A Love Long Ago

A Beautiful Memory: Learning, Belonging and Other Musings

High School Reminiscences, part 8 of 16

Even today, as I look back, I still cling to the fond memories I have of her.

Soon after the end of our school days, I found myself thinking a great deal about - everything, down to the last detail. In the days that followed, I questioned, I inquired, and I knocked at the doors of uncertainty and confusion, vulnerability and disarray to let me into the wellspring of thought and action; I even tested the Almighty God’s patience with my adolescent blustering and hoped that it would pass muster, but it didn’t then; not yet.

I could not help thinking that I was feeling extra stuck, and things were not moving forward. I felt as though my anxiety would swallow me whole and afterward there will be nothing left for me to ramble about: hyper-analysing things, finding fault in myself unnecessarily and feeling vulnerable due to something that was not of supportive mindset or outlook, so I fell back into close orbit with my life and started feeling optimistic again.

The Future was up ahead, but the Past - regardless of wherever I go and whatever I do - will always be in my heart. Nobody can keep your Past away from you, so, at first, I can begin by constantly feeling assured by it and help myself being optimistic about the Future soon after: Who’s going to stop me do that? Nobody can. I am on my own now, as they say, ‘to carve a niche’ for myself; it’s a million-dollar feeling anyway. Yet, everything that I’ve managed to do then, albeit a little forlornly, mostly by keeping to myself, did fill my days up with a certain kind of comforting sincerity and fondness of feeling about the school days that just got over and the dawn of the first-year college up ahead, and that it still makes me feel close to everything I have of those two wonderful years (of which Masush was everything about) is enough for me to see clearly, get unstuck, and find a way forward free and unencumbered to keep going. It brings a smile to my face as my heart leaps up to confess that I still, even after all these many years, think about her. There's a little part of me that keeps the fire burning bright.

"Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time."

- Maya Angelou

Her beautiful memory has always nestled close to my side bent over me with her hair long and fallen curves. O’ the wonder of it. A love long ago that was mine and it still haunts me to this day.

I painted her face into pictures and penned many words of love and locked them away into my antique mahogany box of private recollections so that they never fade. Earlier, I used to quietly press my lips on her forehead with the tender love I always had for her; these days, however, my heart keeps on beating for the innocent days we were made to forsake and forget. It’s been decades now. Verity insists I stop harping on those thoughts of my childhood, that I should lock them away and throw the key someplace unfindable. Though I tell myself that “Maybe I should move on”, but I could never bring myself to carrying out such a sacrilegious task.

More and more these days, I endeavour to tutor myself that one day will come when every barrier will chip away and fall as if on its own and I’ll get to meet her someday. But that’s easier said than done. Things that you want to happen won’t happen just like that as if by magic. They never do. Strange that despite knowing that I still hanker after a lost golden age, my former days and my favorite person of affection.

Common Sense and Wisdom both kneel outside my home and pray that I should forget her, set my thoughts about her free, escape the clutches of my remembrances of her and move on damn it! But never could I bring myself to do that. Because I obey the burning desire to honour her memory and don’t allow myself to resist the pull of the calling, I kept pursuing my private emotional war with the inveterate unjust world. For decades, I toiled more than I can express over my ‘internal basement’ chiefly with a view to getting settled in my own mind and find closure within myself instead of looking to someone to give it to me. My foolishness wastes me I know, yet I don’t resist the beauty of our love that once ruled our adolescent hearts in that faraway unforgettable school. More’s the delight.

I confess that the gradual infliction of Time and Distance between two souls had made us put our memories aside, just for a little bit, so that we grow up without one another in a way that fulfils the world’s expectations from us first. Her memory drifts about in my mind.

Our love story has given up everything at the altar of an era long gone.

Power, Success, Fame

Time and tide had ebbed our poetry of courage and conviction away. Yet my heart clenches with love. I know Obligation and Obedience removed you to the unthinkably distant shores, halfway around the globe brimming with new possibilities and discoveries.

The lure of the West held sway over all my classmates completely and entirely, almost to the point of no return: It’s a reason enough, sadly, to renounce everything old and beautiful back home to seek a new beginning overseas. Stepping off the plane, head held high, with the keen anticipation to start a new life abroad and never look back is the new benchmark for achieving the so-called success and other such ego-boosting trinkets.

Welcome to the era of the feverish worshippers of power, success, fame, and wealth – limitless pursuits of prosperity, espousing get-rich-quick mentality to the hilt that today’s free-market, globe-swallowing globalization happens to offer in abundance. Beloveds, Darlings, Honeys, Loves, Blue-eyed boys and girls, or the apple of somebody’s eye have no place in such a merciless dog-eat-dog construct, ‘Winners’ take all. There are exceptions – uncommonly rare though they are in the boldface of the strange, radical, cynical, sarcastic, alien lifestyles that the most culturally insecure, all-consuming, all-eating, all-partying, all-buying “bindaas” eating, stuffing, romping, chomping, cavorting fraternity nowadays are obsessively seeking to attain, gain and profit from it all – but only a tiny, modest, happy minuscule minority who simply look on helplessly at the overpowering, overwhelming, extreme temerity of the world, slowly but painfully becoming conscious of the omnipresent realism that the world has really gone to the dogs. The agonies of human existence.

Did my Plus-2 school classmates become friends with one another, finally? They never did. Rather they chose not to. Except just one classmate who was of the friendlier bent of mind, better than other fellows could ever be. But before long it too ended, gradually declined, receded into quiet, happier memory.

Masush Rencelaw (alias Rushma Florence) was quite another matter: An unmissable feeling of heartbreak; something that you keep nursing in your heart which keeps lurching towards the sudden anticipation of difficult times ahead, in which facing ignominious defeats or adjusting with the teary backlashes of dreary days and nights of feeling low and lonely are some of the everyday battles which could not always be won. Understandably, for any school-going youngster, it does get pretty difficult to ascertain the action, reaction, or overreaction of the world around him and act accordingly to whatever is making sense or is understood by him. Realities of life that were so confusing at one point had hovered like foreboding clouds over every plausible thing he had managed to sort out eventually. At the end of the day, a small but significant amount of courage, persistence, and light-bulb moments had seen him through.

Love is not what it seems

Gone are the innocent school days of the late nineteen-eighties when incredible love stories or school friendships were though not unheard of but were not quite in the scheme of things of most students. All that mattered was growing up to be a grownup: hopeful and happy with daddy and mummy around to take care of everything else, not to forget cousins and friends from nearby places making up a wholesome world we had always known and gratefully dwelled in thinking blissfully that this is all we have, all that ever was, nothing else will matter evermore. And that’s it. Totally and entirely. Until accidents like Love happen.

Love has always been like that, a forbidden fruit that once upon a time long long ago both Adam and Eve, poor upstarts, supposed to have tasted to their Paradise-expulsion doom. What a slave Love is to Time and Time to Reality. Reality alleges to know better than that, it says: Love isn’t everything. But Love is the only thing that Reality doesn’t care to figure out why because it is not within its purview/syllabus. Reality is in the here-and-now, in the Present, while Love is the permanent embrace, enchanting, sweet agony that Reality despises. Just knowing that Love is worth it, is enough encouragement for oneself to live a life of sacrifice hoping, and longing so that the treasured old flame from way back continues to glow till eternity and beyond. Strong statement? So be it. Love, though unrequited, is all we are left with. This is our destiny, for this lifetime.

This damn life

Friendship? Okay, fine, whatever. They were just class fellows, associates, known faces for two wonderful high school years, other than that they are sweet recollections. Like diamonds, memories are forever. Sigh! I’d always believed that the life of a probashi is kind of different, you can’t put a finger on why. It simply is. For us folks, there always will be a lack of friends.

True that in life ‘good things’ don’t come easy if you are just content being a friendly, lovable human being, without a battling or go-getter spirit to enable you to accomplish what you might need to accomplish.

At this point, it must be said without much ado or embarrassment whatsoever that there are way too many consumptive people on Earth jostling for space and jobs and everything else that can be exploited to the hilt for personal gain, so naturally the wages of life would have already upped their ante quite a bit higher so as to make everyone step into all manner of difficulties all the time – almost stooping to the shameful level where ignorant people from all walks of life – poor or rich, old or young, female or male, infant or aged – quickly attain the satanic knowledge from their own wicked experience of how to come to blows with each other enabling them to try and continue to exist in one piece in a much badgered, over-exploited-for-resources world that has increasingly become devoid of old-world charm and chivalry. Human beings are of their reproductive best.

Nobody cuts the coat according to the available cloth. That’s old-fashioned. Everything these days should be over the top. Ready-made. Instant gratification. Move over Microwave, bring in the Robots/Autobots!

Matter over mind, not mind over matter, material over spiritual, technology over basic human emotion, ‘mouse’ over the cat, strong over the weak, privilege over the powerless, guns over butter, Mercedes E-class over Maruti, elite over the commoners, capitalism over socialism, inhuman over the human, communal over secular* – a soul-crushing malady that gets free rein 24/7 and all 365 days in a year, year after year at a shopping mall, at home and pretty much any place where you can get to be a show-off consumerist cowboy on an impulse buying binge. These days, to survive is to be surprised; even to live longer (than necessary?) one needs to fight, compete and combat, often indecently in these so-called contemporaneous times frequented with dangerous bugs, viruses, and infections. Yeh saali zindagi. This damn life.

*(The list is interminable; the possibilities for such play of words, endless. If you wish to add more to your own list, go right ahead.)

Better to be a simple guy who gets to keep pulling at the strings of his acoustic guitar and sing old melodies of lost love and having a place in your worldly-wise locality teeming with fawning like-minded near and dear public. The classic eternal craving of a musically-declined idealist guitarist, even a flutist, your very own Pied Piper of Hemline … (in this case pied piper of your own locality), who goes by the heart-touching name of ‘Guitar Rajoo’ and speaks your local language suitably interspersing with figures of speech, similes and much-loved familiar phrases are well and truly served and served LIVE, hypnotically for everybody to take recourse in; as though conveying: Come let me guide you off the cliff of your pitiable ratty life and you’ll be fine forever.

One clings to hope. Hope floats. Everybody, as usual, is lost in time thinking about the unthinkable: Future. Everybody is trying to clock in as many years as could be possible in life to be of use in this world. Maybe, life is all about living in hope, perpetual hope.

By Arindam Moulick

PS: You may also read my earlier blog post here: "Straight from the Heart".

Disclaimer: This blog is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of my imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

School Friendship? It’s a Relic

A Beautiful Memory: Learning, Belonging and Other Musings

High School Reminiscences, part 7 of 16

Continuing from where I left off in my last post ("Friendship and Other Maladies", 1st March 2020) where I have plumped the shallows of somewhat no-holds-barred account of the Plus-2 years spent at a faraway school – consigned to a distant memory that despite everything still manages to press an elegant dagger into my heart, here is the penultimate chapter from my ‘High School Reminiscences’ series.

Bittersweet memories of my senior secondary school days are flooding back and I am being quietly seized with an acute sense of nostalgia for the God-given wonderful days of my student life. Those times are long gone – put in the past, drawn a veil over, bygone, ancient history.

But isn’t it a wonder how we hold on to the pieces of our past, or often take a trip down memory lane, or look back on the good old days that are filled with golden memories and laughs? Just like any school student, however, I too had been blessed to have lived some of the best days of my life when I was younger – with little to zero possibility of long-lasting school friendship notwithstanding. That’s how it was then: those two years in that school were generally bounded by the cold bittersweet embrace of friendlessness. But still, I’d want a one-way ticket back to the 1980s/90s, please.

‘How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.’― William Faulkner

Silly poke of a joke!

The silly poke of the joke – “I’ll become an Astronaut someday” – that I played in the class had hit the bull’s eye! Bingo! It was pretty well-timed.

Although it was not too funny, not even excessively clever, barely was it, yet it had managed to put some of our class fellows (‘Arrogant Lot’, AL) in their place; at least that was part of my original plan – Let’s see how they react to it when I pull a fast one on them. Obviously, they didn't care for it the slightest bit. No one got my joke. Others, not from the AL group, grinned and said something amusing and hooted convivially. It was anything but a proper joke I admit, but it was not a flinch-inducing pun either that could cause my classmates to cringe with derision, which was actually what they did incidentally. They frowned.

From the beehive of unsmiling faces in front of me, it seemed to me that they were kind of ‘shell-shocked’, that they couldn’t move a muscle, went blank in the faces, even forgot to think. It was not really the sort of response one would anticipate from ‘friends’ of your own class. Surely then, bursting out in laughter could have made the AL a good sport of themselves that one would have appreciated immensely. The sad thing is that they didn’t laugh at my joke because they didn’t expect anybody should be so wittier than themselves! But one understands that if the joke is really funny then even the most serious of individuals cannot keep their faces straight before their smile breaks into a peal of laughter.

As it turned out, my innocent pun didn’t go down well with the classmates I fraternized with. Without taking umbrage, I just stayed put awaiting that perhaps someone would say something funnier than I could manage. However, none came. The magic, I fortunately realized, was in letting go of things you can’t handle and I continued trusting that things will be okay between the so-called ‘Arrogant Lot’ and ‘Humble Lot’ sooner than later. For the first time in my two years of attending that charming school nestled in the deep, enchanted evergreens of the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) wind-swept Base, I found myself looking straight in the eye of nothing short of, I’d say, a twister-slash-storm – meaning the AL people’s continuous needle-nudge of baffling aloofness from everything that was not up to their express wish and will. Well, it doesn’t imply that this group of 4 to 5 fellas was of out-and-out villainous disposition, positively not, god forbid; they were gauche no doubt but were at the same time blissfully oblivious to accede any kind of appreciation for your talent that they thought didn’t exist apart from their own. They were the uncrowned level-headed aficionados who don’t mind being scathing, searing, clear-cut, and whimsically straightforward with everyone in the class. They were difficult to converse with, difficult to play with, difficult to function as a team, and so on and so forth. Methinks, their primary agenda was: Just Be Difficult.

Poor little fellas couldn’t even at least laugh out loud at the cock-and-bull story I was concocting. It should have been great fun had they laughed. Tell me, where was the harm in saying something you don’t truly mean? What do you call a joke then? Nazi propaganda? Cuban Missile Crisis? Or is it a Charlie Chaplinesque kind of LOL fun? 'It's elementary, my dear Watson'.

Becoming an Astronaut or something like it, is not my idea of making a career choice; as though to become such a bleeding-edge Space professional is a smooth cakewalk (in the Space?) doesn’t take much of a brain; as though I am up to speed in tolerating such a dreadfully impossible challenge to become one. Whatever. On the off chance that my classmates had the presence of mind to laugh or had traded something funny for my joke, I think the general state of our somewhat touchy-feely acquaintance with one another as classmates would have progressed in quite a significant manner and it would have been a great method to find its way into our book of great school recollections. But pity, that was never to be. The joke fell flat. Disappointingly, the AL was not inclined to look at the developing scenario the way a few of us, the HL, colleagues did; I guess, we the Humble Lot, HL were a little too enthusiastic in our black boots than would normally be appropriate to make amends with the Arrogant Lot, AL. We wanted to set a precedent I guess; by being a little more ethically upright than they are known for. I figured a good laugh or two would possibly cut down the lofty Berlin Wall-like wariness and misplaced scepticism towards one another that occasionally make their unwelcome presence felt amongst school-going students without any warning, however, it was not to be. The Berlin Wall-like hindrance has consistently been a permanent fixture between us and them, the AL and the HL, all through the two years of our bittersweet association. To be honest, the overall situation was quite puzzling for me to get a hang of it.

Hell, it was just a petty joke, nothing else; intended to be laughed at or flayed as though it’s a thing of no significance whatsoever. But do it, for God’s sake.

The fact of the matter is that I was not in the least bit like someone who gets a mighty ego-boost from showing my classmates’ potential in a bad light by saying that I was going to become “an Astronaut” and get to mount on a moral high horse at the same time. I contended that if you like my joke, laugh at it or just reject it if you must: anyway, that was exactly what I was expecting from them. But do something for God’s sake; chuckle the way you like it, twist it, and turn it nobody’s preventing you from doing as such. After all, it was a fun session and should be taken lightly, no? Well, if you can’t make anything of the purported joke, then it’s supposed to mean that you are being simply … DIMWIT.

Yes, my little ‘joke’ smacked of a daring hypothetical assertion of some sort that, god forbid, a freshman like me could marshal the fortitude to state something like how I did in a class full of incompatible students, mostly overambitious than necessary was like pulling off a miracle of some sort and surviving to tell a banal tale like this one. No, thank you. But eventually, I couldn’t help but jolly well think that I pulled a fast one on them and they didn’t even see it coming. Gotcha! Score: Me – 1 (One), You guys – 0 (Zero, śūn'ya, Nil, Naught, Duck, Nada, Null). So much for your boasting, kiddies!

No one from our class could come up with something as gobsmacking as saying ‘an Astronaut,’ of all other things that could be said. How preposterous is it going to sound when we, feeling perky, make fun by saying something that nobody typically says? Never really much. Fun often doesn’t mean much. Say something clever and you can’t catch, that has to be a fundamental PROBLEM with a big ‘P’ out front to deal with – not mathematical, but societal and cultural problems that need urgent looking-into. When it is someone’s turn to poke fun or pull somebody's leg for a bit you don’t shy away from it, you share the fun; it’s just another version of your “game of one-upmanship” (played during a free period) that you AL people are already a great exponent of, so where was the hitch? Letting everyone score some brownie points or get offered a chance to meaningfully show-off in front of everyone as to how funnier can you get in the classroom tricks everyone into participating in a leisurely activity wherein you just don’t have the option of getting away from. That is also one of the ways how you make remarkable memories at your school.

‘Friends were the family one chose.’
– Salman Rushdie

You can go ahead and become ‘an Astronaut’ or ‘a Cosmonaut’ or ‘a Psychonaut’ or ‘an Engineer’ for all you like, or simply prefer to take it easy by becoming your locality’s, your neighbourhood’s, your colony’s, your village’s strings-fingering ‘Guitar Rajoo’, a musically-declined escapist guitarist! It’s your personal choice. Some new-age rishi muni (sage) has said something invaluable thus: Nothing else matters so much as long as you are a good person who has left a little corner of the world in slightly better shape as a result of his soul-warming integrity and strength of character. Hmmm. Hmmm. Stay true to yourself, forever and a day.

To say something ‘of great magnitude’ or essentially high-sounding career choice that no one can imagine saying, expect me to come up with something dramatic of sorts. No one in our class could come up with a wittier repartee than mine. I said “an Astronaut”, they said “Engineering”. I agree it was not that wittier as I wanted it to sound, it was thoughtless of me to say “as Astronaut” as if to become ‘an Astronaut’ one need not do an Engineering degree, yet it was slightly better than their jingoistic avowals of orthodoxy that makes them choose Engineering for further studies. Hahaha.

They could only rehash, ad infinitum, what they want to take up as a career: Engineering! As if nothing else is there in the whole wide world of letters to choose from; so you settle on doing what is quickly available, within your reach, accessible, feasible, and reasonable. Come hell or high water, it’s always going to be a writ of the safe-bet Engineering qualification.

Medicine, however, was not easily said because comparatively speaking it’s far too easier and simpler to be an Engineer (Oh, the solid sound of it!) than find oneself tangle with its heavy-duty counterpart Medicine. Doing Medicine is not any unmitigated, sold-out Engineer’s dispensation. Medicine is a serious ballgame that everyone in my class had insisted on conveniently overlooking. What could other areas be of interest for any student who could take up for further studies, aside from engineering and medicine that are already there rotting away like choicest pieces of an Old Rectory or a Museum and are in various forms of … decomposition? Oceanographer? Climatologist? Marine Biologist? Or a plain English Teacher? Not a chance? Doesn’t quite match up to your standards? I suspected as much! For almost all of my classmates, to turn into an Engineer was such a big deal.

An ‘Open House’ was where you say out loud what you aspire to become in life, so what was halting you, fine fellows, from being somewhat more imaginative in tossing some ideas and thoughts on the table and see what happens? Oh! Darlings, if you want to become a Space Cowboy at ISRO or NASA or a National Geographic voyager or simply need to have an orangey Jolly Rancher lollypop and take it easy, then say it as if you damn well mean it! It’s was only a fun game – an activity-based pageant if you like where your creative blurbs about your vocation decisions could bring about the necessary spirited energy to assail us with some joie de vivre in the process while you are at it. All that you were required to do is mentally float into the specific direction of the rollicking groove of your classmates or just go with the flow to effect an atmosphere of bonhomie and fun learning. If you all chaps have known about bunking classes, doubtlessly then you’d have known about brain-storming sessions to generate new ideas, wouldn’t you? Harmless fun, that’s more like it, and that is all there was to it.

Gone Kaput!

Poor little kids, they wouldn’t want to forego their engineering dream. Why’d anyone expect them to do something out of ordinary? Needless to say, most often we end up having a one-track mind, an overly fixated point of view; we simply follow what others have safely done before us and look, at least outwardly, quite comfortable with the choice they made. We herd ourselves in that specific direction that the others went and blindly ape it, more often than not to our peril.

The moment I quipped: ‘an Astronaut’ they quit hollering almost instantaneously… as though some hell broke loose on them or some horrible crap hit the fan around them they appeared as if they’ve been unfairly knocked out of some imaginary competition by the impact of what I said.

You should have seen their countenances. Poor fellows. Where have all your braveness gone now, folks? Gone Kaput? So easily? Good grief. For mercy’s sake, it was a fun session we had in the class, there’s nothing much to be read into it. Being capable or able to become an Astronaut was not the issue, it was rather being able to have fun by saying something overbearing or grandiloquent was the name of the game. According to my understanding, saying ‘Engineering’ could best be avoided in the class on the grounds that everybody already knows that everybody is going to be eventually affected by the dreaded Engineering bug after all.

The ‘situation’ – and they were a smart bunch of situation artists – or the ‘game of one-upmanship’ was solely their creation; I was not a part of it. Coming up with something astonishing to say or seemingly unachievable or perhaps as fashionable as announcing ‘an Astronaut’ to the whole class, I assume, was not beyond their abilities, but my classmates were typically thinking clichéd/conventional “Engineering” to prove some such oft-repeated, overdone, old-fashioned point that doesn’t cut any ice. Does that really mean they just expect themselves to sit and write entrance exams and get attuned to some such outdated novelties that come along with it? I hoped they were better than that. Whatever, it’s their wish and will.

To cut a long story short, I wanted to say something to tick them off a tad, and putting it gently: to pay back in their coin; couldn’t check the temptation you see. I guess I just wanted to see what their response (their ‘reaction’) would be to something which can though jokingly be said but is quite frightfully difficult or better still impossible to achieve. To become an Astronaut or a Cosmonaut is not easy; it’s a pure and unending sense of sacrifice and heightened study of an exceptional branch of science that can bring you closure to success. All that I am saying is that: don’t stop at becoming just an Engineer (“injineer”) and do a “job” somewhere after you’ve become one: Go a little further in your career aspirations and work for the larger interest of humanity if you can. That’s the need of the hour. I don’t mean to lecture, but when you want to become something in life, think about Mother Earth too. What’s more, if you have what it takes, it will go on to prove your true mettle. Let’s not make Engineering just another indispensable degree to be had at any cost. There are other pebbles on the beach. Do I sound a little cranky when I say that? I am certain I do. In any case, that’s the truth and it comes into the know with one’s – I am telling you this straight from the shoulder – personal experience.

Likewise, I don’t parade around or talk about something until I have successfully done it. Having said that, I never planned on becoming ‘an Astronaut’ in the first place because I am well aware of my limitations and that Sacrifice thing I was talking about earlier is certainly not my cup of tea either and is way above my scale. Instead, I’ve become a software engineer err… professional. Certainly not anywhere near becoming an Astronaut but a ‘Softonaut’, as it were. Perhaps it was my calling and I am into it full time.

Now and again, I love viewing through a telescope and look at stars and other celestial bodies in the night sky and that’s as far as I could get to become a certain sort of Astronaut! No wonder, that day in school I could pull a fast one on them, albeit a little foolishly I admit, snug in the belief that I had the last laugh!

Post that infamous little ‘situation’ of our own making, all our shouting matches in the class had come to a grinding halt, stopped shut lock stock and barrel, as we one by one settled down noiselessly on our bench and opened our textbooks to prepare for the next period because up next was the iron-willed, strict more than strict could ever be, Chemistry mam’s (Ms. Titrimetric Analysis) class. Good grief!

By Arindam Moulick

Disclaimer: This blog is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of my imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Friendship and Other Maladies

A Beautiful Memory: Learning, Belonging and Other Musings

High School Reminiscences, part 6 of 16

* "Baje Sargam Har Taraf Se,
Goonje Bankar Desh Raag"

School friendship doesn’t work. When you have been ‘friends’ with someone only for two years at a school, chances are that the friendship won’t keep going forever. Friendships constantly evolve, therefore there’s no one way to guarantee that they will last. That’s the downside.

Nobody is perfect in this world, none more so than an innocent school student wanting to tackle the odds and ends of his/her studentship days and appreciate life as it comes. Still, for a Plus-2 teenager admitted into a new faraway school, braving the rigours of studying heavy-duty subjects like Maths, Physics, Biology, and Chemistry (MPBC), he ended up being not quite at home, feeling uncomfortable with the new surroundings and things like that, with the kind of school life he was experiencing, particularly during those two important years.

From a Christian convent education background to a central school setup, it was like he had been plonked down in the middle of big nowhere. Lonely among the smartly dressed, insatiably curious, potently inspirational characters, he didn’t quite get to know fully, he imagined problems that really didn’t exist. For any teenager, he kidded to himself, problems are not problems at all unless they are mathematical. Math problems are the real ‘problems’ if they are solved everything is on the right track. Other problems are for the adults to tackle not for any school-going teenager to worry about, at least not yet.

What’s more, with barely anyone to call a friend, those two tepid years had been quite a tricky pickle, a Catch-22 situation, he had been in.

They were not friends, were they?

At times, I used to more or less remain impassive to some of my classmates’ beefy mannerisms mainly because, being shy and self-conscious that I was, I found it very, to put it gently, patronizing. I think that’s quite natural an affectation because since I come from a slightly different background in comparison to what I was being introduced to at the school, I was bound to get a little perturbed by almost everything I’ve never seen or heard before as a school student. The new school was really something of a big task to come to grips with. Friendship was a malady in that school, so in no uncertain terms I told myself off: Get a move on.

They, the ‘Arrogant Lot’, kept up the tempo of impressing everyone in the class with their signature antics. (I concede full marks to them as they were very good at their seemingly old game of one-upmanship). Full marks to these accomplished lot of self-flagellators, pounding with the kind of synapse-searing effects of their vivacious behaviour showing off their full regalia of gutsy glory with much aplomb. Needless to mention, most of the time I used to find it hard to believe because I wasn’t quite used to seeing their staple of coarse ruffling tactics (read teenage politics) I thought it a little odd. I don’t know about other students like me but I thought their general conduct which was one of dominance didn’t tickle my fancy at all; in fact, it got in my way of acknowledging their persevering zeal to study well and get “good marks” in the tests-slash-exams so much so that I decided to relegate myself to a cosy corner of self-introspection and quiet contemplation. With no hope to befriend anyone in the class except just one – a saving grace indeed, I thought, man I have got to get a move on with my life! So many subjects, so little time!

Being slightly nervous and edgy, my cautious interaction with most of these class fellows didn’t help my case either. Expecting good companionship or friendship from them was asking to, it seemed, hazard one’s rank, status, or ability as a schoolboy. Because they weren’t really interested in friendship much less kinship, I felt that I was unnecessarily constraining them to feel inspired by it and how good it is to be friendly with one another in the class. Friendship works for everybody. Regrettably, they didn’t take the bait!

To their continued dislike or royal ignore for the thought of great friendship, I proffered, albeit meekly, to push for the compelling idea of meaningful friendship-slash-companionship with them, but none came. Friendship was not their priority; these somewhat prejudiced individuals had other better things to do. Seeing all these in my first year of the two years I had spent in that nice little school I began to – not despise, that would be too strong a word to use – feel repulsed by this strange set of bombastic students without showing it upfront. Despite this spot of botheration, once in a while, I used to find myself joining in the ruckus they made in the class, just by coolly listening to their hectoring ‘BIG BALLER, SHOT CALLER’ talk show, again without evincing much interest.

Proudly buck-toothed and buffoonish Hawkish Sribathtub had zero appreciation for friendship. He straightaway rejected the idea of friendship with one another with an acid disdain – that is to say, in the snidest of terms that could be possible spewing he basically refused to entertain any sort of emotional rapport or kinship with anybody in the class. He loved the manner in which he was. No doubt about it. No doubt also about the fact that he became very famously known as a ‘MASTER OF REBUKES’. Naturally, I (and most likely others too but I can’t say for sure) began to pay no attention to his acrimonious ways after being unduly troubled by associating with him. Just within the first few days into our first academic year, I remember how astonished I was to find him slowly turning out to be a different kind of person who is peculiarly disposed and aggressively individualistic that I couldn’t quite properly comprehend earlier. But when I realized something wasn’t right with him, I became deeply offended by him as a so-called fellow student sitting just a few meters away in the same class. I thought Hawkish would be a good friend but he simply wasn’t interested. I quickly understood that it was his own choice to be such an individual; it’s not anybody’s business (and it is pointless and stupid) to mould him into someone he is not. Baljee Risla his all-weather co-bencher could have better ideas than I could come up with about him.

Anyway, one of the things that worried me as a student is that he began to be blisteringly rude particularly in his behaviour with me as though some wild nerve had come off or got separated in his head and he starts acting smart as a result. Except when the classes were in the session he thoroughly enjoyed being an almighty class-bully. Much to my dismay then that I had made the terrible mistake of disclosing to him which school I was getting admission into after finishing my 10th. I didn't make a big deal about it at first, however later I suffered due to my apparent lack of discretion. Before I knew it he shamelessly followed me to the much talked about central school and immediately took an admission, and to rub salt in the wounds he chose the science stream just as I had!

Unfortunately, Hawkish Sribathtub turned out to be a big disappointment. No doubt, life would have been to some degree more peaceful and kindly without having this impolite equivalent of a fair-weather friend around as a classmate. On my part, however, it was a classic case of poor judgment (of his bogus friendship) and a late realization that contributed to the mushrooming billows of COLD WAR between us. From this sad little thing, I had learned a hard good lesson: Never take anything at face-value while associating with so-called ‘friends’ at school, it massacres your educational proficiency and prestige afterward.

There are loads of reasons why I loved that school especially because of its scenic location: in the remotest corner of the open countryside, miles away from the city. If I could relive high school again I’d be the first one to shoot my hand up and say loudly: “PRESENT MISS!” Part of the reason why I loved that school very much is because I shared my two very significant years with someone I loved just as much. Nothing could match the experience of talking and walking down the path towards the BIOLOGY or PHYSICS lab or “proceeding” towards the grassy ground to take part in the AZAD HOUSE-related activities, S.U.P.W. interludes, taking a moment or two just to sneak a look – all starry eyed at one another, writing copious notes to each other, and so much more. No matter where you go or what you do in life, you’ll never forget where you first fell in love, miss playing baseball, academic books and fountain pens, get good grades with little to no effort, readings at the library, not having life taken over by technology, … I could author a bestselling book. The school is deeply etched in my mind, and I can’t express gratitude toward it enough giving me the kind of friends, teachers, memories that allow me, now in adulthood, to reminisce about how much I adored it. My heart is still bleeding BLUE and WHITE; I am still an ‘AZAD’ (Azad House) at heart. It was all so incredibly wonderful.

Both Baljee Risla and Hangorak Tarik were not far behind from such a comradely show of indignity towards the sacred idea of SCHOOL FRIENDSHIP, which I believe is no less than a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that must be had at all costs. Sadly, they skipped it forthwith! Not interested in investing their time in such a thing! Hope today, wherever they are, they get to realize (I am sure much to their discomfiture) what they have missed all those years back, over three long decades previous. We have squandered the sublime feeling of friendship that never could bloom amongst us students – that is what we have missed. Besides, we’ve failed to embrace friendship fully and wholeheartedly.

School friendship is supposed to be SWEET in feeling but it turned out to be - quite unlike what I had been looking forward to, right from the start of Class XI - sour and always indignant. If two full years of studying together in that wonderful school surroundings weren’t sufficient for us to make long-lasting friendships, then how many years could we have had to actually do so? God knows. What could be more pathetic than this upsetting reality? Save for Topal Chapathi, Thomas (Doubting Thomas?), and last but not least Masush Rencelaw (another name: Rushma Florence) and her conscience-keeping sanitizer of a friend Mitu Singh – all from Class Eleven, and P.S.V.V.S.T.U.V.W.X.Y.Z. Ramraj (and his sibling) from Class Twelve, no one from our class knew anyone else not even by chance. That's how it was. Regrettably, for the majority of the colleagues from my own Class XII friendship was not in their scheme of things. Say what you might, the writing on the wall was loud and clear: The students from Class XI were far more modern, up-to-date, and forthcoming (and exciting) than we intrepid seniors from Class Twelve could ever figure out how to be. 

I fear I maybe am sounding like someone who is being a foolish know-it-all faulty in the head (or holier-than-thou) and is coming across as slightly disgruntled, but I assure you that it is not the case. Just like any teenager, I too have learned my share of lessons from what Life had or has in store for me. All life is a learning experience. This much I’ve understood that Life presents just one golden chance for you to have it, never again is it going to come to you if you had managed to evade it the first time around. Life is all about one good chance that you can avail of, nothing more nothing less. Does it sound unnecessarily intellectual? Maybe it is. I hope you guys will find your redemption and are already living a long happy cheerful life. That’s the spirit, people.

Friendship? Okay, Fine, Whatever

One day, I ventured to say, just for the heck of it, what I’d like to become in my life: the kind of career I’d like to take up. I quipped: “an ASTRONAUT” and I didn’t baulk one bit when I said that. I uttered the words as simply and straight-faced as I could muster in front of a beehive of intelligent watching eyes and clever heads. Immediately, I expected laughter from them and then thought maybe a round of verbal scorns will ensue from their mouths while also pulling their faces cursing inwardly. But no, nothing of that sort had happened. Laughing their hearts out could have been an appropriate response to my quip. I was kind of disappointed because I was, in all my honesty, anticipating good laughs because anyone saying “an ASTRONAUT” was supposed to be a funny thing, especially when we are mostly accustomed to hearing Engineering or Medicine as standard career choices. They didn’t laugh, they scowled.

I watched their faces: they looked strangely glum and kept blinking at me in disbelief as if I have said something they never expected in the first place, as if becoming an Astronaut was their entitlement, not for others to even dare think about it. Expecting others (read the ‘Humble Lot’) to even say something like that, is, to them, totally uncalled for. How foolish things were with them. Thereafter, realizing that the Arrogant Lot thought too little of other peoples’ abilities, I ignored them. I surmised mentally that it would be an exercise in futility to correct their attitude towards others who were not from their group. And rubbing salt into the wounds, and I remember with a cynical ‘See-I-told-you!’ grin on my face, I quickly added a rejoinder: “First of all, a good human being and second of all, perhaps something for the world: maybe an astronaut will do or some such thing”.

Obviously, I decided to play it cool. As though becoming an Astronaut was like a cakewalk or angling in a lake to catch fish or something of that sort. Only it wasn’t, of course. Let that safely be said. But surprisingly, they took the bait! While I knew that they didn’t really think I was capable of becoming an Astronaut or something, (and the feeling is mutual anyway), what got their tongue was the proverbial cat because they couldn’t come up with such a great thing to say! Tsk tsk! What a shame.

But in all honesty, I expected a good cackle among themselves, but no, not even a hint of it came forth. No one laughed or snickered. They simply rolled away from me, frowning. That’s when I understood that they were not really ‘friends’; they were egotistical, puffed-up with pride classmates (the Arrogant Lot) with practically little sense of humour and zero promise of friendship. I could also make out if any of them were friends with others in the true sense of the word, they were not. At school, friendship was not of their concern: If anyone happens to get a little chummy or slightly more friendly, that would happen very rarely though, with someone, outcomes the rebuke “Tu full free ho jara mujhse!” from their mouth. That’s how mean they were, always abhorring familiarity or close companionship with one another. Due to some kind of depressive mentality that was, I suppose, inherent in them, part of their upbringing, insecurity, cynical mania of their mind-set not used to making friends easily when there is someone to make friends with, they became simply incapable to form a friendship with anyone.

Sadly, a lifelong friendship was not something they were born desiring. Instead, they choose to fool themselves with a momentary flux of passions and desires, night and day, year by year, hankering after “good marks”, feeling needlessly superior, mad with ignorant ambition, snubbing possible friends, and above all career-mongering – all of that mounted upon their teenage heads like crowning glory! Poor ruddy folks!

For two long years, their sole agenda was to study, with zero likelihood of making good friends with anyone present in class. Studying well, impressing teachers, and getting “good marks” are all academically fine but don’t tell me they were not affected by the fact that they ended up with not a single friend. Were they of the opinion that friendship comes in the way of studies and that they’ll not be able to get “good marks” to varnish their report card with or build “good careers” if it is given undue precedence? Does it mean that friendship is a cheap little thing one should avoid at all costs? WRONG! Oh poor fellows, what do you know? Friendship is sublime, and you guys had to shirk it as if it was a lowly plague. Don't worry, I’ve given “good marks” to almost all of you chaps for not giving due importance that our fallow kind of friendship deserved! Tell me, can’t Friendship and Studies exist side by side? Like friends, if you like? So very sad is the reality of my student life with you fellas that I’ve now ceased to dwell on this woebegone-ish pet peeve.

I don’t mind sounding a little vainglorious and proud here, but I think I realize that thinking back to those two ‘friendless’ years could cause a torrent of heartaches and heartbreaks for me to deal with, so I don’t dare. Of late, I have been incessantly trying to train my mind to remember less and less about all of my class fellows who have been once a part for two undeniably wonderful years of my life in the good old forgotten central school which is no longer in existence, however, none of my attempts was successful. I don't have anything more to say. Maybe just a few lines more and I’ll be finished narrating this doleful tale of mine.

(A confession: I had a lot going on in my life at the time that I have a soft spot for. English, Biology, the idyllic surroundings of the school including the beautiful backdrop of the grassy playground and the tranquil breeze passing through the place especially during the rainy seasons and the cool winters, Masush Rencelaw (Rushma Florence or S. L.), the library, and the Army school truck for the daily commute to school).

No small matter this

Had they been really good friends they would have surely smiled, chuckled, giggled, and laughed, and seeing everybody snickering at my silly gumption would, I thought, make for a deeper kinship to sprout amongst us like wonderful flowers of bonhomie I had so much desired. But what followed was quite the opposite. They didn’t even giggle or pass entertaining remarks or hooted. They just moved away from my bench without saying anything at all, suddenly getting disinterested and aloof. Considering the circumstance, the least bit they could do was say perhaps something decent and then move away if they had to. For any student, it is quite a troubling feeling to deal with, right? In my time as a school student, I had dutifully weathered such daily tempests of Shakespearean proportions. No, I ain't joking.

That day I was bitterly disappointed. At the day's end, I slowly realized while I walked back to the Army school truck waiting to drop me back home that my two years in the central school is not going to produce any friends. I couldn’t help but accept the kind cruelty of the reality that I was going to be by and large (just a little hope there still) friendless during the two significant years of my life in that idyllic school.

Little wonder then that I left that school in a state of moaning heartbrokenness that had slowly and achingly subsided long after I had joined college. But elegiac memories of that school keep tugging at my heart now and then. And I am happy that it still does.

By Arindam Moulick

* “Baje Sargam Har Taraf Se” is a video song that used to be played on the Doordarshan television channel back in the year 1989.

Disclaimer: This blog is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of my imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.