B D Sharma
I don’t remember as to how and when did the strange notion enter my head that I was quite an intelligent child. Later in life it did dawn upon me that it was a case of a figure among cyphers or rather a case of a frog in the well. Harbouring such a thought was childish or rather foolish on my part. Apart from my naivety, the huge appreciation which my doting parents and grandfather showered upon me had, perhaps unwittingly induced this strange idea in me.

A peep into past

The first seeds of this thinking were sown when I had just been admitted in school. Like other children I enjoyed playing truant in going to school. This provided me time in watching the “Gup-Shup” group of people sitting at the Danga or Sandha as the Chabutra in the middle of our village was known. One day a Sadhu happened to pass by this group and on request he agreed to read the lines of fate on the palms of the assembled persons. Someone asked me also to show my hand to the seer. All the persons who got their hands studied, had paid some Dakshina to the holy man before he read their fate. But I had not even a single paisa in my pocket so there was no way for me to get my future studied by the holy man. However, my uncle happened to come there and provided me with an Anna which I placed on my palm and forwarded it before the sadhu. The latter had a deep “Soota/Kuchh” of Chilam, moved the coin aside and started studying the lines of my hand minutely. After studying my hand thoughtfully he looked keenly at my face, paying particularly some attention to my forehead.
Then he had another deep suck of the Chilam and pronounced that here was a boy who would attain great heights in his life. Since the facilities for education and the means with the parents for imparting the same used to be very meagre in those days so the best my uncle could think of was my qualifying Aathwin/Daswin (8th/10th) class and becoming a soldier or a Patwari. So the good days were destined to come for the family, he observed. But the seer cut him short and pronounced that it would be much better, much beyond that level of education and status. The boy might go even up to BA degree, he added. This prediction infused in me much sense of confidence bordering even to the level of becoming proud. Later on during my student days whenever I could not make adequate preparation for some exam, I always felt confident that the favourable lines on my palm would definitely come to my rescue.
Another interesting incident took place in my childhood which contributed to strengthen my belief in the prolificacy of my mental faculties. My grandfather’s sister used to occasionally go to Uttarbehni- Purmandal for a holy dip on some of the Amaavas days particularly on the occasion of Somvati Amavasya. On the way back she would stay at our home for few days to relieve herself from the strains of her domestic worries. But Buaji as she used to be addressed by all of us, was so workaholic that even while she supposedly stayed with us to take rest, was always engrossed in performing one domestic chore or the other at our place. In those days the management of milk used to be the responsibility of the senior most lady in the house. So Buaji took control of getting the milk boiled over the smouldering dung cakes in the oven, of distributing the boiled milk to the family members, of converting rest of milk into curd and subsequently churning the curd for extracting out butter. My grandfather would take his dinner early and then proceed to the village assembly at the Danga. We went to bed but Buaji would keep waiting for him with the Diya (lamp) being kept burning till he came back. One day before going to bed I asked Buaji if I might put out the lamp. In that case she observed, she would have to light the lamp again and one matchstick would thereby be burnt/wasted. Though one matchstick used to cost merely one-eighth of a Paisa yet wasting even this tiny amount meant a lot to her. This type of thrift helped the people to manage the acute poverty. Her thrifty ways like stitching all our torn clothes, making a bed mat out of the extremely torn and unstitch able clothes, infusing fear in us of not scattering even a particle of salt as the same would have to be picked up by eye lashes in the next world and dissolving even the last drops of curd remaining stuck with the bowl and drinking it, were remarkable. Her sense of thrift was no less than that of Mahatma Gandhi who struck out his name and reuse the envelope he received in his Dak. Majority of the people of that era were as conservationist of natural resources as was the Mahatma.
The logic of keeping the lamp lighted for long, however didn’t appeal to my mother. She broached the subject with the lady next door in my presence stating that a lot of kerosene oil was being burnt/wasted in the process of saving a matchstick. But my mother didn’t have the courage to speak that out to Buaji as elders commanded a lot of respect and awe. But I did get the hint and in the evening I suggested Buaji that she might put out the lamp as the cost of kerosene oil being burnt out for long did cost more in comparison to the cost of one matchstick required to relight the lamp. She understood it and wondered as to why this notion had not crossed her mind. Then onwards she put out the lamp and relighted it. But she started speaking very high about the “wisdom” of the small boy to everyone who visited our home. My mother didn’t disclose the secret behind the story of wisdom of her son. She was perhaps cherishing the appreciation which was being showered upon her son. I also enjoyed carrying the illusion of having great mental faculties. In reality though I was simply a plagiarist who had stolen the thesis of my mother. I might be seen as the youngest plagiarist of those times in this part of India.
By the time I completed the 3rd primary class, the most intelligent boy ever born in our village, Mr Shambhu Singh Narainia, had passed out of the school and got admission in the High School Rahya. So the field was open for me to show my mettle. A crammer of some substance I had learnt by heart the Qoumi Taraana of Allama Iqbal, Saare Jahan se Achcha Hindustan Hamara which otherwise was to be learnt in the next higher class. This elevated my position in the school as I along with another boy of 5th class was given the honour of leading the morning prayer by singing the Qoumi Taraana ahead of other students. Similarly I crammed the “Pahaade”, the multiplication tables, up to the level of twenty even while I was studying in the 3rd class. The teachers had very logically graded learning of tables up to 5 for 2nd class, up to 10 for 3rd class, up to 15 for 4th class and up to 20 for 5th class. This provided me the opportunity of leading the group of students even from senior classes, in reciting the tables up to 20 level in a rhythmic way. This early advancement in my performance facilitated my becoming a sort of school monitor. I was given the key of the lock put on the only trunk which our school had. In it there were about 30/35 books, some stationary items, one football and sometimes one or two small canisters of dry milk supplied by UN agencies. Among the small collection of books was a Dogri book in Persian script containing very humorous stories of an “Aan Parh Pant” and a Semi-literate Moulvi. The Pandit after being unable to read a letter, started to weep thereby causing confusion about the wellbeing of the sender of the letter. The Moulvi used to put one dropping of goat in a jar each day to count and remember the date of the month and got confused when the goat one day defecated in the jar itself and the count of the dates of the month exceeded even beyond the number of 100.
It may be of some interest to the readers that Dogri language had started gaining lot of popularity by 1950s and it was used to be written both in Nagri and Farsi scripts. Though constructing Dogri words in Farsi script was somewhat tedious in comparison to Nagri script but one would drive a lot of pleasure once one unraveled sense out of a sentence. Another book or rather a booklet in which I took interest was on the life of Kisaan martyr Bawa Jitto. In order to convey a message of the revolutionary law, The Big Landed Estates Abolition Act by the Sheikh government, a concerted effort was being made in 1950s to popularize the Kisaan heroes and denigrate the cruel Jagirdars. Who else could fill the bill better than the legendary Bawa Jitto. It was in this context that small booklets on the Kisaan martyr were got printed and widely circulated. Since we used to hear a lot about the Bawa from our elders also so I wanted to go through the booklet and took the same to my home and started studying it after finishing my home work.
While I was reading the story of Bawa a bit loudly in the broken language which a student of 3rd primary class could muster, it caught the attention of my grandfather who was enjoying his Chilam sitting nearby. So excited he became that he made me to start reading it out from the very beginning. He knew extensively about the life of Bawa Jitto despite being unread and corrected me in pronouncing the names and narrative of the story properly wherever I went astray like the naming Bawa’s daughter, Bua Kaudi or correcting the name of Bawa’s coworker, Iccho Megh. He interspersed my narration with some interesting Kaaraks also like the one “Sukki Kanak ni Khayaan Mehtaya:: Dina Rakat Ralaayi”.
So happy and enthusiastic my grandfather became over narration of the story by me that he told all his friends that ‘our boy’ was an expert in narrating the Katha of Bawa Jitto, proclaiming me a sort of great “Katha Vaachak”. He invited some of his friends also to listen the story from me. Once this became the talk of the village, it reached the ears of the Tehsil Education Officer Samba, Late Mulraj Sharma also, who belonged to our village and whose father was on very friendly terms with my grandfather. TEOs of those days used to be big shots having very vast jurisdictions to operate, like Samba tehsil covered vast areas surrounding Sidhra, Purmandal, Sumb, Ramgarh, Bari Brahmana, Gurha Slathia and Vijaypur. To me the pleasure of being an important fellow and being necessary to my elders was very profound. I used to think that I was not like the children who find mention in the folktales: burdensome mouths to feed. Though I was enjoying the glory generated around my persona, it didn’t go well with the TEO saheb who took it as sheer exaggeration. He did also think that too hyperbolic appreciation by my grandfather might spoil the child.
In those days students of 4th and 5th classes of five/six schools would be collected at the centrally located school for the final examination. The TEO would come and supervise the conduct of the exams. When I had to appear in 4th class final, our centre was fixed at the nearby village, Tarore. We were made to sit in rows and barred to carry any book or notebook. However I carried innocently one notebook for rough work. This notebook was used by me to do the homework in Hindi language. In order to tackle the intricate Hindi-Urdu wrangle, the Maharaja’s Administration, on the recommendations of Syedin-Zakir Hussain committee, had specified that the students who took Urdu language from the start, would take up Hindi as additional language from 3rd primary and the vice versa. Urdu being my primordial language, I had adequate acumen in reading and writing this language. However being in the preliminary stage of learning Hindi, my writing in it was full of flaws. While conducting the round through the rows of examinees, the TEO took notice of the notebook being carried by me against instructions. He immediately snatched the notebook from me and started going through its contents. The writing in the notebook from the pen of a beginner was obviously shabby and thinking that Hindi was my primordial language, he exploded “Your grandfather tells everybody that you are very intelligent but your handwriting is worse than that of a student of 1st primary”. My dressing down in the presence of a number of teachers and students embarrassed me much. By the evening the results were compiled and finding my name topping the list, TEO’s doubts might have got cleared about me. He asked his peon to
hand over the snatched notebook to me pointing towards me as that lanky boy when I happened to pass by the room where he was sitting.
The story of my swollen ego does not end here and many more events continued to occur in my childhood inducing in me a sense of self-importance. Ultimately my ego, my pride and my vanity did have a fall also. Readers will be told about those events shortly.

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