Sasi Tharoor, the complicated man

The year was 1990 and we were in our Second year of MA in English literature. In one of the most frivolous classrooms ever in that college or in the history of English literature, we were a happy-go-lucky bunch of 20-year-olds ready to burst into life. Our teachers were a spirited set of human beings who were hell-bent on sensitizing us, as we swished and swerved through the mundane tales from Geffrey Chaucer to William Shakespeare to Kamala Das.

Our contempt for these masters was so fierce that we named the animals in the College Zoology Zoo after some of them. The slow, calculating, ugly, slimy python was very passionately named Alexander Pope, for troubling us the most with his unconquerable language.

I fell in love with the language English quite early, and my parents thought that someday I would become a very efficient Government Administrator or an illustrious teacher. Luckily, for the masses, I didn’t become either. In many ways, my journey to a graduate and postgraduate class in the subject was a well-designed one, though I sadly realized later, that speaking the language, scribbling ineligible lines with it, writing love notes for friends etc., were the best I could do with it! Watching my peers in the classroom who took down notes diligently and listened to the lectures with ardent intent, I saw in myself, a small child looking into a labyrinth, where these innocent people were so entrenched in.

I wanted to prove a point to myself. I decided it was time that I made a name for myself within this territory before my classmates exposed me for being so stupid. So I waited for that moment. My moment of glory would someday be mine and I will revel in its aftermath, my beatification as a Nobel laureate. I knew I had to grab it when it happened. Every day I looked around and saw these faces and frowned at their happiness. How dare they be so happy gobbling up what those old raw nuts created centuries ago? I didn’t see what was there, except that I enjoyed the smell of books in our PG Library, which had a Librarian who looked like a sad John Donne with the demeanour of Captain Jack Sparrow.

I had no clue that my day would be remembered for so long in such fervour!

It was the last hour on a Friday. Unlike other classes, the PG students never had any of the democratic rights that other junior students enjoyed. We were prisoners of our thick specs, large books, dirty jeans and intellectual looks with a perpetual snobbish grim to match. Our classes were inside a fortress within the college with a separate entry and exit to it. As we eagerly waited for the last lecture, someone mentioned about ice cream. Our classroom was generously overpopulated by women more than men and more than often, our existing democratic rights were further decreased, thanks to these numbers. If we had a #metoo campaign those days, it would be us, the male students, who would be raising our hands for the restrictions imposed on us by our feminine friends around.

We waited for 10 minutes and nothing happened. The distinguished Professor who enchanted us with his boring cacophony of Shakespeare was yet to arrive. After another five more minutes, we decided to give ourselves a taste of liberty from the torture of this gentleman whose tummy reminded us of the Labour ward in the District Hospital.

So we looked at each other in apprehension. The most distinguished of the studious nodded, very ably and eagerly supported by yours truly. Soon everyone got up with their bags. We hurriedly left through the PG exit and an ice cream session later, went to our respective homes.

Come Monday morning, we were fresh as daisies and lovelier like the roses in the garden or whatever has been described by the Poets who scolded us from the reminiscence that stared from the shelves. I was scared but my ego didn’t agree with it. So I cut up a face that looked like Shelly watching the ebbing waves of the River Thames. We waited for hours and no teacher appeared. The first hour had passed with each of us narrating how we spent the two days doing things we enjoyed and celebrated. The second hour passed with a bit of anxiety stepping in. No sign of any teacher yet.

We elected the most studious, thick-spectacled fellow from our class and deputed him to walk over to the English Department to see what was happening.

He looked badly battered and bruised when he returned a few minutes later. We wondered whether he was gang raped on his way. What he suffered was even worse. The teachers had decided to boycott our class. The verdict was without any trial and the accused stood there shivering. We cursed the ice cream and ourselves for not having waited for a few minutes that bloody Friday. My friend, a soon-to-be priest, was about to open his mouth for a sermon on how to remain virtuous at all times while conveniently forgetting that he had also eagerly mouthed the Faluda, which he didn’t even pay for.

The verdict was handed out. We had to tender an unconditional apology.

We heaved a sigh of relief. The thought of having to tell the episode in detail to our parents who would gladly send us to guillotine without any remorse, was even more unbearable. So we looked at each other. Suddenly I saw them looking at me as if I was the father of English Literature! A little while ago I was an imbecile, a dunce, a blockhead to all of them. I revelled in that moment. This was it.

So I took up my fountain pen. I relished that moment. I have finally arrived. I am going to unleash every bit of my vocabulary that I have hitherto hidden in my tame, timid nature. I told myself that I was going to use it like a Damocles sword. I, the chosen one, therefore set out on my lonely journey of grabbing the generous supply of white paper and pouring my heart into it as if I were writing the constitution of a new country. In the end, like a triumphant soldier, who has just returned from a successful siege, I handed over the draft, the Magna Carta of our victory, not submission, to my peers.

Some of them winked at me while some looked at me with a newfound respect. My eyes welled with pride and my ears couldn’t hear the great sounds of appreciation I heard from those voices as I ran to hand it over to the Head of the Department.

He didn’t smile when he received the Letter of apology. He opened it and my heart started beating, bettering the beats of Beat It by Micheal Jackson. I could see his face contorting into a frown when he flipped the first page and moved to the second. The frown became a blissful mockery as his eyes caressed the second page. And he sat down on his chair with a thud. I stood there like a Victorious General, the leader of the pack for having outwitted our arch-rivals, having made Machiavelli proud of my achievement.

“Did you write this?”, the huge Professor had stood up, towering a few feet over me. He didn’t look this tall before, I told myself.

I said, “Yes Sir”. It was me.

“Nobody from your class helped you?” I am sure he was astonished at my grip over words and the flourish of language that flowed out of my pen.

“No Sir, no one!” I wanted to celebrate this moment. This is what I waited for. With bated breath, I waited for him to turn to his colleagues and proclaim me as the next Master.

“You are suspended from the class, till you bring your parents to meet me!”

I am not too sure I heard the words fully. All I remember is my head hung in shame and my legs wobbling when I walked to the Bus stop. Two days later when my Dad, a lawyer, who had to produce his best-arguing skills, and after having managed to convince my Professor that I am a harmless thick head and nothing more, I was permitted entry into my classroom. My fellows in crime didn’t even look at me and continued to drown their attention in those mundane textbooks in front of them.

“Language is a medium of communication which expresses what you want the other person to receive in the way you want him to receive and in the way he would be able to receive”, My Professor’s high decibel voice loomed over me as I sat there, lonely.

How I wish Dr Sasi Tharoor was in my class!