I travel to Gurgaon only because it reminds of just how lovely a city Bangalore still is. If Gurgaon has a soul, it is well hidden, beneath the monster towers that stick out of the sparse landscape like a sore forefinger. All these buildings – the glass-and-steel offices and the cement laden housing towers – reach for the sky in a travesty of justice, for just outside them lie low, flat, decrepit, asbestos roofed slums of those who provide the menial labour for the elite in the towers. They live in conditions – no water or sanitation worth its name - that can be only described as appalling and soul-wrenching, but then, let me remind you, Gurgaon has no soul to be wrenched.
If you take a walk outside the gated superblocks, the stench of decay and waste – human, animal and vegetable – hits you, but then you would be the only ‘person-like-us’ taking such a suicidal walk. For Gurgaon has little public transport and its ‘community autos’ carry ten humans on average at most times – the cattle class transport model. For the denizens of the towers, there are cars. And cars. And more cars.
Such hyper-development has unwelcome consequences. Not least, as Harrison Fraker, an architect at the University of California at Berkeley, argues, superblocks in effect become gated communities of privilege. The social consequences of such isolation (for those inside and out) take time to make themselves felt; there is however no doubt that such inequality creates deep and lasting divisions, that perpetuate themselves.
Most travellers to Delhi speak with bitterness of the rudeness, brazen guts and absence of manners of the average Delhi-walla (these attributes belonging largely to the city's post-partition residents, who now comprise three quarters of the population). Yet, even Delhi has some culture going for it - in its train museum, its art, the Delhi Haat and numerous other events that mark an urban space. Gurgaon has nothing.
So what do people do there?
Bill Bryson says in his entertaining book on the US : We used to build civilisations. Now we build shopping malls. .....and here's the Gurgaon story again. Each of its numerous malls are about the same - the stale air of Chinese food wafting along the numerous corridors of upmarket clothing stores. On my first visit to Gurgaon, I went to a couple of these malls in the evening, there being absolutely nothing else to do in the corporate guest house where I stayed. They were filled with teenagers and the yuppies of the city hanging around, in a rather poor imitation of post prandial bestial indolence. I am not one to sermonize to teens on building character or any of that sort of thing, yet it seemed somehow so wasteful, to live one's best years away in a mall, simply to belong to a group that did the same thing. All, while their parents made money, so that they could spend more time at the mall.
A proud resident of a gated superblock told me on my second visit that Gurgaon is the future of urban India. As I look around Bangalore and see the seventeen story supertowers in early stages of construction, he seems vindicated. If he is right, then I want to opt out. For now though, Bangalore stays my city.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
When Moses sank
When a child recently killed himself after being beaten by the Principal of an elite Catholic institution in Calcutta (no such British institution can reconcile to Kolkata), the media began this whole beaten debate about ‘corporal punishment’ again. Why is a debate even necessary to punish those who use their force and armour against children?
Perhaps I am impractical. And, of course, I have never taught a rough, noisy, garrulous bunch of children. Yet, I know the pain.
In December 1977, my family left the little town of Digboi and came to Bangalore. I had then finished my sixth standard in a small school (the ‘school year’ then was Jan to Dec). This institution, run by the Sisters of Mount Carmel was more an extension of all the families that lived in the town – after all, everyone knew everyone else. I was considered by teachers to be a meek and studious chap, never prone to take risks, a ‘teacher’s pet’. Of course, i had never been punished.
I first joined Frank Anthony Public School, Bangalore, in January 1978, it being the only one in which I got admission, Mum and Dad (Dad, in particular) aspired to put me in a true-blue, academic-centric ‘Convent’, which Frank Anthony certainly wasn’t. Their opportunity came in June and I joined St Josephs Boys High School, the venerable public school of 19th Century vintage, with a distinguished alumni list and a place of pride on Museum Road . My brother threw his weight behind the decision: in his class at IIT, there were a number of Josephites, but none from Frank Anthony.
My first day at Josephs was the day school commenced after the summer vacation. It was a hot, dusty day in June, and I sat uncertainly amidst thirty five boisterous boys (it was the first time I had left a co-educational classroom), timid and hesitant in a huge, old classroom, the walls, desks and benches of which carried numerous holes, scars and slashes of creative expression; the scene could have inspired Rowling in her creation of Harry Potter’s institution.
The classes began well enough and I remember relaxing into my uncomfortable wooden bench. A teacher named Moses walked in for the Biology class. After taking the attendance, he asked if all students had done their homework, assigned to them before the school closed for the vacation. There was silence and everyone looked around at everyone else. The boy next to me whispered,” Have you done it?”. “No.” I whispered back. “Then stand up.”
I stood up with trepidation (as I write this, I can feel the emotion coming back thirty two years after the event). “I haven’t done the homework, Sir.” I stammered out, and possibly would have added that it was my first day at school, but such explanations could wait. Moses advanced down the aisle and hit me on the face.
It was a brutal blow, in more ways than one. I had never been hit in school before, was in an alien environment and Moses was a powerful fellow, a brute of a chap, and I reeled back and felt the tears swell. He ordered me out of the class, and I stood in the dark and cold corridor for the rest of the session, sobbing into a hankerchief and wondering just what I had done wrong.
It took me many months to reconcile myself to the school and to this man; I would sit in every class of his with fear. Moses was clearly the worst teacher one could have: of average intelligence and education, and lacking in competence, with limited knowledge of his subject and a menacing air that brooked no questions, he was brutal with students who could not stand up to him (he hit me twice in the succeeding years) and partial to those who showered him with goodies (there were many of those) or who chose to flatter him. I realise today that children can be very tough indeed and can adapt, on the outside, to difficult people: I actually tried to flatter him over the next few years, realising that my marks were in his hands, and even succeeded. Yet the scar never ever went away.
For years, I hated Biology as a subject, and have only, in the last decade, been fascinated by it, largely the result of my interest in wildlife. After leaving school, I often fantasised situations where I gave it back to Moses either physically or otherwise…..but abandoned any thought of retribution after reading Mahatma Gandhi’s biography by Louis Fischer.
Did any child complain about Moses? Some apparently did, and it seemed to boomerang on them. For, Josephs believed in the rule that the teacher was always right, particularly, if he happened to be Catholic. Some years ago, I heard that Moses was still there: the loss to human value by having such a teacher is incalculable.
There are thousands of children who have had to endure much more than this. If we wish to have them educated, and not just literate, the first step is to replace the hand that hurts, with the heart that seeks to understand. Calculus and trignometry (or indeed the digestive system) can wait.
Perhaps I am impractical. And, of course, I have never taught a rough, noisy, garrulous bunch of children. Yet, I know the pain.
In December 1977, my family left the little town of Digboi and came to Bangalore. I had then finished my sixth standard in a small school (the ‘school year’ then was Jan to Dec). This institution, run by the Sisters of Mount Carmel was more an extension of all the families that lived in the town – after all, everyone knew everyone else. I was considered by teachers to be a meek and studious chap, never prone to take risks, a ‘teacher’s pet’. Of course, i had never been punished.
I first joined Frank Anthony Public School, Bangalore, in January 1978, it being the only one in which I got admission, Mum and Dad (Dad, in particular) aspired to put me in a true-blue, academic-centric ‘Convent’, which Frank Anthony certainly wasn’t. Their opportunity came in June and I joined St Josephs Boys High School, the venerable public school of 19th Century vintage, with a distinguished alumni list and a place of pride on Museum Road . My brother threw his weight behind the decision: in his class at IIT, there were a number of Josephites, but none from Frank Anthony.
My first day at Josephs was the day school commenced after the summer vacation. It was a hot, dusty day in June, and I sat uncertainly amidst thirty five boisterous boys (it was the first time I had left a co-educational classroom), timid and hesitant in a huge, old classroom, the walls, desks and benches of which carried numerous holes, scars and slashes of creative expression; the scene could have inspired Rowling in her creation of Harry Potter’s institution.
The classes began well enough and I remember relaxing into my uncomfortable wooden bench. A teacher named Moses walked in for the Biology class. After taking the attendance, he asked if all students had done their homework, assigned to them before the school closed for the vacation. There was silence and everyone looked around at everyone else. The boy next to me whispered,” Have you done it?”. “No.” I whispered back. “Then stand up.”
I stood up with trepidation (as I write this, I can feel the emotion coming back thirty two years after the event). “I haven’t done the homework, Sir.” I stammered out, and possibly would have added that it was my first day at school, but such explanations could wait. Moses advanced down the aisle and hit me on the face.
It was a brutal blow, in more ways than one. I had never been hit in school before, was in an alien environment and Moses was a powerful fellow, a brute of a chap, and I reeled back and felt the tears swell. He ordered me out of the class, and I stood in the dark and cold corridor for the rest of the session, sobbing into a hankerchief and wondering just what I had done wrong.
It took me many months to reconcile myself to the school and to this man; I would sit in every class of his with fear. Moses was clearly the worst teacher one could have: of average intelligence and education, and lacking in competence, with limited knowledge of his subject and a menacing air that brooked no questions, he was brutal with students who could not stand up to him (he hit me twice in the succeeding years) and partial to those who showered him with goodies (there were many of those) or who chose to flatter him. I realise today that children can be very tough indeed and can adapt, on the outside, to difficult people: I actually tried to flatter him over the next few years, realising that my marks were in his hands, and even succeeded. Yet the scar never ever went away.
For years, I hated Biology as a subject, and have only, in the last decade, been fascinated by it, largely the result of my interest in wildlife. After leaving school, I often fantasised situations where I gave it back to Moses either physically or otherwise…..but abandoned any thought of retribution after reading Mahatma Gandhi’s biography by Louis Fischer.
Did any child complain about Moses? Some apparently did, and it seemed to boomerang on them. For, Josephs believed in the rule that the teacher was always right, particularly, if he happened to be Catholic. Some years ago, I heard that Moses was still there: the loss to human value by having such a teacher is incalculable.
There are thousands of children who have had to endure much more than this. If we wish to have them educated, and not just literate, the first step is to replace the hand that hurts, with the heart that seeks to understand. Calculus and trignometry (or indeed the digestive system) can wait.
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