=
Actually, it all started during my first few years in College of
Science, Nagpur. The great thing about those da=
ys was
that, even as a science student, one had to study English till graduation, =
and
this equipped us well for the life ahead of us. The paper on English had a
syllabus on prose and poetry. This helped us immensely later. We had a devo=
ted
group of Professors to teach us the syllabus on the English paper.
=
But I am digressing. I must shake off the memories of those engrossi=
ng
lectures from my English teachers who introduced us not only to the serenit=
y of
Bertrand Russell’s prose, but left an everlasting impression of the
intoxicating beauty of English poetry, how, while lecturing us, one of them
used to put himself in the role of Shakespeare’s Juliet and, in respo=
nse
to Juliet’s nurse admonishing her to forget Romeo, implore us, as if =
we
were the nurse, ” Sweet, sweet, sweet nurse, teach me how to
forget………….”, and we all could see his sensit=
ive
face contorted with Juliet’s
pangs of love. Or another Professor teaching us the contents of
“The Impact of Science Upon Society”=
. I
can recollect him so vividly, constructing for us, through his inimitably c=
lear
exposition, step by step, the cold, and convincing logic of Bertrand Russell
when he argued that it was more important that mankind survives rather than
that the western world wins a nuclear war & defeats the Soviet Bloc. And
one lady Professor teaching us G. B. Shaw’s “Arms and the ManR=
21;,
although it was quite another matter that a particular lady student in my c=
lass
always read the title as “Arms of the Man”, and this gladdened =
our
hearts immensely, and infuriated the teacher.
=
&nb=
sp;
So it happened that we memorised many delectable pieces of English
poetry, and as is natural at that age, we used many lines of these great po=
ets
in our normal talk, as our means of communication. Here I received my first
rude shock when on one Sunday afternoon, I bicycled down (it seems improbab=
le
now, doesn’t it?) to my friend’s house to wake him up and take =
him
for a matinee movie in the theatre which screened English movies. Seeing him
lying horizontal on his bed, more like the ajgar
from the local Zoo, I inquired of him in Shakespearean English if he propos=
ed
to pursue his deep slumber till doomsday, whereupon he opened his eyes brie=
fly
and mumbled ” The woods are dark, lovely, =
and
deep, but I have promises to keep………. and miles to go bef=
ore
I sleep, miles to go before I sleep……….”. And, havi=
ng
said this, he again slept off. This was too much to bear, and I was sure th=
at
even enemies of Robert Frost would not play this kind of mean trick to misr=
epresent
his poetical effervescence. Later, even during the UPSC examination, while
answering the paper on English, I carefully avoided the question on this
particular poem, for fear that my friend’s
horrid misrepresentation would enter my answer rather than the true meaning,
and make me a laughing stock.
=
&nb=
sp; =
A stage came when, in my friends circle, instead of simply saying,
“Let’s hear what news he has brought”, we used to say,
“Hark, for he bringeth tidings from far”. If one of us wanted to
say,” I am a bit confused”, he used to say,” To be, or no=
t to
be, that is the question”. Quite inevitably, therefore, there was this
wholly avoidable misunderstanding between me and a lady colleague. When I f=
ound
her in a brown study, sitting in the College library, I accosted her with a
misquote from Macbeth, “What dark thought passet=
h
thy mind, oh lady, darker than the night?”. She
gave me a stony & distinctly hostile look and left the scene. It was cl=
ear
that she had a total misinterpretation, because my friends later said she h=
ad
accused me that I asked her what she was doing that night.
=
Then
came the annual social gathering of our College. Thanks to the conspiracy of my
friends and well- wishers, I was entrusted with the task of organising a
cultural programme. When I invited items of song and music from my fellow
students, the response was very encouraging, and we gathered in one of the
class rooms to hear and select the items. It did not turn out to be a
particularly happy day of my life, and I brooded about it for long afterwar=
ds,
because most of the items reviewed were not music to anyone’s ears. Y=
ou
see, after listening to those items, when I went home that night and slept,=
I
had a haunting nightmare in which a ghost resembling John Keats appeared be=
fore
me and recited: “Heard
melodies are sweet, but those unheard, Are sweeter ...…=
230;..”.
In a flash, I understood the full impact of these endearing lines of Keats,
more of a mature advice which, very likely, he had in mind when he wrote th=
is
poem. I felt grateful to him =
for
affording this guidance to humanity for many generations to come. My admira=
tion
for Shakespeare knew no bounds because I remembered his lines from Henry
VIII,” In sweet music is such art, killing care and grief of heart fa=
ll
asleep, or hearing, die”. After I got up from my sleep, I thanked God=
for
sparing my life.
=
Of course, Shakespeare was truly a visionary. How else can you expla=
in
what he said in the sixteenth century about our present day politicians: Some are born gre=
at, some
achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon =
'em. Indeed, my hunch is that had he not been s=
uch a
polite person, he would have much liked to eliminate the=
first
two of the above categories from his lines altogether.
=
&nb=
sp;
However, later on in my life, what struck me as odd was that some of=
the
beautiful quotations of my English poets were not only factually wrong, but
that they seemed to gloss over the harsh reality. Take, for example, Thomas Gray's following famous poem which, too, I read durin=
g my
College days:-,
=
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."
=
Now, I do not think I am a cynic, but my actual experience is that t=
he
above poetic outburst is quite dreamy, and exaggerated. In my career with t=
he
Indian Railways, it has so happened that I have had the misfortune to write=
the
Annual Confidential Reports of many such gems, who worked under me, and it =
was
my sincere regret that many flowers of the type which Thomas Gray had in mi=
nd
did, in fact, neither blush unseen, nor did they waste their sweetness on t=
he
desert air, though human society would have been infinitely grateful to the=
m in
that event. Their personalities and performance were of such a kind that the
only class of mild phrases which could be truthfully used to describe these
gems were e.g. "He works to his own entire satisfaction", or
"His selection for this department has definitely robbed some village
somewhere of an idiot", or “The tragedy is that he does not know=
how
precious his absence would be to the organisation”, or “It is
amazing that his mere presence in the team ensures a disaster”, and so
on. Indeed, even today, if you casually look around, you will be struck by =
the
fact that there are, indeed, many gems whom the dark unfathomed caves of oc=
ean
have obviously found difficult to bear &, instead, they have been throw=
n up
to the surface.
=
And that is why, while I greatly enjoyed learning the English poets =
in
my College, in a corner of my mind, I cannot help nursing a cold grievance
against them.