Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan

Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator.

She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts of Delhi) to the godman of RSSB.

RSSB had a few hundred acres of land in that area already. They had an empire there, in fact. It is still there stretching on either side of the Mehrauli-Bhatti Mines Road, sharing some borders with reserved forests. Their headquarters is in a place called Beas in Punjab where they have a township of their own. It is a walled town like the old Shahjahanabad where the rules and regulations are given and implemented by the cult. The godman is like an ancient king there. He makes occasional visits to his subjects standing in an open vehicle. Devotees stand on either side of the road to receive his blessings. There are also regular prayer sessions and preaching sessions.

Something similar happens in Bhatti too. Thousands of people gather for the preaching-cum-prayer sessions called Satsang. Their vehicles require a lot of parking space.

RSSB is known for grabbing land wherever they are. Delhi’s major newspapers carried reports in April 2014 on the forest department’s allegation about RSSB’s illegal occupation of 123 acres of forest land in the Asola-Bhatti wildlife sanctuary area. Recently a friend of mine from Himachal Pradesh told me that RSSB is doing the same thing (grabbing land) in his hometown too and the local people are agitated. 

Staff quarters before being bulldozed

It is to this cult that Sawan school was sold in 2013. The sole purpose of whatever they did in their initial days on the campus was to terminate the services of certain staff under various guises such as unwanted post in a school (e.g., barber, carpenter, plumber, electrician, doctor, nurse) or low-quality service (anyone could come under that charge). Now, Sawan was an exclusively residential school. Nearly 500 students and about 100 staff all resided on the campus. Every service required normally by a community was provided on the campus itself. Hence barber, etc. But RSSB had its own ignoble intentions and so the axe was laid to the roots of many services.

Obviously, there was an agitated reaction from the staff. Some protested openly and went to the extent of blocking the car of the new manager (who will appear in the next post titled ‘Queen’) preventing it from going out of the campus. The result was loss of job for more staff who went to the court for justice. Justice in India usually favours the rich and the powerful. “Nobody can win against RSSB,” a doctor whom I consulted in a private hospital because of my depression told me. “Don’t you even dream of challenging them in any way. Save yourself as fast as you can.”

When the new manager (Queen in the next post) appointed by RSSB to kill the school found that the irons in the fire were too many for her to handle, Pranita was brought in.

Pranita was a bulldozer. With a stout and towering physique, she was a formidable personality. She could kill you – well, nearly – with a look. Or with words. Or indirectly by playing devious games that you would understand too late. When she took charge, she called a number of staff meetings and taught the teachers how to teach better. She gave a laptop to each teacher and insisted that lesson plans for each day of the next week should be submitted every Friday in the format she had prescribed. She gave a lot of work to the staff and made Wi-Fi available in school so that the projects could be completed with the help of Google. The teachers had to prepare question papers on their laptops and get them approved by Pranita before they were used in assessments.

I nearly fell in love with Pranita. I mean with her ways of doing things. I thought that Sawan was going to become a world class school. In my heart, I wished Pranita all success. But I was proved wrong too soon.

The RSSB people called some of the office bearers of Sawan’s alumni and explained to them why some staff were being asked to leave the school. Many reasons were given. One of the alumni who attended the meeting was a former student of mine. He told me in confidence that my name was mentioned too in the meeting. The allegation was that I produced poor results in the Board exams. The student knew it was a blatant lie because English results were always the best in the school ever since I joined it. Everyone knew it. I had received many certificates of merit and even a cash award for the remarkable performance of the students in my subject year after year.

I decided to confront Pranita regarding the allegation. With the permission of the alumnus, I asked Pranita why they were raising an obviously false allegation against me. She said she was not part of the meeting but that she would clarify the matter with the authorities concerned. She left the campus immediately and returned a couple of hours later. I was called to her office. “They were analysing the grade eleven marks,” she said. I told her that grade eleven exam was an internal assessment in which I demand a very high standard and hence the scores might remain low. It was a strategy meant to make students strive for higher standards of performance.

What RSSB wanted was not an explanation. They wanted some reasons – fabricated if need be – for terminating the services of the staff. Pranita was playing a big game. Her attempts which I had interpreted as efforts to raise the standards of the school were actually meant to harass the staff in every which way possible.

The tragic truth is that Pranita succeeded too easily. Many staff were packed off. Quite a few quit on their own. Bulldozers marched on to the campus. Staff quarters were the first to be pulled down. Then the hospital. The auditorium. And then the library. Shakespeare and Tagore and others lay like rubbish on the floor outside the demolished library waiting for the scrap-dealer. 

One part of staff quarters in smithereens

Soon I carried two resignation letters to Pranita: Maggie’s and mine. She was thrilled. I discovered a devilish gleam in her eyes. A prayer rose from my heart inadvertently for the extermination of such devils from the face of the earth. I assume she is still running her college for teacher-training which she had founded before entering Sawan campus like a personification of the bulldozer. I hope she will use her genius for better purposes at least there in her own institution.

Note: Even her signature was fake while she exercised certain official powers in Sawan. 

PS. I'm participating in #BlogchatterA2Z 

Previous Posts: A,  B,  C,  D,  E,  F,  G,  H,  I,  J,  K,  L,  M,  N,  O