I wonder why ……………………………….. I

Perplexing questions I have sometimes wondered about .............. on Sundays and holidays only, of course! In a series to appear on these pages as and when I give them voice!! Or keys on the keyboard!!!!

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People who take themselves and their work far too seriously have been the object of my interest from an early age : I remember a neighbor who believed (very, very wrongly) that his adolescent son was God’s gift to Mankind and to his better half as well! Nothing the brat ever did, acquired, made, studied, managed or won was wrong / bad / fair to middling! No, it just had to be “first-class”! Spoken in Marathi, these two words attained a sonorous status their plebian English counterparts could hardly imagine! So, as we all plodded through life taking it one day at a time, Sudhir (the brat’s moniker) breezed through all life’s activities with only one label for all results : “first class”!

This meant that Sudhir’s academics were covered with a patina of Oxon-worthiness, for back in the days of yore, a “first class” (over 60%) in standards 8, 9, 10, and 11 (yes Portia, they did have 11 classes back then for the school to extract it’s legitimate pound of flesh!)! was a sure-fire indicator for even greater academic excellence to come! He was destined for Higher Things, we were told breathlessly by his doting Paterfamilias.

Everything rolled along swimmingly well, on all four motors, so to speak! Sudhir worked for his S.S.C. examinations like an Olympian athlete would to take part in a school 100 mts. trot! He oozed self-confidence and declared he had finished revising “several times over before the Christmas holidays”! His notes, scribblings and random jottings were prized by duffers in the class whose anxious parents ingratiated themselves to Sudhir père by all means possible! Several weeks before the dreaded examinations dawned, it was all but over, or so it seemed, for this prize student of Jangli Maharaj Road! He, I am sure, could taste success long before the examination papers had been set, misspelt and printed!

Nature, she who had generously poured of Her best into the mould that was strictly single-use, decided to play a trick on Her own creation! The day before the examinations (it was a Sunday, for all self-respecting academic institutions started exams on a Monday so they finished properly on the weekend) Sudhir woke up scratching several pustules on his confident countenance and ram-rod back! Chickenpox, was the verdict delivered with serious concern by a doctor who was hastily summoned to treat his famous patient! And then the cruel axe fell like the guillotine used to in Paris : no examinations for Sudhir that year for fear of infecting the other, not-so-bright particles of the working classes!

Rarely has so much pain been inflicted by one single individual on an entire neighbourhood! Single-handedly, Sudhir’s father recounted the sorry state of affairs to anyone who happened to be within a mile of the quarantined residence! He raved, he ranted, he cursed family dieties and their entire entourages with impunity, such was his rage at being cheated out of “first-class” success, vicarious as it may be!

And from that day to this, I have asked myself the following question : “In the grand scheme of things, in the Lord’s creation, wherein the Music of the Spheres gave so much pleasure to our ancestors, did Sudhir’s performance (or non-performance that unfortunate year of the Chickenpox) at the S.S.C. exam really matter that much?”