The day
dawned bright and clear. Wisps of clouds sailed across the spotless blue of the
sky. The morning sun filtered through the coconut trees and created a dance
between shadow and light on the yard as I stood there musing and remembering. At
that moment, standing on the cusp of sea change, I saw life as a vast
landscape waiting to be filled in by milestones. Simultaneously I was certain that
I had reached another milestone.
Train station. I took my seat by the window and thought of what I had left behind and what lay ahead of me. I pressed my nose against the window pane and felt the heat of the summer sun. My ears soon got accustomed to the metronomic clang of the rails when a great rumbling jolted me out of my reverie. We were crossing the river. I sank back into my seat as the beauty of the valley unfolded before my eyes.
Paddy fields crisscrossed by ditches dominated the landscape.
Occasionally, a group of young boys would stand and wave at the passing train.
Two greater adjutant storks flew away as an urchin took aim with his sling. A
man scratched his head as he inspected the roof of his house damaged by the
first showers of monsoon. All of a sudden, an array of majestic trees shot towards
the sky and blocked my sight. Heavily forested tracts rushed past me and for a
while I could see nothing but a flurry of green and occasional glimpses
of the setting sun, its angry crimson leaking into the surrounding blue.
*******
The
night had wrought much change in the scenery. Fields and forests gave way to
brown patches of land. The air became dry and dusty. Men in bright turbans
drove tractor-trolleys through narrow tracks in fields scorched by the
sun. Women were feeding cattle tied to brick walls. Diesel generators pumped
water from tanks into the sparse crops and beyond, a monochrome landscape
dotted with dry deciduous vegetation and tropical thorn unfolded towards the
horizon.
After
an hour and a half, the roaring rails calmed down and the train pulled into the
station. I stepped into the crowded platform and then into the graveled road
hemmed in by tenements that housed the local gentry. The air was charged with
the shrill cries of peddlers and long mowing of stray cows. But the asphalt
ogre could not deter me. I had found the winding path. I only had to follow the
beautiful, winged insects. How wonderfully true Pope's words are! Hope indeed
springs eternal in the human breast. The future beckons and we move on. No
matter how devastating the river is, it always calms down in winter. No matter
how long the night is, the sun always rises. Thin slivers of hope fly in
the horizon and lure us. We never fail to stretch our hands towards those
ethereal objects.
*******
The
stately building looked as if it had stood there for ages. The July sun beat
down relentlessly and made me sweat like anything as I struggled with the
luggage. Presently there appeared the residential block and I hobbled towards
the doorway. A whiff of air - heavy with the smell of fresh limestone - hit me
like a rapier as I walked through the arched corridor and entered my allotted
room. It was cool and scantily lit inside. As I started the ceiling fan and
disposed the bags on the floor, I remembered something and went out.
A
pallid tint had suffused the sky when I returned after an hour. The tree tops were
ashen and shadowy. The nimbus floating above dangerously soon sent down trails
of rain. My hair hung in wet, oily tendrils but a cool breeze soothed me. I was
already late for the meeting with the Principal. Evening set in and the moon
rose.
*******
I stretched out my body on the mattress. My groin ached. But sleep would not coddle my tired eyes. The pair of fluorescent tube lights in the corridor outside the room did not help matters either. My gaze was fixed on the ceiling fan. The monotony of the fan sent my mind on a tailspin. The journey would be long and tiring but I have to move on. The future throws open its arms and it’s almost impossible to resist the urge to lunge forward and embrace it.
I woke
up with the larks the next day. Pleasant rays of the sun played on a great mass
of periwinkles outside the window. In a neglected garden patch nearby, common
daisies thrived in the shade of a dead fountain. I went out for a walk and
greeted the gardener who was hosing the saplings in the nursery. In the middle
of summer, I felt as if spring had returned. I realized that there was within
me an invincible spring. My heart leapt up.
*******
Corridors bustling with students and
teachers, classrooms fitted with wooden panels. Well, I was in one of them when
the teacher, a middle-aged woman dressed in shorts wobbled in and stared at the
new batch of students, her throat curved in a mother goose smile. After the
introductions, she waxed eloquent about Browning, Tennyson and Rossetti and
posed a riddle: Did God create man or man create God? Some of my new friends were
clever enough to answer, but I sensed that they were concerned not so much
about what was said as much as how it was said. I was lost most of the time and
spent the hours looking hard at my book. I was scared of attracting the
teacher’s attention lest she made me answer a question or read out extracts. I
was afraid that my provincial accent would unmask who I really was – an
arriviste wrapped in the cloak of an aristocrat.
Slowly I grew accustomed to campus
life. My roommate was from the South, scion of a rich family who spent their
vacations in Cambridge. In the room diagonally opposite to ours, there lived a
tall, tough guy who looked at his campus life casually as an extension of his
schooling at a convent in a hill-station. And of course, there were the
outliers and the misfits and I was soon accepted into their company, but not
without a pinch of salt. I was a student of english literature and that was
enough to drive a wedge between us. Most of them studied disciplines that
required very little acquaintance of the english language. They regarded me
with awe but the next moment, I would comically deflate myself by
(mis)pronouncing a word or phrase that unmistakably betrayed my provincial
roots. Yet I was too clever for them. I started dropping names – Evelyn Waugh, Fitzerald,
Alberto Moravia – and they would immediately take a step backwards, unable to
pin me down, yet unwilling to let me escape from their hold.
My passion for
literature earned the respect and admiration of my friends. I wrote for the
college journal, joined the poetry club and met some writers with whom I shared
bits and pieces of my writings. In the semester exams, I scored well and in
seminar presentations, earned the teacher’s praise. Once in a classical
literature class, the teacher posed a question on Robert Graves and I had the
answer on the tip of my tongue. The teacher, a scholar of British Romanticism,
looked at me and declared: there are some literary people in the class.
*******
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