Gratitude

Kunju, the new addition to my family, is a great teacher too

I didn’t want to be born. By the time I grew up old enough to accept the terrifying and inevitable absurdity of life, I had longed for death too many times. Now I’m old enough to know that gratitude is a great virtue. Where do I begin?

There’s one person who has endured my insanity without complaint. My wife. She loved me and continues to love me in spite of myself. In spite of the maxima and minima of my unpredictable mood swings. She taught me that I was not entirely abominable. Rather she taught me that I was lovable. She mellowed my intrinsic ruthlessness. The process took time. Years. Years of endurance with me. Forbearance, perhaps.

Then there’s a whole society called Shillong that taught me the greatest lesson of my life. St Edmund’s college, its principal, my colleagues there and one student named Nicholas all deserve infinite gratitude from me. They went out of their way to teach me that I was not as great as I thought. They taught me the profound lessons of humility and modesty. And a lot more. They taught me more than I could actually absorb then and hence I fled the place in frustration. Looking back, I know they deserve heartfelt gratitude from me as much for driving me away from Shillong (which eventually took me to the best phase of my life) as for the essential lessons of life they taught me.

Sawan Public School in Delhi was that place, the best phase of my life. Sawan was my paradise on earth. ‘Paradise in Delhi’ is the title of a chapter in my memoir, Autumn Shadows and it refers to Sawan. Sawan was the antithesis of St Edmund’s. If Edmund’s went out of its way to transmute me into a creature of their choices, Sawan went out of its way to accept me as I was, with all my eccentricities and outlandishness. Sawan let people be. I found roots in Sawan campus. It’s quite a different matter that another religious group like the Edmund’s people invaded Sawan too – soon after Mr Modi became the supreme pontiff of the nation – and pulled out the roots of the very school mercilessly. Religion is a monstrous bulldozer that creeps into everywhere.

I shall not digress, however. This is for the latest Indispire invitation: “It’s the month of gratitude. Share three things you are grateful for. #gratitudemonth”