शिक्षक दिवस पर

 

देश के प्रथम उपराष्ट्रपति एवं द्वितीय राष्ट्रपति महामहिम डॉक्टर सर्वपल्ली राधाकृष्णन जी के जन्म दिवस पर शिक्षक दिवस समारोह में उपस्थित सभी गुरुजनों को मेरा हृदय से प्रणाम है। आज मेरे साथ मंचासीन सभी व्यक्तित्व किसी ना किसी तरह से अपने गुरुजनों के आशीर्वाद एवं सहयोग से ही अपने पद और प्रतिष्ठा पर आसीन है। अध्यक्ष जी शिक्षा एवं विशेषज्ञता से एक चिकित्सक हैं, एवं इसके लिए उन्होंने कड़ी प्रतिस्पर्धा उत्तीर्ण करके यह उपलब्धि हासिल की है। इसी प्रकार मंचासीन सभी अधिकारीगण भी विभिन्न प्रतियोगी परीक्षाओं में अपने एकेडमिक कैलिबर के आधार पर ही चयनित होकर आज यहां विराजमान है। साथ ही हमारे सभा में उपस्थित सभी सम्मानित शिक्षक गण भी किसी ना किसी प्रतियोगी परीक्षा अथवा चयन प्रक्रिया के माध्यम से ही यहां उपस्थित हैं और इन सब के यहां उपस्थित होने के पीछे इनके स्वयं के गुरुओं की कड़ी मेहनत झलक रही है। इसलिए मैं आज इस सभा में उपस्थित सभी व्यक्तियों के गुरुजनों को भी हृदय से प्रणाम अर्पित करता हूं।

अभी-अभी अध्यक्ष जी ने बताया है कि माता-पिता किसी बच्चे के प्रथम शिक्षक होते हैं, एवं समाज में (और विद्यालय में) उतरने के बाद गुरुजन ही छात्रों के माता-पिता होते हैं। क्योंकि मैं स्वयं एक बोर्डिंग स्कूल में पढ़ा हूं इसलिए मेरे संदर्भ में यह बात और भी सत्य हो जाती है क्योंकि हम वर्ष के 9 महीने अपने माता पिता से दूर रहते थे और हमारे सम्मानित शिक्षक गण हमें पढ़ाने लिखाने के साथ हमारे भोजन, हमारे रहन-सहन, हमारे खेलकूद, एवं अन्य गतिविधियों में भी हमारे दिन रात के साथी होते थे।

मैं देखता हूं कि छात्र वर्ग में शिक्षकों के दायित्व को लेकर के कुछ भ्रांति है। अभी भी बहुत से छात्र यह मानते हैं कि उनकी शैक्षणिक जीवन एवं उपलब्धि के स्तर का पूरा दायित्व उनके शिक्षक का है। अर्थात जो वे पढ़ाएंगे उसे वे ग्रहण कर लेंगे एवं उसके आगे उनका कोई स्वयं का दायित्व नहीं है। क्योंकि आज यहां कुछ छात्र-छात्राएं भी उपस्थित हैं अतः मैं उनसे अनुभव साझा करना चाहता हूँ, कि आपकी जीवन की शैक्षणिक उपलब्धियों में सबसे बड़ी भूमिका आपके स्वअध्ययन अर्थात सेल्फ स्टडी की है। सेल्फ स्टडी का कोई विकल्प नहीं है एवं शिक्षा एक ऐसी चीज है जो कोई आपको परोस नहीं सकता है। जब भी मैं ऐसा कहता हूं तो बहुत से लोग मुझसे है पूछते हैं कि क्या शिक्षक की कोई भूमिका नहीं है? जी हाँ, शिक्षक की एक बहुत ही अपरिहार्य भूमिका है, और वह है कि स्वाध्याय के मध्य कुछ ऐसे क्रिटिकल गैप आ जाते हैं जिन्हें मात्र किताब को पढ़कर या तो समझा नहीं जा सकता है, या फिर समझने में बहुत समय व्यतीत हो जाता है। कुछ कॉन्सेप्ट्स ऐसे होते हैं, कुछ स्किल्स ऐसे होते हैं, कुछ विधाएं ऐसी होती हैं, जिन्हें एक अनुभवी शिक्षक ही सही से समझा पाता है। अतः छात्रों से मेरा अनुरोध रहेगा कि अपने शिक्षकों की सानिध्य का पूर्ण लाभ उठाने के लिए आप स्वयं कड़ी मेहनत करें स्व अध्ययन करें एवं जहां पर स्व अध्ययन से आपका समाधान ना हो वहां पर अपने शिक्षक की सहायता प्राप्त करें। ऐसे में शिक्षक को भी पढ़ाने में अच्छा लगता है एवं आप का भी ज्ञान अर्जन अच्छे से होता है। 

पदीय दायित्व के कारण आज में आपके समक्ष खड़ा हो कर के आप से वार्ता कर रहा हूं। यह बहुत ही असहज क्षण होता है जब शिक्षकों को कुछ समझाने के लिए कहा जाए। जो पूरे समाज को समझा रहे हैं उन्हें मैं क्या समझा सकता हूं। परंतु एक पूर्व छात्र होने के नाते कुछ बातें आपको बताना चाहूंगा। अच्छा शिक्षक कौन होता है? जरूरी नहीं है कि यह अच्छा विद्वान एक अच्छा शिक्षक हो। बहुत से शिक्षक ऐसे होते हैं जो मात्र 1 दिन पहले किसी टॉपिक को पढ़ के अगले दिन छात्रों को बहुत अच्छे से समझा लेते हैं। उन्हीं के सापेक्ष कुछ ऐसे प्रकांड विद्वान भी होते हैं जिनके छात्र उनकी कक्षा में कुछ नहीं समझ पाते हैं। मेरा मानना है कि शिक्षक के स्वयं के ज्ञान से ज्यादा आवश्यक है कि शिक्षक को अपने सामने बैठे व्यक्ति के अज्ञानता का पूर्ण बोध हो। आप शिक्षक हैं एवं इसमें कोई संशय नहीं है कि आपके ज्ञान का भंडार बहुत बड़ा है। परंतु आपके सामने बैठे हुए छात्र की शैक्षणिक पृष्ठभूमि, पारिवारिक पृष्ठभूमि, एवं सामाजिक पृष्ठभूमि भिन्न प्रकार की हो सकती है एवं उसके पूर्व से सृजित ज्ञान की अपनी एक सीमा होती है। एक अच्छा शिक्षक वही होता है जो अपने छात्र की समझने की क्षमता का सही आकलन करके उसे उस स्तर पर जाकर के उसे उठाए। मैं उदाहरण के रूप में अपने इंजीनियरिंग के समय के डॉक्टर शर्मा का नाम लेना चाहूंगा जो कि हमारे रेफ्रिजरेशन के प्रोफेसर थे। जब पहली बार उनके साथ क्लास हुई तो उन्हें पता चल गया कि फर्स्ट ईयर में हम लोगों ने थर्मोडायनेमिक्स की कोई पढ़ाई नहीं की थी। दूसरी कक्षा तक उनको यह भी पता चल गया कि बहुत से छात्रों को कक्षा ग्यारहवीं की थर्मोडायनेमिक्स का भी पक्का ज्ञान नहीं था। वो स्वयं उद्योग जगत, एवं ISRO और DRDO सरीखी वैज्ञानिक संस्थाओं के लिए सलाहकारी करते थे। पर तीसरी कक्षा से उन्होंने कक्षा ग्यारहवीं के स्तर से थर्मोडायनेमिक्स और हीट के विषय में हमें पढ़ाना प्रारंभ किया। कुछ एक्स्ट्रा क्लासेस लेनी पड़ी, परंतु सेमेस्टर के अंत तक लगभग पूरा बैच थर्मोडायनेमिक्स के साथ-साथ रेफ्रिजरेशन का बहुत अच्छा ज्ञान रखता था। बहुत से शिक्षक ऐसे भी मिले हैं जिन्होंने बस अपना सिर धुना, कि पता नहीं आप कैसे इस कक्षा/संस्थान में आ गए हैं एवं आपको "यह" भी नहीं पता है? जाहिर सी बात है कि वो "यह" क्या था ये मैं बताऊंगा नहीं क्योंकि उस के माध्यम से लोग जान जाएंगे कि हम किस शिक्षक की बात कर रहे हैं और शिक्षक दिवस पर मैं किसी की बुराई नहीं करूंगा। मैं यहां पर पुनः यह दोहराना चाहूंगा अच्छे शिक्षक की यही पहचान होती है कि उसे अपने छात्रों की अज्ञानता का बोध हो और वे उस स्तर तक जा कर के अपने सामने बैठे छात्र को सुलभ तरीके से ज्ञान दे सके। 

हम विगत दिनों में कोविड-19 के सबसे भयानक दौर से निकलकर बाहर आए हैं। लॉकडाउन के समय छात्रों की पढ़ाई की निरंतरता को बनाए रखने के लिए हमारे शिक्षकों ने बहुत से नवाचार किए हैं जो कि सम्मान एवं प्रशंसा के पात्र हैं। साथ ही कोविड-19 समय घर-घर सर्वेक्षण में भी शिक्षकों ने बहुत अच्छा योगदान दिया है जिसके लिए जिला प्रशासन की तरफ से एवं व्यक्तिगत रूप से मैं सबको धन्यवाद ज्ञापित करना चाहूंगा। कोविड-19 के ही मध्य में निर्वाचन की भी प्रक्रिया हुई, जिसमें लोकतंत्र की वेदी पर हमारे बहुत से शिक्षक साथियों ने अपने प्राणों की आहुति दी, जिन्हें हम अपने श्रद्धा सुमन भी आज अर्पित करते है। 

मेरे पिताजी, एवं उनके समय के कई छात्र बताते हैं कि उनके गाँव के स्कूल में मात्र एक कमरा होता था, एवं उनकी बहुत सी पढ़ाई कभी वृक्ष के नीचे, और सर्दी में खुली धूप में टाट बिछाकर होती थी। उस समय संसाधन बहुत कम थे, परंतु शिक्षक का समाज में सम्मान अलग स्तर का था। स्कूल के उपरांत भी जब "मास्टर साहब" बाजार में निकलते थे तो छोटी उम्र के बच्चे उनके भ्रमण क्षेत्र से ऐसे गायब होते थे जैसे गधे के सर से सींग। उन्हें भय रहता था कि अगर मास्टरजी पकड़ के अभी 8 का पहाड़ा पूछ लेंगे तो भरे समाज में मिट्टी पलीद हो जाएगी। बच्चों के अभिभावक भी शिक्षक गणों को बड़े सम्मान से बिठाते थे एवं अपने बच्चों के विषय में जानकारी लेते थे। बहुत कुछ इसी तरह का सम्मान मैंने भी अपने छात्र जीवन में अपने माता-पिता को अपने शिक्षक गणों को देते हुए देखा है। आज शिक्षा व्यवस्था में संसाधन की कमी नहीं रह गई है। विद्यालयों का कायाकल्प द्रुत गति से हो रहा है। छात्रों को बहुत सारी सुविधाएं शासन द्वारा उपलब्ध कराई जा रही है। परंतु कहीं ना कहीं समाज द्वारा, अभिभावकों द्वारा, एवं स्वयं छात्रों द्वारा भी शिक्षक को एक सेवा प्रदाता मात्र के रूप में देखा जाने लगा है। बहुधा जनसुनवाई के समय कुछ छात्र क्लास छोड़कर अपने शिक्षकों की शिकायत करने के लिए मेरे समक्ष उपस्थित होते हैं और यह देख कर के बहुत दुख होता है । बहुत ही तकनीकी रूप से देखा जाए तो यह सत्य है कि शिक्षक एक सेवा प्रदाता है। परंतु शिक्षक की गरिमा एक अलग पायदान पर रखना एक स्वस्थ समाज के विकास हेतु बहुत आवश्यक है। इसके लिए समाज का दृष्टिकोण बदलना पड़ेगा। मेरे द्वारा, एवं जिन अधीनस्थ अधिकारियों से मेरी बातचीत होती है उनके द्वारा भी, विद्यालय निरीक्षण के दौरान प्रयास यह रहता है कि यदि किसी चीज में कोई कमी मिले तो संबंधित शिक्षक को वह बात अकेले में बताई जाए ना कि उनके छात्रों के सामने। वहीं यदि कोई बात प्रशंसनीय हो तो उसे सबके सामने व्यक्त किया जाए। साथ ही हमारे शिक्षक साथियों को भी यह ध्यान रखना होगा कि समाज एवं अभिभावक वर्ग की नजरों में उनकी स्थिति एक सेवा प्रदाता की होने के पीछे भी वर्तमान में विद्यालयों में आ रही संसाधनों की उपलब्धता कुछ हद तक उत्तरदायी है। अतः अपने कार्यकाल में इन संसाधनों के विषय में जो भी कार्यवाही करें उसे संदेह से बिल्कुल परे रखें। जैसे बिना पोटेंशियल डिफरेंस के करंट का फ्लो नहीं बनता है उसी प्रकार बिना शिक्षक की गरिमा को एक ऊंचे पायदान पर रखें शिक्षा का प्रवाह भी नहीं संभव हो सकता है। मैं पुनः आप सब को शिक्षक दिवस की हार्दिक शुभकामनाएं देते हुए अपनी वाणी को विराम देता हूं। धन्यवाद। जय हिंद, जय भारत।

(शिक्षक सम्मान समारोह, क्षत्रिय भवन, सुलतानपुर में दिए गए वक्तव्य से उद्धृत)

Athletics and the Unathletics - a period Drama

 So, finally, the gold drought was broken by the stellar performance by Neeraj Chopra. The performance of Indian contingent has been quite impressive in this Olympiad. The medals tally does not do justice to some heart breaking near-misses. However, somehow, the whole achievement was somehow seeming incomplete, till this golden cherry was put on the top of this quite impressive cake by this handsome javeliner from the Indian Army. I must confess that I have not been watching any of the Olympic events live. Part of it can be attributed to inertia as we can't seem to get out of Netflix and Amazon Prime even when we get sometime to stare at the television. Still one could not help but look for video clips of the Golden throw. The throw that sent the javelin flying followed by a calculated follow through to avoid fouling the mark was every bit impressive. And it transported me to another era some twenty years back - the last time I had cheered for someone sending a javelin hurtling through the wind across the ground. Quite by chance, this weekend we watched, on Netflix, Unbroken - part biography of US long distance Olympian Louis Zamperini, who won laurels at the Berlin Olympics, and then, as a prisoner of war with the Japanese, endured what only the Japanese Army could do. Eerily, the movie also transported me to that same era, some 20 years back.

In a nation wholly obsessed with cricket, we were no exceptions. Of course cricket was the first priority if you had choice, either in watching or or in playing. However, we studied in a Boarding School which was a part of a comity of schools founded in the heydays of Raj, on the pattern of of the fabled public schools of the mother country, and games and sports were a big part of our daily life, in all the associated variety.   We had football, field hockey, squash, tennis. However, Athletics played a big part in any Oakgrovian's life especially in the longer "summer term", if we could call it so.

 The school opened as the monsoon clouds gathered along the hills. Initially, it was time for Football. It is the only game which is possible in heavy downpour. (Although occasionally it would rain so hard that the backpitch was literally flooded, and the ball would float) So we had the Inter House Tournament, and the Inter School Tournament thereafter. St. George's, our neighbours next door hosted Jackie Memorial, which saw teams from across North India participate. Our school wasn't the most comfortable with Football, especially in the open, "Senior Division". Not that we did not have our moments, esp in the Inter House. One would recall Imran Khan's flamboyant locks and "international" looks and moves, as he kept the goal for his house. Another moment that stands out in mind, is the straight off the centre point volley by Ranjan Kumar, against our hapless goal keeper. It was the fastest goal I have ever seen - 4 seconds from whistle. However, the memory most sharply etched on my mind is that of my classmate Mohnish, getting his arm broken, defending his goal post in a junior division inter school match against Wynberg Allen. The two forwards literally trampled on his bones with their studded boots, but he did not let the ball go. In its own way, it showed us a glimpse of the stuff martyrs are made up of.

Come September, however, Football gave way to Athletics. To begin with, it was the preparation for the Cross Country race which we colloquially called "the Marathon". It was about 3.5 km long for the kids and 6 km for adults.  It was a series of ups and downs, as any course along a hill would be. And the final acclivity before the finish line was literally breathtaking (taxi cabs ferrying us and our luggage from the plains often stalled on this climb). For as long as I can recall, on the day the race was actually run, it used to pour, a lot. The starting line used to be crammed with the hopefuls, and a lot many fell down within steps at the sudden start. The rest ran for the glory of their House, for it was the richest event pointwise - the winner got 10 points, unlike winners of any other event who had to be content with 5. By September end the rains would stop and the focus would shift to the Valley, the only "green field" in the whole of bajri-surfaced Mussoorie. It was the arena for almost all of the track and field events. Mile, 800m, 400m, 200m, 100m. Long Jump, Triple Jump, sometimes High Jump, and much later, pole vault. Throw events were generally done on the Back pitch. Until, it was decided in our later years, to showcase Javelin throw in the main Valley function. Which is what brought all these memories flooding back to me today. There is something majestic about the javelin and it's thrower - the elegant flight and the implantation. There are some moments to recall - from inter house, to Inter School, and finally to District level. Our school boasted of the fastest sprinter by a huge gap. Sanjeev was a year senior to us, and had an under 11 seconds time in 100 m! Then there was pole vault, where our school had to use dated iron shod bamboo poles against the fiber poles of the much richer private schools. Again, it was my same classmate, who had been lent the fibre pole quite graciously, to start participation. However, once he started beating them, the fibre pole was snatched away! So he had to use the old bamboo to win silver (or bronze, can't recall) I recall loud jeering from our camp, telling him what to do to his opponents' nether zones with that sturdy bamboo! Of course, the most dramatic event that occurred happened in my final year, when three houses tied for the first position, based on the final results of the 4x100m relay race! I was at the scoreboard then, and it was one of the most anxious moment I had had, for the masses were really angry about the result. The Math did not lie, of course. Then again, it shows us this ugly facet of human nature - instead of being happy for their own first place, they were mad about someone else's top position.

Of course, the end of the last para reveals a lot about my own place in the scheme of things. I was a glorified scorer, and not a player. While I may look back at those days of Athletics with glasses rose tinted with nostalgia, I am in no illusion about how painful those one and half months of Athletics were for me and a few other kindred spirits. As any acquaintance of mine would know, I had absolutely zero inclination for any sport. Other than the gully variety of cricket in the early childhood, and some rusty badminton picked up during field postings, I have not played much sports. The reason is quite simple - I was not good at them. That may very well be because I have not played them much first. Yeah, the chicken and egg problem. Still, of all the sports around, why were athletics the most painful for me? It is because the team sports like Football, Hockey and Cricket had place for only 11 players and 5 reserves. Hence, I was in no remote danger of being on the team, and I would be just a passionate spectator, cheering the House team as expected. Although, on one occasion, when we were in Class VII, the whole of class VIII had boycotted the Inter House Hockey tournament midway. Some issue involving some classmate. Our house team had made it to the final, and a team had to be fielded out of Class VII and VI alone! So we had a total of 13 "players" available. While I still could not make it to the playing eleven, I had the misfortune being the first replacement. Guess the thirteenth guy was even more removed from sports! I stood there on the sidelines, in my shorts, holding a broken and taped over hockey stick. Those were some of the most nerve racking 70 minutes. Whenever any player showed any hint of getting injured, my heart would skip a beat. Our captain took a scoop to his head, and it must have hurt like hell. Mercifully, he carried on - may have been the quality of available bench strength at the back of his mind that urged him to play on despite the nasty blow. Our Housemaster was the referree, and there were allegations of biased decisions, which led to all 3 houses cheering against us. Finally at 1-1 the game went into a shoot out, which was won by some good goalkeeping by my classmate Abhishek. I escaped a public humiliation. 

However, unlike these sports, Athletics did not have a team size limit, as they were individual events. The long distance races had no limit to the number of participants. So just out of spite, our seniors forced us to participate. Their spite was justified at many levels. In those days, inter house / school athletics involved a process known as indexing, where one's weight in pounds and height in inches were added together. The magnitude of the sum decided the category or "Division" in which the said boy could participate. I remember the cutoff for subjunior division or "Subs" was 132. Well, most of the better players of my class in our house were bigger and heavier (may be that was partly the reason why they were good) - and most landed in Intermediate Division (the 3rd level)! For comparison, one senior from Class XI, who had the advantage (?) of a short height, had starved himself down to Junior Division level! We did do that - all of us to some extent, some of us to a dangerous extent. Some lived for weeks on salted lemon water. We had not heard of bulimia and anorexia back then. One was supposed to starve for house/school/personal glory, so that one lost enough weight to get "indexed down" to a lower Division where, after regaining full strength, one could have an (unfair) advantage. Well, since most of our classmates in the house were indexed out, it imperilled us in two ways - firstly, the whole class was labelled as "house-unpatriots", who did not starve themselves enough. Secondly, competing in the "Subs" and Junior Division fell on our most unworthy shoulders. Our whole class gave the House 1 measly point - a day scholar, who incidentally being a local boy, had a sporting upbringing, and incidentally being the shortest boy in the class across the 4 houses, had no trouble making it to "Subs". Rest of us? Well, we kept up with motto of Baron Pierre de Coubertin - that the most important thing was taking part. And boy, did we take part! I lost the mile by a full round, and 800 by half. Did not qualify for the main event in the 400. Even the shot could not be putted to the first graduation mark. And in the long jump, I succeeded in reaching the pit in my last attempt! Those were the days, of course. The nights were worse (still better than the nights some of our juniors endured). One would be dragged into the cupboard room. A dimly lit place for dimly lit activities. Each one of us was asked how many points "we had given to the House". Of course, none. Even the day scholar was absent at the night, so our collective score could not get off the mark! Once we had regaled our scores, of course, the patriotic seniors did what they deemed fit to motivate us. If only more medals could be had that way, we could have outsourced our Olympic coaching to the police! [Or may be the Forces - for our juniors, described as having had it worse than us in the para above, had their heads bashed from both sides with gym weights (rubberized, of course, they weren't total savages) in the school gym, by a senior, who went on to win the sword at the NDA (or was it the IMA), and would be doing his unit proud right now (I hope not the way he did his House proud in the gym that night!).] Well, everyday we came out all resolved to win at least one point (the 4th position got you that), not so much because of the fear of our seniors' "motivational exercises", but largely because we did not want to be "burdens upon the House", which we were reminded we were, on a daily basis. Unfortunately, our schoolmates from other houses conspired to cruelly deny us that measly point, and we were rescued only when the Annual Athletic Meet was over, and we had lost the first place to the House which had been champion for 14 years, and had been knocked off the perch last year on a technicality. 

In our second year, in Class VII, we had a kind and genial House Captain. Plus the team in general did not have a fighting chance, and we did finally end up 4th. So, there was not much trouble given to us. Not that we were left unmolested. Just that they could not really call us "burden on the House" without accounting for their own role in the ignominious position the House was in. The next year, I had an existence of my own in the school, and I did not participate in any event, and dared anyone to make me!

Fortunately, this aversion to sports was not genetic. My brother excelled in midfield at football, kept goals in hockey, and even won gold in that pinnacle of athletic event - the Pole Vault. The school had invested in a decent fibre pole by then! 

Coming back to "Unbroken". My wife wondered how someone could do that to another human being, and how someone could take it so lying down. Same is her reaction to every Holocaust movie I have made her endure. Same was the reaction of my service batchmates when we watched the light and sound show at the Cellular Jail. I do not wonder. I have seen what even juvenile humans can do to even more juvenile human beings in an institutional setting. As I have said earlier, human villainy is but ephemeral; it takes institutions to crystalize it. In the end, we look at the good, the bad, and the ugly, with the same rosy nostalgia. Even Zamperini patched it up with the Japs, in the end!

On 2nd of June - a Day of Small Joys

 A lot of Oakgrovians would write about the significance of 1st June. So, to write about the 2nd of June, falls on me. Unlike the hallowed significance of the former, the day when our prestigious alma mater was founded, the latter is quite insignificant. Except for the fact that it was the day the school closed for the summer vacation.

As any kid torn apart from the family for months at a stretch would do, I looked forward to 2nd of June. If truth be told, I looked forward to it more than I did to the 1st! Yeah, sure, this was the Day the school was founded, and, well, we had the functions, where I used to be in the awardee list, and we had a special dinner. However, for the homesick minor that I was, Founders' Day was joyous only because it was a harbinger of the summer vacation.

Truth be told, it was a travesty of a vacation. Our counterparts in our rival schools enjoyed 3 to 4 months of vacation (so we were told). We managed with measly 2 months and 22 days. And since the Winter Vacation accounted for 2 months, it fell on the lot of the summer vacation to be 22 days long. We left on 2nd June and rejoined on 24th. Since most of us were from Bihar or Eastern UP, by the time we reached our homes, it was late 3rd June, if not the 4th. So, in effect, we got a little less than 20 days home-time, and it rankled me till my last summer vacation in 2003! (I remember sitting with Railway Time Table, trying all permutations that would somehow make us reach home early. One theoretical option, Shatabdi to New Delhi followed by Purushottam Express made us arrive by 3rd June forenoon. However, the change-over time at New Delhi was just 10 minutes, and we never risked that.)

The 2nd of June was in many ways, an extension of the 1st. Many parents, who had turned up to attend the Founders' Day, would be moving along the campus from the early morning. Affluent few would be coming down from Mussoorie hotels, while the majority would have stayed the night on the campus itself, at Boys' School covered shed, probably. So, a lot of students would be with their parents from the daybreak. While the morning would start the usual way, with a late-rising day bell schedule, there was that pleasant anticipation that it would end outside the rigid discipline of the school. As the day progressed, we would have more parents arriving, those who did not attend the Founders' Day. The pristine mountain air would get tainted by the noticeable odor of diesel fumes, for it was on such rare occasions  that we had such multitudes of vehicles on the campus. In the Boys' School, we used to pack up our things for both vacations, while in Junior School, it was not required during the shorter vacation. Hence, for the latter 7 years of my stay, even the chore of packing, which went across the midnight of Founders', made the 2nd an extension of the 1st.

We were officially allowed to leave after lunch, after taking the exeat slip from our House Masters and informing all concerned. Boys of Classes IX and above were allowed to take exeat themselves, but for junior students, the arrival of a parent was a must. I never had the experience, as by the time I was in Class VIII, my younger brother had joined, and my parents had to come anyway for him. After collecting our belongings, we moved to the road above the front pitch (The Mall), where the taxi would be parked. It was pricey, the taxi service, and usually two or more parents shared. So we had to wait for all concerned to pick their exeats before we could move. The journey downhill the Chuna Khala road was bumpy (it was kachcha then), and from Jharipani fork onwards, it was quite smooth. Those congenitally cursed with motion sickness had a hard time there. We used to stop at a few places - there was the Prakasheshwar Mahadev Shiv Temple, which served free lunch and tea, and highly subsidized icecream as prasad. In the earlier years, Universal Book Depot on the Rajpur Road was also a must stop spot for me, where I bought too many overpriced books which my folks let me indulge in, out of affection which had been dammed artificially for 4 months straight. Thereafter we hit the city of Dehradun.

It is not without reason that our School Song mentions "we leave the plains and heat". While we did feel hot at school, in as much as we gave up even the sleeveless sweaters, and slept in a blanket, instead of a quilt, at night, nothing prepared us for the sudden blast of hot air as our taxi hit the city limits. Hot, and noxious - for we had been breathing too pure an air for 4 months, and the everyday smell of motor fume laded city air overpowered our senses. While there were many errands to be run in the city - folks shopping for woollen wear on sale, or walnuts, for example, most of us would first converge on that biennial pilgrimage - Dehradun Railway station.

Built in the 1890s, the Dehradun Railway station was never meant for some 500 plus parents and students using its waiting halls simultaneously. The extras spilled over to the platform benches, and onto the platforms themselves. Trains were scheduled all along - Link Express in the afternoon, to board which, special leave to depart from the school before lunch was needed. Then there was the Gorakhpur / Raxaul train that left around 3 to 4. It was followed by the Shatabdi to New Delhi, by which departed the hip Delhites, and the pretend Delhites of Ghaziabad! My train, like that of most wards of Eastern Railway employees, was the Doon Express. The train was perennially late, but since it was the originating station, we faced no problem in boarding, around 8. Getting a confirmed reservation on that was a miracle that my father accomplished more often than not. He had learnt a hard lesson when they had come to pick me up on 2nd June, 1994, and could not find a reservation. We had to board a wooden tiered III Class compartment (Indian Railways would insist on calling it II class) on which some enterprising parent had painted "Reserved for OG students" with blanco shoe liquid! The journey was much uncomfortable, and hence, thereafter my father kept a reminder in his diary to get our berths reserved at 8 o clock on the first day of the Advanced Reservation Period, a habit which I have inherited!

Since our train departed too late, we made do with the station life, as best as we could. It was a microcosm in itself. While some of us would spend the late afternoon to departure time in the city, shopping, running errands, or eating and getting food packed, I, along with like minded folks, would simply live the station life. We would saunter along the platform (there was a lone platform which forked into two at the southern end, and the far-off platform was built in our last year), and indulge in train-spotting. It was a delight to watch the shunting operations, the to and fro movement of train rakes across the yard, the minutae of points and crossings switching, coupling and decoupling. Only a train spotter, or a dyed in the wool railwayman can appreciate all this. Then, in our younger years, it was a special privilege to mingle with the seniors in a relaxed settings. Those unapproachable and quite dangerous seniors were much docile in the presence of their (and our) parents. We could be frank with them in ways we would dare not in the school. We could shop at the same ice cream cart together, share comics, walk together, sharing anecdotes, almost like buddies. In the older, senior years, the platform also was the stage for something much more colourful.

I must digress about this point, since the tale of the platform would not be complete without it, but quite a lot of it transpired outside the platform (hence the digression) It so happened that 2nd of June used to be the date when the newly promoted students of Class IX, of both genders, were let loose, in a common area, sans matronly supervision. (Since our promotions happened in late April) So it was the setting for the blooming of socially accepted puppy love! While senior boys were likely without parental presence, the members of the fairer sex had to dodge the same by moving in groups of friends of their own kind, who just happened to wander along to that deserted end or nook of the platform, where the rendezvous had been planned. All above the board, nothing hanky panky. In our case, on 2nd June 2000, there was a clear reluctance on the part of newly senior males, despite enough hints from the counterparts. Both sides moved in packs, circled each other with wistful eyes; but the side, that is supposed to make the first move, did not, despite the desires of many individuals within the pack, because of the general peer pressure. That peer pressure was on account of the rather acrimonious parting between the girls and the boys in 1997, which the latter had nursed as a grievance over the years. As it transpired, the failure of the dalliance effort, of 2nd June 2000, led to some serious deliberations between the members of both sides (who moved together on the train homebound, and later, school bound), and it led to the unique concept of "Class letters". Yes, the first 'love letter' received by our class was addressed to all the boys, from all the girls of the class across the valley. The gist of it was, why were we being so 'bashful' (that specific word was learnt by us in our Class IX English text book), and why not let bygones be bygones. The reply was also all to all, and brimming with the issues that would do any Truth and Reconciliation Committee proud! Bygones vented, there was the genuine question of the future - what if this was a classic bait and switch operation on the part of wily females. The reply to that contained apologies for the bygones, and a sort of guarantee, that no individual advances would be rejected! The railway-layers of British Raj could not have had such guarantee. For we tested it, and the guarantee was worth its weight in gold. All offers were accepted, such was the effect for peer pressure. A middling scholar sought out the class topper - accepted. A guy proposed to girl who was very much acknowledged as committed for another classmate - accepted. Many guys jumped multiple rungs above their league - all accepted. To take it further, the proposal of one of the guys, who sent it based on a prank taken too far, to a girl with whom he had had an unfriendly argument a few days back (which actually set off the prank), also got assent! Well, none of those romances survived the real world, and more than half unravelled by Class X itself. Still, the ritual mating dance of the Thies and the Thaas is a part of sweet memories of 2nd June.

The talk of 2nd June would not be complete without the mention of the 'mug festival'. In Junior School, a lot of toiletry was used communally - toothpaste, hair oil, shoe polish, face creams etc - in the sense that the biennial supplies brought by all students were pooled together, and then one tube or pot was opened and used by all, before opening a new one. So only a few items were kept in private use - the tooth brush, tongue cleaner, comb, soap in a dish, and all of the above kept neatly in a  water mug. The epitome of order. Perhaps a bit too much. It was quite inviting, like an assembled wicket, with stumps and bails. Inviting one to throw a slipper at it, which led to its disintegration in quite a spectacular way. In our senior most year in Junior School, mug blasting was raised to an art form. We did not have to pick our slippers to throw them; we could aim and launch them straight from the foot, with deadly accuracy! Not just the mugs resting on the floor, below the cots, but also mugs on window-sills, and on the shelves! So in the buildup to the Founders' Day, mug blasting was pretty much an in thing. Somewhere down the line, it was decided that on the vacation day, 2nd June, 1996, a grand 'mug festival' would be played. I still wonder how that idea came into being. Still more astonishing was the fact that the matrons did not take an adverse notice of the rising frequency of the mug blasting incidents, which obviously emboldened us that much. Truly, on the morning of the second, it was a pandemonium of flying mugs, slithering soap bars, and mixed up toothbrushes and combs. It was eventually stopped by one of the matrons - the kindly one, not the other, I-cannot-think-of-a-polite-adjective one. We were not there the next year, and had quite forgotten about it all, when, very recently, someone from a very junior batch told me about mug festival on June 2nd! I guess we had birthed a tradition, that may have lived on for years, if not decades! 

That pretty much sums up our 2nd of June - a day of small joys, etched forever in our memories. Written this June the second, 2021.

Book Review - Acorns - An Anthology

 So, over the last weekend, I finally got the time to read 'Acorns'. I would not cover myself in false glory by saying that my work engagement kept me from it. No, I must admit it was the cheap pleasure of streaming television, which has totally taken over any free time which might be given to reading. The book I have co-authored fared no better than other books. Mercifully, we still watch streaming TV as a family activity on the big television (and not on our phones), and hence, when we retreated to the family home for a rare break, and the room did not have an internet hooked TV (as the old family still watches dish), I finally got to peel off the waterproofing and read through those pages.

In an instant, from the first sentence, I was transported back to simpler times. The thick stone walls, the hard shiny cement floors, the wrought iron beds, the ancient riveted boilers, the sonorous brass bell - all came alive. I flitted across, like a ghost maybe, through various scenes woven in those 193 pages. As I have pointed out before, Boarding School story has been a rich genre of modern literature. These stories are much enjoyed by boarders past and present. One may have studied anywhere among these schools that dot India's hills both in the North as well as South; one finds that irrespective of the location, these places are microcosms of their own, with their own traditions, customs, culture and language. So, for an average Joe, "fag" would mean a cigarette, if not a homophobic slur. However, in most boarding schools, it means a junior pupil, in his capacity as an unpaid manservant (or boyservant?) for the seniors! Again, all those schools, with their own traditions, customs, cultures and languages, have much in common with each other. So "fag", in our school, was also an bonded servant, but only a particular context - as a ball boy at tennis, or worse, a perpetual fielder at a day of cricket! The more general term was "chick". A shout of "oye, chick" did not mean that a pretty damsel had been spotted, but rather that some senior needed some errand run, and the eponymous chicks within hearing range had the choice to comply with a "yes Sir!", or, if the opportunity so presented, hide and make a getaway, at the peril of being indicted under Section 2 ("No bunking") of the Penal Code of 'Tid-Bits', the law of the land in those 250 acres of wooded hills. (Section 1 was "No sneaking", for the curious reader.) 

Such rich microcosms are bound to generate great stories, as is attested by the swelling shelves of boarding school literature. What sets 'Acorns' apart is that being an anthology, it offers a cornucopia of voices, characters, and subgenres. Of course, the school boy (and girl) romances were present. Most of them quite innocent, comprising of furtively written letters, and stolen glances, just the way it happened when we were boarders, and a century before that. Some incidents have happy endings (School Across The Valley, by Vani Raj), while some were doomed under the sight of no nonsense schoolmarms (The Architecture of Solitude, by Tabish Nawaz). However, the best romance, in my schoolboy eyes, shall be revealed later. There are stories about the efforts it took us Hindi heartlanders to strive for the standards of the English Language our teachers expected of us - (Unlearning The Queen's English by Sweta Srivastava Vikram), (The Damn Dictation by Sudip Bajpai - partly so). No Boarding School anthology would be complete without the spectral denizens that are claimed to haunt the century old edifice. There are stories about ghost hunting (The Sighting, by Manoj Panikkar), ghost stories going all awry (The Scream, by Nitin Dubey), and then, the real encounters (Rice Shoup & Bater Mutton, by Raghu Menon). A lot of the anthology is just about regaling interesting incidents and anecdotes, some funny, some sombre - my own submission would fall in the category - one author has penned down about that biannual ritual of packing up and moving to and from the school, bringing up the memories of steel trunks and canvas hold-alls (Travelling to Oak Grove, by Shrikant Avi), boarding school bildungsroman (8 Years in Lockdown, by Priyanka Pandey; Nostalgia 1959, by Vipin Sehgal), the cultural and cocurricullar life (Singing Siblings by Kanishka Mallick), childhood capers going wrong (The Secret No More, by Amit Suri), the (too early) end of childhood innocence and dawn of carnal knowledge (Mumps, Birds & The Bees, by Raveesh Gupta), and unforgettable interactions with the guardians who were our teachers (A Tale of Two School Masters, by Patrick Corbett). There are two 'past and the present' potraitures, which are the most heartfelt parts of the Anthology - of a senior and a friend (The House of Cards, by VC Vishwakarma), and of a rather imposing authority figure and the terror of our collective childhoods (Big Ma'am, by Nikhil Kumar). Of course "Big Ma'am" the character finds her way in many of the stories, given the enormity of the dark shadow she cast on our lives at the Junior School. However, Nikhil manages to bring out the human being behind the character, quite well. It almost reads like that movie, The Reader (Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes). Boarding Schools are known for their sporting culture, and we have two stories, true ones of course, encompassing Cricket (The Day That Was, by Mangu Srinivas), and Hockey (The Accidental Goalkeeper, by Prabhat Ranjan). The Reunion, by Anurag Sinha, avoids all these classifications - and is a sweet little story about friendship and the bro-code. So, finally, I come to the romance I liked the most, and the one that would have been liked by most of the former schoolboys smitten by some of their beautiful tutors in their formative years - First Love, by Gary Sengar. It titillates, but within decency, and it builds up gradually to a rather dreamlike climax; a dream no schoolboy would like to wake up from!

The best part of any multi-author anthology is that one gets to savour a little bit of many contrasting styles. All the stories are contributed by highly successful wordsmiths (that includes scientists, business managers, tech professors, and, of course, civil servants). Some stories are written in the informal language of a reunion regaling, while others are as formal as the best of modern classics. Every one of them is quite engaging, although I cannot judge my own piece! I must say that after reading the book, I did regret not editing the story, which I had written fresh out of school in 2005. Then again, for all the sophistication it lacked, it gained in raw honesty of a freshly experienced account. 

If one has to put a critical eye to it, one can only say that the book (future editions) may be planned with some handsketched maps of locations, in one or two sketch map sheets, for the benefit of those who did not go to Oak Grove. Of course, an imaginative reader would like to do his own world building. Then, again, within Oak Grove, the stories from Girls' School were less - three out of twenty. I, for one, am very curious to learn about what went on in that fabled 'place beyond the valley'. May be Acorns II would have some tales of that kind. In the long run, it would be interesting to learn even about the lives at our rival schools. Mangu Srinivas' story opens up the possibility - how wonderful would it be if Khaled, Nishanth or Pravin from the game penned their version of it - like 'The Flags of Our Fathers' for 'Letters from Iwo Jima' (two movies about the same battle, from both perspectives). Well, maybe then the Anthology won't remain Acorns, but graduate to Acorns, Pinecones and Clovers, and what not! Still, it is this reader's fervent wish that such a collaboration materializes some day.

The printing quality is top notch, and it gives one pride to be a part of it. It is paperback, for economy purpose, and is printed in quite easy to read font. The best part of the appearance is the cover art. The imposing Junior School facade, background for innumerable batch photographs, has been stylized in water colour and embedded in a circle, reminding one of a crystal ball, wreathed in acorns and leaves; somehow giving fairytale look to the whole setting. The artist has, in one cover slide, matched the best of the twenty authors within.

In conclusion, the book is a must read if you are an Oak Grovian. It is a must read, if you have been a boarder. It is a must read, if you have always been a reader at heart.

ACORNS - AN ANTHOLOGY IS AVAILABLE AT 

https://www.amazon.in/Srivastava-Srinivas-Kanishka-Mallick-Chandra/dp/9390488737

A Tribute to Boarding Schools and Boarding School Stories

 So, very recently, I graduated from a blogger to a proud "author"! For I have a five percent contribution to the contents of 'Acorns - An Anthology.' This is my first writing to appear in a publication which is not a periodical, and not an institutional publication. It certainly is the first publication which is being bought by eager readers, for good money, as against being distributed en masse! Many of my readers (of the blog, for I have not yet got reviews for the book) have commended my writing, and have encouraged me to write books. It is a given truth that any IAS officer, who retires unscathed in career and health, shall surely write a memoir - and you cannot fault them (or us, hopefully, in the future) for that - for our daily life, especially in the field postings, is rich with interactions with diverse characters and events, not sharing about which would be a sheer waste of such God-given experience. However, I have always wanted to write fiction. Inspired by all the above, of course, but still, fiction. For fiction gives us some creative liberties, to drive the story to an ending happier than real life would normally allow.

My story, in the above anthology, is truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. However, given the fact that the names have been masked, and the narrator has no name (except for the nickname provided by AM), it could be very well taken as fiction - which would be my defence if any of the characters of mine take offence! The story was a part of a novel (still in writing, sadly) called 'In Grey and White'. The title is a play on the common phrase, 'in black and white', and refers to what we called our regular school uniform. This was written way back in the later half of 2005. I had just written my second, much better, and yet still unsuccessful attempt at IIT-JEE, and had resigned myself to complete my Engineering from a second tier college (which is also in retrospect, for back then it felt like third tier!) Reminiscing about my school days, which had ended only a year back, was an effort to relive an association which a top-notch educational institution. So the writing style, and the world view, is that of a Class XII pass undergraduate, bereft of any benefit brought by higher education, wider reading and 16 years more of experience.

The story, like the whole anthology, is in the genre of Boarding School stories. It is a rich genre, which has fascinated and delighted the still-too young-to-be-a-boarder students, and on the other end, facilitated the reminiscence of older gentlemen who had once been boarders. The genre is almost as old as the very British institution of Public Schools - a nomenclature which is quite misleading, for the public part means that the school was open to all religious denominations and trade, and not just a particular sect (unlike the purely religious boarding schools that were there from before.) Among the earliest classics are Tom Brown's Schooldays, much inspired by real events at Rugby College, in the nineteenth century. Later, a whole series of stories, on girls' boarding schools, were written by Angela Brazil, in the earlier part of the twentieth. They have been my guilty pleasure, courtesy expired copyright and Project Gutenberg! In the later half of twentieth century, we have works of Enid Blyton - like Mallory Towers, and St. Clare's, although it must be admitted that her works encompassed much more than boarding schools. For the millennials, the best example would be the Harry Potter series. For behind all the spells and dark magic, and a lot of world framing later in the series, it started as, and for a large part remained, a story about a residential school, with its four houses in constant competition, with teachers who lived with their students 24 hours, with classmates who were also dorm-mates, with the budding school romance and school feuds, and with must win at any cost Quidditch Inter House Championship. When Harry must shop for his robes, wand and books, it surely reminds all boarders of their own kitting before a school term, when we had to account for items ranging from over coats to socks and even shoe laces, lest we find ourselves without them on the remote hills!

Why has this genre been so popular? My theory is that boarding schools offer the closest option we can have on alternate reality. A group of students, and their teachers, shut away from the rest of the world for months on end, in a rather remote location, in a place with decades, if not centuries of own traditions, create something which cannot be replicated in a setting where the interaction with the society at large is rather constant. In the earlier days, all the contact with family was through weekly letters, and with the world at large, through newspapers. Television, though available, was a weekend luxury, and that too as a privilege that could be withdrawn on the slightest pretext. Telephone meant a walk to Barlowgunj, 4 kilometres uphill, till Class VIII, and after that, the school gate at Jharipani. We got a telephone in the dormitory in our final year, though. This cocooned existence led us boarders to compensate the lack of breadth of our human experience with sheer depth. We had really strong feelings about class honour, school honour, and, during the months of September and October, House honour! We wept when our classmates left school, for whatever reason. We were at the top of the world when our House won the Cock Shield in the Annual Athletics Meet, and I recall vividly the lamentation and mourning one of our rival houses underwent when their 14 year stint as Champions was broken. We had a very strong peer pressure against boozing and fagging (the tobacco one, not the indentured services of a junior, of which we had aplenty), which some of our classmates, who had joined from privileged backgrounds in Class XI, found to their great dismay. We had taken the art of self study, and collective self study at that, to another level - a habit that has come handy till date. We choreographed our own dance sequences and light works, with skillful use of cardboard, wood and cellophane - the pinnacle of which was the 'spaceship' load of five aliens our class had brought to stage in Class VIII. We even wrote our own dramatics plays, both of the official kind in the Interhouse Championship, as well as the ear burning and ribald variety, presented in the honour of the Teachers-of-the-Day, on the night of every 5th September! As I write these lines, that decade from 1994 to 2004 swims vividly in my thoughts. I am sure most of our rival schools from Mussoorie, as well as other schools across the country and the world, would have equally relatable stories to share, and that gives a continuous feed to both the supply as well as the demand for more Boarding School stories.

So I wish the readers of Acorns a pleasurable and hopefully reminiscent reading experience. I must thank the whole team, led by Amit Suri sir, a super senior, as well as my contemporaries Nikhil and Tabish, for the honour of making it to the first cut. I hope we see more volumes, for I surely still have much more to put to paper. Happy Reading!

Acorns - An Anthology is available on Amazon, at https://www.amazon.in/dp/9390488737

Weekend OTT Review

 Much hoopla is going on about Bridgerton   - someone on social media said it was a modern equivalent of Jane Austen! Well, I could not get past the first episode. It is fiction, of course - but Black Aristocracy, in 1813? Seriously? (Britain abolished slavery in 1833, for the record) A whole of gratuitous titillation aside, the above mentioned historical inaccuracies, as well a pathetic Darcy-Bennett attempt combined to leave one totally uninterested. Leaving it off in the midst of first episode was a good decision, which was not made with Tandav. 

Too bad, for once one gets past the first episode, one is somehow obligated to finish (a form of mild OCD, you see!) May be the first episode, bad though it was, did no go beyond the point on no return. May be it was so bad, that one was compelled to look for a meta joke somewhere! However, after the first episode, it was just 4 angle shots of Leading Lads and Ladies swaggering across the Raisina. For quite sometime, these leading Lads and Ladies have been doing just that in their movies, and they simply did not get that their swaggering about is one of the reasons why viewers are quitting their "Main Stream" Cinema and going for OTT content. Viewers expect a gripping story and real acting - and that is why within the time we finished the series, it dropped from 4.6 to 3.7! Too bad we started it a day too early.

So, if you are still looking for a tip about what to watch, I would suggest "The Boys". It is a great story, with great performances, as well as contemporary satire.

On Elections and Coup - Us v US

 [ Schadenfreude -  noun, scha·​den·​freu·​de | \ ˈshä-dᵊn-ˌfrȯi-də 

: enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others ]

One could not have imagined that this year would give another opportunity to write, so soon. However, this morning, my facebook feed was overrun with news about how the supporters of the US President had run amok in the Capitol building, effectively stalling the proceedings. It has been described variously as an Insurrection, or a Coup. That things should come so far in one of the world's oldest and biggest and definitely the most advanced democracy is definitely a matter of concern. However, with a sheepish grin, we must say that for many of us here, it is also a matter of schadenfreude!

There are many reasons for things coming to this level - the gradual erosion of niceties in public discourse, aided by the electronic veil of social media, but not without significant contribution from the mainstream media too. Anyone in doubt should watch 'The Loudest Voice' on Hotstar. The truly outlier nature of the incumbent President is a big factor, as the afore mentioned erosion has taken place across the globe, but few respectable countries have seen such shameful spectacles. However, what really connected both - frenzied mobs and a paranoid megalomaniac, in a common intent and purpose, was the purported "stealing of the election."

I have always been much thankful for the invention of the Electronic Voting Machines, especially as a person who has to get elections conducted, quite periodically. Whenever the debates over the propriety of EVMs had come up, some detractors have brought up the question, as to why advanced nations like the United States do not use them, if EVMs are so good? I hope, again, with a guilty feeling of schadenfreude, that this question has been laid to rest.

While most qualities of EVMs have been enumerated well in the above linked article, the most significant advantage it gives is the quick, and immutable calculation of results. While the quickness is a great administrative convenience, for which I shall be eternally grateful, the immutability is what gives the result its strength. Manual counting of ballot papers is a long, tiresome process, and prone to errors, both honest (especially if the counting has been going on for a long time) as well as malafide. Hence, there is, to begin with, a justification for recounting, and later, when such errors are discovered, there is a cascading distrust on all the counting which has happened. It gives the losing candidate a fig leaf of the possibility that the count was wrong (and the election was stolen from him). Some candidates, like in the District Board Constituencies in my subdivision in Meerut, just lie down on the roads for a while till they are chased away by an overworked and really annoyed police. Some, as in yesterday night's disgrace, exhort their supporters to run over the national legislature.

When I wrote that article, the use of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail, or VVPAT for short, was not universal. Detractors could say that the total of the votes being shown by the machine cannot be verified with each singular vote. Any person who has worked with the EVM knows that it is teue. Then again, justice not only needs to be done, but also seen to done. The public at large could not be so sure, earlier. Not anymore. For the uninitiated, the VVPAT is a printer cum box that prints a slip with the election symbol polled for, which is then displayed in a window for 7 seconds before falling into the box, much like a ballot paper. Thus, firstly, each voter can see that the slip printed matches with the vote he has cast, and secondly, at the end, the slips in the box can be counted as one would with ballot papers, and matched with the result being displayed electronically. In the last election to Lok Sabha, five of the booths were randomly picked in all Assembly Constituencies, for the said comparison. None of them was found mismatched, across the whole country. There is a provision where any voter can get the fidelity of the VVPAT machine checked during the poll, by asking for a dummy vote in public, so that anyone can see whether the button being pressed and the symbol being printed match or not. Not a single challenge has succeeded in proving the VVPAT wrong, till now. [Of course, there are some challenges with the VVPAT - all administrative. The next few lines are technical and may be skipped by those who are put off by such discussion. Unlike the rest of the EVM, which is purely electronic, these are electro mechanical. So they suffer from all the ailments expected of a mechanical device - they can jam, their printing mechanism can get stuck, the paper roll can tear off, and they are susceptible to mechanical and thermal shocks. This simply means a lot of replacements and loss of time. Nothing that cannot be improved over the years. Then again, the 7 second display slows down the poll, but it is small price for full transparency. There is another administrative and legal issue of initiation error - where, after the mock poll, the polling officer fails to remove the slips from the box after resetting the machine. In this case, on verification, the electronic count would fall short of the manual count, by the exact margin of the mock poll results. Conversely, if a polling officer ends the mock poll by counting the slips, but fails to reset (CRC) the machine, the electronic count would exceed the manual count by the exact margin as of the mock poll! With the mock poll certificate in hand, it is not an unresolvable issue!]

Soon we are to embark on yet another election to the rural local bodies of the State. Polling would be held in the traditional ballot paper and box manner. Each voter in this election casts votes for 4 posts - members of the Wards of Village, Block and District Panchayat, as well as for the village Pradhan. Provisioning 4 EVMs for each booth would not be possible. However, we now have multipost EVMs. States like Kerala and Maharashtra have used them in local body elections. Even we have used them in the Urban local body elections way back in 2017. In fact I was responsible for the first use of this technology in the State. While the programming of this machine is a bit more complicated than regular ECI EVMs, for the voter, it simply presents 2 or more ballot paper on the ballot unit, and he may press one button next to each of the ballot papers, to cast his votes on each ballot. During the counting, the machine displays results for each ballot sequentially. It would have heartening to see its use in the upcoming elections too. However, these machines are still not enough in supply. May be we would see them in the next cycle. So meanwhile, we find ourselves in the unenviable position of more sleepless counting nights, and candidates throwing tantrums. Our only solace would be the thought that it could never get as bad as the United States!

On New Year's Day

 It is a known truth that if one claims to be a hobby blogger, then one must show for it at least one article a year. Consequentially, there is this immense urge to get the first write-up of the year off the mark. This urge begins when, on the midnight of any December 31st, the clock ticks, and lo, we are in a new year. Hence, this much celebrated transition happens to be the subject of this article.

We humans have divided our day to day life in many temporal divisions. An ordinary human deals with units as small as seconds, when a frozen dish needs to be nuked in the microwaved, to half decades and decades, when we do long term planning. We have minutes, hours, days, weeks, months. However, passing of any of these hardly merits a celebration like we do when a year passes. Some puppy love couples (and parents of infants - I included), do celebrate passing of months (menniversary?) However, we put special emphasis in the celebration of our circumambulation of the sun - not only the calendar year, but also the things like birthdays and wedding anniversaries. What lead to this primacy of the year, over all the other time periods? Come to think of it, most of our time partitions are artificially constructed. The only two naturally occurring time divisions are diurnal, and annual. We can observe the sunrise, the growing of the sunlight, the bright noon, the evening, with sunset and dusk, followed by the night. However, the day repeats too frequently to be amenable to celebrations - though some of us do solemn prayers early morning! Similarly, the annual cycle is a natural cycle - the warm glow of spring, which grows into the blazing summer, which grows humid and culminates into the rainy season, followed by warm sunny days that lead to the winter chill, when, as the saying goes, the spring is not far behind! In the old days, the waxing and waning of the moonlight would have affected humans significantly, and hence there would have been significance of the monthly cycles, but the modern Gregorian months are no longer exactly aligned with the lunar cycles anyway. Hence, the year occupies a special signifance in our hearts.

In our country, though, there always remains a question of "which year". In our working and social life, we are dictated by the Gregorian calendar. Hardliners would call it the "Christian Calendar", and they would not be wrong, as the calendar was started by a Pope. There is a "Hindu Calendar". In fact there are two - the Saka Samwat, the official calendar of India, and the Vikrami Samwat. The year in both coincides, but the count of year is different. The Samwat calendars do impact our lives significantly - our major festivals are "fixed" in them - Holi falls in the Poornima of Falgun month, as does Deepawali on the Amavasya of Kartik. Infact the Samwat calendars are much complicated and scientifically advanced. The months are lunar, and follow the moon cycle accurately - with Amavasya and Poornima falling on no-moon and full-moon days. The year is roughly solar, and stays true to the solar cycle over a long period of time (unlike the Hijri calendar, which follows the moon faithfully, and hence falls short of the solar cycle by 10 days every year, which leaves us with the interesting phenomenon of Eid and other festivals falling in different seasons over a long period of time, unlike Hindu festivals, which largely stay in a defined time band.) This is because the Samwat calendar puts in an extra month or Adhimas every few years. The Adhimas is added to the month it follows, and successive Adhimas get added to the following month, so that over a long period, all 12 months get an Adhimas. The consequence, of course, is that the "New Year Day" does not coincide with the same spot in the cycle every year.

Thus, for all its historicity and practicality, the celebration of the Gregorian Calendar New Year has become a worldwide event. Though it is a part of the Christmastide (which is itself wholly inspired from the Germanic Yuletide), the New Year's Eve and the New Year's Day is wholly a secular holiday. Hence, it was a little jarring to go through my Whatsapp feed this time. The number of messages wishing me a Happy "Western" New Year, or "Working" New Year, or "Anglican" New Year, or "Foreign" New Year, to top it all, had multiplied manifold. Some messages were downright apologetic and condescending- implying that this is not truly the New Year, but since you believe in it, hence I deign to wish you a Happy New Year grudgingly! There were a few messages contrasting the drunken revelry some of us do in the New Year's Eve party, to the pious fasting done during Chaitra Navratri! These qualified wishes do take away the whole point of wishing someone. The social media is replete with the whole spectrum of indic cultural revival, and yes, there is a need to restore pride in the cultural treasure of this rich civilization. However, pride is endogenic. If our expression of pride is coming through sanctimonious pulling down of "the other", it is not pride, but plain old envy in a self-righteous disguise. With the powers that be turning into a permanent Grinch for the foreseeable future, this is the last thing we need with us.

Another jarring observation was the fact that how many of us were demonizing the year gone by. Lots of memes, with the zero of 20 replaced by a blow up of the coronavirus, and the one of 21 replaced by a vaccine syringe, were shared. Somehow that defies logic, as if the pandemic is somehow contained in the year. Well, for starters, the disease of commonly known as Covid-19 - that 19 stands for 2019. So blaming 2020 somehow is like putting the blame of the arsonist on the guy whose house he burnt down! However, all said and done, we cannot deny that we have lived through a remarkable year. It was marked as remarkable way back at the turn of the Century. We were in our earlier teenage, in the school. The nation had just flexed its nuclear muscles, and we were told that we would be a superpower in 2020. It was safely far out in the future for conjecture and hyperbole, and yet near enough to tantalize. The mere sound of it - Twenty Twenty, was magical. Well, we all know how it turned out finally. We did have the pandemic, which was truly once in a century event. However, more remarkable was the Lockdown that was created by it. That was unprecedented. As administrators, it gave our generation something to reminisce about later - for some get the opportunity to hold elections in 5 years, some get to do the Census in 10 years, but only a select few got to do the management of a nationwide curfew for such a long period. As an icing on the cake, we also had a plague of locusts this year, something straight out of the biblical accounts!

Anyway, what transpired earlier cannot mar the enjoyment of the moments when one year melds into another. Others prefer loud boisterous and boozy parties. I, in true Yuletide spirit, prefer it quiet. My current dwelling has a hearth (which had been boarded up by the previous occupants, and had been got restored by us), and a nice blaze really sets the mood. Some dry cake, some reading material - like the history of the District, and to complete it all, some good music. Unlike the Christmas playlist, New Year's Day has fewer songs to its credits. There is always the classic Auld Lang Syne. Or, for us who were adolescents at the turn of the Millennium, there is Waiting for Tonight by Jennifer Lopez. However, for some reason, this time I found myself playing the immortal Aane Wala Pal, Jaane Wala Hai - on a loop. There could be no better song to celebrate the passing of time, capturing at the once the ephemerality of it all, as well as the opportunity of living out an eternity in that ephemeral moment! On that thought, I end this article, and wish the reader a very Happy New Year!