I had a first hour class, starting at eight. With the help of
the alarm on the cell phone clock, I got up at 6.30, made myself some tea.
Mukta had not slept well. She was
reading some Hindi book in the drawing room. I took my tea and joined her.
Don’t begin reading / writing, she said, if you have to be in class at eight.
As if I did not know. I let that pass. We had some conversation, mainly
regarding the forthcoming wedding in the family. Mukta wanted me to drink my
tea faster. Tell me how, I wanted to ask her, but then I let that pass too. Washed,
muttered some mantras, lighted an incense
stick, got into some starched clothes that Mukta had in the meanwhile laid out,
had no time for breakfast, took a few brickbats from Mukta, returned a few, and
without waiting for more took my bicycle and was in the class within a few
minutes past eight.
As Lord Mountbatten said, too much insistence on punctuality
can be a fetish. It is not that learning, like electric train starts at eight and stops
at 8.57. Students need time to get out of the previous class, I mean mentally
too, and then get into the present. No teacher worth anything has been guided
by clock in these matters. But we are yet to get out of the factory culture that
the British began in the name of universities in India. Day at IIT M still
begins with a wailing siren. Perhaps some professors ignore their alarm clock.
But I have always respected it, though not with the religious commitment of my
good colleague (read Critic) Mohan. NDA undid him!
My students, about 30 of them, had to speak for 90 seconds each on a
man-made problem in their place. This is a Spoken English class. Most seemed to
have comme unprepared, though the topic was announced nearly three weeks ago. Actually,
they seemed to have got in straight from
bed, w/o washing or breakfast, with less than three hours of sleep in the night
behind them. You could as well teach Spoken English to ghosts! But then there
is a good thing about students at IIT M. They make no compromise on the
minimum. Each of them had visited some site on the internet and had got some data
and had transferred these data to their slides.
Some of them had even edited and adapted their slides, with
necessary changes. They said, for instance, they were from Visakhapatnam, and
Visakhapatnam was the headquarters of the eastern naval command and the pearl
of the east coast, it had 49 parks and the level of suspended particulate
matter in the air in the city at 9 in the morning was…. Some students had
changed Visakhapatnam to Nellore, Warangal, Bulandshahar, etc. I am nearly sure
that Warangal and Bulandshahar are not coastal towns. But am I a geography
teacher, or an English teacher! Their spelling and pronunciation, that matter
to me, were nearly all right, and I was
pleased. You can teach nothing unless you love your students, I mean
emotionally. Americans have proved that only happy customers keep you in
business, and the director writes a personal mail to those with high teacher
ratings. Once even I got 99.7 percentile! Even a Padmashri cannot taste sweeter!!
But some students really had something to say. Now I know how
much food, water, power, time, etc. is wasted in the hostel sector. Some students
spoke about average time spent by students on social sites, chats, browsing,
and consultation with friends across hostels. After 10 p m, which is when serious
study time begins, personal consultations are not allowed across hostels. But
then technology has always helped. Cell phones and internet serve useful
purposes.
A survey of use of free time by students at IIT M claimed
that nearly 80% of the boys among respondents spent 80% of their free time
gossiping about films, cricket and girls. For other respondents, the percentage was higher. 83% of them claimed
they spent 85% of their free time consulting their friends on films and
cricket, clothes and other girls. This was before the advent of cell phones,
and before the Dept. of HSS began its five year integrated M A programme. This
post-Modern age with greater connectivity and fewer inhibitions seems to have
almost achieved the Marxian goal of classless society. Workers of the world may
or may not have united in the world, students at IIT M have across hostels and
departments! Though I have done my turn at gate-keeping as a hostel warden,
these discoveries continue to surprise and instruct me. How steadily and
decisively is our democracy growing regardless of divides of class, caste,
gender, etc…
After the class, some students came for consultation. They
wanted feedback. I gave them feedback from my notes, and told them they should
listen to their bits of presentation, and then come back to discuss the same. I
was going to copy the recording to the group. Some students always take me
seriously. They do rewind and listen and return to discuss. They convince us
that life is earnest, life is real and the grave is not its goal…, etc. and
keep us from committing suicide. May God
bless them!
Prof Mohan of my dept. then reminded me that I should perhaps
go for tree plantation ceremony organized by the Institute for the retiring
employees. You can always depend upon Mohan for finding innovative and pleasant
ways of diversion after the class. No matter how many times he has already
drunk his tea(read gulped, he does it in one go at boiler temperature, and, so, he is our best bet for
a place in at least a footnote in history), he can still join you for your
coffee in the canteen, and even pay for it. Mohan prefers tea in the canteen
because he does not know how good tea tastes; for the same reason I take
coffee. So we both cycled down to the site behind Mandakini Hostel. Mohan says
he found a second-hand bicycle on Noah’s Ark, but he has kept it in good trim,
like he keeps his other possessions. Only
two months ago, Mohan held a sapling here that was actually planted by a
colleague from the Horticulture Section. Mohan was surprised that the tree had
struck roots in spite of his touch.
Soon a good crowd of enthusiastic
colleagues from different departments and admin gathered there. Two other colleagues
and I retiring that day were given a sapling each in our turns to plant in the
designated pits. I felt guilty not having attended any plantation ceremony before, and not having, let alone
planted, even watered even one tree in the two and half decades on the campus.
But I quickly reminded myself that Prof Megha Singh, of Bio-Physics / Applied
Mechanics, had done it all for all of us
for years to come. In spite of the builders, many trees planted by him still
survive. But then death, sooner or later,
is the only lasting law of life. Only Shakespeare’s lines are expected
to survive death. So I told myself there was no need to be emotional. I faced
the camera, grinned and had some butter milk. Given a chance, our butter milk
can do better than our computer boys and girls. It can wipe out coca cola in
America! I decided to write a letter to Shree Modiji, with a copy to The Hindu, of course.
At home for breakfast, I could not
answer Mukta what tree I had planted. Told her to give me breakfast first. I
had hoped she would forget, but she is relentless in exposing other’s
shortcomings. She could as well have asked me where I planted this tree, or who
was there, and what snacks were served, etc. I had to tell her I did not know
and that she could ask Mr Srinivasan, Executive Engineer in-charge of the
Horticulture Section. IIT M directory had his phone number.
Back at the Institute Admin Block, some
more papers to be signed on the first floor, some others on the second. Still
later in the afternoon, we were invited for tea with Dean Sriram. We had to wait a few minutes.
Before we turned up, some monkeys had looted the banana chips that were being
brought for this tea party. The dean apologized, and told us some nice things.
He said he had some good news for me. My heart jumped inside my breast, I
almost felt like asking him if we had been included in the pension scheme. But what
he said was not much less exciting. I had been made a Higher Administrated
Grade (HAG) professor, subject, of course, to the approval of the Board of
Governors. He explained that so far I had been like a joint secretary to the
government, but now I would be like an additional secretary to the government. I
did not know until that moment that there were secretaries of so many different
kinds and ranks. This was like a blessing the rishis used to give the suffering in the past. You will have a son
who would bring you good name and fame, but they did not say when. More
obliging ones, however, left less for speculation. They offered instant boons.
I felt like asking Sriram what it
meant in terms of cash. But then I held myself, it might not be in good taste,
Wordsworth has spoken against it, giving and taking we lay waste our lives.
Gita says what is mine will definitely come to me, and what is not mine will
never come, etc. Raja Rao, no less a person than Raja Rao, then a visiting
professor at Princeton, also a novelist who wrote in English when he should
have written in Kannada, has said that no people in the world know how to
manage their failures better than the Indians. Others commit suicide, Indians
blame God.
So I kept quiet, and concentrated on the fresh supply
of murukkuls and sweet and coffee. Usually,
at meetings in Admin Block roasted cashew nuts were served in the past. Some
body once calculated that one or two professors who had spent time there as
dean and then had risen steadily through different floors to the top had at the
rate of 100 g of cashew nuts per meeting eaten about a ton of it in the decade
and a half or so they spent of their tenure in the hallowed rooms of this building! But under Prof Bhaskar R, perhaps,
the Institute has adopted austerity measures. Besides, as desired by Gandhiji, we
should promote local and cottage industries, and murukkuls have no cholesterol problem. Above all, you do not feel
guilty leaving uneaten murukkuls on
the plate, etc.
It was time to go up to the Fifth Floor, to what used
to be the Senate Room, in my opinion the best room on the Campus. With even one
window, and this hall has many, without curtain, this hall, in my experience,
gives the best view of the green paradise the lucky lot like us live in in the
middle of a polluted megapolis.
The Director came at four, and with mechanical, in his
case, electrical, or electronic (?) precision, began the chore of the day.
Citations were read by the HoDs. The
audience were invited to share their views of the head and heart of the
retiring employees. Most retiring employees, no matter how inconsequential or
unpopular, always have one or two people to speak well of them. I had three.
I found Pawanji and Gayatri in the hall. It was such a
pleasant surprise. They make such a wonderful couple, touch wood! Until a
decade ago, they were both pencil slim, and now they both look heavy and
prosperous. Actually, Gayatri told an old acquaintance that she need not apologise
to Gayatri as she (Gayatri) was no longer “slim” as she used to be. I wished I
had asked Pawanji and Gayatri to join me for the tea-party!
For me, Prof Malathy, head of my department read the
citation written by my colleague Prof Devaki Reddy. It had a few adjectives,
but mostly facts. Prof Mohan, Prof G Srinivasan of the DoMS, and Prof
Rama Shankar Verma, of the Bio-Tech, spoke. As such occasions demand, they said
very nice things about me. But Mohan was a big surprise. In all my 26 years
here with him, I have never heard him say nice things about anyone in public.
In private…, well it is private! But he made an exception today, and said shocking
things, like I was the best combination
of a teacher-researcher and that I just stood outside my room and spoke to the
British Council even in the pre-mobile phone days w/o difficulty; the B C, of
course, answered by post! Did hyperbole ever reach a greater height! I decided
to take this for a compliment!
Srinivasan said what a nice man I was, and
Ramashankarji said that I had praised his English and had encouraged him to
write more. Going by the culture of the place, when even the tea-boy in the lab
finds his name among those under the by-line, should Ramashankarji not have
added my name at least to one footnote in one paper! But I am stretching
things! I know he publishes in spite of me, I manipulated to have him take over
from me the bank passbook of the Hindi Mitra Mandal and such other papers that
do not enhance your citation index. But with luck, anything can happen!
Retiring employees were also given a chance to
respond. I took over 10 minutes, and told the audience how lucky I had been to
have got a job here, and how kind the Institute and its authorities had always
been to me and my family, and how they had often gone out of the way to
accommodate my difficult requests, etc. I also urged them to have some more of
Humanities at IIT M; B S at MIT has 40/200 credits in Humanities, but B Tech at
IIT M has only 11/185. I also said that the game of ranking of universities is
loaded against us, etc., and that we should encourage and publish more in home
journals and even in our own languages. I thanked the Dean and the Director for
supporting a Hindi translation of my book, and agreed that in global times (?),
perhaps the Institute should go global; and the view of things from the White
House was different, etc., and that I was grateful to have been part of an
institute whose students are accepted all the world over.
For all this for all the three employees retiring
today, the function took under an hour, at the end of which the Director gave
retiring employees a memento each and a folder containing some papers. Some
more photographs were taken. It took me some effort to look less nervous. But I
found that Prof Bhaskar smiled before the camera like adept screen artistes,
almost effortlessly. The poor thing, he has to sit through this kind of
exercise every month, like presiding anesthetists in surgical operation
theatres do. He must be a super-human being not to have been dehumanized yet! Nearly everyone in the hall waited in a queue to shake
the hands of retiring employees. It felt so good. For a moment, even I had the
illusion that after all I had not lived a life in vain. Stardom of a moment can
cause incalculable damage to the victim’s
common sense!
I requested Gayatri and Pawanji to take away the
memento and the folder, and rushed to the cycle park outside the CLT in the
HSB. IIT M has done much to promote the use of bicycle on the Campus, but has
done little to make the bicycle users feel comfortable and welcome. It took me
some minutes to extricate my vehicle from the zig-saw puzzle there, but with
God above and heart within I reached the Bio-tech seminar hall only a few
minutes late, and was happy to note that people were still on coffee. I no to
coffee, and went inside.
Nearly all seats, especially in the front row, had
already been occupied. But Prof Nagarajan, the Dean of International Relations
and co-ordinator of this talk, rose and introduced me to the speaker, Prof Mrigank
Sur (?) of the Neurosciences Dept at M I T, Mass. Prof Sur gave me his seat and
asked me not to feel guilty. He said that this way he could claim that so many
people came to hear him that he had to give up even his seat! I thanked him and
sat down. Prof Sur was introduced on his feet.
Prof Sur spoke good English, explaining how brain
worked in modules, and how it programmed,
or wired and re-wired, itself to reach conclusions, etc. He described
experiments he and his students at MIT had conducted and the results they had
obtained. He speculated that many Nobel
Prizes were waiting to be grabbed in the future in this area. He also quoted
from his own works published in Nature and other top journals, etc. He has a sense of
humor. He kept a medium size seminar roomful of young and not so young
scientists and others smiling throughout the hour long talk. He described the
anatomy and functioning of the brain with confidence and clarity. His
experimental data obtained from observing the behaviour of mouses in his lab
were well illustrated with videos and
w/o equations. And this in spite of his B Tech in Electrical Engg from IIT Kanpur
and Ph D in Electrical Engg from (?) in the US. Only Stephen Hawking seems to
have achieved more in his A Brief History
of Time. But like that over-sold book, I felt this talk was also an amusing
piece of science fiction. If our brains were even remotely comparable, why did
rats get caught in traps, or why they have no “language”, or poetry or even basketball,
like us, to use his own metaphor? He
said he did not know. Very honest, of course! But hardly illuminating.
Somebody said social sciences were a painful elaboration
of the obvious. What I had heard was an emusing elaboration of almost nothing!
But there may be lessons to be drawn and extrapolated, and I may be wrong. Now
and then, tired by the events of the day, I felt drowsy, and might have missed some
a crucial point or two.
Finally, home. Got and made a few calls from and to
friends and relatives near and far. Also called Pindaruch, my village in North
Bihar, about 2,600 kms away. I spoke to Kaaki, crossing 90 now. I told her that
I had retired. So you would come home now, she asked. Yes, I said. Please, do; anhaar ghar niik nahi lagait chhaik (dark
rooms do not look good!). I wished I could cry. I had just now crossed another mile-stone
on a road to nowhere !!!!
But, as Milton said, tomorrow to fresh woods and
pastures new. May we go from darkness to light, tamso maa jyotirgamayah!
shreesh / 28 Feb., 2015
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