Student Fixing

      'Fixing',' Fitting' ,' Management', 'Arrangement'... words packed with power and potential.These are the key words to whooping success in the modern world. I learnt the aura and resonance of the words a wee bit late in life,and have now decided to make the most of them at the slightest opportunity.My chance came soon enough ! Room No.20 in 'Gauhati Commerce College'. It was chock-a-block with B.Com.Pt-II students.The boys in smart blackish grey trousers and pale blue shirts, and the girls in pleasing pink-checked kameezes, white salwars and flapping, creamy white dupattas! So very cool and soothing to the eye. But it was not so pleasant very soon.The room began getting crowded by the minute. Soon, it was bursting at the seams. I sat at platform trying to man the jostling crowd as I desperately tried to attest their photostat documents needed for the form filling-in day, for the forthcoming examination. As Bearer Uttam , the faithful, energetically stamped away and I began endorsing the photostat papers with my signature,the whole enterprise appeared as defeating as the myth of Sysiphus.We were simply making no headway.The students seemed only to grow in volume, no matter how much I tried to lessen the number. Suddenly, in the middle of the melee a voice rasped in, 'Ma'm - can you attest my papers first? "My father is in the hospital!" I looked up. A flush of altruism , humanism, philanthrophism or whatever word you may have for it, gushed up in me. My look eased. I softened immediately.Two others pushed forward. One gushed, 'Ma'm--my mother is having an operation today'.The other could barely whisper,'My brother had a bike accident this morning. Ma'm could we both have our papers attested first?' I was in trouble. A real dilemma! I looked around for help. I didn't know how to tackle this .The serpentine queue wriggled, shook and convulsed before me. Bearer Uttam stood ramrod straight (as straight as his podgy self would allow him), the rubber stamp poised in air. I would get no help from that quarter. The decision had to be mine, and mine alone. I looked up at my earnest pleaders once more. Just then I caught their eye.'The eye'!-oh! the Achilles' heel of every human kind. The eye--the window to the soul ,the eye that can't ever lie ! Aha ! And it was the 'eye' that told me all. The schemes and strategies uncovered in a jiffy and the culprits were all exposed.Now, to tackle them ! 'Hmm'. I cleared my throat. Another hopeful turned desperately to me .Was I really such a credulous fool that kids less than half my age were all set to take me for a ride?! Ah! thats an angle I have to think of and come to terms with, in leisure. Now, turing to the immediate situation. Surely--,I just couldn't allow these 'bravehearts' to outwit me. But I really had no energy to argue with any of them. My mind started ticking, my grey cells in quick tandum. Soon, my eyes took on a crafty glint as they narrowed with a super brilliant brain-wave.Yes that's it. I can still beat them at their game.Oh! Yes ! I took a stiff British posture, a very British accent and an altogether British strategy (perhaps,being an English teacher helped). I adopted a game-a student 'fixing' game. I called it an 'Internal Arrangement' "All Right!" I boomed ."All those who need to go to the hospital make a seperate line.We'll have a SPECIAL MEDICAL LINE. I'll attest their papers first.The rest will have to wait for their turns in the queue". One minute .Two minutes. Wonderful! My game was gaining momentum. No seperate line yet. I tapped patiently on the desk, ticking off seconds. Soon, it was five minutes. No 'SPECIAL MEDICAL LINE' still . "Well" said I, triumphantly."There sunddenly seems to be no urgency on any medical ground." We will proceed the usual way. I took up my pen, and Bearer Uttam stood up an inch straighter,impatient to begin. An instant later we were both totally engrossed. But that was after I did a quick survey of the room and saw  the instant 'Internal Arrangement' among the students at work. I shook with silent amusement to note the handful of o pportunists wincing under the glares, silent threats and inaudidle promises of black-eyes, purple head-bumps, unforgettable thrashing and what-have-you, from their other mates. I saw them mutely hang their heads and take up positions at the end of the line, hospital appointments totally forgotten.Or, rather, the prospect of the 'REAL HOSPITAL VISITS' which awaited if they pushed their cases  too hard-was proving too daunting for their liking! All of them took up positions in the line and began waiting for their turns.The quiet tension in the classroom, the silent gnashes, the tremulous roars and the inaudible snarls ricochetted around, as the boys flexed their muscles and the girls whet their painted claws, daring the 'hospital group' to outsmart the hundred faces before me. I could not help smile to my self at the magnificent success of my little game of 'group fixing' or 'student fixing'!

My Evening Raaga

'What  do you do in the evenings?' A simple query ? ..............An opening line to a conversation ? Or....Is it just a phatic use of language? Whatever it is, its enough to send me into a flurry , completely throwing my cool to the winds , and making me quite disoriented and' hopelessly inarticulate .Whatever I do in the evenings is so very ordinary , so terribly mundane,its something I couldn't possibly talk about it , leave alone unflinchingly haul it to public view and allow it to face the onslaught of critical opinion .

Well, then, whatever do I do in the evenings? I patronize no club nor soiree. Nor do I have a kitty to  flaunt. Discotheque is a lexus learnt rather late  in life,and therefore,non- functional. Surfing stufies me, and shopping till date, is  necessarily prompted by urgent requirements . So, then, .....how do I occupy myself in the long hours of an evening? All I can muster up to say by way of an answer, could possible be in the vein....'Nothing much,nothing ..in particular ' .

'Nothing?' My own answer startles me. Then ,does my sense of contentment ,the deep peace that settles upon me in the quiet of my home, the thistle-soft feeling of bliss that wafts about me...against me, in the evenings--  all a void,a nothingness? I  am paranoid . I can't allow my life to zero on a void, a nothingness . In desperation I  decide to break the rhythm of  my life .My husband and I think that's the best thing for us to do . We must bring about a change . We take trips together ...and even singly . We visit in various patterns . We try to understand and impress upon ourselves that the tranquility of the evening hours is claustrophobic and we must get out of it . We must be alive,be able to breathe. That is what everyone prescribes . So a heady month follows . Evenings filled with glorious activities, programmes, excitements commence. Days spiral out ,nights follow ,my evenings take on a new hues .Yet in spite of it all, somehow, I find that the old warmth of my evenings is lost in some unconceivable labyrinth of swirling actions. It all seems to be of no purpose. My heart is cold. The smile on my lips does not light up my eyes any more. I seem to have lost the sparkle of my life, somewhere, I know not where.

I am at a loss to apprehend the strange sad feelings in me . Finally, I give up trying. I realize the panacea lies elsewhere . My husband and I cancel our socializings and stay home. I know there is a cure. I cannot put my finger on it yet . I move about the house, my husband sits with his drink.the newspaper spread out before him. He gets up to go to the kitchen to add his special touch to the 'Korma' in the making. Just then I rush out to take my son's call. Minutes later we stand back to look at the latest painting made by our daughter. Moments pass. We argue about the decision of the framing. I admonish my husband as he spills ash over the new rug trying to be the art critic. I take up Amitav Ghosh's book , "The Calcutta Chromosome" and settle down on the lumpy sofa for a good read before dinner. Suddenly something happens. I fell so bouyant . I look up. I am so happy! I hum a little song.  

I suddenly realize a glorious truth. In what I had termed as "Nothing" _is compressed the intangible, quite imperceptible collection , a conglomeration , _a curious collage of age old values, customs, feelings, sensibilities , cultural histories, aesthetics _of which I am only half conscious. These quiet evening hours at home_so simple, so staid, so common place, _but are ever so powerful, so essentially impressive and influential in the shaping of a personality, _...my personality. The immensity of it all stupefies me. A benign feeling soothes and caresses me. My quiet evenings are indeed the kaleidoscope of my pulsating being. I realize now why I could not breathe, dislocated from the rhythm of my essence__measured out so softly, so tenderly by my evening hours. I begin to stroll out into the quiet garden with the stirrings of "Yemen" _ to throw myself to the thrill of "Bageshwari" and then, nestle back against the quiet and soothing notes of "Bhopali". "Sa re ga pa, - - dha sa, -- pa dha pa, -- ga re sa".Each note so insignificant by itself - but so vital in holding fast the throbbing , pulsating"Bhopali Raaga". And I find that my soul slumbers in quiet peace to the soft lilting tunes of my evening raaga.