More Salt Than Pepper

by Karan Thapar

  Yet they are right to try. And do you know why? Because when your ego leads to your first fall and you start to nurse your bruises it’s the sudden flash-like memory of their words – maybe long- forgotten but also starkly recalled – that helps you understand. It may be a lesson you don’t heed but it’s one you rarely forget. In need it usually comes back.

  21 October 2002

  A Calculated Affront

  I’ve just returned from spending Founder’s Day at Doon School. It was my first after nearly twenty-eight years. That’s such a long time you actually don’t remember what it used to be like. Instead, nostalgia and your own distorted memory create an impression that takes precedence over reality. But once back the old truths fall into place.

  This year the chief guest was Arun Shourie and in his speech he complimented the school on its excellence. Arun was generous with his praise and justifiably so. As he spoke my mind flashed back to the Founder’s Day of 1968 (or maybe it was 1969). Morarji Desai was the chief guest. He was also Indira Gandhi’s deputy prime minister. Christopher Miller, the last Englishman to serve as headmaster, had invited him and the school was looking its best.

  Desai arrived by helicopter touching down on the sacrosanct main field. He raced through the many interesting school exhibitions laid on for him. I was twelve and waiting to show him what I could do with pippettes in chemistry. But he was not interested. The photographs of the occasion show him looking over my tiny shoulders towards the exit.

  It was Desai’s speech that angered and hurt the school. To begin with he spoke in Hindi, a calculated affront to our English headmaster and a language he fully knew the boys could not easily follow. But Desai hated public schools and wanted to rub it in.

  What I remember of his speech was the way he chided the boys for greeting him with a handshake. Why had we not done namaste instead? This, he admonished, was aping the West and forgetting our own culture. Indians, he said, sounding particularly supercilious, should always do namaste. The handshake was alien, improper and a characterless imitation.

  It made us bristle. In those days politicians were not commonly disliked but Desai left school a universally hated man. He had barely spent two hours on the campus, claiming he had to get back in time to greet Mrs Gandhi on her return from a foreign visit. We were only too happy to be rid of him.

  A surprise, however, was to follow. When the next day’s papers arrived they carried front page photographs of Desai at the airport receiving Mrs Gandhi. And what was he doing? He was shaking her hand.

  Desai had tried to belittle the school but in the process made himself seem small. Arun recognized the school’s worth and visibly won us over. But I wonder if he noticed that it excels not just in the knowledge it teaches but, even more so, in the bigger, wider lessons it encourages each boy to imbibe. On the day he visited, the boys sang Song No. 3 from the school hymn book. It’s by Iqbal, the man who first thought of Pakistan.

  Lab pe aati hei dua banke

  Tamanna meri,

  Mere Allah burraie se

  Bachanna mujhko.

  As I joined in the singing, words long forgotten suddenly returning to memory in precise and perfect order, I recalled another truth about the school. At Doon you know nothing of caste or communal division. Ram or Krishna, Allah or Christ are the same. An Aggarwal and a Garg live side by side with a Rathore, a Vashisht, an Ahmed and a Henderson. And they all have silly nicknames.

  23 October 2000

  When Affection Is a Rude Joke

  They say there’s nothing more cruel than schoolboys. They’re wrong. Far worse are those you were at school with – even after thirty years! My class of ’71 at Doon had a reunion this weekend and I met up with several old friends I haven’t seen for decades. But if anyone thought age, experience and wisdom would have curbed our penchant for laughter at someone else’s expense – what I call digging it in – they couldn’t have been more surprised.

  ‘KT, just look at you!’ was how I was greeted when I walked into the gathering. I soon discovered that the old school sobriquet was not used out of affection so much as to emphasize the comment that was to follow. ‘If your teeth were as white as your hair you could advertise Colgate!’

  Less obvious, though no less pointed, was the second greeting with which I was accosted a short while later. This time, however, I required the full recall of my literary memory to understand!

  ‘Hey!’ said a familiar voice not heard since the early 1970s. I swivelled in its direction to find a group beckoning me. They were clearly enjoying themselves. ‘Do you think you’re Mary’s little lamb?’

  ‘What?’ I spluttered, perplexed by the simile.

  ‘Well, its fleece was white as snow and so is yours!’

  Fortunately, they tired of my hair fairly quickly. Unfortunately, that created the opening for jokes about my loquacity. To be honest, I don’t think of myself as garrulous. But others do. Worse, my old school friends have also held firmly to the belief that I can’t keep a secret. ‘Telephone, telegram, tell Thapar’ was the saying when we were fifteen. As far as this lot is concerned, it holds good even today.

  After a series of comments such as ‘who thought Tota would join the navy!’ and ‘Yaar, I can’t believe monkey’s become such a hot shot,’ attention turned to me. I knew I was in for another ribbing.

  ‘KT, you chose the right profession.’

  ‘Why?’ I foolishly asked, falling into an obvious trap.

  ‘Because you never let anyone talk in school. Now, as an anchor, you can keep on interrupting and claim you’re doing your job!’

  ‘In fact, why do you bother to have guests?’ someone else butted in. He was smiling but his tone was pure stiletto. ‘The poor chaps don’t get a word in edgeways. Why don’t you call it “Interview with Self ”? You know you’d love that.’

  To be honest I would have been disappointed – actually upset – if our conversations hadn’t started this way. Schoolboy affection is always disguised behind barbs and innuendo. It’s less obvious but far sturdier than what you later encounter. In fact, I would add that you can always rely on someone whose leg you can pull. But can you equally trust a man you are formal with? Humour dissolves more than differences – it eliminates reserve, eradicates pomposity and obliterates the need for silly white lies.

  I’m not sure if day school students can meet up after three decades with similar camaraderie, but I suspect not. On the other hand, the gruelling experience of a boarding school – and, of course, our capacity to romanticize memories, forgetting the dreadful whilst exaggerating the comic and peculiar – ensures that a friendship is never forgotten. Whilst you may not meet for years – even decades – and that was true of many of the class of ’71 – when you do you can strike a chord instantaneously. And even if the rekindled old flame may start to flicker and fade after a bit, it will certainly shine brightly for the duration of a reunion.

  Wellington was only slightly incorrect when he claimed that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. I suspect the roots of that victory more accurately stretch back to the pranks played in the dormitories, the punishments inflicted by prefects and the homework hastily completed with a little help from the class egghead minutes before submission. Such incidents may or may not have put iron in the Duke but, for the rest of us, they’ve promoted self-reliance, self-confidence and an ability to see the funny side of any predicament. What’s more, they’ve forged bonds that have survived the test of time.

  So even if schooldays are not the best in your life – and, actually, it would be rather sad if they were – the boarding school experience is undoubtedly special. But you have to know it to truly understand why.

  26 October 2006

  Amitabh, Naseer and Mummy

  The last rays of the sun were just starting to disappear behind the deodar trees as the play began. It was twilight and there was a distinct nip in the air. But there was enough light left to notice the apprehensiveness of the couple to
my left. I was in the Rose Bowl at the Doon School and the play was an English translation of Charandas Chor. Their son, Imad, had a small part. There must have been several other parents feeling equally tense. Thirty years ago mine too would have had to grapple with similar emotions. But the pair beside me were a little special. They were Ratna and Naseeruddin Shah.

  ‘Poor chap,’ I said, trying to make my voice soothing and my manner reassuring. ‘Imad must be quite intimidated by your presence.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Naseer laughed. ‘I’m the one who’s quivering and shaking!’

  The play began slowly. That’s not the sort of comment any of the watching parents would have made. In fact if mine, way back in 1970, had said something like that I would have been mortally offended. Parents are meant to encourage and applaud. But I wasn’t there as a parent, only as an old boy. And this was the first time I was sitting in the audience watching a school play. On previous occasions I had been part of the cast.

  Yet from the outset the mood of anticipation was clearly palpable. Everyone seemed to be anxiously waiting. The pace of the performance hardly mattered because the sense of expectation was so strong. But what was it, I asked myself, they were so keyed-up about? It reminded me of the audience at a production of The Little Foxes in London in 1984. On that occasion everyone was sitting forward, craning their necks and struggling for a better view. Then the explanation was simple. Elizabeth Taylor was playing the lead role. Here, at the Doon School, the answer eluded me until Naseer gave it away.

  ‘There he is,’ he suddenly whispered into my ear. ‘In the dhoti entering from the left. That’s our son.’

  When you have a son on stage you don’t need Elizabeth Taylor to excite you. The only difference was that the audience in London greeted Taylor’s performance with loud oohs and ahs. At the Rose Bowl, the parents responded to their children with nervous little laughs followed, of course, with broad happy smiles. I’m afraid I watched as much of Naseer and Ratna – albeit from the discreet corner of my eye – as I did of their son.

  Charandas Chor took me back thirty-three years to April 1968. In the same Rose Bowl – practically on the same spot where last weekend Imad had stood – I recall the young Vikram Seth standing. In a captain’s uniform with a false moustache to make him look manly, he was playing the Chocolate Cream Soldier in Shaw’s Arms and the Man. He was the star of the show and I had only a small insignificant part. But I was his nemesis. Engaged to the daughter of the house, he gets caught flirting with the maid. That was me. In those days the boys of the Doon School, like early Roman actors, played all the parts in a play.

  As Vikram embraced me I was supposed to fall into his arms. It was, after all, seduction. But as he held me in a clinch – or whatever was permitted of one – my stockings started to roll down. As his ardour grew stronger my legs slowly turned bare. By the time he had me in his grip I looked more comic than alluring.

  ‘Pull up your stockings, yaar,’ someone shouted from the stands. Your peers can be merciless when you are twelve.

  ‘Forget about her, Vikram,’ said another voice. ‘She’s got hairy legs!’

  This year the Founder’s Day chief guest was Amitabh Bachchan. I believe I was the one who suggested his name but I could be wrong. Although there were some who thought otherwise I feel it was an inspired choice. In previous years the chief guests have been men of distinction: prime ministers, chief justices, prize-winning authors, even the Dalai Lama. Amitabh is equally distinguished but he is also something more. He is popular. He was chosen not to please the teachers or the parents but the boys.

  Of that there can be little doubt. Long before he arrived the whole of Dehra Dun knew he was coming. An hour before his car drove into school the gates were shut to keep out the crowds. Inside, the Rose Bowl was crammed to capacity. There wasn’t room to stand but there were still many who could not fit in. The overspill of several hundred were seated on chairs outside, unable to see him in person but with access to a large screen replay.

  For the headmaster, who speaks first, it was a hard act to precede. Even the parents, who normally pay close attention to his annual report on the school’s performance, were impatient to hear Amitabh. And the chairman of the board of governors, who was next, knew he was only getting in the way.

  So when Amitabh got up to speak he was heard in pin drop silence. I don’t remember any shuffling of feet or crossing of legs. I don’t recall hearing a single cough. And, yes, even the mobile phones seemed to go silent.

  His rich deep baritone filled the Rose Bowl. In response, a sea of smiling faces looked back at him. I’m sure many did not pay attention to what he was saying. It was the power and impact of his delivery that mattered or just the fact that he was there and speaking to them.

  I tried to listen and there was a lot I liked about his speech. But unless I misheard him there was one moment when I wondered if he really meant what he was saying.

  ‘Schooldays are the best days of your life,’ he said, repeating the old cliché most boarding school students distrust. ‘Cherish them and believe me when I say things get worse after this.’

  He may be right but isn’t that a depressing message for teenagers to hear?

  If AB was in the limelight on Founder’s Day the next belonged to his friend, Amar Singh. He came with Amitabh Bachchan but the school talked about him long after Mr Bachchan had left. The reason was that to everyone’s astonishment – and to many people’s delight – he gave the school a donation of ten lakhs. I’m not sure when something similar last happened. Unsolicited gifts are what the board dreams of but only rarely do they materialize.

  Of course, there are those who question Mr Singh’s motives but I think they are being unkind. It doesn’t matter why a man gives money – whether it gives him happiness or publicity. What counts is that those who need it should receive assistance. Today if an additional boy can be given a full scholarship to the Doon School that’s money well spent.

  To his critics the Amar Singh scholarship may be an oxymoron but to the beneficiary it can only be a boon.

  Sunday nights after Founder’s Day are depressing. Each year a pall of gloom descends over the Doon School. The festivities are over, your parents have gone and all that is left is the prospect of Monday morning school. I used to think of them as one of the worst nights of term and I can’t believe the boys don’t feel the same today.

  In fact, what makes matters worse is that your parents always leave affecting an air of cheerfulness. My mother would depart smiling. I’d be close to tears but there wasn’t even a hint of emotion in her voice. I used to think she was happy because she was leaving me behind.

  This year, however, I saw Sunday night from the other side. On a train full of returning parents I realized how hard the wrench can be for them. It was their mobile phones that gave the secret away.

  Normally I disapprove of people who make pointless conversation on trains or planes. They have nothing to say but nonetheless say it ostentatiously. But last Sunday the conversations were a revelation.

  ‘Hello, beta,’ I suddenly heard a voice say out loud. I turned to find my neighbour speaking. From the chord leading to his earpiece I concluded he was talking into his phone. His face was sombre. His eyes were moist. His voice sounded heavy.

  ‘So, son, three days are over and another Founder’s Day is done. It was good to see you, beta.’

  I couldn’t hear what the son said but after a while the father spoke again.

  ‘Hum Saharanpur pahunch gaye hein aur phir kuch ghantoon mein Dilli. Ab chutthi khattam aur kal office jana hei. Achcha nahin lag raha.’

  So does that also mean Mummy’s big smile and cheerful voice were put on?

  22 October 2001

  Chapter 4

  A Bit of a Brown Saheb

  ‘A bit of a brown saheb, eh?’

  Lessons from the Underground

  Its official name is the London Underground but everyone calls it the tube because that’s what it looks
like. But actually, when you see one of the trains emerge out of a tunnel and approach the platform, I’d say a comparison to toothpaste would be more apt! Anyway, that’s what I thought when I saw my first tube at the age of sixteen. I was at Victoria station, having just disembarked from the airport coach, with two enormous boxes on either side. Believe it or not, but the Air India flight from Delhi was two hours early and Kiran, my sister, with whom I had come to stay, was taken completely by surprise.

  ‘Take the coach from Heathrow and then the tube to Bond Street’ were her crisp instructions once she’d recovered from the shock of a brother arriving for a holiday ahead of time. ‘I’ll be at the other end.’

  Bond Street was around the corner from Kiran’s office but for me, new to London and both excited and anxious, it was a name from Monopoly. The mass of people was startling. They all seemed in a hurry but also very businesslike. Whilst the few who were lounging around, with spiky hair and broad bell-bottoms, appeared disconcertingly mod. In my grey flannels and ill-fitting school blazer I knew I looked like the outsider I felt I was.

  It was in the middle of this reverie that the train suddenly appeared. A rumble from the tunnel heralded its imminence. The others recognized the sound and prepared themselves for its arrival. Since I was new and unfamiliar I continued to stare at things uncomprehendingly.