SHAKES-POWER

Pardon the cheesy title.

I was watching 36 Chowringhee Lane the other day. It's a movie anybody who is old, or is growing old, or is refusing to grow old, should watch.

But this is not about the movie. Its about Shakespeare. That's because, the central character, when she is at her loneliest, most betrayed, most hurt moment, quotes from King Lear. Understandable, she is a Shakepeare teacher after all.

Shakespeare has a way of getting in your veins, in your arteries, and then flowing over to your heart.

This post is not about Shakespeare either. That will take many, many books to write. And I am not erudite enough.

It is about Anjana Miss, in Class X, who taught us Julius Caesar. And who taught me not to fear Shakespeare. Who told me to grab the verbs to make sense of the blank-verse sentences. Who taught me the power of Antony's oratory and Brutus's honour.

It is about Kajaldi, at Presidency College, who taught us Twelfth Night. And who taught me about the rainbow-witted comic genius and the pathos-lined romance of Shakespeare.

It is about Sukantada, at Jadavpur University, who taught us King Lear. And who taught me about the poetry of pride and fidelity, and the tragedy of delusion and dementia.

King Lear was the Shakespeare play that made me spontaneously cry when I read it.

Thank you.

I will quote those lines from King Lear, which are spoken by the old and lonely Jennifer Kapoor to a stray dog, as they walk on a desolate Christmas evening:

"No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; ..."

It is a failed father's, a defeated king's, a mad monarch's, an old man's delusion.

But then, when we strip ourselves of our foolish possessions and comforting relations, aren't we all this lonely and wailing:

"And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never!"

WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE PLAY, SHAKESPEARE OR OTHERWISE?

A BAG FULL OF MEMORIES

As a young girl, rummaging through my Dida's (maternal grandmother) almari (cupboard) on a summer noon, I came across a stiff, boxy, bronze-coloured 'ladies' bag' with a short shoulder-strap, the kind carried by yesteryear heroines like Nanda and Asha Parekh, swinging it along with their hair and hips when the handsome hero serenaded them.

I was completely unable to visualize my rotund and grey-haired Dida looking even remotely like those buxom heroines. Why is it always so difficult for children to imagine old people to have ever been young? Now, at my age, it is so much easier!

Much later, I saw some faded sepia photographs of my Dida in fancy winged glasses and back-combed bun of hair, wearing a nice sari and posing beside my dashing Dadu (in a formal suit and tie) before some party. It was only then that I was able to connect that bag with my Dida, who otherwise had always seemed to be a cloth batua (hand-made bag) kind of a person.

To my great delight, the twist-to-open knob of the bag twisted open to reveal, apart from some old coins, a fancy hair pin (the kind you plunge into a really big bun or a really evil villain's heart) and a defunct gold-plated watch (Swiss made, with real gold) with a tiny rectangular dial and, sadly, one hand only.

The watch and the pin became useful accessories in all kinds of role-play, including espionage dramas.

And that bag became my faithful companion in countless hours of playing teacher-teacher, being boxy enough to hold all my old notebooks and ink-less pens, and also sturdy enough to last through the temper tantrums of a very ill-mannered teacher prone to throwing down her bag at the slightest provocation of her imaginary students.

It might have been a big comedown from the ball room to the class room, but the bag adjusted with the grace of a true lady.

WHAT WAS THE BAG YOU COVETED AS A CHILD?

WHEN I GROW UP, I WANT TO BE…

...a teacher. That’s what I always said when I was very young (I don’t remember saying so, but have to believe hearsay evidence from the family).

A lot of time was spent on rehearsing for the future profession. I would come back from school, take an ancient handbag belonging to my dida (granny), wrap a black orna (veil) around my head to simulate long black hair tied up in a bun and persuade my mother to drape a saree on me.

Then, frequently tripping over the voluminous folds of the saree (which would have to be double-folded to fit my childhood height), I would start taking lessons with various imaginary children. Sometimes I would scribble comments on last year’s used notebooks (Good, V.Good, Fair, V. Fair, Poor, V.Poor; the difficult-to-spell Satisfactory was avoided, and the equally-complicated Excellent rarely awarded) with a red pen kept for this very purpose.

I would teach lessons loudly and earnestly with a lot of imitative gestures like tossing of the head and raising of the eyebrows in the approved teacher-like manner (learning the syllabus myself in the process), praise a few students (whose names were those of my real life class-friends) and vigorously scold a few non-existent poor chaps (with names of classmates I did not like). A boy called Rajeev regularly received severe beatings from a wooden scale – my mother says that the patch of mattress which was supposedly Rajeev was quite worn out because of my strict disciplinarian nature.

I did not tire of playing “teacher-teacher-khela” (teacher role-playing) even when I was nine or ten. Sometimes, my cousin J, who visited frequently, would join in and then we could jointly and gleefully make life miserable for the make-believe students by imitating the classroom-manner of the most fearsome of our teachers. Not all the time, though, because we would also take turns in pretending to be our favourite teacher of the moment.

My Barama (aunt), who was a real-life school-teacher, would sometimes give me stubs of white chalk and I would scribble profusely all over the grey-painted door (which served as a blackboard – scribbling on the walls was forbidden). Once my mother bought a whole box of coloured chalks, and I was over the moon for months. Just as our real school-teachers did, I would draw complicated scientific and geographical diagrams, happily explaining related concepts to my invisible brood of students. In fact, in hindsight I feel it was a brilliant idea of my mother to encourage this role-playing, because it definitely made learning lessons a very attractive game.

Later on, I switched loyalties and wanted to become a journalist. Still later, I compromised by becoming a teacher in a college myself, and getting married to a journalist.

WHO DID YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GREW UP?

TUITION INITIATION

The backbone of the Indian Education system is not the official network of schools and colleges, but the parallel unofficial network of private tuitions. Children get initiated into the tuition racket pretty early on in life, sometimes even before they enter school. There are many tutors who ostensibly coach little kids on the essentials needed for admission to Montessori sections of ‘good’ schools. Catch them young, preferably as soon as they are born!

Coming from a family which prefers to swim against the tuition-tide, we were left to fend for ourselves as long as we could, surviving with a little help from our parents (to twist the Beatles song).

So when I remember my initiation into the tuition-racket, it is actually in the role of the tutor rather than that of the tutored.

I was a ripe 7-year old, newly promoted to the second standard (Class II). It was the carefree summer holidays before term started. I had a younger friend called Sonali, who would start her first standard that year. Now, Sonali’s mother (who I called Kakima – a generic term for all my friends’ mothers), was suddenly inspired to appoint me her daughter's tutor for one month to teach her the basics of the First Standard syllabi.

So, after playing and sweating it out in the playing ground every evening, I would accompany Sonali back to her house and guide her through the intricacies of Addition/Subtraction and Radiant Reader.

My charges? An evening snack every day – an omelette, or muri makha (spicy puffed rice) or chirey bhaja (fried crushed rice), and a bar of chocolate as a grand farewell present.

WHAT ARE YOUR FIRST TUITION MEMORIES?