Sometimes he thinks about it to himself, but he is unable to find a satisfying answer that way. Are these images the result of things he’s overheard, or products of his own memory, or has he, by thinking about them over and over again, convinced himself through some self-hypnotizing force that he’s actually seen these events, really had these experiences?
The question remains a question and will remain a question. But those images and those scenes are real for him, he can still feel them today . . .
Small hands filled with a tender warmth . . . eyes, swimming in an ocean, filled with adoration, like dark stars . . . breasts . . . a gentle, soft, warm glow on the tip of the nose . . . the course of a long breath on which he slowly rises and falls, like something rising and falling, floating on the waves of the ocean . . . What are all of these? Stories? Memories? Or self-deceiving desires which contain no truth?
*
There are so many of these sorts of memories or half memories, but it’s strange that he remembers his impressions of the first few events of his life well; they are depictions of the three great drives that govern every human being—pride, fear and sex.1
Why? The rapid development of these three drives, their presence in the earliest memories of life, demonstrates how significant they are, that human beings acquire them at the same time as their humanity, not from future circumstances or actions . . .
It’s difficult to determine which of these memories came first and which later because they are of roughly the same time, and so it’s best to treat them as if they are like two screens in the same memory theatre, because together they reveal something . . .
His naming ceremony has already happened.2 He’s already witnessed the sacrificial fire with his wide eyes, and his innocent ears have already heard the mantras someone whispered into them. He’s about three years old, but his unalloyed, overconfident ego is greater than the one Napoleon would have had had he remained undefeated for 1,00,000 years!
He’s begun to think of himself as a responsible child and he’s always serious, so his elders treat him with respect and he’s earned a reputation for being quite mature. He’s often given chores to do which he does with a cheerful pride. He’s even been sent out today on an errand—his brother is ill, so he’s been told to go and fetch the doctor. And that’s the reason why he’s come so far from his home to the street in front of the doctor’s house.
But his feeling of responsibility only lasts as long as he has been entrusted with some important task. He doesn’t think that he is obligated to complete the task. Often he forgets to do the work he’s been entrusted with in his excitement—like today. He’s come this far, but he’s no longer a dutiful messenger. He has turned back into a child, and the laughter begins to rise inside him and calls him out to play in a voice that no self-respecting child (and what child isn’t self-respecting?) could refuse . . .
The round, red letter box3 that sits facing the street has captured the boy’s imagination. Somehow, he’s climbed on top of it, straddling it as if he were riding on the back of a horse, and he’s swinging back and forth with one hand on the stump at the top as if he’s holding on to the reins. The other hand is patting the neck of the ‘horse’ like he has seen his father do . . .
He’s the emperor. He’s sitting on his victorious horse and challenging the world. Whenever a pedestrian passes near him, he scowls and yells at them and says whatever comes to his head. He’s an emperor in his imagination but to the pedestrians he’s merely a rude child, which is why no one says anything to him, no one gets offended. They just look at him and walk on.
In his world, he’s as tall as the letter box. From his throne he can look on at the entire world and laugh at it insignificance.
That’s when the postman—an insignificant postman from an insignificant world!—comes and destroys his dream, tells him to get down from there, and when he doesn’t immediately obey, gets angry and says it again. That’s when the crestfallen child-emperor takes his revenge—he jumps down, lands directly on the postman’s toes, grinds them with his heel and then runs away, stopping for breath only when he gets home, and after catching his breath, he convinces himself that he really has won.
And then the sudden slap from his father reminds him that he is a small, dependent child who had been sent to get the doctor and who has come back home without him, wasting a full hour in the process.
The second memory. He is wandering through a museum by himself, in the gallery where the wild and savage animals are on display. Suddenly he’s face-to-face with a terrifying lion. One paw raised to strike . . . frightening teeth . . . that tongue . . . those bloodshot eyes . . . and he screams, overtaken with fear, and he runs.
The child does not realize that the lion is filled with straw. He runs. It feels as if the lion is chasing him, will catch him any second. He does not even turn around to look because he never wants to see those teeth, that tongue and those eyes again.
And he’s by himself. There’s no one around to ward away his fear. Somehow he manages to get outside and then continues running on the street. A peon recognizes him and grabs him, lifts him in his arms, and realizing that he is unable to run, the boy lets out a panicked wail as if the lion is about to get him!
But it doesn’t get him. It doesn’t for a long time. Then the boy nervously turns around and, when he sees that the lion isn’t following him, breathes a sigh of relief.
The fear was suppressed for now, but it found a new home in the child’s imagination. Ever since that day, he had begun having terrible nightmares. He would wake up in the middle of the night screaming. And if he woke up and saw that the room was dark, then the darkness would come alive for him with not one, but innumerable lions. Ever since that day, the lights in his room stayed on all night long, but no one had any idea what had happened to him, why he was having nightmares or why he was becoming so thin and irritable . . .
The fear went away by itself. One day, a similar lion was brought home. After much trepidation and watching his brothers do it first, he went up to the lion and sat on its back. And when he discovered that it was lifeless, he screwed up his courage and tried to see what would happen when he put his hand in its mouth. That’s when the fear suddenly vanished, that’s when the child picked up a knife and tore through the skin, scattered the grass and straw that was filled inside and began to laugh . . .
This had another serious consequence. The child learned that fear comes from being afraid. All of the scary things in the world are merely lifeless hides filled with grass and straw and it’s folly to be afraid of them.
It’s a lesson that he’s kept with him ever since. He still believes that whenever one sees something frightening, one shouldn’t be afraid, one should cut through its hide and remove the grass stuffing inside and scatter it about, and then laugh. It has made him overconfident, some say destructive and cruel, but he knows . . .
He was punished for cutting through that hide. And afterwards, on several other occasions, he was punished for destroying these artificial fears, because society cannot exist without fear. Today, too, he is in prison for the crime of proving the hollowness of one such exaggerated, terrifying fear, and he’s awaiting his punishment. Because he has laid siege to the world’s biggest fear—the fear of the law—his crime calls out for the worst punishment . . .
But he laughs because he’s already tasted victory . . .
And a third memory . . .
It’s vulgar and revolting. Its exact shape and its root cause are not things that I remember. All I remember is his state of mind, his feelings while he was standing there.
I—that child—am observing a scene. I don’t remember what, but I do remember that it is something inappropriate, something forbidden, something repulsive, something vile and that these are the apposite feelings that enter his mind while watching it.
It is inappropriate. Only those who have turned back after having been tempted by lust to the very shores of sin can understand—they turned bac
k not because of some external prohibition or law or their own inability or fear but because of an internal, self-generated guilt . . .
And they are the only ones who live life. It’s easy to follow the customary path, and the world praises those who live according to custom. But there is no reason that life should be easy or inspire respect. Life is greater than that; it’s not bound by custom and it flies higher than the desire for fame . . .
Life truly belongs to those who don’t follow the rules but understand the basic impulse behind the rules and create rules for themselves accordingly . . .
Love has made man a man!
Fear turned him into a social being!
And pride assembled him into a nation!
*
The world thinks that education is its highest obligation, but only the kind of education it desires, not the one that the student wants. And that’s because society’s ‘respectable man’ is not a man at all, he’s a ‘type’,4 and society wants to beat and pummel every individual from the start, to grind down his personality and turn him into a replica of that type, to destroy his inherent make-up and make him a mere facsimile . . .
How is such an education provided? The poor are beaten and pummelled from childhood, not just in their homes, not just in the streets, but everywhere and by everyone. The entire world becomes a schoolhouse for them where they are given their education with dry heartlessness. Since those who are better off are not educated in these abrupt ways, their education begins at home or at school, and their real-world education is deferred for as long as possible.
To make iron chains, iron is first melted in a furnace and then immediately poured into moulds. But to make a chain of gold, the gold is first softened and then stretched into a fine wire and then rounded and cut, after which it can be worked upon. In the end, it’s polished, and that’s when it’s done. These are the differences between the educations of poor and rich children.
Shall we call this fortune or misfortune? He was born in a well-to-do family, and accordingly he was educated at a convent5 school.
A cluster of boys and girls in a tiny little garden surrounded by the vine-covered walls of a European convent school.
On one side of the cluster stands a nun—the cluster’s teacher. Her face is full of affection, her hair is silvering and her eyes shine with a sort of amusement. She also has a childish lisp, but this only happens when she tries to speak Hindi.
The cluster is planted in the centre of the garden and the boys and girls are playing very seriously. A boy stands in the middle, holding a wooden mallet, and in front of him is an anvil made out of wood, too! The other boys and girls have formed a ring around him. The boy is pretending to be an ironsmith, and each time he brings the mallet down on the anvil, the boys and girls sing out in unison, ‘Hit it! Hit it! The iron wants the mallet!’ And the ring circles around . . .
The nun is quite pleased since the children seem so taken by this game. Their faces are serious, sure, but that may be the result of her presence. If she were to leave, they would be less restrained and happier. She thinks this to herself and quietly leaves the garden.
Quietly, but not so quietly that the children don’t notice. As soon as she left, all of them realized that they were free. And they immediately began taking advantage of their freedom. It took less than a minute for two boys to start arguing, and then fighting, and the others quickly took sides. The battle went on for about ten minutes, and then suddenly peace descended. Because the door had opened and the nun had returned. And now her face no longer had an affectionate expression nor did her eyes sparkle playfully.
Students were not beaten in that convent school.
That day, Shekhar was returning home at approximately 4 p.m. Slowly, engrossed in some thought. A typewritten card had been attached to a button of his jacket. He couldn’t read what was written on it but he could guess because the Sister had told him to be sure to show it to his father and bring back a response, and then she added, ‘You’ve been very wicked.’
He was as serious as he was because he was trying to come to a decision. He had certainly been ‘wicked’ in the nun’s words, but that was no reason for him to be sent home to be beaten. His sense of fairness spoke to him, ‘I’ve beaten up others, been beaten up myself. Why should I be punished again at home?’
He came to a decision. He took off the card and tore it to shreds. Threw it away. When he got home he told his father, ‘I now want to go to a boys’ school. I’m grown up now. I won’t go back to that convent school to learn with girls.’ His father laughed and said, ‘Good.’ He kept thinking of the nun’s playful eyes, eyes that would be waiting for him and for a reply to her card. That thought made him giddy. He began shouting at the top of his lungs, ‘Let her wait! I’m going to school—to school!’
But he didn’t go directly to school.
Described earlier: the process by which gold is slowly softened and not immediately cast in a mould. When Shekhar left the convent school, his parents were thinking of other arrangements for his education. And until that had been found, he had his freedom . . .
When a child is getting ‘educated’ he rebels, but when the rebel is left alone his natural curiosity gets the better of him. Whenever his older brother sat with his teacher to study, Shekhar would go and stand next to the table because no one ever prevented him from standing there. He was so short that he couldn’t reach the top of the table, so he would stand on his toes and hold on to the corner of the table and use it as a support to listen in. His brother and his teacher would laugh, but they didn’t say anything to him. They didn’t pay him any attention.
Several days passed in the same manner. One day, Father came to see how his brothers’ studies were going. He saw them learning Panini’s Sanskrit Grammar and said, ‘Recite today’s lesson for me. Do you remember it?’ His brothers started off well enough, but they forgot it halfway through, got nervous and stopped. Father laughed affectionately and said, ‘Study, study, pay attention and study hard’ and got up to go. That’s when he said, in a voice bubbling over with eagerness, trembling from excitement, ‘I’ll recite it.’
Everyone laughed, but Father smiled with what appeared to be bemused consent when he looked at him.
It didn’t last long. Soon all of their faces wore awestruck expressions. That young child had perfectly recited not only the day’s lesson but the lessons from the day before and the day before that and a day from quite a while back. Without pausing for even a second!
His father was overjoyed and said, as if he were rewarding him, ‘Starting tomorrow, you’ll also get lessons. We’ll get another teacher just for you.’
Some reward!
Yes, so the next day his new teacher arrived. But he really only arrived since he didn’t stay for very long. A mere three or four days after they started, the teacher found his student holding on to the back of a chair and banging his head against it like a thunderbolt, over and over. The teacher asked, ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m toughening myself up,’ he said and went back to what he was doing.
The teacher didn’t surmise that the child had possibly heard someone say something like that before, like ‘He turned out to be tough’, and hearing a note of praise in the utterance, he had decided that he wanted to be tough, too. The teacher laughed and said, ‘Let’s see how tough you are! Will you butt heads with me?’
A summons? He said, ‘Let’s go.’
They only butted heads once. When the boy readied himself to butt heads again, he saw that the teacher was no longer amused. He had his hand on his forehead as if he needed help standing, and then he got up and left.
And he never came back. Because every teacher knows that education is possible only so long as a teacher still intimidates a student.
A few days later another teacher arrived from Lucknow. Every part of his body announced that it was from Lucknow. He sat down to teach with paan in his mouth, and when the child started taking dictation, he repeatedly
spat on the ground and ruined the boy’s concentration.
Impudently, the boy said, ‘Teacher, are you planning on teaching or merely spitting all day?’
The teacher lodged a complaint with his father. Father scolded the child, ‘Why are you always getting into trouble? Do you want to learn or not?’
The boy responded in the same tone as before, ‘How am I supposed to learn? Is this teaching? All the teacher does is spit.’
Father felt that the child had a point. But he wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to in this manner by a child. Angrily, he said, ‘Don’t talk nonsense. Go and study. And if I hear one more complaint about you . . .’
The child went away. He felt as if there were no justice in the world. But he also wasn’t ready to suffer injustice. He hung his head while he went back to the study room, but when he got there and saw his teacher, he said audaciously and haughtily, ‘Spitting-teacher!’
Shocked, the teacher said, ‘What?’
‘Spitting-teacher! Spitting-teacher! Spitting-teacher!’ The child went on repeating it over and over as if he were banging on something with a hammer.
That was all the studying that happened that day—at least in front of the teacher. When the teacher left, they locked him in that room, without his dinner, and made him promise never to do it again.
But no. The child was exhausted and went to sleep. He stayed there until the next day when it was once more time to study and when he was brought before the teacher, he started again, ‘Spitting-teacher! Spitting-teacher! Spitting—’
He was taken away and given a different kind of education, but the teacher never returned.
This was how the first act of his education ended.
After this, his sister started teaching him. But she had a different technique altogether. And the child discovered that education could be worthwhile. And a student could also be worthy. He began worshipping his sister, and began to learn, without anyone’s knowledge . . .
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