At last I got a job… That was what my first reaction after seeing the SSC results.
My long time dream of teaching, of being a mentor, of doing something good for the society and most importantly of being employed was coming true. But this feeling was short lived. 50% of it broke as soon as I saw my posting at Jaynagar, a place in south 24 pgs , a little over 80 kms from my home & 4 hours of journey(is stretched to 7 hours on one lucky day). The good work of breaking the other half of my hopes were a combined effort of my students, my fellow colleagues, my place of living, & the mosquitoes (some of them as big as jet plane), snakes , bugs ,cockroaches living with me.
The only shinning part of this rather gloomy life was the salary. It was good (far beyond my expectations) & my only motivation for continuing with this job..
Oho… let me introduce myself. I am Mr X , a MSc in physics from one of the most reputed institutes of this country(its the IIT …for those who cannot figure out what I am referring to), a short (most of my students were taller than me), soft spoken , city guy.
Enough with the introduction part ,lets get into business.
One fine morning I got this ‘Good’ news that I was one of the teachers selected for doing census in that area. And I was the Lucky one because I don’t have an ailing wife at home or children’s exam or marriage of my brother/sister in laws(in our country this is much more important than census). My recent tiff with the head master proved to be the cherry on the top. So I sacrificed the dream of enjoying my summer vacations at home & devoted myself to this ‘Noble’ (referred by the headmaster) work.
On that saturday I left home with a few of my Noble crusaders in for collecting the data from a village called radhanagar.
The first house in which we went was a concrete one, made up of bricks & a asbestos ceiling (one of the few in that area). I collected all the required information’s & then got some strange request from the owner. He wanted to include his name in the BPL community so that he can enjoy some benefits. I told him that it does not looks that he belongs to BPL & I cannot include his name there. So his next request came. It was more shocking than the first one. He wanted to include his fathers name in the BPL list. He showed me the cattle shed & advised me to give that as his fathers residence in the form. His father must be so proud of him after hearing this.
On the fifth house I saw another son who will make their parents proud. When I asked about his fathers name he replied that he does not know that (also his mothers name too) but his elder brother living a few village apart might be able to tell. My colleague suggested to give any arbitrary name there as according to him “who the hell is bothered about what we write in the form”. He wend one step further & suggested the name to be Rizwan Khan, the name of the hero of a movie he recently went to see on his last sick leave. According to him watching ‘Saarook khan’s ‘ movie on the first day was far more important than taking maths classes. Adding to my surprise that man too agreed to make Rizwan khan his father. Well if he is happy with his ‘new’ father the government will not interfere.
In another house a man in his late fifties told his age to be 35 , his wife age as 27 with the elder son of age 21. I told him this is not biologically possible so he negotiated his age to 40, wife’s to 33 & his elder son was reduced by 5 years. We were okey with this as it is feasible both biologically & mathematically.
As one should save the best for the last this was the best incident of that day. An eye opener for our government.
In one of the houses a man had 2 wives & both of them were living ‘peacefully’(that what he informed us). So he wanted to include both their names as his wife. As being partial to anyone of them can cause the ‘peace’ of his house to break in pieces. But our form neither had 2 columns for wife’s name & nor any one of his wives was ready to part with her share of him. After hearing another round of slangs from both of his wives we assured them that we will ask the government to make a special form where multiple options for wives/ husbands name should be present(our government should take this matter seriously).
After that day’s work was over I returned to my house with an enriched vocabulary, a few experiences of lifetime, an injured knee (I slipped a couple of times) & a few threats (2 of them were death threats, 5 of breaking all the bones, 15-20 of breaking some body part or the other).
This was a learning experience for me. Learning in all respect as I added many new words to my vocabulary, slangs, mostly spoken to us during our vigil (most of the people had some sort of strange fear about what we were doing). I was surprised to see their talent in finding new abusive words & ashamed of my ignorance(our education ministry should start a course on this for idiots like me). This was an eye opener for me (& ear opener too).
(Based on the experiences of one of my friend & the ‘writer’s imagination’)
My long time dream of teaching, of being a mentor, of doing something good for the society and most importantly of being employed was coming true. But this feeling was short lived. 50% of it broke as soon as I saw my posting at Jaynagar, a place in south 24 pgs , a little over 80 kms from my home & 4 hours of journey(is stretched to 7 hours on one lucky day). The good work of breaking the other half of my hopes were a combined effort of my students, my fellow colleagues, my place of living, & the mosquitoes (some of them as big as jet plane), snakes , bugs ,cockroaches living with me.
The only shinning part of this rather gloomy life was the salary. It was good (far beyond my expectations) & my only motivation for continuing with this job..
Oho… let me introduce myself. I am Mr X , a MSc in physics from one of the most reputed institutes of this country(its the IIT …for those who cannot figure out what I am referring to), a short (most of my students were taller than me), soft spoken , city guy.
Enough with the introduction part ,lets get into business.
One fine morning I got this ‘Good’ news that I was one of the teachers selected for doing census in that area. And I was the Lucky one because I don’t have an ailing wife at home or children’s exam or marriage of my brother/sister in laws(in our country this is much more important than census). My recent tiff with the head master proved to be the cherry on the top. So I sacrificed the dream of enjoying my summer vacations at home & devoted myself to this ‘Noble’ (referred by the headmaster) work.
On that saturday I left home with a few of my Noble crusaders in for collecting the data from a village called radhanagar.
The first house in which we went was a concrete one, made up of bricks & a asbestos ceiling (one of the few in that area). I collected all the required information’s & then got some strange request from the owner. He wanted to include his name in the BPL community so that he can enjoy some benefits. I told him that it does not looks that he belongs to BPL & I cannot include his name there. So his next request came. It was more shocking than the first one. He wanted to include his fathers name in the BPL list. He showed me the cattle shed & advised me to give that as his fathers residence in the form. His father must be so proud of him after hearing this.
On the fifth house I saw another son who will make their parents proud. When I asked about his fathers name he replied that he does not know that (also his mothers name too) but his elder brother living a few village apart might be able to tell. My colleague suggested to give any arbitrary name there as according to him “who the hell is bothered about what we write in the form”. He wend one step further & suggested the name to be Rizwan Khan, the name of the hero of a movie he recently went to see on his last sick leave. According to him watching ‘Saarook khan’s ‘ movie on the first day was far more important than taking maths classes. Adding to my surprise that man too agreed to make Rizwan khan his father. Well if he is happy with his ‘new’ father the government will not interfere.
In another house a man in his late fifties told his age to be 35 , his wife age as 27 with the elder son of age 21. I told him this is not biologically possible so he negotiated his age to 40, wife’s to 33 & his elder son was reduced by 5 years. We were okey with this as it is feasible both biologically & mathematically.
As one should save the best for the last this was the best incident of that day. An eye opener for our government.
In one of the houses a man had 2 wives & both of them were living ‘peacefully’(that what he informed us). So he wanted to include both their names as his wife. As being partial to anyone of them can cause the ‘peace’ of his house to break in pieces. But our form neither had 2 columns for wife’s name & nor any one of his wives was ready to part with her share of him. After hearing another round of slangs from both of his wives we assured them that we will ask the government to make a special form where multiple options for wives/ husbands name should be present(our government should take this matter seriously).
After that day’s work was over I returned to my house with an enriched vocabulary, a few experiences of lifetime, an injured knee (I slipped a couple of times) & a few threats (2 of them were death threats, 5 of breaking all the bones, 15-20 of breaking some body part or the other).
This was a learning experience for me. Learning in all respect as I added many new words to my vocabulary, slangs, mostly spoken to us during our vigil (most of the people had some sort of strange fear about what we were doing). I was surprised to see their talent in finding new abusive words & ashamed of my ignorance(our education ministry should start a course on this for idiots like me). This was an eye opener for me (& ear opener too).
(Based on the experiences of one of my friend & the ‘writer’s imagination’)
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