In the summer vacation of 1980, Mayo boys did not persuade me to take them on a trek to the Himalayas.
There were two reasons for it.
Firstly, they seemed to have had enough of trekking already. Secondly, I had to trot off in a different direction that summer.
Why I had to do that has a story behind it. The story, however, is so old it needs to be told in flashback.
So here is the flashback . . . .
~
In July 1967, I left my native place Chamba to do my MA in English.
Those were the days when all colleges and schools in Himachal Pradesh were affiliated to Panjab University. The University campus was located in Chandigarh and Shimla was the only place in Himachal Pradesh where there was a Regional Centre for Post Graduate Studies.
I preferred Shimla for three reasons.
Firstly, we Himachalis shudder at the idea of leaving Himachal Pradesh. Secondly, Chandigarh is so hot Himachalis spend more time in the air-conditioned cinema halls there than in the University classrooms. Thirdly, I had heard the girls in Shimla were quite accommodating and even though I was way past the minimum age for adult franchise, I was still a virgin.
It had been my dream to join a college or university after doing my MA and teach English literature. The dream was so persuasive I had looked at other professions the way a high caste Hindu used to look at a low caste Hindu before the Constitution of India came into effect on January 26, 1950.
What were doctors, engineers, administrators, auditors and servicemen, after all, but a bunch of unimaginative bozos recruited to keep the systems the British had set up before their departure from the sub-continent going?
Doctors waste their lives on sickness and disease. Engineers waste their lives making ugly buildings and inefficient machines. Administrators sit in their government offices playing God to the masses. Auditors have nothing better to do than find faults with other people’s accounts. Servicemen spend first halves of their lives saluting others and second halves getting saluted.
A professor of English literature, on the other hand, enjoys his work of teaching poetry, prose and drama and giving lectures on literary aesthetics a la Aristotle, Plato, I.A.Richards and F.R.Leavis.
~
Dreams, particularly of the young, tend to be extremely fragile.
Not even the most gifted engineers in the world have been able to manufacture a box on which it is clearly indicated: ‘Dreams inside. Handle with care’.
All they have been able to manufacture are the cardboard boxes with glassware icons on them so that even the dumbest luggage handlers at airports and railway stations do not break the expensive goodies inside them.
I carried my youthful dreams in a jhola (satchel) after doing my MA in 1969.
Carrying a jhola was the fashion statement of the day. Jhola came in handy to carry the manuscript of your recently composed poetry, a packet of Charminar cigarettes and a copy of Jean Paul Sartre’s Nausea – necessary tools to assert your superiority among your peers in the coffee house.
By 1972, all the dreams in my jhola were gone. So were the tools of my superiority.
All I carried now in my jhola were splinters of shattered dreams, a well-thumbed copy of Making Life a Masterpiece by Orison Swett Marden and a bundle of beedis the Bihari paanwala handed me reluctantly on credit.
~
By 1977, I had accepted a schoolmaster’s job at Mayo College Ajmer.
By that time, I had also done my M.Phil in English literature.
There were three reasons why we did M.Phil those days.
Firstly, doing M.Phil helps a bit in bridging the gulf between dream and reality. Secondly, it offers respite from pain and humiliation boys face sitting home after doing their MA.
For girls, it helps killing time before getting married.
Thirdly, unemployment rate in India by 1970 had gone up so high your MA could not get you the job of a peon.
Even though my dream of becoming a professor of English literature had evaporated into the thin air by 1972, I still wanted to be a teacher and that too in a government school in Himachal Pradesh.
There were two reasons for it.
The first one has already been spelt out. We Himachalis are the most laid-back people in the world; leaving Himachal means we can’t be laid back anymore.
Secondly, a government job in Himachal Pradesh is like a one-time ticket into the world of eternal pleasure. No matter how often you remain absent from your job on account of weather conditions, illnesses, weddings, fairs, pilgrimages, harvesting seasons, religious ceremonies, births, deaths and excessive intakes of lugdi (home-made whisky), you still get your pay. No matter whether your students pass the Board examination or not, you still get your pay.
Best of all, you get promotions with the passage of time. You don’t have to do any thing special to earn them.
So I tried to get a school teacher’s job in my state. I tried and tried but never succeeded like that fairy-tale spider.
To be utterly frank, all those fables and tales about stubborn spiders and creative crows are just . . . bullshit. Yet they are taught to school children in India even today!
There could be two possible reasons for that.
Firstly, everything else in India keeps changing except school education. Secondly, fairy-tales still continue to be Indian teachers’ all-time favourites in the classroom application of inspirational psychology.
~
When you fail to get a government job in Himachal Pradesh even after trying for a decade, the hard facts stare you in the face: You just don’t qualify!
Fact # 1: You don’t belong to a scheduled caste
Fact #2: You don’t belong to a scheduled tribe or a backward class
Fact # 3: You are not even distantly related to a politician or a senior bureaucrat.
When I eventually left Himachal Pradesh, I got a school teacher’s job at Mayo College Ajmer.
There were three reasons why I was selected for the job:
1) I was the most qualified among the candidates present.
2) They did not administer a written test in English.
3) I readily accepted the salary offered.
~
Burning ambitions are like raging erections, difficult to keep under wraps.
Both clamour for instant gratification, no matter what you do to achieve that end.
I had just about completed one year at Mayo College Ajmer when my burning ambitions once again started raising their heads.
As for raging erections, the amount of work boarding school masters in India are made to do leaves room only for burning ambitions. No one knows it better than the wives of boarding school masters.
A plumber is a plumber and a policeman is a policeman. You cannot expect them to be doctors even though some plumbers and policemen do practice homeopathy at home.
At Mayo College Ajmer, a schoolmaster is expected to be the jack-of-all-trades. Here is a list of what he has to do.
During games time, he has to teach kids how to play cricket, football, hockey, basketball, tennis or squash.
No matter if all the games he ever played in his life were kabaddi and gulli-danda.
During swimming season, he has to teach kids how to swim. He also has to make sure none of them decides to stay back in the swimming pool for personal reasons.
No matter if contact with water in his entire life was restricted either to drinking it once in a while when the municipality taps ran or getting soaked in it during monsoons.
Once a year, he has to judge field and track events during the annual athletic meet.
No matter if all the athletics that happened in his life were on occasions when he placed his school report in his father’s hands and ran.
Once or twice a year, he has to take kids out on cycling and trekking expeditions.
No matter if he hates both cycling and trekking – things he had to do in his youth to reach school or college on time.
Once or twice a month, he has to sneak his way into local cinema halls to catch a boy enjoying a late night movie without his housemaster’s permission.
No matter if he too had enjoyed a matinee show or two in his youth when his parents thought he was in school!
Once or twice a term, he has to face unexpected parents visiting the school and asking him about their kid’s performance.
No matter if he fails to recall even the name of the kid, leave alone his performance.
No wonder then that my lust for a professor’s job turned unbearable after a year at Mayo College Ajmer.
Ground reality, however, told me I needed to do PhD to qualify for the job. M.Phil degree now got you jobs recently re-christened ‘Support Staff’.
~
Everyone knows it takes years to earn a PhD degree unless you are in a hurry and buy it from the University of Meercut or Raotek.
Since Himachal Pradesh University at Shimla had come into existence only recently, I decided to get myself registered there as a matter of right.
But you need to have a research guide to do your PhD.
In 1979, it was easier to find a government job than to find a research guide in Himachal Pradesh.
So I had to look elsewhere.
Fortunately, the reputation of Patiala had grown from its association with the size of a peg of whisky to a town with a University that went by the name of Punjabi University.
In 1979, Punjabi University Patiala had quite a few professors who had done their PhD degrees from America either as Fulbright Scholars or as illegal immigrants.
However, it did take me some time to find Dr. Peenewala (not his real name) and persuade him to be my research guide. A discrete investigation revealed he was very choosy about his research scholars. To be chosen as his research scholar, one had to be one up over Sisyphus in terms of perseverance and patience.
How I managed to do that is a saga I have happily consigned to amnesia.
What I remember with pride, however, is the fact that I did earn my PhD degree with Dr. Peenewala as my research guide.
~
But why did I dedicate my thesis to my friend Major K.S. Rajput (not his real name) and not to my wife like most research scholars tend to do?
Many friends ask me this question when I persuade them to have a look at least at the first page of my PhD thesis.
I never give them either of the true reasons listed below.
Firstly, Major Rajput was the one who procured for me, from time to time, crates of booze from army canteens. What those crates did to win me the position of a research scholar with Dr. Peenewala is a secret I cannot divulge for reasons of safeguarding the remaining career of Major Rajput in the Indian Army.
Secondly, during my research period, my wife was so busy producing kids she hardly paid me any attention, leave alone my research work.
What I did to make up for her lack of attention is a secret I cannot divulge for reasons of safeguarding my own career.
~
At the end of this flashback, I guess it’s kind of necessary to reveal the topic of my research to explain why I trotted off to Hyderabad and not to the Himalayas in the summer of 1980.
The topic of my thesis was “Manifestations of the Undercurrents of Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra in the Major Poetic Works of Emily Dickinson”. It was such a path-breaking original research it was recommended for the award of a PhD without a viva voce!
But why did I choose that topic?
Firstly, I didn’t. Dr. Peenewala did it for me.
Secondly, HP University had to accept all research topics submitted for approval in 1979. As a fledgling university, it had to set its priorities right vis-à-vis the mighty UGC (University Grants Commission).
Thirdly, the topic was so very American it was sure to get me a fellowship at the American Studies Research Center Hyderabad, if not at the Harvard.
That’s why I had to trot off to Hyderabad in the summer of 1980.
Charminar: Major Landmark of Hyderabad
