Hemantha Kalam - 112 - Sixty years delayed. And still...

 9^th August! Sunday! Low paced day! 

The car was patiently climbing up the slightly gradient but well laid out hilly road.

“We are nearing, sir” announced my chauffeur for the day. As we neared the destination, cars, luxury and super luxury, of visitors, were parked by the side of the road, for furlongs of length. My chauffeur, expertly, found a gap among the cars and parked our car. “We are here and that is the entrance gate, sir” he showed me the place; well-guarded by strong gates.

I just sat in the car for a few minutes ruminating that those very gates could have changed my destiny, differently. I neared the gates and the security guy asked me whether any of my relatives are inside. I shook my head negatively. “Phir, aapko andhar jaana nahin hoga, saab. Behtar hoga ki aap yahan se chale jaana” (Then, you will not be able to go in. Better if you move away from here), he said as politely as possible, in deference to my grey hair and grey beard.    

So I just took two photographs of just the threshold and returned to my car. “Chalengae saab?” asked my chauffeur. “Haan” I replied absent mindedly, while my mind already started probing through layers of memories.

Sometime during the mid-1960s, all of a sudden, my father broke the bomb in the house asking me “Would you like to study in The Doon School, Dehradun?”

I never heard of even Dehradun, let alone of The Doon School. I was a timid person and could get easily scared. I did not know what to say. I was fumbling for words. I did not want to adventure in an unknown school and in an unknown place. The mere thought that I may have to converse in English and Hindi there, petrified me.

It was my mother who came to my rescue then, I thought. She told my father rather firmly that she will not permit the only child of the house (I was the only child of the house at that point of time. My siblings joined the family a bit later) to be sent away to be ‘incarcerated’ in some residential school. Even she did not know of the prestige, standards and costs of the school. Whatever be the case, she was not willing to send her son to be put away as a non-entity among many others.

Then she asked my father, how much will it cost? My father was working for the Vice-President of the country then and my father said that he will get a scholarship for me till the completion in the school. Admission also would be his ‘courtesy’.

Cutting a long story short, I didn’t get to study in The Doon School (much to my relief, at that point of time) and I was happy to live with my parents and go to the local government school in a slum, in Chennai.

Had I been to The Doon School, what would have been my destiny? Whom would I have met and what would I have been doing now? All hazy! What I am doing now is the only reality.

But, let me tell you. The worm of curiosity was always working in the background to visit the school at least once before I croak and this time, when I went to Dehradun for the first time in my life in over sixty years, I made it a point to visit The Doon School – Sixty years delayed. And still… I wasn’t allowed to get inside beyond the gates.

In Chennai, there have been a few colleges that kicked me out as unworthy of their esteemed institutions, when I had applied for admissions with them. In one of those colleges I became a visiting faculty to teach Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Law.

Let me see, if I may have a worthy occasion to get into The Doon School too?

What do you think? Please do write in the comments

Until the next, I remain with,

Krutagjnatalu (Telugu), Nanri (Tamil), Dhanyavaadagalu (Kannada), Nanni (Malayalam), Dhanyavaad (Hindi), Dhanyosmi (Sanskrit), Thanks (English), Dhonyavaad (Bangla), Dhanyabad (Oriya and Nepalese), Gracias (Spanish), Grazie (Italian), Danke Schon (Deutsche), Merci (French), Obrigado (Portuguese), Shukraan (Arabic and Sudanese), Shukriya (Urdu), Sthoothiy (Sinhalese) Aw-koon (Khmer), Kawp Jai Lhai Lhai (Laotian), Kob Kun Krab (Thai), Asante (Kiswahili), Maraming Salamat sa Lahat (Pinoy-Tagalog-Filipino), Tack (Swedish), Fa'afetai (Samoan), Terima Kasih (Bahasa Indonesian, Bahasa Malay and Singaporean) and Tenkyu (Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea), Malo (Tongan), Vinaka Vaka Levu (Fijian)

Hemantha Kumar Pamarthy

Chennai, India