdote goes, give by right hand such that even the left hand remains unknown about it. He never flaunted it even by mistake. There used to be a screening test for one to get through the class. You could be asked table from 2 to 30. I was very petrified to have been appearing for the test. I had butterflies in my stomach. And unexpectedly I got through!! That was the first time, a sense of superiority brushed through me. That was the only time of my school life, when I enjoyed learning, rest all was made for marks, sheer mugging. I wonder he never expected a single penny from any of us!! At the end of the class, mind you, it was the first tragic separation from someone to whom I secretly admired deeply. We went on to gift him a pen set worth Rs 50 or so at the last class. Sir humbly refused to take it. Since we emotionally appealed him, after contemplating for almost an hour in front of all, he kept it. I could not forget that moment, Sir with his folded hand, banian, half pant, spectacle….looking at the ground deeply…with a sense of extreme spirituality. Accepting a pen set worth Rs 50 from about ten of us for a yearly coaching, could not have been a tribute to what we went through. Today I would have gone ahead with just a tight hug and nothing else. But at 12 years, you can’t help but do that. At the day of exam, like a coach, he had brought curd-rice for all of us and without asking how it was, he was feeding it to us, and bucking us up for the next delivery. How selfless one could be. He has always remained an ideal for me for how much you can trouble yourself for others and at the end of the day what you have is immense satisfaction, irrespective of how much of it is repaid back to you.
Love: Sir is as affectionate as much disciplined. Sir knew I like a guava among all the fruits. He has always kept a guava from his own garden especially for me because all others used to eat everything given to them but I was choosy. Till today I get those guavas at my home. At the hindsight, I feel a child need a disciplined affection for growth and one lame is without another. Even after 7th standard, he was integral part of all my decisions; going to Ruparel College after 10th, opting Chemical engineering at UDCT after 12th, joining Pradan after Lubrizol. He was there everywhere. Looking at my health at 12th, he was cautious if I could tolerate the chemical fumes/gases/products that were seen in my college. He even consulted some of the doctors, took opinions of my seniors and once when I reacted to this what is long-life worth if it’s lived against one wishes, he laughed a lot and said you know what you are doing, go ahead. After two year in industry when I decided to join NGO, he first showed a great concern, later on when got convinced; he literally announced to the whole city that my son is “mad” enough to take a different path. Little he knows that he is implicitly a big impression for me to do it.
Sir has always been accompanied by his mother-in-law, whom we always called Ajji. Ajji is a Sanskrit and Marathi scholar. Ajji taught us marathi, which is one of the subjects for scholarship exam. She is blessed with strong memory, I had always astonished as she used to hum her childhood poems. Her pronunciation of marathi words is exemplary, as if that’s how we should speak the languages, as sweet as sugar! She is a wonderful cook, I have had pleasure various time to eat fish and modak-ladoo made by her. Actually modak-ladoo is Lord Ganesha’s favourite food and they are prepared in Ganesh festival. But whenever ‘this ganesha’ kept on going to meet them even otherwise the festival, modak-ladoo were prepared especially for me. I have admired her clarity in whatever she did.
I wish him on teacher’s day. From my first ever salary, I brought him a pair of shirt and pant piece. Yet I am so full of him.. How can I pay tribute to Thakur Sir..
APJ Abdul Kalam, former President said in Ignited Mind, to have one primary teacher makes a deep impact on one’s life. I was extremely lucky to have one in the form of Thakur Sir. I have learnt a lot from him, without him actually preaching all that.
Discipline: Sir is the first disciplined fellow came to my life. I was and am still much unorganized, not to-the-core-punctual, doing many things simultaneously, absent-minded etc. But at every point Sir is completely opposite to me. Initially I used to be late in the class especially when I had to come early. Somewhere at time I learned that best way to be on time for a chap like me is to reach early! If you have missed homework, then you will be punished not by bitting but by non-cooperation, putting you aside. There is hardly anything disheartening than this if you have slightest of self-worth in you. It worked with me many times. It took me later on many years to actually value the importance of discipline almost 15 years, but I know what it is and how it could build or kill you. The knowledge acquired that time, was useful for me to develop my mathematical abilities. I could get through State Talent Search, National Talent Search –interview just by the basics gotten through at early times.
Self-lessness: They say they don’t make people like this anymore. I mean, everybody wants money, who does not? Nowadays private coaching classes are the highest earning revenue models. But Sir took a free of charge seventh scholarship classes of us. As the anecdote goes, give by right hand such that even the left hand remains unknown about it. He never flaunted it even by mistake. There used to be a screening test for one to get through the class. You could be asked table from 2 to 30. I was very petrified to have been appearing for the test. I had butterflies in my stomach. And unexpectedly I got through!! That was the first time, a sense of superiority brushed through me. That was the only time of my school life, when I enjoyed learning, rest all was made for marks, sheer mugging. I wonder he never expected a single penny from any of us!! At the end of the class, mind you, it was the first tragic separation from someone to whom I secretly admired deeply. We went on to gift him a pen set worth Rs 50 or so at the last class. Sir humbly refused to take it. Since we emotionally appealed him, after contemplating for almost an hour in front of all, he kept it. I could not forget that moment, Sir with his folded hand, banian, half pant, spectacle….looking at the ground deeply…with a sense of extreme spirituality. Accepting a pen set worth Rs 50 from about ten of us for a yearly coaching, could not have been a tribute to what we went through. Today I would have gone ahead with just a tight hug and nothing else. But at 12 years, you can’t help but do that. At the day of exam, like a coach, he had brought curd-rice for all of us and without asking how it was, he was feeding it to us, and bucking us up for the next delivery. How selfless one could be. He has always remained an ideal for me for how much you can trouble yourself for others and at the end of the day what you have is immense satisfaction, irrespective of how much of it is repaid back to you.
Love: Sir is as affectionate as much disciplined. Sir knew I like a guava among all the fruits. He has always kept a guava from his own garden especially for me because all others used to eat everything given to them but I was choosy. Till today I get those guavas at my home. At the hindsight, I feel a child need a disciplined affection for growth and one lame is without another. Even after 7th standard, he was integral part of all my decisions; going to Ruparel College after 10th, opting Chemical engineering at UDCT after 12th, joining Pradan after Lubrizol. He was there everywhere. Looking at my health at 12th, he was cautious if I could tolerate the chemical fumes/gases/products that were seen in my college. He even consulted some of the doctors, took opinions of my seniors and once when I reacted to this what is long-life worth if it’s lived against one wishes, he laughed a lot and said you know what you are doing, go ahead. After two year in industry when I decided to join NGO, he first showed a great concern, later on when got convinced; he literally announced to the whole city that my son is “mad” enough to take a different path. Little he knows that he is implicitly a big impression for me to do it.
Sir has always been accompanied by his mother-in-law, whom we always called Ajji. Ajji is a Sanskrit and Marathi scholar. Ajji taught us marathi, which is one of the subjects for scholarship exam. She is blessed with strong memory, I had always astonished as she used to hum her childhood poems. Her pronunciation of marathi words is exemplary, as if that’s how we should speak the languages, as sweet as sugar! She is a wonderful cook, I have had pleasure various time to eat fish and modak-ladoo made by her. Actually modak-ladoo is Lord Ganesha’s favourite food and they are prepared in Ganesh festival. But whenever ‘this ganesha’ kept on going to meet them even otherwise the festival, modak-ladoo were prepared especially for me. I have admired her clarity in whatever she did.
I wish him on teacher’s day. From my first ever salary, I brought him a pair of shirt and pant piece. Yet I am so full of him.. How can I pay tribute to Thakur Sir..
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