October 20, 2008
Mangalore
Bangalore, Oct 18: Early morning on Wednesday October 15, I was rudely jolted out of a well-earned slumber, by an SMS. I silently cursed, imagining it to be yet another telemarketing message, on brokerage houses making comical market predictions and buy recommendations. But surprise!! Emblazoned in bold capital font were the words ‘Aravind Adiga won the Booker’. What? Adiga won the Booker? It was the perfect wake-up call to a fine day of reminisces.
Aravind and I made our acquaintance at the tender age of seven (3rd standard). He had just taken a transfer from Canara School and boy, did he take us by storm! Shaken out of our complacence, we had to double our efforts in order to compete with him. We maintained a healthy competitive spirit, both within and outside the classroom—him, Ajith, and me. I remember the inter-school competitions together—fights, debates, cricket (he had a strange bowling and throwing action), laughter, and schoolboy jealousy. But beat him in class tests, I did—only twice—I still cherish the elation.
Aravind was made of strong stuff; an introvert in many ways, he always wanted to be perfect—even as a young boy. I remember him being emotionally lost and empty when he lost his mother to cancer, a few months before the board exams. But would he wallow in self-sympathy? Not him. He went on determinedly to secure the first rank in the state board exam. What a tribute to the woman who inspired him, he told me once.
File Photo of Threesome with Fernandes Sir
Back then in the late 80s, we had an unobstructed view of the Arabian Sea from the path leading to St Aloysius High School. The warm, salty, gusty, breeze was occasionally marred by the putrid smell of hydrogen sulphide from the PUC chemistry lab. Once done with class, we would invariably be found tucking into tangy bhel-puri at ‘Manguli and Laura’ next to the Light House Hill mosque.
St Aloysius College had just turned co-ed, and watching the girls stroll from our vantage point on a granite bench near the cycle stand, was certainly the highlight of the day! Back home, on Wednesdays it was watching Prannoy Roy on ‘World This Week’. A weekend out with family was a trip to Kadri Hills or the beach. Life was devoid of cable TV and mobile phones. A lot of water has flown under the Nethravati bridge since then.
Our batch was blessed with inspirational teachers. Getting a rank was not top priority then, though rote memory helped. Fr John Mendonca, now retired, was the school headmaster, who taught us mathematics. His office was always open to all and to top it, he never compared or belittled students before one another. Leo Fernandes, a methodical and principled man, taught us science. Ruby Lobo, who took us into a reverie of splendorous battles, fought on the banks of rivers, and the shaping of post-colonial and post-world war Europe, taught Social Studies. Joseph D’Souza, always punctilious and articulate, taught English. He would inculcate a habit of reading newspapers by asking a student to gist three important news items for each day. Malathi Bhat tried her very best to make Sanskrit an easy, scoring, subject.
With such flashbacks, I was browsing the net and I hit upon a related article on the Booker award by Melka Miyar on Daijiworld. A cursory glance and time stopped still. I saw a picture taken years ago in Mangalore in 1990. The photo had Fernandes sir, Aravind Adiga, Ajith Mascarenhas and me. I was truly amazed! A colleague of mine brought a copy of the Deccan Herald and Deccan Chronicle in Bangalore and showed a paragraph of what Fernandes sir had to say, ‘I took Adiga and two others of the same class, Sunil Furtado, and Ajith Mascarenhas, to a studio to take a photograph of theirs, because I had never come across such students in my entire career. I considered the three boys a treasure; I took a photograph of theirs in the year 1990’.
I emailed Ajith immediately and he replied that Aravind deserved the award and that we looked like we were caught in a time warp with strange expressions and clothes to go with it! Memories came flooding in. The three of us had just finished our board exams and Aravind any myself had secured ranks. Unfortunately, Ajith’s papers (as rightly commented on the Daijiworld message board) were ‘lost’ by the exam board, only to be ‘found’ at a later date with a diluted result (though he was equally capable of securing a rank).
Arvind Adiga, Ajit Mascarenhas and Dr Sunil Furtado
Fernandes sir met us in between classes at St Aloysius College and requested a group photo with us. We were flattered to say the least! So we marched to his quarters in Kodialbail after physics class. This was prior to advent of digital cameras, so, he took us to a photo studio at PVS Building, Kodialbail. A dwarfed table with a lonely sheet was arranged and the cameraman told us to keep still, hands-on-thighs, and the photo was captured for posterity.
Fernandes sir then took us for lunch at Hotel Ayodhya in Kodialbail and thanked us for making time for the session and wished us all the best. The photo had Aravind Adiga to the extreme right, Fernandes sir to my left and Ajith Mascarenhas to Aravind’s right.
Aravind migrated to Australia two months later. I met him once at Woodlands over coffee in 1993 when he had come down for a week.
He sounded different, his speech had calmed down and words sounded voluminous. The accent had undoubtedly changed, and he seemed to be in transition. Of course the rest is now history. Ajith studied computers at KREC, Suratkal, and now holds a doctorate in computer science and artificial neural circuits and works as researcher in the Center for Applied Scientific Computing at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, San Francisco and I am a neurosurgeon in Bangalore. The three of us captured in time and now in three different genres, reliving the promise an inspired teacher saw in us.
I used to see Fernandes sir at Milagres Church at Saturday evening mass occasionally and we used to exchange pleasantries. I visited the school last Christmas, but all the familiar faces had changed. Fernandes sir had retired. ‘The three of you must have really left an impression on your teacher, for him to have taken a photo. Besides, he has mentioned you and the other boy by name, even during Aravind’s moment of glory. You don’t get inspirational teachers like that anymore. He still does not differentiate between the three. He is like a parent. Congratulations to you,’ said Dr A S Hegde, my department head and director at Satya Sai Super-specialty Hospital in Bangalore.
‘Sure’, I said, ‘He was an inspiration for us’. I hung my head in shame because I’m sure that we forgot about the photograph after it was taken. ‘The three of you and the teacher must have a re-union like in the movie ‘Rock On’, said other colleagues.
I switched on the TV to find Aravind holding the Booker prize; talking about his inspirational character Balram Halwai whom he met at a wayside tea stall. ‘Go away, don’t write about me, you’ll be gone to the city and soon I’ll be forgotten’, he had said to Aravind. My heart skipped a beat. I hazard a guess that I and a lot of others have forgotten a hundred Balrams in our lives. How much they would have cherished our memories, while we took their guidance and support for granted?
Our ‘busy’ lives have locked their memories in a storeroom far away, only to be jolted by sharp shocks like ‘I considered the three boys a treasure; I took a photograph of theirs in the year 1990’.
Dear sir, teachers, and St Aloysius School and College, and pure serendipity; I thank you.
Congratulations Aravind. Thanks to you, Daijiworld, for re-kindling old memories.
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