A Spring Moonshine

Lovely response kaniths. If you have looked at my replies to other commentators, you will doubtlessly realize that around the time the incident occurred, I was not yet a teacher prowling about in search of good students. I was myself a student wondering what to do with my own education. So the feeling of losing a good student was simply not present. I see it quite differently today of course. But it is too late now to rectify matters.

Best wishes to you for successful career. It was fun to know that you were born on Teachers' Day. I receive greetings on Teachers' Day once in a while. And I always forget the date!!

oj

 

Dear Sabita,

This was a heart warming response.

I have to admit frankly that the feeling I probably extracted from readers is paradoxical. This is so because I felt nothing at all when the event occurred. So, there was no question of a committed teacher being robbed of a willing student. Yet the feeling did surface decades later. It is funny in a way. For it reminds me of a joke. Apparently someone had tried to tickle a rhino. But the rhino felt nothing through the hard thickness of its skin. Yet, the tickle kept moving inside it slowly till after a day or two the rhino actually began to giggle.

Same case here I suppose. However, as I told Kamla, on a different plane it has affected me the way some may believe I am affected. I suddenly realized that Tagore had written a short story with almost the same message. It described exactly the same paradox I wrote about. I was delighted by my discovery, needless to say. And I felt that this is probably the best snippet that I have penned so far. I think for once I have come out of the confines of logical discourses and spoken right out of my heart.

Best wishes.

oj-da

 

Thank you Pavithra. I am happy to know that it is my writing that got us acquainted. I love writing whenever I find the time. I think I enjoy writing more now than I enjoy(ed) teaching. Unfortunately, I don't get enough time follow up my hobby.

Best regards.

oj

 

Yes BeatClub,

I too hope she rose high and fulfilled her ambitions. There is no way I can discover the truth though. But whenever I pass that way, I can't help asking myself. To tell the truth, it's best that things remain this way. If I knew everything that happened, my snippet would be quite uninteresting to read!!

Regards.

oj

 

You are right jskls. It brings great pleasure to impart knowledge to the uninitiated. I may have been lucky to have witnessed at a rather young age a student's eagerness to learn. But I felt the true import of it decades later. It's nostalgia for sure. Nostalgia that sends a hint of a tragedy from the distant past. Life affords to all of us an opportunity to choose out of many available roads ahead. Only, at the point of time the decision is taken, no one knows where the roads lead. Neither the girl knew, nor did I, where each of us would land 50 plus years on. That's life. Partly turbulent, partly peaceful and mostly uncertain.

Regards.

oj

 

Sorry Aria. I didn't notice your comment because I was roaming elsewhere. Anyway, the way you ended your comment caught my attention. But it reminded me of what I have read about Tsunamis. How the tidal waves take route way down somewhere below the sea bed. It could have been that way and that's about the same thing as the rhino joke.

Are you an economist by the way? I ask this question because "ceteris paribus" is one of those expressions students of economics begin and end their lives with. Not that it doesn't have relevance elsewhere. But in sciences like physics, you can actually create a ceteris paribus environment to measure natural forces in action. Such as measuring gravity. Economists have to imagine that the rest of the world is watching in silence, when in fact it is not. Funny, isn't it?

This was wonderfully expressed and woefully difficult to respond to. The question is hypothetical. It could have harvested the same decision, it need not have. How should I know? All I know is that I didn't feel at the time what I feel (or probably others) feel now. This is why I ended the tale without a moral. As Cheeniya noted and I had said:

In fact, like Oscar Wilde, I don't believe in morals at all, especially when art is concerned.

I want to feel like an artist, not like a person who is trying to figure out the most accurate measure of gravity. I was quite amazed when I recognized a connection, however tenuous, between what I wrote and the way Tagore finishes his short story The Post Master. Here is the quote from the Gutenberg translation:

I don't know if you are satisfied with my response to questions. No one ever knows in any case.

oj

 

Sorry Balajee for the delay in responding. You have a way of looking at the thing that is so different from others' points of view. And I think you are right. Everyone is a moral coward. Only, my case was worse. I didn't care at all for the girl. Nor did I feel the guilt. I cared, or thought I cared, when there was no point in caring anymore!! I guess that's Life.

oj