Karad Diaries-7

One of the other subjects that I was fond of, apart from mathematics, was Sanskrit. I scored easily in the subject, and was dismayed when I was not given the lead role in the college Sanskrit play ‘Columbus’. I just did not have the personality for the role, but this was something I could not understand at the time. I also had a morbid fear of public speaking, and participated once in a debating competition at my school to overcome this. I remember mugging up the entire speech, and delivering it mechanically, but that was all. It was only after I joined IIA and was invited to make a speech at the IIA National Convention at Nagpur, that I thought I need to do something about it. I wrote the entire speech, punches and all, and read it at the Convention. I still remember the butterflies in my stomach sitting on the stage before delivery of the speech, but I started out in earnest, and I received good response from the audience, which encouraged me to continue.

After this event, I tried every opportunity of speech at every public event, either by submitting papers to conferences or by impromptu interventions in the form of questions from the floor at every event, which sometimes resulted in invitation to the dais for making a small speech. Eventually I became quite adept at it, which gave me some recognition in the IIA circle, made me Chairman of the IIA Centre at Aurangabad and many other positions later.

This was a far cry from the shy and introvert demeanour I had as a school student in Karad. In spite of my participation in many outdoor activities with my friends, I was essentially an indoor person and did not mind staying put at a place and spending time alone, reading something or the other all the time. I remember reading almost all the hindi novels by Premchand one after another borrowed from the Municipal library at Karad. So reading ‘Dostoevsky’ was not a one-off activity, it was part of a pattern. Looking back, I think all this reading also made me a bit more introvert and less a man of action, which I tried to correct in my later life by joining the Communist Party, but that was after I started my professional career at Aurangabad.

In Karad, the only other activity I remember had to do with the religion or at least a practicing branch of it. Datta Bal, a spiritual Guru, had become famous when we were in school, and I used to attend the prayer meetings run by one of his disciples every Thursday evening, with some of my friends. The meetings were held in a closed room, with the light coming only from an oil lamp in the room in front of a large photograph of Datta Bal, the Guru, and the room would be normally filled with the smoke from the incense. We would try to concentrate on the diagram of Omkar painted on the wall, and recite the prayers en masse. I do not recollect getting any better intellectual or spiritual capacity as a result of these meetings and when I went to 11^th standard, with the pressure of study and other matters like clearing the Intermediate drawing examination for architecture admission, I stopped attending the Thursday meetings.

But the religions and their associated philosophies are fascinating topics, and my interest in religion has continued all my life. Recently I came across ‘The Case for God’ by Karen Armstrong, which stipulates that all religions in the world are basically trying to make their adherents better persons by prescribing a set of rituals about how to go about in life. I never considered myself a religious person as I do not carry out any of the rituals prescribed in my daily life, but found out that by Armstrong’s definition, I was actually a deeply religious person, though a bit gullible one, as many of my forays in being a good Samaritan have resulted in a good bit of trouble for me and my family - but that is a subject of another blog.  

Karad Diaries-6

My college life thus started with stay at my uncle’s place during the term and back to Karad in vacations. I was thus at Karad for the winter vacation in the second year of the course when the youngest of my brothers, Srinivas, was born. My father was away in Mumbai, and the task fell on me to write a telegram to him to come back as mother became suddenly very ill and it seemed that she would not survive the childbirth. I was 17 at the time, and was more worried about the wording of the telegram than the seriousness of the situation we were in.

I later felt guilty about this kind of frivolous concern taking hold of my mind at the time, but I am told that the human mind works in funnier ways than this. Anyway, father came back as a result of the telegram, mother was admitted to the hospital, and everything turned out to be just fine.

It must have been my feeling of inadequacy that was responsible for this kind of concern rather than the problem with the language, which was a part of my studies in school, and moreover, my journey of the English literature had started at Karad well before the admission to architecture. I was already an avid reader, one of the tenants at my mother’s place in Kolhapur was owner of a bookshop and used to have a number of new books delivered at the residence, which he graciously allowed us to read, on the condition that we read them then and there without spoiling them in any way. It was thus my hobby of reading was nurtured, and has stayed with me ever since.

When we moved to Karad, my next door neighbour was an enterprising and ambitious young man, Anil Kulkarni, who gave me a copy of ‘Crime & Punishment’ by Dostoevsky, told me it was a classic and insisted that I must read it. As my knowledge of the language was limited, I read the entire book with a dictionary at my side. In retrospect, it seems a bit too heavy a book to try out in a new language, but strange though it may seem, I developed a taste for English literature because of this first experiment. Anil eventually went over to USA after his graduation in Pharmacy and was quite successful there, became a US citizen and married a Punjabi girl. I googled him and wrote to him when I first went to USA in 2009, and he invited me to visit him, but somehow or the other I could not make the trip. 

Anil was my mentor in many other ways. He lived with his family next door to us, and all of his family members used to carry out all household tasks all by themselves. We were also from the same middle class section of the society, but we had maids for cleaning the utensils and washing the clothes, and I never thought that you need to do anything about it yourself. Anil taught me many of the skill involved in these tasks, including ironing the clothes and I remember we also did a lot of experiments including taking out a blue-print and measuring time by using the solar shadow angle and so on.

He was admitted to the first batch of the pharmacy college that opened at Karad, and I remember attending a cultural event at his college in winter, in which Anil was one of the actors in the play “Shantata Court Chalu Ahe”, a serious drama, the depth of which I could not really understand at the time, but remember a very sad incident on the way back from the event, where I saw a bunch of college students burning a blanket in the bon-fire depriving its owner, a poor man, of his protection in the winter. This happened at least 50 years ago but it is etched on mind as some kind of proof of human carelessness and pointless cruelty.

Karad Diaries-5

Even though my number on the merit list of Sir J. J. College of Architecture was 4, and there were 80 seats, I could not get admission due to a certain rule of Mumbai University regarding groups of subjects, and I was not eligible as the seventh subject I had opted for was Arithmetic and not any of the languages. My father fought about this rule in the University which relented after a month and I was admitted, along-with one other student, Sharad Mahajan from Pune, who was actually number 1 on the merit list but had the same problem. Both of us joined the college in July.

I still remember the day I finally went with my father to Mumbai to stay at my uncle’s place. When we reached CST (VT at the Time) station in Mumbai in late evening, it was raining heavily and no taxi driver was willing to take us. Ultimately father told me take out the raincoat, and we both walked in the rain with our luggage to the uncle’s place, from CST to Yellow Gate Police Station at Indira Docks (Alexandra Docks at the time). Mumbai was much less crowded those days and rain actually cleaned the road, where the storm water drains worked, and the journey via P. D’mello road was something I would remember all the time.

My uncle was a police sub-inspector at the time and had quarters above the Yellow-gate Police Station. It was the only residential premises in the area, all the other buildings were  warehouses, and would have some activity only during the day. I don’t remember any shop or any other kind of building in the area, besides our own building. The ground floor of housed the police station, and the two upper floors had quarters for the sub-inspectors. A service building in the same premises had servant’s quarters, built along with the Police Station in the British era. Both the buildings were in stone with typical british detailing. Once, after coming back from the movie ‘Dracula’, I noticed that the doors opening on the terrace were similar to the doors in the Dracula’s palace, and couldn’t sleep as the frightening scenes from the movie were still fresh in my mind.

The first day of college turned out to be quite disappointing, considering all the effort that we had put in to get admitted. I was told to join a studio in which everyone was drawing parallel lines on a large white sheet of paper, and having drawn first the horizontal lines, we were asked to draw vertical cross lines to form neat square pattern. Though I had all the requisite materials, bought the day before, I remember thinking that it was a frivolous and unworthy task and kept thinking that I have made a mistake in joining architecture. Added to this, the first person I met was Wong Tat, who could not understand any other language than English and my communication skills did not include English at the time, leaving me to talk by gestures alone, which must have puzzled him no end.

I would have left the course the very day, if I had not discovered later in the day that there were also many Maharashtrian students in our class. In fact we had a Marathi Mandal, which carried out cultural events and took out a Marathi bulletin, which featured articles and poems. I became an eager member of the group and contributed poems on a regular basis, so much so that my nickname was ‘Kavi” the poet, though I think it was more in jest, as I now realise I was no great poet, though I fancied myself one, and bore the title proudly.

Karad Diaries-4

One thing that I shall always cherish about the schooldays in Karad was the exalted status they gave me as one of the brightest students, particularly in the subject of mathematics. We had a new teacher in the 10^th class, Mr. M. N. Joshi, who was one of the SSC Board toppers and he decided to test our acumen on the very first day of joining. That year the SSC Board had changed the pattern of the examination, where questions were not directly based on the text-book, and unless you had a certain problem solving ability it was difficult to even translate the question properly in the mathematical framework. Mr. Joshi used this paper to test us, and I scored the highest in the class, 41 out of 75.  As this was a question paper for the 11^th class while we were in 10^th, even this score was remarkable. I was famous for scoring 100 out of 100 in Mathematics my earlier school at Kolhapur, but in Karad I was a nobody till this incident.

I was already in the A Division meant for the brighter students, and this incident made me a contender for a place in the list of honours at state level, alongwith Dinesh Deshpande, Pradeep Kashalkar and later Chandrashekhar Sabnis, who joined us in 11^th standard. After some time Mr. M. N. Joshi left the school to found his own coaching classes and we were students of his first batch, classes for which were held in a makeshift place previously used as a gymnasium. Mathematics ruled the day here, and once, when I declared my inability to attend an extra class due to my prior commitment to a drawing class, everyone laughed and derided me for putting drawing before mathematics. I had to explain that I needed to clear the Intermediate Level in the State Drawing Examination as I intended to join architecture after my matriculation. Unlike the current aspirants to the course of architecture, I had absolutely no idea what architecture was all about, only that I needed to clear the Drawing Examination for eligibility of admission to the course.

None of us could, however, make it to the state level honours list, to the disappointment of all, though I managed to get 99 out of 100 in Higher Mathematics and 91 out 100 in Arithmetic. Dinesh Deshpande joined UDCT, Pradeep Kashalkar joined Arts in the hope of making it to IAS, but could not make it and had to contend with a good position in a Bank. Chandrashekhar Sabnis became a doctor, but later died young due to a tragic accident. I met Pradeep later when he was transferred to Aurangabad, but have no contact with Dinesh after school and have no idea of what happened to him.

But my closest friend at Karad was Shrikant Sane, who did not figure in all this competition. Shrikant used to stay near my place, and we would be together for almost all the time. Shrikant taught me swimming; he was an expert, and with him and other friends I used to roam around doing trekking & many other exploits together. Once we had a shot at sighting the ghosts on the riverbank where there was a cremation ground and were told that the ghosts generally loiter there on a no-moon night. We used to study in the night at Shrikant’s place and decided to check this out, but when we ventured out on the next no-moon night at about 11.00 pm, our courage failed us after reaching the bank of the river and we ran back reciting Ramaraksha all the way. Of course, the other exploits worked, like trekking in the mountains of Agashiva and Sadashiva. Agashiva was a difficult trek, crossing over a few ranges, but Sadashiva was easier and I remember running all the way down the mountain just for the heck of it. Those indeed were happy days.

Karad Diaries-3

The earthquake occurred in the early morning, waking all of us up instantly. We were all sleeping on the floor as usual, but earth under us moved to and fro as if we were all sleeping on a giant swing, and we could not understand what was happening at first. We were all frightened, Sanju suggested we recite Ramaraksha and we all started reciting it in earnest. This went on for what felt like eternity, but could not have been more than a few minutes. After the movement stopped and everything was quite still, we rushed out of the house and assembled in the front courtyard. All the members of the landlord’s family had already gathered here, who, like us, were in their night-dresses, and there, in the sight of other people, we recovered enough to talk animatedly about the experience.

As it turned out, this was not altogether a novel experience for some from the landlord’s family, who used to live at Koyananagar, where earthquakes had occurred previously, but of course, they were of a smaller magnitude. We later learnt the devastating effects of this quake, which had caused havoc in Koyananagar and surrounding area near the epicentre of the earthquake. Our school was converted into a makeshift hospital to cater to the large number of people who were caught in the collapsing buildings and suffered injuries. After this quake, there were many aftershocks, and I remember sleeping out on the street en masse, for fear that the house would collapse over our head and later we moved to Kolhapur for a few months as the school was closed and we were given temporary admission in Vidyapeeth High School near Ambabai Temple in Kolhapur.

Surprisingly, there was virtually no damage to the structure of the house we lived in, mainly because it was a single storied structure with brick walls and a lightweight roof of steel sheets. So after a few months, we came back and continued to live in the same house as if nothing was amiss. I continued with my studies, and it was about an year after that I tried to take my life for reasons I can not remember, nor justify in any way.

As I recollect, we had a few choice locations for study, which I had found out with my friends in the school. One was under the old bridge over Koyana, where there was a gap between the steel girders and top of the stone pier of the bridge. This was quite high up and tricky to reach from the road at top but not really scary as the pier was very wide and the height of girder was about 6’, giving a good headroom. The other location was inside the shikhar (roof) of a deserted temple on the bank of the river, which was slightly dark inside but gave enough light from the opening to enable us to read if we sat just near the opening. It was in this location I tried drinking Tic-20, an insecticide, but apart from its horrible taste it turned out to be quite harmless. I have forgotten where I procured the bottle or why I did it, but remember that I felt relieved after I found out it did not work.

Much later, in an IIA seminar on character building, we were discussing the fears and loss of self-confidence in the young who are unable to accept the reality about them; I disagreed with the speaker and said nobody can feel insecure about his physical features or appearance, which is genetically programmed, but later recalled this incident and felt there might be some truth in this after all, as I recall no other reason for me to be so unhappy as to try to take my own life at the time.

Karad Diaries-2

The day I ran away from home was the day of Ranga-panchami, a day in which people throw colours on everyone they come across. People all over India celebrate this on the second day of Holi, but in western Maharashtra it used to be done on the 5^th day after Holi.  Though hailed as a celebration of colours, it doesn’t stop at colours; people throw muddy water at each other, smear each others faces with grease paint and hit unsuspecting bystanders with balloons filled with water and sometimes even push visitors in water tanks and so on. All in all it is a rowdy celebration and I hated it immensely, but that was not the reason I ran away from home.

We were three brothers then, and Vijay being youngest, was the spoiled child of the house. I and Sanju (the second brother) resented this, sibling rivalry being what it is; there were always some or the other kind of petty quarrels. Vijay, of course, would colour every incidence and report to father earnestly, resulting in him scolding us which was something we took for granted. We even had a nickname for Vijay, an abbreviation of ‘a puppet of the ruling power’. All this was normal, but the day before Ranga-panchami a complaint by Vijay made my father so mad that he beat me mercilessly with his shoes, which was more than I could take and decided to run away from home.

So in the morning of Ranga-panchami, I just took my bicycle and rode away, but had no clue as to where I would be going. So instinctively I thought of Grandma who was at Kolhapur as she adored me and would be consoling me and may even scold father for beating me. The distance was about 70 kms., and I managed to reach there by evening. The only incident during all this journey that I remember is that the rear tyre of the bicycle got punctured and I had to seek help of a puncture repair shop on the roadside who knew next to nothing about bicycles, there being no bicycle riders on the highway, but managed the job sufficiently for me to carry on riding. I do not remember paying him, but I used to have no money at the time and it never struck me that I would need any. So much for the planning to leave home and start a new life.

As it turned out there was no new life for me, only a change of place for a few days. Of course, as I learnt later, there was a great deal of search operation at Karad, when everyone realised my absence and Sanju bore the brunt as he was sent to search for me and became an easy target for all the rowdy activity of the day. This is something I had not anticipated and felt sad when I learnt about it. As all search at Karad failed, my father made a phone call to my mother’s ancestral home in Kolhapur, one of the very few places that had a telephone connection those days, and someone came to inquire about me at Grandma’s place, where I had reached by then.

So a great rebellion turned out to be a tame affair, the only outcome that I can now record is that I proved that I could ride a bicycle all day and travel 70-75 kilometres when young. I have a bicycle now and ride it occasionally for minor errands, and the maximum distance I can manage these days is about 5 kilometres. But then I am 65 now so that is also worth celebrating.  

Karad Diaries-1

Of all the towns I have ever stayed in, Karad happens to have some very special memories for me. It was here that I experienced firsthand the tremors of an earthquake, ran away from home for the very first and only time in my life and tried to take my own life for reasons I do not remember now. It was also where I explored the surrounding area with my friends, bicycling and trekking in the mountains, swimming in the river and doing many more exploits of similar kind, usual for a teenager.

I was all of 11 years old when we moved to Karad, and was admitted in the 8^th standard at the Tilak High School, which was about a mile from home, a distance I used to walk merrily with friends everyday. The School building was quite old, in typical british pattern of stone walls and verandahs enclosing a large courtyard where we had our morning prayers led by the Principal, who looked like the First President of India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, with his bushy white moustache, white dress and Gandhi cap.

We lived in a rented house, like most of the lower middle-class families at the time. The house had high compound wall with a central door leading to the front courtyard, and was divided in two parts, one for us and the other larger portion belonged to the landlord. The front courtyard had a large champak tree in the centre, and also had a common loo and a bathroom on one side. We had two rooms, the outer just enough to accommodate a folding bed, two chairs and a small cupboard. The inner room was slightly bigger and was used as kitchen, also had an open washing place, and a door leading into the rear common courtyard, which had a banana tree and scores of other plants all using the waste-water from kitchen. As I now realise, it was a model of a sustainable household, with almost no waste, and the only services we used were water supply from the city mains and electricity from the grid.

My father had purchased a big radio in Kolhapur, which was placed on top of the cupboard in the outer room, with its indoor antenna in the form of a wire-mesh about 4” wide and almost 10’ long spread all across the room at top. It was an extravagance on the part of my father, as its cost was more than double his monthly salary at the time, but my father did not bother about such things when it came to things he really fancied. I remember going to dramas with the entire household (we were 5) and the tickets were really way above what we could afford, as I realise now. He never spared expenses when it came to school-books, dresses and many such items, and I remember suggesting him once to buy second-hand books to save money, but he would have none of it.

We lived in an area called Dubal Galli in Shukrawar Peth, and here I faced a lot of bullies who would call me names, curse me for no reason and throw stones at me when I was not looking, and it was difficult to pass the road without something or the other happening almost every day to school. Once one of them caught hold of my schoolbag and ran away with it. I told my father about it and he ran after him, but couldn’t catch him. After this episode, I found out an alternate route to school and never had to face them again. The lane was actually famous for a very different reason, as it had a house belonging to the late Home Minister of India, Hon’ble Yashawantrao Chavan, and I remember once going to the place when he visited and joining the crowd of the visitors to have a look at him. He was a very simple person, who met and listened to all visitors earnestly before replying. I managed to get an autograph from him, and should have saved it for posterity, but can’t find it anywhere now.