Lovers of Doom

Our school, sometimes, held unusual assemblies. Such assemblies were called abruptly; usually during the mid of a period. Students used to throw their books in happiness and run to the assembly area to listen to the principal. For, such assemblies were held to announce the demise of some important person and to declare the closure of the school for the rest of the day after observance of silence for two minutes in the memory of the departed soul. The delight at the sudden revelation that one could go back home early and get rid of the boring lectures was too great to be suppressed. Students giggled with happiness while observing the silence; ending the ritual with a dash to the class room to fetch their bags and run towards home.

That happened when I was a child. Death those days bore hardly any significance other than being a harbinger of the welcome news of the sudden termination of the misery of being in the school, albeit only for part of a day.

Matured people are expected to react differently to death. Or, to any failure, for that matter. But we don’t. We rejoice at the failure of others. We take pride in predicting failures. “Take my word -- India will never win this tournament!”, is an oft heard declaration. When a rocket launched by India fails, the ‘Mr Know It Alls’ are fast to comment, “What else did you expect from India?” Near misses of aeroplanes over the Indian sky are reported with great enthusiasm, the agency never forgetting to add how many people would have died in case the collision had not been averted.

Today’s newspaper carries the picture of a young girl sentenced to life imprisonment. Just behind the girl walks a happy man, eager to have his face captured in the frame. We are happy when others fail or perish. We are very reluctant to acknowledge the success of others. For example, the same newspaper which never fails to report incidents of murder and rape, never reported the extraordinary achievement of Dr Tathagat Avatar Tulsi.

Tulsi did his high school at 9, BSc at 10, and MSc at 12. Jealously raised its ugly head, and Tulsi was accused on an international forum of memorising heavy sounding scientific terms and vomiting them out without understanding a single word. The boy went into a shell temporarily. In 2003, the prestigious Time magazine named him among the world's seven most gifted youngsters. Tulsi, when 21, completed his doctorate in Quantum Computing from the Indian Institute of Science. He turned down offers from Waterloo University in Canada and the Indian Institute of Science Education & Research (IISER), Bhopal, to become the youngest faculty member of the Indian Institute of Technology at Powai in Mumbai at the age of 22. He is set to join as an assistant professor in the Department of Physics from next week.

The story of Tulsi did not appear on the front page. Not on the back page. Nowhere. News of Tulsi does not sell. News of death and failure sells.

Are we the lovers of doom only?

The First Board

What is a board?

I expect you to be over nine years of age, and still wondering what a board could mean. Do I mean a piece of timber? Food or meals (room and board), perhaps? A vertical surface on which information can be displayed for public view? A table? An electric switchboard? A platform for playing certain kinds of games? After all, what could a board mean?

If you, in spite of all your wisdom, cannot decide what a board is, how can a nine year old child imagine its correct meaning.

I am talking about myself. We lived in Kolkata. I went to a government school. It was my fourth school. Arriving from Varanasi in September, I had joined Class Four almost at the end of the January – December session. The syllabus was quite different, but being a good student I was somehow managing.

One day, as the class was on, an important looking man came and announced something. I did not understand a word, but perhaps the other students did, and an “Aaaah” went up in the air.

I asked my friends what the Aah was all about. They explained that we would have our board from the next week or so.

Okay, so be it, I thought and went home. By the time I walked the one kilometre or so to home, I had forgotten all about it. It was only in the night at dinner that I remembered the important announcement.

“Mummy, we have the board from the next week”, I said, chewing between words.

Mummy reacted as if she had touched a live wire. “Board?” “Next week?” “Are you sure?”

I felt sorry about putting her to so much of discomfort. Without knowing what the word meant, just to comfort her, I said, “Don’t worry! Waisa board nahin hai.”

“What do you mean waisa board nahin hai? What kind of board is that? Today is Thursday night. You are saying next week. Oh my God!”

By now I was sure that Board was something very bad, and it would perhaps have been better had I not disclosed the news to her. However, there was little I could do now.

I looked at her, and slowly went to bed. Later in the night I heard voices. Daddy had returned from office and was having dinner. Mummy was telling him, “Agle haftey se Happu ka board ka exam hai. Usko kuchh bhi nahin pata. Date-sheet kya hai, admit card kahan hai, kuchh bhi nahin janta.”

Oh, so I was going to have my exams in another few days, I thought. The next day, from the classroom, I saw Mummy enter the school office. She waited for the school to be over and then we walked back together. She was carrying my admit card and the examination schedule. I looked at her from the corner of my eyes. She was not angry. She was not unhappy, either. Whatever the “Board” was, it was not due to any misdemeanour from my side, I decided. I grasped her hand lovingly, and started walking happily.