Some old things

Warning: It’s a long post.

An old reminiscence was bestirred from its sleep when I saw Baba Amte’s photograph on the first page of this month’s Reader’s Digest issue.

Although I was in the hub of almost every activity in the school, I always felt alienated by a few teachers. It’s not that all the teachers were like that, but as it happens, I craved for attention from teachers who always ignored me. May be they didn’t like my gregarious nature because they always favoured students that were reticent and not as hard working as I was. Anyway, the point is, this thing, their seemingly orchestrated ignorance of my presence, weighed heavy upon my subconscious, and this heaviness stayed with me as long as I stayed in that school. Later on when I joined another school I realized people actually liked me.

Reverting back to Baba Amte. Once he came to our school and delivered a speech in the assembly room. Four children were selected to say a few words in the honour of the baba. We were supposed to have done some research on him before coming to school that day. My speech was replete with humorous anecdotes and drew maximum applause and laughter during its delivery. The others were formal and clichéd and people clapped just for the sake of ceremony. But they did something that I didn’t do: they touched his feet after their respective speeches. I didn’t, for two reasons: I don’t like this gesture of touching feet, and I didn’t know him so closely as to touch his feet. It doesn’t mean I didn’t respect him. There was no humility in their gesture, they were either just conditioned that way, or they did it just to seem nice. They hadn’t studied about him and whatever they had spoken they had garnered from the teachers and from whatever I had read of him in various magazines and newspapers.

I nurtured great admiration for Baba Amte and for all he had done for the leprosy patients. I considered him very brave and heroic and even idolized him while I was reading about his various feats in the leper ashram. Very few people in the world have the audacity and determination to follow their heart’s call.

He made those three kids sit with him (due to a back problem he could only stand or lie) and chatted with them very affectionately while I stood nearby. Everybody in the assembly room eagerly tried to listen to what he was saying to those kids. This steered bonhomie went on for 5 minutes, and then all the four of us went back to our seats. This incident left an indelible mark of hurt inside me. I have always wondered why he talked to those kids while I stood there quietly.

After a few months there were wide-spread floods in the country. Baba Amte was collecting clothes and other stuff for the submerged villagers and our school too participated in the effort. I collected lots of clothes and bed sheets from home and my neighbours and on a chosen day we all went to his camp near, perhaps the Red Fort — I’m not sure — in the school van with all the collected stuff. Baba Amte laid on a raised platform while a few villagers sat around him. As soon as he saw us, he called those same three kids, by their names. All three of them went running to him, touched his feet and then sat beside him while he chatted with them. Everybody looked at them with great affection and pride. Ironically, those three kids had brought nothing with them. Although I didn’t mind much this time because I had joined a group of villagers who were singing folk songs and I would rather sit with them, a shadow of sadness hovered around me all the time we stayed there.

I detected the same pattern as the one in those teachers and for a while I thought, well, may be there was something very wrong in either the way I looked, or in the manner I conducted myself. Or may be I tried too hard to be what I was, or what I was not. May be I always seemed artificial and it was written all over me and this made me look like a three dimensional specimen of a walking and talking artificiality. So I tried to be what I was, or what I was not, but the pattern of their collective behaviour remained unaltered. Fortunately, I left the school just when I was about to lose the last remaining fragments of self-respect that were left in me.

In the new school I became an instant favorite not because I was “special” but because I did well in my class and helped my classmates in their studies. For the first time I realized that being good and being smart at a few things was not that bad and this didn’t reek of artificiality.

Knowing English matters a lot in a government school, and my vocabulary was far better than our English teacher’s vocabulary had remained stuck for many years in the contents of our English text books. Instead of resenting my grasp he would often praise me. My other skills, that had been hitherto suppressed in the old school just so that the other kids wouldn’t fell “less able”, blossomed too. I started singing in the school functions, I helped them prepare their dance performances (I cannot dance but I have a sense of what looks good on the stage) and I worked on drama scripts. The same happened in the college. I was so much liked there that in the second year there was some talk going around that I would take part in the college elections, which was of course no where in my mind.

It’s been a long time now. For the discussion’s sake, I’ll just mention those three kids who were the darlings of the teachers who ignored me and who earned a special place in Baba Amte’s heart by touching his feet. If there was ever a circle for them, life for them has come back full circle, and they are still there where they were when they were kids, even after studying in elite schools and colleges (of course, thanks to those teachers). I never bore a grudge against them and in the school we were all friends, and it hurts me to say that all three of them are still at home, without friends, without jobs, without siblings (all the siblings got married), without a social life, without a passion, without any future plans, and without those teachers. They live boxed lives, totally dependent on their phobic, dictatorial parents without whose permission they can’t even step outside their houses, forget about go somewhere and meet someone. Their lives are in an interminable limbo.

On the other hand, for me, life couldn’t be better. I just became the proud father of a beautiful baby girl. Alka and I are perpetually in love — despite our myriad ideological differences our love grows with every passing day. I have a stable career as a web content writer that fetches me more than good income. I have some great, lifelong friends. I get so much adoration from people around me that it sometimes becomes overwhelming. My work and my future plans keep me busy all the time and it is hard for me to go to bed at night just thinking of all the things that need to be done the next day. I wanted to write and now I earn a living writing. I wanted to learn singing and now I have a great guru (oh yes, he is nagging sometimes) who teaches me Hindustani classical music. I always wanted to have a family of my own and now I have the greatest family in the world. There are so many things I want to do, there are so many things I want to achieve, and I’m happy to claim that I feel empowered to pursue my goals. What more can I ask for? Ok, a lot, but that’s another story.

Somewhere I feel, the attitudes I was confronted with, somewhere, even if at a micro level, made me what I am today. Again and again I had to prove my worth, and there was never a thing called a free lunch. For even small things I had to wage big wars. This made me self-reliant and instilled in me a sense of struggle and without realizing it became a habit. So in a sense, I’m indebted to those who purposely or inadvertently ignored me or prevented me from attaining my potential in the early days of my youth. By constantly making me feel as if I was at a wrong place among wrong people, they were paving the way for a brighter future for me. Thanks to all of them! Really.