After the chills and
thrills of walking from the railway station towards the new college and an
altogether new life, my father and I arrived at a creaking wrought-iron gate
leading into a long driveway with hedged sidewalks on either side … its sides
trailing a dazzling display of different creepers/shrubs in full bloom … white
and rose-pink, yellow and pale orange, magenta and purple… Oh! As we took a right
turn, a long corridor with high-raised gothic arches on nicely chiseled pillars—a
magnificent old building of massive granite stones came into view. As we
climbed the wooden stairway on the eastern end of the building and took a right
turn leading to the administrative office and the Principal’s chambers … there were
already a few new faces like me—with anxiety writ large on their faces—leaning
on the ornate wrought-iron parapet … perhaps,
waiting for the call from the Principal’s office…
After a while of my joining
the lot, a middle-aged man in dhoti and a short-sleeve shirt came to me and
holding my hand in his palm gently said: “inta
ajagratta itey elaa? Chudu nanna garu
yanta kasta padalisi ochhindo dabbu malla kudurchkovataniki? Ippudina
jagrattaga undandi… (How could you be that careless? See! What a trauma
your father had to face to secure the cash once again! At least be careful from now onwards….”). I
was taken aback by the man’s—Veeraiah, a peon in the college, which, of course,
I could know only after a while—sudden appearance on the scene with that
advice, though he was right. Driven by guilt, I had to drop my head down. A
little later, another man in khaki
knickers and shirt (Rehaman, another peon of the college) came to me and with
all the pity in the world gave me similar advice. That left me in terrible shame. I looked
towards my father and silently pleaded for his pardon. Yah! Of
course, I deserved all that! You know what happened?
The previous day, quite
early in the morning, to be precise at 4 AM, I started for Bapatla for paying the college fee. My father gave me a small wrapper-thin packet saying, “Keep it
safe… it has two hundred rupee notes and five ten rupee notes. Take it out only
while paying the fee at the college. Secure it with a safetypin in the pocket.”
I took the packet and dropped it into my pants’ side pocket and came to the
railway station …. Purchased a ticket with the five rupee note kept in the
front pocket of my shirt and came to Platform No. 1. After a while, the Janata Express from Delhi
to Madras arrived at the platform. It was still dark. Locating the ordinary
compartment, I boarded the train. While sitting on the bench, casually, I put
my palm into the trouser pocket to
ensure that the packet with money was safely tucked within. To my utter shock,
there was no packet. I pushed my palm further down in panic till it touched my
knee. As I pulled out my trouser pocket, I found, to my shock, that it had a
gaping hole as the tailor hadn’t stitched its bottom. Hurriedly, I got down from the train hoping
that the packet containing money must have fallen somewhere at or near our home
and rushed there. The rest, of course, you could guess!
Coming back to the present,
now when the same Veeraiah called out my name loudly, realizing that my turn had
come for the interview with the Principal, I walked in staring at the name
plate—‘Dr B A Naidu, MA, MSc, PhD (Kansas, USA) FBS, Principal’—and as I pushed open the wicket
gate in front of the giant wooden door painted in red varnish, my first day back home in Taluk High School
came to my mind, which momentarily splashed a smile on my tense face… with it
greeting the assemblage in that high-ceilinged chambers boasting a big ceiling fan hanging to a long iron rod circled by white walls with photos of scientists here and there,
I presented my documents to the man wearing a tie, with his coat hanging
behind him on the chair, presumably, the Principal and answered him with
confidence, and finally thanking him elegantly, walked out with a sweet
smile...
Straightaway came to my
father standing leaning on the stonewall and took money from him, and passing
on the documents paid the fee to the clerk sitting with a sturdy steel box with
slots for different notes and happily came out… and thus became the student of 1st
year of Agricultural College, Bapatla. Later that afternoon, leaving me in
Seetaramaiah-garu’s room, my father
left for home. That was way back in July 1962 but still fresh in memory.
I was placed in the ‘C’
batch and the theory classes for ABC batches were held in the gallery in the
main building. Walking to the classes early in the morning through the college garden
amid the fragrance of dew-fresh flower beds, rows of shrubs, and
aromatic-creepers hanging over the wired arches on the walkways … that were
wrapped in an eerily romantic haze… was all a dream come true for the seventeen-
year-old who just came out of the watchful eyes of parents and started living
all by himself…. There was a round green house to the right side of the drive-in—a
quiet hiding place from the gaze of the faculty walking in, to sit and silently
commune with the chirping birds, till at least the electric bell rang from the
distant corridor… mornings were sheer enchantment….
As the classes started, on
the first day, I sat by the side of the third window from the lowest step that
faced the gas tanks surrounded by ornamental palm plants, offering a beautiful
scenario to ruminate on if the lecture was
otherwise boring. It was the third day, and by then, my neighbors in the row—Roy,
Viswanath and a few others—had become a little more familiar, resulting in a
kind of exchanging pleasantries and views mostly about film songs... rock music
…Elvis Presley… and such others. One of them fishing out a mouthorgan stared at
me questioningly—if I would try?—and tempted by the offer, I took it and as all
stood up to greet the English lecturer who was entering the classroom, taking it
as a human wall to hide behind, for the sheer fun of it … blew it at full
throttle … as though to offer a background score for his arrival … and
obviously, surprised by it, the lecturer made a few enquiries and after the
class was over, he somehow centering on me asked to see him in his chambers.
By then it was clear to me
that I had made a mess of myself … but walked into his chambers with
confidence. As he enquired about the incident, I simply admitted to blowing it
but insisted that as the neighbor had shown it to me, out of sheer curiosity I played
it, but not to mock at him. As I was thus arguing confidently with him, his
neighbor, Mr. Ahobilarao, Lecturer in Physics, fired a question in his baritone
voice: “What if it is reported to the Principal?” I was indeed floored by it,
yet not allowing my nervousness visible, simply whispered: “If that is how my
lecturer prefers it, I have nothing else to submit, except to blame my
misfortune.” Laughing at it, as though to say, “Come on Bachhu, I know what really happened and don’t be smart”, the English Lecturer, to my fortune, let me
go, of course, warning me to be more careful for I was no longer in an arts
college but a professional college where my fate in exams would be decided by
the faculty who had a say over almost half of the total marks, not just for one
or two years but all four years. Thanking my stars and heaving a sigh of relief,
I came out of his chambers, but did I heed his sane advice or learn anything
from the whole episode? I wonder!
Today, looking back at
those years—of shuffling between labs, lecture halls, hostel room, basketball court, pavilion and mess in
gay abandon through the corridors/under the long rows of avenue trees of the
campus… often entangling in a row with instructors in the laboratories,
challenging their wit, of course subtly and yet … attracting their ire…sitting
in the gallery (lecture hall) at that seat abating the window all through, for it afforded scope to read good many books such as Radhakrishnan’s Eastern
Religions and western Thought, and of other authors like Alistair MacLean,
Alberto Moravia, Daphne du Maurier, Maugham, Guy De Maupassant, Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, and so on, of course, intermittently
meditating on the green leaves of Palmyra and banana trees around the tanks … at times getting caught as it happened once in the dairy-chemistry class that forced me to sit in the first row in all its subsequent periods... but in the
process paying penalty in terms of scoring marks in practical exams—how stupid
I feel about myself and all those years that have gone by less remuneratively.
I must also say here how… sitting in the same seat I enjoyed the best of the
lecturers like Mr. I V Subbarao, Mr. I S
Rao, Mr. P V Ranga Rao, Mr. I V Reddy, Mr. B S Murthy, Mr. Sankaran and the
like. Indeed I used to look forward to their classes with utmost devotion.
But in all that stupidity one thing was true: acquired my own method in madness that perhaps
led me to cultivate the habit of thinking on the feet creatively and often used
to come up with an altogether different perspective. Many a time, this, of
course, proved to be costly in terms of managing relationships with the hierarchy
on the campus, for I was often perceived as an ‘affront’. Why! this question of
being perceived as an ‘affront’ by the hierarchy haunted me all through… even
in the job-arena posing many a challenge. Of course, it must also be admitted that it
afforded me a status of my own—a blessing in disguise. And then,
am I concerned about these out-comes? Perhaps, not… I think I was indeed, nonchalant about them.
Nonetheless, when I look
back, it is the “gratitude” to all those professors, lecturers, instructors
including that magnanimous English Lecturer and the whole of four years that I
spent under that green canopy of Bapatla Agricultural College which indeed made
me fit enough to face life and its travails that overawe me.
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