In Retrospect

By NILOTPAL KUMAR DUTTA

Neel is a young inquisitive boy from Bihar growing up in the Indian Mining township of Dhanbad, when TV had not touched lives in small towns and the internet was still a few decades away. Now a corporate executive, he looks back on how he reached here and contrasts his growing up years to that of his son, without being judgmental.
The journey of growing up and discovery is filled with humour and emotions. It explores a young boys desire for recognition, little triumphs, occasional fumbles, involvement of family in defining professional goals, chasing of those goals, compromised choices, and constant struggle with self-doubt and indecision.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Oct 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781482839357

Book preview

PROLOGUE

A large part of the reason why I am writing this book is in the first and last chapter, that is, chapter 1 and the Epilogue.

I grew up in a small ‘colony’ of a coal mine in Dhanbad. We must be the last generation that grew up in a small town when TV was not present. Absence of TV made life more interesting as a kid since we were in constant pursuit of finding something interesting to keep ourselves engaged with.

In the last few years, I have been seeing photographs of the place that I grew up in being posted on Facebook and WhatsApp. Our colony does not look a shade of what it used to be. I am sure it is true for most of similar townships across India. I met someone from Sindri, a very vibrant township in Dhanbad till a couple of decades back, and came to know that for all practical purposes the township has ceased to exist. The township was built for a fertilizer plant and the government decided to close the plant a few years back. There has been a gradual deterioration of places like these, the pain of which can only be understood by someone who has been a part of the good old days.

Post-independence industrialisation saw birth of several townships. It also saw movement of good talent to these places leading to a good quality of life and a very positive environment. These places were very cosmopolitan in nature and were competitive with a broad outlook to life.

The development of IT and finance industry has seen movement of talent to cities, resulting in overcrowding. Life in cities, as we experience now, is not only very different from the life that we experienced in industrial townships, but also from what it used to be in cities sometime back. There is a pace and consumerism that one tends to question at times. And these come at a cost, which I fear we fail to realise.

I am not sure if it has to do with age, but every time that someone posts a photograph of Jitpur Colony or Sindri, it leaves me with a flood of memories and leaves me sad seeing the current state of things. Through this book I have tried reliving that past.

As I look ahead, I see my son, nephews, nieces, and their friends going to colleges in a few years. They lead a life very different from what we led. And this difference is not only limited to the one between life in a small town to that in a city.

So much seems to have changed. There is so much information available these days. Information, comparison, and analysis are available on fingertips and my son, his cousins, and friends seem to know what they exactly want and need to do to achieve that. I see them making their own decisions based on individual research. I am happy for them. I look at my own experiences and that of my friends and ask myself, ‘Were the process of discovery, the inadvertent compulsion to meander at times to find one’s way, not more interesting and enriching?’ Maybe or maybe not, but then it had its own innocence and charm.

Through this book I want to tell them that they should follow their heart, fearlessly, in the decisions they take. I also want to tell them that whatever they choose to do and whichever journey they embark on, the biggest gift that they can give themselves is not to let the ghosts of self-doubt creep in. And if they creep in, they should be challenged and defeated. Once one challenges them, defeating them is not very difficult.

I write this for my son, his friends, my nephews, and nieces.

I also write this for my friends who I grew up with. I loved them then and continue to love them now.

A part of my own story is in the book, but then it is there only to maintain continuity of the story.

PART 1

CHAPTER 1

Life Like Yours

M y wife and I have been waiting for our son in front of the arrival gate of Bangalore International Airport for more than an hour. As we see him coming out of the arrival gate with his friends, we pace towards him. The excitement of reunion after close to a week is showing on my wife.

‘Congratulations,’ we say and hug him. He had gone to represent his school in a Model United Nations competition hosted by a prestigious school in Calcutta and they stood second amongst all the participating schools. We meet his friends and we realise that we do not know any of them. We meet their parents, and as we say bye, it dawns on me that we may not meet them again.

It has been close to twelve years that we have been in Bangalore and my son has just moved to Standard X in Bishop Cotton Boys’ School.

The drive home is full of discussions around the school event and the 1878 Congress of Berlin, which was the topic for the Model United Nations. I have not been a bad student of history and I claim to have great interest in the subject, but the level of details presented by him has always escaped me. He had been spending a lot of time on the computer researching on the subject and that clearly reflects in his articulation as he narrates points, arguments, and counter-arguments presented by him during the session at the school. My wife’s pride shows on her face as she listens to my son with complete attention.

There is abundant information available today unlike when we were growing up. Also, the effort required to get information may not be necessarily high. For the same set of information, I would have had to buy a couple of books and still the information would have been less than 30 per cent of what my son could manage through the internet.

‘How were the other kids?’ I ask.

‘Cool,’ he replies, involved in the discussion.

His reply answers my question but leaves me without any understanding if they were good or average, but I let it pass.

We are happy that he has won and happier that the event is over. He needs to get back to studies.

‘I have three more MUNs and one debate competition to participate in the next two months,’ he says, conveying information, not looking for an approval.

‘But what about your studies?’ my wife exclaims with worry.

‘What about my studies?’ He sounds puzzled.

My wife tells him how important it is to devote time to studies and he argues forcefully on importance of all that he has planned to participate in the next few months. Arguments have become a part of daily life, more so between my wife and him. Arguments put forth by him are logical, informed and the tone respectful, but it is still an argument with parents, irreverent in the eyes of my wife. Beaten on logic and content, she laments, ‘I never argued with my parents.’

He remains silent, but I feel that he is saying in his mind, ‘Drama.’

My son reminds my wife that he has been consistently amongst first three, not only in his class but in the overall standard. It is difficult to fault him on his commitment to studies if the results are a basis for discussion. But then results are not the only indicator of how one will do in future. We know how things can go wrong in a year and try telling him about several good students that we knew who eventually had average results in ICSE. My wife emphasises the importance of solving scores of problems in mathematics and physics to have sound fundamentals. And this requires a lot of time to be devoted. I agree.

Both sides think that each knows better.

‘What do you want to study after your XII?’ I ask, changing the topic.

‘I am not sure,’ he answers.

‘Not sure?’ There is a stern tone in my voice. ‘It is time you start thinking about it,’ I add.

‘Were you sure what you wanted to do in life after finishing IX?’ he says.

I wanted to tell him that I was continuously bombarded with many in the family on what I should do, but then I would have let my authority diminish in the discussion.

I wonder, ‘Is he saying that he is not sure, or is he saying that he is sure that this is not the time to be sure?’ I continue to think, ‘Is it important to decide early and pursue a goal or the journey of discovery is so enriching that it is better to wait towards the end of the journey and then take a more informed decision. Could we have avoided the pressure that we put ourselves in? But then did we have so many opportunities? We had close to three thousand engineering seats to write entrance examinations for and the number of MBA colleges that could be counted on fingers. Or did we have a narrow view because of the state and environment that we lived in? I am not so sure.’

It was turning out to be a long pause. ‘But you need to think,’ I counter.

‘I will figure it out. I think I have time,’ he says not to counter me but with a depth of thought. Such discussions always take me a few steps back to the past. Very rarely did someone ask me what I wanted to do in the future. Mostly it was people telling me what I needed to do. And to the credit of my family, there was an absolute consistency in whatever people wanted me to do.

‘I think you should prepare to get into IIT,’ I say like many other parents that I know.

‘I want to study abroad after plus two and I am not sure if I want to do engineering,’ he says.

‘You can always finish engineering and then do something else,’ I counter, recovering from surprise that the answer throws me into.

‘Everyone is trying to do engineering and I do not want to be a part of that. I may study physics which interests me or something to do with finance.’ I feel relieved that he is at least thinking about the subject and I feel happy that he has a clear opinion.

I have always believed that most of us do not think, and if one thinks, half the job is done.

We reach home and he walks away to his room, picks up his mobile phone, and calls his friend.

Did we argue with parents? Maybe we did, but definitely not so much. I wonder, along with my wife, was it reverence, or was it that we were not as informed, or was it that we were not so sure of ourselves, or was it a little of all of these that prevented us from arguing with our parents. If my father ever called out my name in a stern voice, it was enough to wake me up from bed and be immediately on my feet.

My son comes down and seeks my help on three different topics for the forthcoming MUN. Apart from one topic on environment, I am confident of a positive contribution from my side. I love the way he can detach himself. Seeing him, I cannot say that we had an intense argument sometime back. While many of the sentences are still in our mind, he seems to have moved on.

Emotions of any kind lingered with us as we were growing up. In fact, they linger even now. We did not know the art to move on that I see with my son or his cousins.

Not having won the argument revolving around studies and possessed by intense love for her son, my wife says, ‘You need to play more. Physical activity needs to be more. We used to play every evening when we were your age or when we were younger.’

‘Play where?’ he says while picking up the glass of milk kept for him.

I live in a row house in a housing society of 4.5 acres, which has 16 row houses and 240 apartments. The place has concrete roads along the campus and two small patches of land meant primarily for toddlers or very small kids. It has a gym and a swimming pool. There is no place for a young boy to play.

My wife does not have an answer and says, ‘Why do you not go for swimming or to the gym in the evening?’

‘I do go to swim every weekend. I return home almost at five every day from school, battling Bangalore traffic. Then I need to finish my homework. And the water is so cold in the evening by then that it is difficult to get into the pool. When do I have time to go for swimming on weekdays?’

‘Okay. But then you can at least go to the gym,’ my wife says.

‘But it is so full of oldies, and the equipment is hardly enough for so many people,’ my son says, finishing his milk.

‘But I go there too,’ I immediately say, not sure if my reaction was after hearing the word oldie.

There is silence for a few minutes.

We have moved to this place around a couple of years back. Prior to this, we were staying at a place that had two thousand apartments. It did have two tennis courts and one basketball court apart from a small play area. But then with two thousand houses, the play areas had too much strain.

My son comes and hugs my wife as he prepares to go upstairs again and things are back to being good. We decide to go out for lunch the next day. On my wife’s asking him as to where does he want to go for lunch, he mentions Dakshin in ITC Windsor. All of us sit down and talk for some time till he switches on the television to catch on some tennis match being telecasted.

He seems to be as busy as we are with his own set of activities.

I take a few steps back and try remembering how we spent our weekends when we were growing up. I do not remember going to a restaurant my entire school life but then I did not have lunch all weekends at home as well. Then where did we eat? I remember eating almost two weekends in a month at various houses in the neighbourhood. They would insist that we come over for lunch or dinner and my parents would insist in the same way if we were inviting someone. In case I was not willing to go, my mother would say, ‘They will feel bad. You should not hurt their sentiments.’ I would look forward to those invitations. While a restaurant has the advantage of having food of one’s choice, I will, any day, trade a lunch at a neighbour’s place for the sheer warmth it came with.

In the place where I stay now or the ones before, I hardly know my neighbours and I have rarely been to anyone’s place. I think, ‘Am I the strange one or the odd one out?’ But then I find everyone around to be like me. No one knows anyone and our familiarity ends with a few pleasantries exchanged now and then.

I have grown up amongst neighbours who were like a family to my parents. And in the place I live now, people do not know each other.

I have often wondered, ‘Do we then find friends outside of neighbourhood or from our respective offices?’ But then with people changing jobs so fast and the rat race that all of us seem to have become a part of, I doubt if that is possible.

I try thinking who my friends are. I look at the current organisation that I am working at, then my last organisation and then the one before that. I admit that I have made a few friends from the organisations that I have worked for, but then most of the names that come to my mind are from my school and college. And I have spent more time with my job than my student days.

Is it different for others? I do not think so from what I know of others.

My father retired from the job with which he began his career. He made friends from the place that he lived in, who are a part of his retired life now, in some ways. My parents still attend marriages and similar ceremonies of kids of my neighbourhood and are always updated with the most recent developments in the lives of people that we grew up with, though they have moved out of that place quite some time back.

Things seem so different these days. My son comes back late from school. He jogs in the evening for some time and then is home for studies. By the time my wife