By: Ganesh Saili
‘Forget their marks!’ the late Avadesh Kaushal said at the Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra in Dehradun, adding: ‘We, as a society, lay too much stress on percentages. With 98% cut-offs in our colleges, this pressure alone can crush.’
‘Instead, let us celebrate those who tried but failed. Adding: ‘Those who got up to do better elsewhere!’
Take the instance of Maugher Monk, a teacher at the Mussoorie Seminary – our first school in 1840. His letters, penned to his father, are a priceless record for social historians who want a narrative of everyday life in the hill station’s early days.
You get to meet someone who failed at everything he turned his hand to – soldier, trader and hotelier. And that’s exactly what makes him so fascinating. For every time he failed, he got up and tried again. After all, life is not measured by how far you rise – your true worth is measured from where you have clawed your way back.
We know success stories are great. They get the juices flowing. But far more interesting are those who graduate from the College of Hard Hits or the University of Life.
On finishing school in the 1960s, my entire St George’s College class made it to one of the IITs. Those days, you either studied to become an engineer or perished. I awoke one fine morning at the Agricultural University of Pantnagar – surrounded by the untamed Terai, with the 16,000-acre farm hemmed in by tall elephant grass. It was in Jim Corbett’s territory, where the occasional man-eating tiger still lurked around.
In retrospect, my two-year stint there taught me how to rear chickens, breed pigs, and do a three-point hitch on a tractor. Of course, my vocabulary improved with colourful and inventive cuss words from the vernacular!
‘Stop counting on your fingers!’ Dalbir Singh Rawat, our Mathematics teacher, shattered my daydreams. ‘What’s the slide rule for? Scratching your back?’
Well, I tried but skidded down the slippery slope of Calculus. After some unsuccessful attempts, the university was relieved to see me go.
‘Don’t bother showing me the door!’ I quipped. ‘I know the way.’
‘No problem,’ they laughed. ‘Always a pleasure to see you off.’
They were kind. Put my hold-all and tin trunk atop the bus. But it wasn’t the end of the world. I started afresh and finished college, where I taught for around forty years.
Around that time, I met Aunty. She was fiftyish and set to appear for her High School examination for the twentieth time. The result was always the same: she had failed, again.
‘Her answer-book was neat,’ reminisces an old teacher. ‘She simply copied the questions one at a time to arrive at the end, only to start all over again.’
As the few years rolled by, dread replaced anticipation as she approached the Mussoorie Girls’ Inter College examination hall. Why worry?
‘What misers those grey heads at the U. P. Board must be,’ her old neighbour opines: ‘Her examination fees alone would entitle her to an honoris causa high school certificate!’
Then there were her knitting skills too.
‘She knitted a pullover for me during the exams when I was a baby,’ affectionately recalls Dolly, the school Head Clerk’s daughter. ‘And years later she made one for my little daughter!’
Nothing fazed her. She never finished class ten. Instead, she used all her grit and determination to educate her children and to see them go off into the wide world to make a mark for themselves.
On East Canal Road, Edith Bond exclaimed: ‘ A writer?’ Ruskin Bond’s mother was not too happy to hear her son wanted to be a writer after finishing his Senior Cambridge.
‘What nonsense!’ she said, giving him his first rejection slip. ‘Be sensible! Join the army.’
I guess the army saved itself a uniform. Literature won. If you were to take away sixty years of his writing, you would find Indian writing in English poorer.
Today, no matter how hard I try, I cannot imagine a greying Brigadier Ruskin Bond joining the ranks of the half-pay lists of the world.
Ganesh Saili born and home-grown in the hills belongs to those few whose words are illustrated by their pictures. Author of two dozen books; some translated into twenty languages, his work has found recognition worldwide.
