A Pilgrimage

by Saikat Rudra

The smile was clumsy and awkward, though the eyes glinted, signifying joy of success. The autumn sun was blazing hot. We sat in a sling of rope 'charpoi' in the deep and dark shadow cast by the mud hut. An emaciated goat was munching grass while her kid was prancing around.

'What do you want to do now?'

The shy, gawky teenager looked up, groping for an answer.

'I wish to continue my study.' His voice faltered.

His name was Bipul Das. The eldest son of an agricultural labourer had won through the Secondary Examination this year in first division, obtaining an average of 91%. But now the road ahead appears to be a blind alley that stops before him.

His father, a bony, prematurely old person, wiped his perspiring face with a napkin hung over his shoulder, and muttered phlegmatically, 'Where is the money, sir? I have five family members to feed and we don't have our daily fill.'

The man paused a little and, waving his hand to the son, said, ' None in my family has ever gone to school, and he has brought glory to us. But...'

It was an unending 'but'. The old man looked blank.

The success story came out in major dailies and news channels. He did not know whether any good Samaritan would ever come his way. Did he expect any ?

The man got to his feet and said, ' Sir, I will sell the small piece of land I have, and I wish to see him walking down a thoroughfare, as far as he can...I will not commit the sin of  truncating a growing tree.'

Tears rolled down his cheeks.

Artwork by Kusumika Mukherjee

Abhijit Dutta's thoughts

by Dr. Abhijit Dutta


            Teachers are considered to be the guardian angels of society. This was a paradigm of yesteryear. With the progress of time, sincerity has taken a backseat so far as teachers are concerned. The spirit of austerity has vanished amongst them with their increased salaries coupled with the rising crescendo of private tuition. Comfort has inhibited the lifestyle of the teaching community with very few exceptions theses days. Better floor space is offered by luxurious shopping malls than libraries, while the craze for consumerism proliferates among almost all and sundry in their class. Plain living and high thinking is no longer their credo as of yesteryear and the phrase, according to most of them, represents anachronism and self-contradiction of the worst of sorts.

          Added to this is the rampant politicization of the teaching community.
This feature is manifest chiefly in West Bengal which witnesses large- scale polarization of teachers on political lines. The result is disastrous. Inefficient and effete cadres of the ruling party have been inducted into important schools, colleges or universities. Merit has thus taken a backseat in the groves of academe and chaos and disorder rules the roost. Centers of excellence have been staffed with political prodigies of inferior merit who make a mockery of learning in classrooms and ignorance steals a march over composite wisdom. Institutions of academic renown and proficiency have lost all their previous flair where bastardized mediocrity is easily perceptible amongst teachers and percolates downward to the ranks of students. It will be useless to seek a solution to these maladies stalking teachers today.

          The effects of globalization and filthy lucre have already done much mischief and this mischief can never be undone. There is no question of change of hearts for today's 'mastermoshais'. It would be highly Utopian to expect anything better from their ranks nowadays. There are many exceptions no doubt.... but the rank and file will remain unfazed and unchanged in the present. With the gargantuan rise in their pay and perks , thanks to the ardors of numerous commissions, the spirit of foppishness has permeated the ranks of teachers particularly in colleges and universities. The craze for consumerism among teachers was well manifest when a teacher of a prominent English- medium school in Kolkata asked an affluent student of his to gift him a laptop upon pains of withholding his promotion if the request was not complied with.

          Quaint behavioral patterns are noticed. Humility has been largely replaced by arrogance. The behavior of teachers with students nowadays leaves much to be desired causing much tension to brew in the groves of academe. The filthy behavior of a university professor towards physically challenged students created a flutter when flashed in the print media. The teacher concerned had categorically stated openly that handicapped students were unfit for higher education in prestigious universities as their fate in the world was already sealed. He openly characterized them as redundant numskulls in society. Character assassination of colleagues has become almost a daily feature in centers of higher education today. One professor at a preeminent university in Kolkata belittled the academic potentials of his teaching colleagues before his students in class. This same besotted individual arranged his own felicitation immediately on retirement rendering him a laughing stock among his students and disgruntled colleagues. Craze for foreign degrees have permeated the ranks of teachers today. Degrees from universities in the West are rated far above indigenous ones and constitute passports for entry into the upper echelons of society and hence this prevailing craze. The result is disastrous. Teachers become bereft of national prestige while a colonial hangover continues to color their minds with contempt for anything native. Thus their abject disregard for colleagues sporting purely local degrees. The yardstick of learning in very many Indian universities today is a foreign degree.

                                                                                         

Author: Abhijit Dutta is a UGC Professor of History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

                                                                                                                                                                            

Technology and communication

by Shantanu Bagchi

Consider this situation: your flight has been delayed by two hours because of a snowstorm, and you are getting tired of listening to the same songs over and over again on your iPod. You are trying to sample people around you to find a decent match: someone with whom you can start a reasonable conversation. How do you know whether or not a person, in fact, is a good match? You usually look for a signal that helps you separate one person from the rest of the crowd, which includes physical appearance, speech, and virtually everything else that your senses can capture. Even though they say that eyes are the window to the soul, it fails miserably in the current situation! Books can help unravel some mystery in these circumstances: it seems there is some evidence that you can form a rough idea of someone's mental state by looking at what he or she is reading. I think this is also true at the subconscious level: the signal that you want to send out probably has some influence on your book selection for an upcoming air travel. I wonder how this is going to change with the advent of ebooks and readers. Until now, figuring out what someone is reading was relatively easy: you just had to look at the cover of the book. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case with these new gadgets out there. Are these shutting off an interesting channel of communication between complete strangers? Who knows!!

Author's website: http://sites.google.com/site/shanbagchi/