Joe Bloggs

Mind that pig

A blog should be about good writing. As I don't exhibit much of that these days (did I ever?) I thought I'd put something up here that some of you might be interested in. A good friend has just travelled a little through India. He traced some steps he took over 20 years ago. Here is the first installment of his story of those travels and he tells it after returning to Delhi from a three day trip to Punjab.

The main point of the trip was to see the boarding school I taught at all those 22 years ago. So I arranged for a driver to take me up there, and drive me around while there. He came to my hotel at 11am on Saturday. Can't help sounding condescending but he was a real sweetie. He's very small in stature and greeted me with a big white smile. But I could tell immediately he was very conscientious and I knew I was in good hands. That impression was confirmed when he conducted a little prayer ritual at the wheel before starting the engine. It's been blisteringly hot here - today was 44°C (108°F?) up in Punjab - so I made sure I got a car with aircon. We set off winding and wending our way out of Delhi with the driver pretty much sitting on the horn. Delhi is still by our standards a vast slum and the traffic, though actually not as bad as I thought it would be, is complete bedlam. You swerve left to avoid that oncoming bus, only to careen right to save that pig. A couple of days before I left I took a wander round this hotel and was treated to the site of what looked like a giant boar, though without the tusks, on its side suckling its boarlets (?) next to the lychee stall.

I was ready for some emotional moments as I woke the next day, but didn't really know what to expect. While Googling the Sri Dasmesh Academy a few weeks ago in a (vain) attempt to find the phone number, I found some intriguing articles in the online versions of the Times of India and the Hindustan Times. One said that a boy at the school was accidentally shot dead in a hunting expedition from the school about a year ago. The article criticised the school for improper supervision, while I was left to wonder what sort of school arranges hunting trips - certainly not the case in my day! Another article reported that about 30 older boys had run away from the school, though later came back. In another incident many of the staff were fired all at once, though I couldn't glean the real reason. The school was having trouble filling places, one article said. That's a far cry from when I was there, when parents would apparently beg for their kids to be let in. The place seemed to be going downhill fast. What would I find? Might there still be a teacher or two still there from 22 years ago? Arriving out of the blue, what reception would I get? Being Sunday, and possibly during a school holiday (some said yes, others no), would there in fact be anyone there?

Further installments to follow.