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Torch Bearer Torch Bearer In 1970 I was in class X. So were millions of boys and girls all over the world – so I guess I shouldn’t boast. Anyway . . . The time between the end of the monsoons and the onset of winter is an idyllic time of year in Darjeeling. The red sun rises rapturously over the dark eastern ranges of the daunting Himalayas, briefly tinting the snows deep orange, then crimson and then pink, before turning them all dazzling white. Later in winter – after long, dry spells – airborne dust refracts the rays of the rising sun, lavishing the beholder with a lingering, silent spectacle of matchless iridescence. On balmy, beautiful mornings butterflies flit from flower to blooming flower. Fluffy, white clouds float carelessly across the clear sky till they disintegrate against the majestic Kanchenjunga range. In the evenings, moths with huge wingspans flap their way up from the Rangit valley under cover of dusk – like shadows shifting strobe-like before they are gone up the hill. Down below – on hard, dry ground – hormones rage all over senior-school Mount Hermon. Fencing [couples leaning up against the old school fences talking & gazing into each others’ eyes] flourishes. Who has time to notice nature’s glorious tapestry? Two months to GHD – Final Exams looming – Sports Day nearing – Special Dinners – impending partings – GHD songs – cheering and, for those leaving for the last time as students, imminent tears. Where does Nature figure in all this? You get the picture. I could have stopped after that first sentence – 'an idyllic time of year' – and you would have understood perfectly. But I wouldn’t have got to use all that ‘vocab’ that I picked up subliminally during all those years of “Library Reading”. Did it ever strike you that Library Reading was always the last thirty minutes of night study? That dinner that you had to eat because you didn’t want to starve; that dinner you really want to forget; is settling heavily in your stomach and already putting you to sleep. Your resistance is low but you have to open that book and read. And every boring line sinks deep into your subconscious only to rise to the surface thirty years later when you’re unsuspectingly writing an anecdote in your journals. So – it was that dry season after the monsoons. After night study I went down to Fern Hill and walked into our class X dorm – only to be assaulted by thousands of tiny little night flies. They hovered brainlessly around every light they could find. They got into your face if you were more than five feet tall. By class X most of us were five feet tall – not counting a few of us who never made it past the dizzying five-foot barrier!!! No offence to the shorter people. I really love all of you a lot. Seriously. And you’re in good company – Gavaskar, Tendulkar, Roberto Carlos, Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great – need I say more? The worst part, however, was when we turned the lights out at 9pm. The insects had no idea what they should do once the lights went off. They were totally disoriented. If you were in bed – insects with serious withdrawal crises bombarded you. Most of us covered our heads when we went to bed. Only – it wasn’t quite cold enough to be sleeping with your head covered. What a pain – after that horrible dinner – that horrible thirty minutes of Library reading – now this! Give me a break! Who could put up with that? Who could blame us for trying to find a way out? Who wouldn’t understand our rejoicing – and even join in with us – if we found a way out of this, the last straw of all the burdens we had to bear in class X? Could there be such an unreasonable person? Could anyone be as unreasonable and insensitive as not to celebrate with us? Well . . . One fine night we had had enough of the onslaught and decided that it was time to take charge of the situation. One of our evil geniuses – we had a few in our class – had this brainwave. It must have been one of those final sparks before the darkness of sleep takes over. I volunteered to be the ‘messenger’. We looked around for the most powerful torch in the dorm and then I stood in the middle of the dorm floor – facing the door. In those days – the class IX dorm was on the ground floor and the Class X & XI dorms were upstairs. We didn’t have class XII in those days. We didn’t need class XII. Eleven years was enough for us. After our time – something happened and students needed twelve years to complete what we managed in eleven. Just kidding!!!!!! The knowledge base has grown. There is more history – about thirty more years of it since I did ISC. Science and technology have progressed more in the thirty years since I left school than in all history. I can’t take credit personally – but my generation, after all . . . Ok! Ok! Enough. A story is waiting to be told! So . . . where was I? Oh yes . . . messenger . . . powerful torch . . . As usual, Darru [one of our wardens & our much-respected and venerated Physics teacher, Mr. Jim Darr] came in at 9pm, beaming from ear to ear. 'Lights out!!' he said in his usual almost-laughing tone, his eyes sparkling. We waited till he had left and gone across to the Class XI dorm. 'Lights out', we heard him say down the corridor in the class XI dorm – an echo of his announcement in our dorm. We gave it a few minutes – a little less than the length of time it took for the little bugs to start hitting our faces. I took a position in the middle of the dorm. Over my head was a towel – my ‘disguise’. I stood there with the torch and the ends of the towel in my hands. With the towel covering all of my face except my eyes, I pointed the torch to the ceiling and turned it on. In less than a minute there was a living pillar of the flying insects hovering desperately in the narrow beam of light, vying for the spotlight. Slowly, so as not to lose any of my ‘following’, I started the voyage to the Class XI dorm. All the lights were out: downstairs in the Class IX dorm; in the rooms on both sides of the passage between the class X & class XI dorms and in the other rooms downstairs. Occasional conversations punctuated the gradually descending silence in Fern Hill. Treading lightly, feeling very much like a thief in the night, I walked slowly till I reached just outside the class XI dorm. Taking a deep breath, I raised the torch with one hand so that it was on top of my head and not lighting up any part of my face. With my other hand I held the towel in place across my face – much like a bedouin in a sandstorm. I prayed for invisibility for my face. I was one of the smallest guys in class ten. Heck – I was one of the smallest guys in the whole of Fern Hill! I didn’t want the class XI guys knowing who to catch. Some of those guys were HUGE! And muscles . . . you had to see those guys work out pumping iron every evening between 8pm & 9pm to know why I was scared of consequences. Step by step I walked into the dorm. There were still a couple of conversations going on, one to the left of me as I entered the dorm and the other one in the far right [north-east] corner. About seven steps into the dorm came the first, tentative, challenge. 'Eh!' a voice said in the dark. One of the conversations had come to a stop. I just kept walking, slowly, the laughter very close to exploding in me, trying my best to contain it. 'Eh – who’s that ya?' Another voice this time – and a stronger challenge. By this time the other conversations had stopped and I could feel about fifteen pairs of eyes following the beam of the torch with every step I took. I could hear their brains as they wondered what was going on and the penny started to drop. The thought, “empty vessels make the most noise” ran through my mind at that most inopportune moment and took me even closer to laughter. When I had reached deep into the dorm, I switched off the torch. Then I turned and ran as fast as I could back to my dorm. By the time I got to the exit of the class XI dorm, I could contain my laughter no longer. It burst forth first as a loud snort, then a series of louder snorts and, finally, the full-blown version – also known as ‘the guffaw’. I imagine my dorm-mates heard ‘the guffaws’ approaching at a rapid rate of knots – and heard them all the way into the dorm till I dived onto my bed from a distance and disappeared under the covers. Thereafter they heard the sound of my guffaws muffled by the two standard-issue Fern-Hill pillows in which my face was buried! 'Eh, Talay', [that was my nickname], 'what happened?' someone asked. For a reply, they got more snorting and guffaws. The counter-attack was slow in coming – because of the nature of the war that was being waged, I presume! We heard them coming down the corridor before we saw them. I wish I could say that one of us jumped out of bed and bolted the door to our dorm, thus barricading ourselves, at least for the night, against retribution. It would have been a masterstroke! I can imagine them standing outside our dorm knocking on the door while we all snored loudly to let them know we were fast asleep!!! Alas – I cannot, with any honesty, say that any of us had the presence of mind to take that bold step. We lay ‘innocently’ in our beds as a group of class XI guys walked slowly into the dorm with a torch in their hands. They walked into the middle of the dorm and turned off the torch. 'You guys better watch out ya! Don’t try bringing them back again.' I don’t know if anyone was scared or anything. I know I couldn’t control a couple more snorts and chuckles. There were several fake snores from various corners of the dorm. I think if Yak, Kong King, Jayang, Varanond & Prasobchok had come in; there would have been silence. But I also think that if those guys had been in the class XI dorm – I probably would not have tried this stunt. They were in the prefects’ rooms, however, leaving only the non-prefects in the dorm. As a result, there was more ‘snoring’ and chuckling. 'It’s not funny - huh! Just watch it.' After a few seconds, during which they stood around to ensure that their warning was being treated with respect, they left. That night we had all the class X insects AND all the class XI insects bombarding us. But we went to sleep a lot happier than the affronted class XI guys. They had established their seniority – but we went to sleep with laughter and the memories of our fake snores heralding us into the land of dreams. In fact - we all woke up with smiles on our faces the next morning. . . . Ok - ok baba! That's an exaggeration! Happy? By : ROBIN SENGUPTA Graduated : Date : 21/2/2003 5:28 |
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