CHAPTER VI A GIRL CLASSMATE FROM DISTANT SOUTH

CHAPTER VI

A GIRL CLASSMATE FROM DISTANT SOUTH

    My classmate and fellow French teacher, Gisy, was a beautiful ‘Keralite’ Protestant Christian girl, whose father was an engineer in the Fertilizer Corporation of India at Sindri.

    We were known to each other as being teachers in the Rotract Club’s Foreign Language Classes but had not conversed till the second year examination. When the examination was concluded, she was going to Sindri and incidentally I saw her. She gave me her roll number and she asked me to send her results as and when published. Even in those days tabulators felt themselves privileged to tell your results before their publication. So like many others, I could know it and I also enquired about her results. I wrote an inland letter congratulating her for entering in the clinical course with a mini-’lecture’ on socially oriented future professional life.

    She replied to it promptly and gratefully and also congratulated me in an artistic feminine fervour, widely spaced in the full last folio of the inland letter —Congrats! Congrats!! Congrats!!! She had written in her letter that though I had not mentioned my results, she had presumed that I also must have passed. This reply from a beautiful girl evoked a pleasant sensation in my mind.

    When she came later, we met several times, mostly discussing the issues of her state and our class. We used to leave behind other friends while coming out from the lecture theatre of the Old Block. Her friends used to comment on us and also my friends had lately evolved a nickname for me, ‘George Fernandes’. I visited the Ladies Hostel for the first time to meet her and had a few sittings in its visitors’ room. One evening, she had also come out in a red nightie when I had gone to give her sweets on the occasion of my sister’s marriage.

    In the meantime, in order to impress her more than to learn, I joined a postal diploma course in French, run by the French Academy, Delhi, the address of which I had obtained from an advertisement published in the Reader’s Digest.

    I had not told her about my taking a French course, but when I had some knowledge of French in due course of time, I started to insert some paragraphs in French while writing letters to her, which were sent through peons of the hostel, who played   a crucial role in the development of such affairs.

    I do not remember what I was writing or what we were talking about but they were never ‘love letters’ or ‘love talks’, yet today, I cannot justify going to the Ladies’ Hostel or writing letters, describing the seasons and the country.

    After some months, my sister-in-law came to see her sister who was admitted in our hospital for acute appendicitis.

    I had gone with this ‘Keralite’ girl student to see the patient and my intelligent sister-in-law could smell something between us. She later informed my brother. We had a long correspondence. Previously also we used to have exchanges on national and familial issues. I wrote that it was mere friendship but as we came from the rural background it was not being appreciated. My brother firmly replied, “I do not subscribe to your psycho-analysis, simply I know, in our Hindu philosophy, a girl of her age can only be a sister. Friendship with a girl is a term not in consonance with our wisdom.”

    My mind was revolting, yet, I agreed and in the next letter I addressed her as sister; though my pen had much difficulty to scribble it but I could never accept her other than a fiend. On the basis of it, I conclude that it was certainly a case of infatuation, not unnatural for our age. It may be that she might have taken everything in mere formality or decency but I cannot deny that I had not dreamt to cross the obstinate barriers of religion to go too close to her and that too, of course, without changing my own religion.

    I had knowledge of the Christianity but I had the supreme influence of the Hindu philosophy, more so, as explained by  S. Radhakrishanan.

    I also feel, all this happened during the National Emergency, when I was devoid of doing social work. An idle mind is a devil’s workshop. Thanks to her that I learnt French.

    She was one sister amongst four sisters without a brother but I feel my that act was childish and we remains as friendly ever as we were. After her marriage, her husband came to see me. In their wedding reception ceremony, I presented her a copy of The New Testament, which she adored as the best presentation and once she told me that she read it every night.

    During a tour of Kerala, I had an overnight stay with her parents. They received me gladly. Her mother at 96, Girinagar, Kochi, could recognize my name as if she was told my name by Gisy and told she had made food in mustard oil brought by Gisy ( in Keral coconut oil is common). It was my first stay in a non-Hindu house and it seemed to me that I had some relation with them in some previous life. I saw a VCR for the first time there in 1984. She was always prompting me for marriage but when I married she was far away.

 On 3.4.2016 we met last in our 1973 batch meet at Patna though she was as vibrant I was social work puzzled and she taunted me that why I was not present previous day (when she had presented a memorable dance!). Some years back she had told before friends that her daughter usd to say seeing me there in Kerala in some visits, 'Mummy, your boy friend has come!|

Duing Dec.1-2,2018, she organized our 1973-batchmayes’ meet at he The Village, a resort near Kochi International Airport where I had a brief talk with her and her  husband Dr. Kurien and their daughter who has become a gynecologist.

Fig. 8 — The Darbhanga Medical College, Laheriasarai :  my Alma Mater.

 Medical Examinations?

            “The mythology of examinations includes a widely-held belief that examiners give higher marks after they have had their coffee; as Richord Gordons’ old stager said, ‘A low blood sugar is conducive to bad temper (Gordon, 1952).’ We have not been able to substantiate this but have, in fact, noticed an interesting and not wholly explicable tendency for examiners to give higher marks just before lunch. There is a clear tendency to award the highest possible marks much more often at the end of the morning than at the beginning. The difference between the two distributions is statistically significant (x2=30.1:P<0 .001="" o:p="">

            — Examinations in Medicine, P.R. Fleming, P. H. Sanderson,                J. F. Stokes, H.J. Walton, Churchill Livingstone: pg. 60).