I Learnt It a Hard
Way
He had waited for me till I had done
with it in my crude way. And then, in a tone, that rings melody to my ears even to this day, he said to me, “You do not have to do it the way you
did.” Then, displaying through the movement of his own tongue, he explained
how, instead of finger, the tongue inside the mouth locates the unwanted small
piece and pushes it out to be thrown away conveniently.
The lesson that I learnt then in my
teenage taught me never to miss an opportunity to learn if there was scope for learning. Even after I had done my
graduation and was pursuing postgraduation in English, I learnt with a pinch of
salt at that stage that there is no age
for learning and that there is no end to learning.
For some unavoidable reason, my grandfather
had to go to Moradabad to be with my uncle and had to stay there longer than planned. I was then in Bareilly
and had strict advice from him to be in touch with him through regular correspondence. The only means of communication then being post card and inland, I regularly wrote
to him and was always promptly responded
by him by his neatly written postcards and inlands.
One such detailed inland I wrote to
him when my cousin, though elder to me but more a friend than a brother, was
selected for a job out of Bareilly. Overtaken
by mixed feeling of pleasure at his selection and grief at his departure from
Bareilly, I wrote in English with a congratulatory tone balancing it, with best
of my ability, with words of agony. It was indeed an occasion for utmost
rejoicing that my cousin got employment of his choice.
After about a month my grandfather was back to
Bareilly and, as usual, got busy with his routine of life. He had
steel bed close to his wall almirah which contained his
entire world from books in Persian(Farsi), Urdu and English, scores of Unani medicines
like Majoon Taba kusha to Tukham Balanga , heaps of papers, from relevant to
irrelevant, tied in number of bunches.
One day, not long after his return, I came into the Baithak (now called drawing
room) for something and as I passed through
his bed he signaled me to wait. I
stopped abruptly and looked at the open almirah
and watched him with a sense of lurking fear of having inadvertently annoyed him for some reason. He took out a
bundle from where he snatched a used inland.
It was one of the inlands I had sent to him
when he was in Moradabad. I found a couple of lines of the letter marked
in red. I was shivering in my shoes and was preparing myself to be at the
receiving end. But it came like a cool breeze when he spoke in a soft tone. “ Look, you had written a very good letter,
and I am proud of your love for your brother.” I felt like being patted on my
back. But the next sentence he spoke was a bombshell that shook me as if shaken
by a tremor. “Did you know what it meant
when you wrote: ‘Though I will be missing him, but since he is leaving for
good, I am very happy about him.’ “Did you know what it implied?” he asked
me. I looked at him with blank eyes. He explained, “ The phrase ‘to leave for good’ means to leave for ever.
It is used for the departed soul.” My
God! I found tears trickling down my cheeks. “There is nothing to feel bad. We
all make mistakes. The important thing is never to give up the desire for learning.
There is no age for learning; there is no end to learning.” I retreated with
dried tears reflecting what my ignorance could have cost me if the letter had been addressed formally to someone else.
I have crossed now my grandfather’s age, but I have
not forgotten the words of caution passed on to me by my him. I have written five
books and got them published but not without first passing on the scripts to my knowledgeable friend, brothers-in-law and
sons-in-law for having a close look through
them and thrice I was saved from
having committed gross factual mistakes before
pushing the scripts in the publishing houses.
****
