If I think about it carefully, my own character doesn't seem to have been inspired by those great and magnificent people we learned about in school. Gandhi, for example, featured prominently in all my moral science classes but all I could make out was that he was someone who ate meat, felt guilty about it, confessed to his mother and never ate meat again. As a vegetarian myself, I felt slightly proud that a man who my teacher apparently admired (believe me, those were pretty rare from my point of view) ate meat only once in his life. But apart from that, I got nothing out of the story.
And then there was Ambedkar. The people who set our syllabus seemed pretty obsessed with him and at the beginning of every new year, it became a practice for all of us to go through all our textbooks and find the Ambedkar chapter first. Never fear, he was always there in at least one textbook. Every year, the story was the same. Ambedkar was stripped in class, made to stand in a corner, away from all upper-caste students and was not allowed to touch the water jug. Now before some self-righteous squirt jumps upon me to defend Ambedkar, let me state that I have the highest respect for him but when I was an eight year old kid, this story made no sense to me at all. From what I could make out (at THAT AGE mark you) was that Ambedkar later became a very famous man who abolished such practices. So if such practices are banned now, shouldn't our teachers just tell us not to treat people in that way and leave it at that? Why should we bother learning about the same incident year after year until we got sick of it? In fact, I had gotten so sick of it by Class Eight, I had actually begun to resent him and his annoying habit of popping up year after year in our textbooks and us being forced to write about him in exams. I tell you, if you ever want people to grow up resenting some one, put him in their school textbooks.
And then there was Ambedkar. The people who set our syllabus seemed pretty obsessed with him and at the beginning of every new year, it became a practice for all of us to go through all our textbooks and find the Ambedkar chapter first. Never fear, he was always there in at least one textbook. Every year, the story was the same. Ambedkar was stripped in class, made to stand in a corner, away from all upper-caste students and was not allowed to touch the water jug. Now before some self-righteous squirt jumps upon me to defend Ambedkar, let me state that I have the highest respect for him but when I was an eight year old kid, this story made no sense to me at all. From what I could make out (at THAT AGE mark you) was that Ambedkar later became a very famous man who abolished such practices. So if such practices are banned now, shouldn't our teachers just tell us not to treat people in that way and leave it at that? Why should we bother learning about the same incident year after year until we got sick of it? In fact, I had gotten so sick of it by Class Eight, I had actually begun to resent him and his annoying habit of popping up year after year in our textbooks and us being forced to write about him in exams. I tell you, if you ever want people to grow up resenting some one, put him in their school textbooks.
No, the repeated drilling of someone's childhood story into my brain didn't teach me anything. Instead, what really got me interested in the concept of untouchability and the social stigma attached to it was a touching story by a man called Shankar in a picture book called Life with Grandfather. Having grown up with my grandparents myself, I could easily identify with the story's protagonist, a small boy called Raja. In one of the chapters of this book, Raja started making friends with a housemaid (whose name I've forgotten) who is an untouchable. The maid starts treating Raja like her own child but she does this behind his grandfather's back since she's extremely frightened of "Big Master". However, grandfather does find out and he is so furious that he banishes the maid from the house and takes Raja for a "purification" ritual.
What really made me wonder is how somebody like grandfather who doted upon his only grandson (as my own grandfather doted upon me) could be so cruel when it comes to untouchables. I think that the story made me realize that most upper-caste people who discriminated against untouchables didn't do so because they were inherently cruel or were natural sadists who sought pleasure by stamping down upon lower castes. These otherwise kind and generous persons (the grandfather in the story was respected widely for his benevolence) had been misled or programmed by some stupid social norm into hating lower caste people. This story taught me that naively hating or retaliating at people who commit such atrocities is not really the answer. A few years later, I figured (again with the help of the same story) that to get rid of something like untouchability, one must remove the mindset, not just merely punish the perpetrators. I came to this conclusion when I was twelve. No moral science textbook had ever taught me such an important lesson. Another important thing that this story taught me was that few characters are purely black or white. Like grandfather, most of us are shades of grey.
However, nothing really challenged my beliefs as much as that amazing comic strip Calvin & Hobbes. Here was this six-year old terrorist and his feline companion who had absolutely no time for social norms or etiquette. They lived for themselves and they lived to challenge the world. I, a boy who was (and to some extent, still is) a wimp who righteously detested any sort of anarchy found Calvin somewhat weird. But at the same time, Calvin often displayed emotions that strongly mirrored my own, only Calvin was more vocal about his opinions. More importantly, this aggressive philosopher made me think. For instance, check out the raccoon story at the beginning of the post. That particular story has been a greater comfort to me than any religious text or philosophy textbook. "What a Stupid World" :D sums it up pretty well.
Here's another one.
However, nothing really challenged my beliefs as much as that amazing comic strip Calvin & Hobbes. Here was this six-year old terrorist and his feline companion who had absolutely no time for social norms or etiquette. They lived for themselves and they lived to challenge the world. I, a boy who was (and to some extent, still is) a wimp who righteously detested any sort of anarchy found Calvin somewhat weird. But at the same time, Calvin often displayed emotions that strongly mirrored my own, only Calvin was more vocal about his opinions. More importantly, this aggressive philosopher made me think. For instance, check out the raccoon story at the beginning of the post. That particular story has been a greater comfort to me than any religious text or philosophy textbook. "What a Stupid World" :D sums it up pretty well.
Here's another one.
I had always been a pro-animal supporter to some extent (by which I mean I don't go to the fanatical level of some PETA activists and at the same time hate senseless killings) but I had always been trounced by need-to-curb-excessive-population reason for hunting. This strip gave me the answer to that argument.
This one however, is my favourite.
This one however, is my favourite.
An only child like Calvin, I was more or less alone during my childhood and was forced to resort to imagination to keep myself company. I would often get lost in huge expansive landscapes like the one above created exclusively for me by my brain. As I get set to enter my twenties however, I have more or less ceased these activities. My family members no longer need to be converted into aliens or superheroes because I see them doing superhero stuff as they live life everyday. And I'm positively scared of blasting off into space and exploring other planets because I don't want to come back and find out that too much has happened and I have lost a lot of time which I could have spent with my family at home. Still, an occasional flight to Epsilon Eridani or the Andromeda galaxy does help tide over the monotony of life.
So you see, school never really shaped my opinions about life and society. It gave me knowledge but didn't tell me how to use it. In junior college, we were all forced to attend classes where we learned about "the superiority of Indian culture and the beauty of integrating the best of the east and west". After that, I didn't stop hating Indian culture until I went to classical music concerts out of my own free will and learned to appreciate the subtlety of Indian music on my own. I guess it shows that if you try and force something down my throat, I'll won't be able to enjoy it.
So you see, school never really shaped my opinions about life and society. It gave me knowledge but didn't tell me how to use it. In junior college, we were all forced to attend classes where we learned about "the superiority of Indian culture and the beauty of integrating the best of the east and west". After that, I didn't stop hating Indian culture until I went to classical music concerts out of my own free will and learned to appreciate the subtlety of Indian music on my own. I guess it shows that if you try and force something down my throat, I'll won't be able to enjoy it.
