A Tale of Two Schools (June, 2004)

This is a story about two schools.

The first school was more than an institution; where values grew like laughing daisies in an Illustrated Guide to the English Countryside. A newspaper cutting from yesteryears talked about the school under the article head that read, 'A Mother for Rs.60'. Indeed for working parents it came as a messiah where they had the opportunity of letting a number of mothers take care of their kids in their absence. For their adolescence there was Rabindranath Tagore, albeit filtered, and John Lenon and Abbasuddin for music to fill the air. Children entered the school, white and soft, wrapped in home made quilt, and left in trousers hiding hairy legs. The premium was always on honesty and kindness and even though the pressure of the rat race did sneak in through here and there, on the whole it was insulated from the vagaries of the fast competitive world.The infrastructure was hardly adequate, but the real rooms were the hearts. Thus a crowded assembly with the sweet smell of the sweat of your childhood sweetheart was a treat rather than an issue. Issues there were, of the tonnes of holiday homework, but then it is not that meritorious short cuts were not allowed. Most importantly, the academic discipline, which sometimes went overboard, helped getting a grip over the Boards. The final bungee jump was so well rehearsed that most landed like a gentle parachute. The spirit of the school was captured a century or half back when Oliver Goldsmith said of the Village Schoolmaster-
Yet he was kind; or if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault.
That is not to say it bred a cluster of bibliophiles. The smell of Monsoon was enough to suspend classes on occasions, where the teacher would suddenly throw away the chalk and the Shah Jahans and the calcium carbonates and say, “ What the heck! Let’s have some songs!” And we used to pour out like the imminent teardrops of an August Kolkata sky, onto our small courtyard. Singing to the skies lines from Tagore, or the Bhatiyali strains of the fishermen of East Bengal. No 'O Sajna Barkha Bahar Aayi' though, Salil Chowdhury or Madan Mohan was barred because the school rightfully feared Amar Utpal or Bappi Lahiri might slip through the door left ajar. There was no laissez-faire but they, like the makers of the Second and the Third Five-year Plan, sought discretion to be a better part of valour and adopted the infant industry argument. The teachers used to join in under the beaming, kind face of our principal who was as unconventionally germane to our all round development as probably Tagore was to the students of Shantiniketan. Each contour of her face spelled exhilarating bliss or unavoidable doom, for her anger was stuff legends are made of. But as the Chinese blessing seeks, we did live in exciting times!!
Time used this wonderful palate to mix and match the vivid colours of my childhood. Stolen glances, a few locks of hair carefully snipped, jealous looks at my childhood sweetheart locked in a kiss- memories of boys who were ‘strange’, of girls who were ‘normal’, of women who were kind, of men who inspired awe. Cuts on my body with gaping flesh and oozing blood, truckloads of runs in the domestic circuit of hand cricket with paper balls, rumbles in the stomach as the results were declared in one gala annual affair all come rushing back as I tell you about this school. They are all there, trapped in the bricks like the heart beats from Poe’s Tell-Tale heart, and what a ditty they recount.

The second school was again more than an institution; it was a polite Tower of London set in the genteel settings of an upper Middle class Bengali diaspora. Where it was better to be British than to be American in mindset, and thus discipline scored over individual freedom. The stiff upper lip seldom stuttered when pronouncing the hardest reprimand, and when young minds were left traumatised, no amount of counter-soothing could bring back the respect that was lost forever. What remained were dark strands of fear like tea leaves in an empty tea cup.
It was a censor board working overtime, sometimes rightfully, but in more cases than not, censoring creativity, dreams and lending a linear direction to the development of minds. All-round didn’t actually have an all-round definition, and there were major chunks of life, which were left out. As a result people passing out from the school had this terrible difficulty of adjusting to the world which became for them a metaphor for magic realism, a page out of Marquez. Where time twisted and turned around characters, partially from their world, partially from another. A world which was left amazed at the lack of exposure of the pass outs to truth, both beautiful and ugly. Things like boys fighting in a muddy football field, like Hercule Poirot solving murder mysteries, like the politics of Indian freedom struggle, like Kishore Kumar yodelling love songs.- indeed love was wrapped in a spiritual and an eclectic packet and delivered very carefully to the sleeping futures of the world. While explaining Lines to An Indian Air or The Highwayman, love had to be dealt with because of syllabic constraints. Otherwise my suspicion is that the School would have only done Horatius and The Walrus and the Carpenter and might have done away with Chapter 20 of our Biology textbook by P.A.Paulose. And staying with The Walrus, indeed very few oysters from the school could find their feet without excess tribulations.
All this however can still be debated, but what cannot be defended was the punishment handed out to a kid who had the misfortune of drawing an old man urinating against a city wall. When Suman Chatterjee pleaded with kids to draw beyond the very English medium Twinkle Twnkle Little Stars and Mickey Mouses, little did he know that a kid would take up his advice, draw how he sees his city and get into serious soup. Even in the highly unlikely scenario of the picture being sketched in the sexual context, the Middle Ages style of discipline was something that did more harm to the mind of the child than correcting it. And you don’t have to be child psychiatrist to conclude that.

Funnily, and I bleed profusely as I say this, the schools were one and the same.

So you think you can tell, heaven from hell?