In a Pensive Mood

Today, as I sat in the staff room of the college I work in, I felt a deep sense of loss. I could not quite point out the origin of this thought. I listened to the voices around me, discussing, chatting and talking of many things probably important to the owners of those voices, and felt disgust for myself. What I asked myself was I doing here? Why wasn’t I reading a good book? Why wasn’t I thinking of reading up for ideas for perhaps the PhD that I had once hoped to complete? Why was I leading this aimless existence? If financial independence was what I had sought, was this the way to achieve it, I wondered? Every day I rush out of home at the appointed hour, board a train to reach my destination, walk into college, sign in the attendance register and do what is, to my mind, a mere travesty of a teacher’s job. I thought of how a few years ago I had come here to take up this particular lectureship…

As the train moved into the station at Diamond Harbour on that hot May day in 1999, I was sure this was a job I was not going to take up.

About two and a half months ago, I had been recommended by the WBCSC to FCC as “lecturer in English”. FCC had done the gentlemanly thing and offered me the job on a probationary basis, subject to confirmation. That confirmation, my future head of department (with whom I had had many conversations before making this journey) assured me, always came at the end of the year without any particular effort. But I was not unduly worried about this. After all, I didn’t believe in sticking to jobs. In seven years, I had changed three jobs in my previous profession which was business journalism.

In the last seven years in fact much had happened in my life. I had given up researching for a PhD, joined the newspaper world, job-hopped, met my soul mate, courted and married and given birth to a lovely baby girl a little after my first marriage anniversary. Phew!

Now here I was. My husband was mostly responsible for this. He believed that with my kind of academic record I should be teaching in a college or university. Much on his insistence I applied for a college job through the WBCSC which after a year following the interview thought it right in its wisdom to post me in FCC, Diamond Harbour, only 55-60 kilometers away from home, in the deep south of the state of West Bengal. The choices for going there were by local train or bus. The bus route proving rather circuitous for me, I decided on the train route. My head of department advised me to accompany him the day I would join.

“I am not joining”, I had said.

“No harm in joining, you can always resign from the job, you know,” my husband had argued.

“But all that distance! In those dirty, smelly, crowded local trains! Leaving my little baby behind for all those hours. Two hours up and two hours down. I will be away for at least 8-9 hours! What will my baby do!” I had wailed.

“Look”, he had said calmingly, “You have the choice. Let us go and look at the place at least.”

So on that day we were a happy threesome. My HOD, my husband and I. I began to look upon it as a day out, as we walked out of the station and boarded rickshaws which would take us to the college, 10 minutes away from the station.

As we neared the college, I could see the 50 year old main building and the new wing which actually stood a little distant from the parent like a stubborn child. No walls or fences. The buildings seemed suspended in greenery and time. We stopped before the entrance which was a large gate with the name of the college embossed into the structure, hardly visible. It was with something of dread that I looked at the place. We entered the premises, though ‘entered’ is a sort of hyperbole, because the premises were more or less undefined. We walked on towards the main building which housed the principal’s office. Up a few stairs and to the right and we entered unannounced. Behind a large prehistoric table sat the principal of this academic institution, balding, bespectacled but altogether an authoritative figure. HOD introduced me as the new lecturer (did he add the adjective unfortunate? I’m not sure).

“Ah! Yes, yes. Mrs Ghosh. Please be seated.”

He looked at my husband, standing a little behind.

“Mr Ghosh. He has accompanied his wife, this being her first day to this unfamiliar place,” HOD explained.

“Oh, please sit down.

I kept wondering about what I was doing here. I kept reminding myself that I had the choice.

There were other people in the room. One lady looked as though she needed a good rest. Another younger lady was vigorously reasoning with a person over the phone. She subsequently explained to the others how she had left her one year old child at home with a maid and this reluctant caregiver had just resigned from the post over the phone.

A couple of formalities later, the principal asked me to be taken to some classroom in which examinations were being conducted and I was to put in an hour or so of invigilation duty.

That was the first day. I came back home unconvinced that I could do this job, such a distance away. Moreover, I had never travelled by the local trains. The thought of doing this on a daily basis was practically anathema. I could not rush back if I needed to, I could not take a cab back if necessary. I would have to wait for a bus or for a train. Trains left DH station only every one hour. The imagination boggled.

And yet I went back the next day, and the next and the next...

I had a degree in English Literature and I wanted to teach. These thoughts propelled me, and I went.

Soon the examinations were over and classes began. I went to each class well prepared, waxed eloquent on my subject and enjoyed being able to get in touch with the subject again. There was only one point of unease. The students would sit without a murmur, looking at me, never moving a finger to take down a note. I hoped rather secretly that I was holding them spellbound with my knowledge and eloquence. Then came the moment of reckoning.

My HOD asked me a month down the line how I was enjoying my work. I said I liked it, but was a little worried at the students’ quietness and lack of interaction in class. He nodded sagely and dropped the bombshell,

“Actually, I spoke to the third year students about how they liked your classes,” he revealed, “and they said you were lecturing entirely in English and so it is difficult for them to follow everything you say.”

Entire lecture in English: wasn’t that the most natural thing to do? After all I was teaching a class that was to major in English Literature? I voiced my confusion.

HOD explained indulgently as though I was a rather stupid child: “Students here are not very adept in English. You will have to explain many things in Bengali. Your lectures would have to be seventy-five per cent in Bengali. That’s the way it is.”

My sense of shock was perhaps unreasonable, none the less it was strong. Not adept in English? Then why would they want to study English Literature? The Bengali Language boasts an equally rich Literature.

Stupid question, but I have not stopped asking it even after almost eleven years. I am still teaching in this institution. I’m still trying to teach the nuances of English Literature. My Bengali has improved greatly. And the students, well, they still come in hordes with vacant faces and confused ambitions. Each year the number of seats for English Literature studies goes up by leaps and bounds under the plea that it is an extremely popular subject with the young people in the area. As for me, mine is not to question why, mine is but to do …or give up the job. Problem is I need the job, it’s the work I hate.

There was the time when with stoic resignation, day after day I simplified and simplified my explanations of the Literature to make it understood to the students, hoping that somewhere it would touch a chord of comprehension of the value of the subject. But English Literature to the students of the deep south of West Bengal quite simply means a few suggestive lectures on what could be asked in the university examination question papers and a whole lot of selective study based on such suggestions. I cringe at this approach to the study of literature, but I tell myself, I need the job.

Now I have even stopped trying too hard.

In fact, such is the system, that one cannot do much that is innovative. The authorities and the powers that be have certain fixed ideas about what you can do and what you cannot do. Even if you break through those barriers your very colleagues might look upon you with a jaundiced eye, because they didn’t get the idea first. Indeed, a vicious circle which one like me with a well crystallized cynicism cannot think of breaking any more. So I nurse my injured aspirations and do my job and extract all the pleasure I can from the thought of pay day. That’s financial independence of an emancipated woman with a sinister twist, if you will!

To Be or Not To Be Woman

March 8 is International Women’s Day, and I find myself pondering on this concept of setting aside a day for celebration of certain things. Why do we have to commemorate the existence of women on this earth? Is this something akin to the Save-the-Tiger project? Save the women, from circumstances and from themselves - is it?

When I was a kid nobody talked of anything like this. I did hear of a children’s day, on November 14. That’s about it. Papa only said - girls are now going ahead in life, so you should too. I never stopped to ask which way is ‘ahead’. He said - women are doing a lot of brave things, standing erect on their own feet etc. I was puzzled considering I had, since the day I started walking, always been standing on my feet. Now I realize with bitter understanding, that he spoke of economic independence.

Then as I grew up, I heard about equal opportunities. To me gradually this boiled down to picking up the tab when you are out with your boyfriend. You have the opportunity to be chivalrous, gallant, independent, hardworking and all that sort of thing. But woman? Are you a woman? What does being a woman mean in these hard times? What is the woman expected to do? Answers to such questions are elusive.

Women have started off by fighting for social rights, personal freedom to expression and equality of opportunity. Men have as usual proved they are cleverer by willing to be the less efficient lot. Carry on they say, to the women -- you are doing just great, juggling home and career, ambition and emotion, being wife, mother, daughter-in-law, working woman… Women feel good when described as adept jugglers. They never stop to think why they should be jugglers at all! Instead of talking about women’s rights, let’s just talk about human rights. Remember, we women are humans too and there is something called right to leisure? Yet back home from work it’s the man who will stretch his legs while the woman will simply put her bag down, and start making the tea for both of them. It is the woman who will think it is alone her duty to attend to the child who has suffered the working parents’absence. It is she who will bring the child some small gift hoping to make up for this absence. Which in turn will lead to the child taking the mother for granted.

A woman has to undergo many changes in her life. Some changes demand even personality modifications. A girl, once she begins to realize that she is a girl, is constantly reminded of her vulnerability. She can be taken advantage of physically. She grows up fearing molestation, rape, betrayal, whether the experiences actually take place in her life or not. First she is daughter, then wife, then mother. Each role is very different and has entirely different demands on her abilities. She continuously tries to prove equal to the roles and if she is somehow failing to live up to expectations she keeps trying to justify herself to all and sundry.

Do men have to take up this eternal juggling act? They don’t really have to. Men after all are men and can lead life on their on terms. After all they are the bread providers, no matter that the woman brings in the butter, jam or sausages to go with it. Even women excuse them saying men are like that. Forgive, forget, carry on.

It is not the woman’s physical, but emotional vulnerability that is her undoing. She is always so afraid of not having someone she can love and cherish that she is grateful to the man for simply allowing her to love him. And man forgets that all he has to do in return is love and cherish her. Love is not the spontaneous and beautiful feeling that it appears to be in the books of poetry. It is more a power game. When the woman treats the man like a slave, he is happy to serve. But when she loves him and just extends herself to his every need, he starts taking her for granted.

Is International Women’s Day a reminder that we should stop taking the role of capable and caring women, in the family and in society, for granted?

Women’s enfranchisement, women’s empowerment, women’s emancipation – they are all so many very big words. What does it all mean to someone like me who rues her abilities each living day. Since I have put myself forward and taken up responsibilities without any questions, my elders have thought nothing of loading me with as many as possible. I have very little applause for it. I can think of at least two female friends who are in similar predicaments. Independent, enfranchised and empowered women always end up doing a lot of extra work. The dependent women seem to have all the fun. Men throw themselves on top of each other to protect them and forgive them all their trespasses.

I am not saying men do not take up responsibilities. They do. And when they do so the women in their lives silently support, unnoticed. Men who cannot take up additional responsibilities in the family are normally hampered by an uncaring, obstinate wife. And the other class of men who have taken up many responsibilities are generally the life-long bachelor class. At least as far as my knowledge goes, this is the case.

Speaking of classes, there are two classes of women as well: the strong types and the pretentiously weak types. There should be an International Women’s Day for the second type – they are the ones who should be lauded for knowing what’s what. The strong types are the eternal fools, rushing in where the weaker angelic types smartly do not go!

What's the Purpose?

Very often the thought occurs to me that each human being must have been put here on this earth with a specific purpose. In which case I wonder what purpose may be served from my existence on this earth. I look around and see that I have what most people would desire. A job which makes me at least financially independent, a good husband, a lovely daughter and some good friends. I can do many things I want to do quite often. And still I can't help feeling that somehow God has been perhaps a little half-hearted in His gifts to me.

Take for instance the job I do. It brings in the cash for the daily bread and butter, but I feel a sense of dissatisfaction that my potential as a teacher and an academic lies underutilised. I could do much more I feel but don't have the faintest as to how I would go about doing it. Which brings me back to the question of purpose. When I started out on my academic journey I seemed to be going in the right direction. I turned my love for reading into a genuine appreciation for literature. I studied English Literature with fervour and at one point of time I was in a position to develop my own theories about certain aspects of literature.

But then fate struck a blow and the course of my life changed. So I question, what was the purpose of my developing the kind of interest in my subject of study, because for the next seven years I practically had nothing to do with literature.

For these intervening years, before I became a college lecturer I tried my hand at journalism, and business journalism at that. Nothing to do with literature, but for the scope to use my expertise in the English language. I learnt a few new tricks no doubt.

Then fate cracked its next joke. I applied rather belatedly for a college job, and got it. But the place I was sent to needed an entirely different approach to the teaching of English Literature. I was doomed to teach the nuances of the finest in English Literature to groups and batches of students for whom the language itself was a major conundrum. The students in fact took up the course in the first place with the mistaken belief that they would be taught spoken and written English! And a bit of Shakespeare on the side on lighter days! I have been rendered speechless at Destiny's sense of humour. I am finding it rather difficult these days to retain my own sense of humour. So I say what was the purpose of the moment I stepped into the whitewashed corridors of Loreto College to study English Literature. For this? Then there is perhaps a larger purpose that I do not yet see.

Another aspect of my life which leaves much to be desired is relationships. I was born into a large family. I grew up with an elder sister and two elder brothers, but at the moment I am not quite sure if I can count siblings so easily on my fingers, such are the lapses in our understanding of each other. My sister is very much in touch, keeping herself abreast of developments in my life. I cannot say the same for my brothers.

I consider myself singularly unfortunate in matters of relationships. The family I was born into has never been one I can fall back upon. In fact relationships have soured to such an extent that last week I was reluctant to pick up the phone and call up my brother’s home to wish my nephew on his birthday. This is the first time since the child was born that I have not gone across or called up the child to wish him on his birthday. I feel awful, but I do not have the courage to show my sincerity where it is not likely to be appreciated.

This has been the case in all my relations through marriage too. No matter how I have conducted myself, I have not been able to convince my husband’s relatives of my good intentions. But there is worse. The most corrosive aspect of my marriage has been the relationship I have with my ma-in-law. It is essentially one of mistrust. She has looked upon me as an interloper, interrupter or some such thing. She perhaps feels that I have destroyed her dear boy’s sensibilities. She will never appreciate that her dear boy’s sensibilities are what attracted me to him in the first place and that is exactly what I would like to see preserved. She has never said as much but her actions and attitudes have spoken louder than words. In her case too, I did try to convince that my intentions are pure enough, but I realize I have failed miserably.

So now I have stopped trying. I suppose it is not a very comfortable situation for my husband, but the good man is bearing up well under it. God bless him! The sad part is he thinks he alone has taken the brunt of the situation and I have simply been willful. Though he has tried to show understanding, he has not quite seen steadily and seen whole. So the whole question of purpose crops up again. God gives, but how!!

Relationships are important to me. But I find I cannot handle them. So why give gift me a craving for relationships? I know many people who could not care less. I could have been like that.

A third and very important aspect where I find God particularly half-hearted is the matter of domestic help. Since a large portion of the day I am out of the house, I cannot run the household without help. So at any given point of time I have at least three people working as domestic help to carry out all the chores that I could have handled if I were a homemaker only. But somehow they are never the most suitable people. They are either very lazy, the kind who cut corners or absolute nitwits. My patience is unduly tried. What could be the purpose of handing me an existence which bothers me with its mediocrity and mundane nature? Perhaps God has put me on this earth to learn just one lesson, the lesson of patience! AMEN!