"POLE STAR? HEY, DIDI (SISTER), YOU DO NOT KNOW THIS SIMPLE THING?

“POLE STAR? DIDI (SISTER), YOU DON’T KNOW A SIMPLE THING?”---A CHILD’s INNOCENCE UNQUALIFIED!

“What is a Pole Star?”----the question by a Ten year old girl was simple and innocent. Don’t you think so? But the dressing down she got from a five year old boy was amazing. To me, more amusing was his answer—not because of his own ignorance but HIS APPLICATION OF MIND IN HIS OWN INNOCENT WAYS. What do they say: MORNING SHOWS THE SHADOW OF THE SUN OR in my typical home dialect it would be---“JAMM DIYAN SHOOLAN DE HAUN MOONH TIKHE” (The barbs have pointed arrow heads even at the time of their inception!) The answer the five year old gave was a visible sign of an active mind. No doubts, he is today, enriching CAPGEMINI with his software skills. But those days were different. He used to be mostly silent and come out with his ‘CONFUSCIAN GEMS’, all of a sudden, in the middle of a discussion. To say the least, this ‘five-year-old-boy’ of 1981/82 vintage keeps me rattled even today with his wizardry of mind and lethargy of the body. Tell you what? Let us get on with this episode.

I was on vacation with my family at a lovely place called SUNDERNAGAR—a valley between MANDI and BILASPUR in HIMACHAL PARDESH. This is where SATLUJ-BEAS LINK CANAL emerges out of a 13 km long tunnel before it drains into River Satluj at SLAPPAR—some 30 odd kms from Sunder Nagar towards Bilaspur on road Bilaspur-Ropar-Chandigarh. The tunnel is an engineering fete by Bhakhra-Beas Management Board (BBMB). It links River Beas with River Satluj. Basically, the purpose was to garner surplus waters of BEASRiver, during lean periods, for hydro-power generation. At SUNDERNAGAR it makes a small lake sort of a water body. The weather of this place is good enough to beat the summer heat of the plains because it is a bowl formed by lower Shivalik Hills. It need not be emphasized that SUNDERNAGAR was a gateway to MANDI, KULLU and MANALI---the most sought after tourist places of HIMACHAL PARDESH. I am sure you would have heard of DUSSEHRA FESTIVAL OF KULLU—which goes on for ten days. It coincides with RAMLILA days in the months of OCTOBER/NOVEMBER every year. As for as MANALI is concerned, it needs no introduction for being at the foothills of ROHTANG PASS, which, in years to come, may be ten years from now, would have a 5-6 kilometers long tunnel constructed with the help of JAPANESE to link it with LEH-LADDAKH Region, by way of an all weather road passing through picturesque valleys of LAHAUL, SPITI and PANGI.

Being a riparian state and boasting of large number of mountain streams and rivers, Himachal Pradesh is the mother of many hydro-electrical power projects—which makes it the only state in India with surplus POWER SUPPLY. The economy of HIMACHAL PRADESH is basically serviced by timber, tourism, apple orchards and hydro-power. Sunder Nagar, as a township, was, therefore, a product of ‘hydro-power-economy’---which was a new way of wealth creation for Himachal Pradesh—a deviation from its traditional dependence on “TWIN ‘T’s”—i.e. Tourism and Timber. All said and done, Sunder Nagar then was a total change from the din and noise of plains. I can not say the same thing today.

The year was 1981. We were staying with my co-brother-in-Law, Sh RS Dadhwal (my wife’s elder sister’s husband) who was then a Superintendent Engineer (SE) with Himachal Pardesh State Electricity Board. He eventually retired as CHIEF ENGINEER of the Board—then went on to be the Executive Director of NATHPA JAKHRI WORLD BANK Power Project. But such contours of destiny were not known in 1981. The BBMB (Bhakra Beas Management Board) township at SUNDERNAGAR is a neatly laid colony, where my sister in law and her family stayed in a Type-IV or Type-V house. ‘Dadhwals’ had two school going siblings—the elder one, a daughter, ANUSHKA and the younger one, ANUPAT, a boy.

The two of them were very inquisitive children who were always causing mental agony and embarrassment to their elders by asking them high quality intelligent questions. They will ask questions like: Why do moon and stars do not fall to ground? Or what is holding them in their place? What makes an owl see in darkness? Why do glow worm glow—where does the light come from? You see, these are very funny questions if you have not studied science in your life. Their general knowledge, for children of their age group, was well above average. If you were not alert with them you had to cut a sorry figure. Both of them were the ditto carbon copy of the intellect of their father. They are, undoubtedly doing extremely well, today. The girl graduated as a medical student and got married to a medical specialist. The husband and wife are now doing well in the army. The boy, ANUPAT, walks with the cake. He graduated as an electrical engineer from IIT New Delhi. Thereafter, he went to US for his post-graduation. He completed his post graduation in computers at ANN ARBOR, then, worked for a while as a software engineer in USA. He has now become a proud owner of his own company XXXXXXXX, which is a search engine of INDIA specific searches on the net. He has diversified into regional languages and made INTERNET user friendly to common people in INDIA. He is having a hectic time at BANGLORE with his clients. SEQUIA INTERNATIONAL, his backers, must be proud of him. Now, he is a very busy man, no doubts.

His cousin, my son, became equally nasty in their company and began to display very funny dispositions of mind. He too, would shoot to bewilder anyone with his innocent inquiries. Living with them I leaned the art of dodging and pulling a fast one on them. I had to always tread with care while discussing or debating with them. Threesome could force a normal human-being to get exasperated at the drop of a hat. But in those days they were on the learning curve and they had a digestive stamina to consume any thing of knowledge that came their way. Anushka was then10 years old; Anupat was around 8 years old and Abhipraya was the youngest one, hovering around 5 years of age. They used to daily get magnetized to me in the evenings to listen to some war time stories---some facts and some fiction. I used to concoct a lot of stories, laced with some moral lessons for the children. I had picked up this art from my grandma. I used to do this in my evening walk with them on the road side—where they used to keep shooting and I would keep rattling a convincing answer.

I try to do the same even today, but they are now grown up adults and they know how to hoodwink me, for they have no time for the irrelevant moralities of the past. If I start even with my own son and daughter now, they yell, “NOT NOW PAPA, SOME OTHER TIME”. Have they become wiser or are they worldly wise? I do not know. But those were different days. They were hungry for such stuff and to satiate their curiosity. I used to give them a good cocktail of “Shepherd-Boy-and-the-Wolf” kind of tales. Arguably, today, they have no times for such impractical values because of the uncanny demands of modern life. Frankly speaking, the real life of a modern Indian adult runs on a track which needs ‘two rails’ to move; and, the rails must run parallel to each other but never to meet. Who was it—MARK TWAIN who said: EAST IS EAST AND THE WEST IS WEST, NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET? What says thou? No doubts, a modern Indian adult remains torn between the ‘Idealistic teachings’ of childhood, family and school as well as the ‘Pragmatic Demands’ of ‘Real life situations’ due to pressures of adopting an influencing culture of the WEST’. Unfortunately, ‘Western life-style’ has become synonymous with MODERNITY. This is a reality as the ‘moralistic- dispensations’ of the EAST are considered as the IDEALS of a RECLUSE. ‘Idealism’ and ‘Realism’ are the two banks of a river which will never meet. But there is always a middle course, if you have had a good childhood. How do you define this? Try it; I won’t.

However, my story goes back 26 years when innocence was writ large on the minds of these three eager but UNPRETENDING children. Their queries and questions were not only genuine but also NATURAL. You see, I always feel that “PRAGMATISM” is actually an acquired state of the mind through ambition, desires and materialistic needs, necessitated by awareness, education, knowledge and easy life styles, which do guide a person to “PRETEND” or put up a facade which is the anti-thesis of his basic instincts. I do reckon that education, knowledge, ‘grey hairs’ called experience and social etiquettes called sophistication cumulatively act on a child’s mind during the process of his growing up and he begins to put up an orchestrated show in his conduct as an adult. A child’s mind is more ductile, you can mould it what ever way you want through your personal acts of pronounced righteousness or by continuously bombarding his mind with knowledge. Parents, who neglect their children during their formative years (between 5 to 15 years of age), have themselves to blame if the children go astray. Have your own definition of “ASTRAY”. I will dare not.

But parents do play a very vital role in the future careers of their children. Unfortunately, this aspect of “Education at Home” is being neglected today. Most modern parents think that their parental duties are over once the child is either sent to a boarding school or entrusted into the custody of tutors at home. This is what I call “DESENSITISATION” of the child and ultimately of the society. However busy the parents might be, they have to devote some time with their children to make them emotionally sensitive besides imparting knowledge from outside the text books. Anyway let me get back to the story at hand.

One day, in July 1981, while we were on our usual evening walk along the main road of BBMB colony, suddenly the street lights went out. It was pitch dark all around but the sky was glowing with stars. It was an unpolluted sky—unlike the modern city sky at night when every thing is obscured by smog, dust and haze. We stopped for a while near an electric pole, when Anupat fired his first shot, “Uncle, in the army, how do you find your way when you go from one place to another”. “Oh, we have the maps; we have the compasses which indicate the direction.” I had replied. “Do compasses indicate the correct direction” Anushaka queried. “You see, these compasses are magnetic and they have a needle pointing towards the NORTH always” I clarified. “And how do you do it at night?” Anupat had questioned. “We prepare our NAVIGATION CHART which gives out the degree and the distance between various destinations” I explained to him. “Suppose you do not have the compass or you lose it, then what would you do?” was a straight bullet fired by ANUSHAKA. “Then, we do it with the help of stars” I answered. “Stars? What stars?” It was Anupat who was bewildered. “Oh, it could be Cassiopeia (W STAR), Great Bear (Sapat-Rishi) or POLE STAR (Dhurv Tara) etc.” I told them. “Pole star? What is it?” Anushaka asked.

Before I could say anything, the five year old ABHIPRAYA lashed out at ANUSHAKA, “Oh! Didi (Sister), you do not know even POLE STAR? YEH DEKHO, YEH POLE HAI—ISKE UPPAR SIDHA JO TARA AASMAN MEIN DIKHTA HAI WHO ‘POLE STAR’ HAI. Ek dum AASAN. (See this. It is a POLE---The STAR right on top of this in the sky is a POLE STAR. So Simple.) I burst out with laughter. My stomach began to ache. What a simple answer? I don’t know if it were innocence or genuine display of knowledge. In matters of education and profession, this young KIDOO is also no less than his famous cousins. He is currently rusting in USA as a software engineer. I hope he has now known the real meaning of DHRUV TARA.