How I won the scholarship without learning anything

In eighth grade of school, I won a Sanskrit Scholarship. A regional scholarship that felicitated students that had demonstrated a talent in Sanskrit language. Criteria? Every student who scored 95% + in their year-end examination scores. I remember feeling so chuffed about winning this scholarship. The school arranged to take the 5 winners to the felicitation venue where we found ourselves amongst hundreds of other students from schools across New Delhi. Our moment of glory comprised to being called upon the stage and being handed a certificate along with an envelope containing Rupess Five Hundred, not an insignificant amount for an eighth grader, possibly the first money we had made ourselves.  I felt good about it for weeks at end, if not months.

In the 20 odd years than have gone past since then, I have found myself thinking many a times about this one classmate. A lanky girl with silky soft hair tied casually in a hip length plait. She had few friends and was considered aloof and rude by many. Finding every opportunity to burn her skin darker still at the basketball court, one of the odd girls who chose that sport. Scampering around school corridors in winters without bothering to put moisturizer on her skin, her brown skin flaked with white due to dryness. She had chosen Sanskrit as her third language too.

In our eighth grade, we had to start writing short essays in Sanskrit. There were the standard topics – an animal, popular Hindu festival, a city, a famous leader etc. The unstated expectation was for the students to refer to guides (un-regulated coaching books available outside of prescribed school curriculum) and copy out those essays word for word. For the purpose of examination, there would be a choice of 5 essay topics. If you were a smart student, you would have seen enough test papers of the past to identify 4-5 topics which gave you a reasonable guarantee that atleast 1 of them will show up amongst the 5 choices in the annual examination. So you memorize these 4-5 essays, cross your fingers, and vomit it out on the exam day.

It made life simple for our Sanskrit teacher as well. Our homework submissions during the year were largely error-proof. Errors, if any, were mostly because of the student’s laziness in copying from the “guide” books. Imagine her plight when this lanky girl submitted one original essay after the other. They were full of mistakes as she learnt to put the language to use. I remember seeing her assignments when they came back after evaluation. The pages would be blood red from the teacher’s pen. The teacher wasn’t amused. The girl however was determined.

She was the only one who really learnt the language. No wonder she never got that scholarship.

two Buddhas too many

Bangkok loves its shrines, spirit temples and deity statues. It would be surprising to cross 100m without stumbling upon one of the three. It wasn’t surprising then that Lumpini Park, the 142 acre breathtakingly beautiful green lung of the city, should decide to add a second Buddha statue.

But why on Earth would the wise folks managing Lumpini decide to place the only other Buddha statue right next to the existing one? This was clearly mindless bureaucracy at work. Or yet another example of the crazy Thai ways. Or both.

And then rolled in yet another Wednesday evening. As I walked past this new statue during my evening walk with my toddler leading the way, I noticed that the entire periphery of the statue is draped in beautiful slender fragrant white flowers. Flowers that have fallen from a tree whose canopy was exactly overhead the statue. 

It wasn’t bureaucracy after all that decided the statue’s placement. Nor was it the “crazy Thai way”. It seemed to be guided by faith or beauty or both or something else altogether. But there was logic, quite possibly linked to that beautiful flowering tree which I am yet to notice elsewhere in the park.

It was a gentle yet firm reminder to not be abruptly dismissive of something because it seemed illogical to me. To be patient for the logic to reveal itself. To be tolerant even if it didn’t.

It irks me when people are dismissive and condescending of indigenous/ traditional practices without trying to get to their heart, their unique logic. Yet here I was, guilty of the very same when faced with a new environment.

Lesson (hopefully) learnt.  

A picture is worth a thousand words. And 20,000 pictures?

Our kids generation is going to be the most heavily photographed one. Its mind boggling sometimes. The amount of energy we devote to clicking them, sorting through the pictures, sharing the 10 amongst 1000 clicked on various social media, online and offline family albums, tracking likes/comments.

My father enjoyed photography and bought a Mamia camera back in the late 70’s. Thanks to his love for the camera, we were lucky to have few albums of our early years.  I always thought my Dad was surprisingly missing from most pictures. I now know that he was on the other side of the lens.

The story repeats 32 years down the line. My son will find his mother missing in most pictures. It might take him another 30 years to realize she was behind the lens.

In the frenzy of all this clicking, I am beginning to get somewhat dis enchanted with pictures though. They seem to hide as much, sometimes more, as they reveal. They seem to create a delusion that all was good “back then”.  They perpetuate nostalgia.

Will my son think of his first birthday being only about cake, candles, lots of smiles, beautiful resort and, tuk-tuk ride?  When it’s his 17^th birthday and he is feeling crappy for some reason, will these pictures make him feel worse?

What if we gave our children a thousand words instead of a 1000 pictures for each birthday? Telling them how we felt at that time. About them growing up, our journey as a parent, our highs but also our lows. Along with a few pictures, maybe that’ll be a bigger treasure for them? I am sure it would have been for me.

Quality of Life

We are always in the pursuit of a better “quality of life”. Coming from a developing country and a middle class upbringing, a better quality of life has the predictable hallmarks. If I were to sum it up, it would be really boil down to – good amount of money. Enough to live in a nice house, spend on entertainment, leisure, shopping, eating out and, afford quality education and amenities for our children.

I know I am lucky to be enjoying this quality of life early on in life. But having it and living it everyday, I am beginning to question its definition. We live in this city – husband, wife & child – with no family or close friends. Bangkok has been better to me than any Indian city I have lived in on several counts. Yet, I don’t belong here. I miss a sense of connection. Sometimes, I simply miss pain. Seeing and feeling it.

Years ago on a Mumbai sub-urban train, I found myself face-to-face with a girl with unending streams of tears down her cheeks. We sat quietly for the length of my 20 min long journey. She did not try to hide her tears. I neither pretended to ignore them nor did I reach out to comfort her. A few months later, I found myself making the same journey back home, this time the tears gushing down my face. On board a packed local train in Mumbai, I could weep without feeling embarrassed or being comforted by strangers. I thought it was the most considerate gesture. As though the city itself was comforting you by being comfortable with your pain.

Flash forward 6 years. I am cocooned in a nice big house and in a car when I step out. On the metro system, all of us are glued into our smartphones. Lots of emoticons, very few emotions. We are always polite and friendly to each other, always smiling in this Land of Smiles. You need to be a "happy and positive” person to make new friends in this new city. You need to sound happy to your mother over phone or else she’ll simply say “I told you not to leave home”. You need to maintain a happy front for your husband for isn’t this the good life we wanted – nice house, cool car, exciting foreign city, good disposable income?

I am struggling to understand this still but its becoming clear that comforts and convenience alone do not define quality of life. There needs to be a sense of connection beyond your immediate family. With the city you live in, the people around you. In my case, even a need to anchor myself to a city. I am thinking of an old Dido track –

“If my life is for rent and I don’t learn to buy,

                        I deserve nothing more than I get, for nothing I have is truly mine”