Childhood Diaries – Poppins saved the day

In a letter to his friend in 1887, Lord Acton wrote - "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

There’s no shade of doubt that Lord Acton was entirely spot on with his observation. As a 5^th standard student at Hajo H.S School, I had the taste of power and it did corrupt my young mind too. I was elected as the Class Captain with an overwhelming majority. The election procedure was almost a replica of the General Election, someone had to propose a candidate’s name followed by another supporting the move and there you went to the election fray. Election date was finalized with a day or two spared for the candidates to realign voters in his or her favor. Perhaps our Class Teacher took all those pain to expose us to Indian Electoral system.

As the Captain, my responsibility was to maintain order, cleanliness and ensuring a spotless blackboard with chalk and duster neatly kept aside the table. Also before summer vacation, all the classes used to collect contribution from the students and arranged a tea party with teachers and students. From decoration of the classroom to the menu was decided by the Captain and his team which also sometimes culminated in fight over unequal distribution of sweets and others (in Junior classes). But the most authoritative right of the Captain was to note down the indiscipline acts of the students and report to the Class teacher.

During that time, my sister received all the praise from my parents and Grand Parents for her good mannerism and keeping them informed on my activities. While I was a “Dagabaj” for the Grand Father, his tone immediately mellowed down to call sister.  Perhaps, more of adulation for my sister made the child in me felt a little rebellious towards the girls. The girls were my sworn enemy and it was them with few of the boys, not in my good book, who were asked to carry out all the cleaning activities. Yet, a slender allusion of defiance to my authority was enough to report their names to the Class teacher for some fabricated acts of indiscipline. As things turned out, in one rainy day, when we boys were far outnumbered by the girls, I had a narrow escape from the irate scales the girls were carrying!.

After a few months, opposition to my captaincy grew in numbers with a group of boys too joining the other group and they pressed hard with our class teacher, Sri Bijoy Kumar Das,  for changing the captain.  After a few days, Sir relented and a date was decided. The sudden turn of events made me edgy as losing the election meant, I were sure to experience all those which I was inflicting on others. We were about 18 boys and 15 girls in the section and out of the 18 boys, more than 5-6 were opposing me.

Intuition told me that the group of girls would be very hard to split. But the small dissatisfied splinter group of boys held the key and they alongwith all other boys except few stick-in-the-mud ones, were the most vulnerable to swing on either side.  

In those days, my mother still used the dressing table her father gifted on her wedding. The dressing glass was fitted to a drawer with a lock and key arrangement where mother used to store mundane staff and also sometimes small cash. For more valuable & secretive ones, the drawer had another closet inside. While keeping cash changes, she used to push small notes from outside without opening the lock of the cabinet through the gap between two planks. That day, the sight of a ten rupee note couldn’t miss my probing eyes getting stuck up a little.   I could pull out it after some effort with a safety pin.

I knew the best utility of the ten Rupee note. Poppins candies used to be 50 paisa a roll and I bought 21 of them while going to school on the day of election. The kind shop keeper gave me an extra as my B’day gift. Eventually to avoid any undue alarm, I lied to him that it was my B’day and mother had asked to throw Poppins treat to all my friends in the class.

Things thereafter moved on faster. Candy rolls were displayed to my friends and declared that a party would follow my win . Boys will be always boys ! Those avaricious tongues soon forgot all animosity and voted in block for me and the girls again lost it in a thin margin of 2 or 3 votes.

The guilt of stealing money however kept on haunting me for a long time. I wanted to bare all to my parents, but couldn’t out of fear of getting reprimanded. My father, in particular, held me at high esteem and believed his elder son could do no wrong though mother was often suspicious as ever and kept a policing eye on me. Of course, the guilt feeling kept on reminding me to become a better Captain for the remaining part of the year.

The guilt feel was also a stark reminder that I was no good material for a future Politician. Years after, when opportunities knocked my door, I was fortunate to hear the inner call to ignore the knock.

As time moved on and a few years rolled by, bizarre changes kept on happening to me. The girls whose presence, I could hardly stand suddenly looked irresistible and more so during the occasions like Saraswati Puja in their immaculate dress up. Didn’t know that youth had finally crept into me!

From that time onwards, life was full of endless possibilities till “Mr. Bell rang the bell of alarm”  and my Parents awoke up ! The feral horse was finally domesticated.

You can contact Kamaljit at kamaljitmedhi1975@gmail.com

Five Minutes of Living in Two Different Worlds

I awoke up to extreme discomfort and took a minute or two to shed off the drowsiness to make out that something was utterly wrong with me. I was breathing heavily. The discomfort emanated right from the side where the most precious part of human body works, the beautiful and mischievous heart. I was sweating profusely and hurriedly reached to the AC remote to set the temperature to Hi Cool mode. In a feat of nervousness, remembered an article, I read a few days ago, which said that young people normally suffers massive heart attack, fatal in most cases. I looked at the wall clock. It was 4:15 AM and almost the same time I was born into this world on 21^st Feb, 1975.

I called my wife sleeping with our younger son. Siddhant was down with a bout of viral fever and my wife slept in a separate room with him so that, in the morning I remain fresh at office. I told her to get me admitted to GNRC Hospital immediately as bringing me to our Refinery Hospital may result in loss of precious time.

It had to be the dreaded stroke. It’s a curse of the increasingly sedentary lifestyle and the surrounding looked blurred to me. As my wife stood rooted in shock, confusion and nervousness, memories of the yesteryear’s struggle and aspirations for materialistic pursuit flickered at my mind. Yearning for fast track promotion at my job, meticulous financial planning for future and all these were about to go for a toss. Suddenly I realized, I have not lived life the way I should have for all these years. If only, I would have spent some more time with my children, did go to the evening gym instead of remaining hooked to the phone and restrained my ostentatious eating habit, I would not have seen this day. The thought of wife and the two small kids plunging into turmoil was even more unbearable.

Then all of a sudden, I remembered, Bhupen Hazarika was performing at a Bihu function when he suffered the first stroke. He didn’t make out the  confusion as he failed to sing the songs one after another, he was singing for so many years with gusto.  I remembered, I was worst in Sanskrit and used to get rebuked by Dr Srikanta Sarma Sir at our school.

 नैनं छिन्दन्ति शस्त्राणि नैनं दहति पावकः। न चैनं क्लेदयन्त्यापो न शोषयति मारुतः।।

अच्छेद्योऽयमदाह्योऽयमक्लेद्योऽशोष्य ऐव च। नित्यः सर्वगतः स्थाणुरचलोऽयं सनातनः।।

Weapons can’t pierce, Fire Can’t burn,  
Neither water can wet nor the air can dry

Soul can’t be cut, burnt, decayed or dried
The forces of nature can do no harm

Soul (aatma) is permanent – Bhagavat Gita )

It seemed to be quite OK. I remembered all the words.

I asked my wife to hear me recite another one

केयूरा  न  विभूषयन्ति पुरुषं हारा न  चन्द्रोज्ज्वला

न  स्नानं  न  विलेपनं  न  कुसुमं  नाSलंकृता  मूर्धजा

वाण्येका  समलंकरोति  पुरुषं  या  संस्कृता धार्यते

क्षीयन्ते  खलु  भूषणानि  सततं वाग्भूषणं  भूषणं

(Neither ornaments like Keyura, nor garlands glittering like the moon, neither bathing, nor cosmetics, perfumed oil nor flower embellishes a person. It’s only his cultured tongue, a person adopts, decorates  him. All ornaments wear out, yet the ornament of cultured speech stays forever)

I remember word by word. No, it can never be a Stroke!

But my recitation at the wee hours failed to enthuse my wife.

 “ At this hour, you want me to hear all this ! Don’t you know when you were riding the train at bed, I was awake with the feverish boy. I was about to fall asleep and you called me to hear your Goddamn recitation.  You are crazy…..you need to see a shrink immediately. All along, I have been saying, you are never… never …. a normal human being” 

My wife says I snore like an old train running on steam.

I reached for the Aluminum and Magnesium Hydroxide gel which all of us familiar as Diegene. Gulped a few bottle caps in a hurry. Remembered, previous evening,  I couldn’t open my snacks as flurry of visitors swarmed my office room till Dinner time.

Grh….grh…grh…..grh…….

A big burp followed by one after another two way air outflows and I was feeling better and better.

I said to my wife “ I feel OK now. You may catch some sleep. I need to make a power point presentation for the Departmental review”

All the day’s planning flickered through my mind. The subjects which seemed trivial a few minutes ago with the prospect of a stroke, once more started looking important - Power Point Presentation, choice of colors for the walls of my apartment, planning for upgrading to a Villa, getting the Reliance Jio sim and many more.

And life goes on and on.

You can contact Kamaljit at kamaljitmedhi1975@gmail.com