The Bibliophile

 

I don’t know whether I should be grateful that I work in the Central Govt. of the Indian Republic. Several of my good friends who work in the State Govt, Armed forces and academia have hung up their boots and are leading a life of leisure. I continue to slog in a job not of my liking. I’m in Calcutta now, a city that I always loved to live in. The job fails to interest me much but I still have a good three and a half years of this drudgery to undergo before I retire from work.

    A nice way to look me up in Google would be to input the string" bald bureaucrat, with an unexplained interest in Roadside barbers, fountain pens, Carnatic music and Classical Guitar".....Well, that would just about describe me adequately. My reading has taken a huge plunge. I blame it on the quiet invasion of social media. That urge to read links sent by well meaning friends, to reply to messages etc have overtaken my life. I have no excuses for this long break from the blog. Writing is something that grows on you initially with inspiration, later with practice. I lost the urge to write. In the humdrum at workplace, I get to worry about procedural inanities, turf wars and ego hassles. I was persuaded to re-start this blog because I saw a longish note in Facebook written by a student called Ashley, on my bibliophile-friend Professor Nagesh who retired recently.  https://www.facebook.com/ajax/sharer/?s=22&appid=25554907596&id=10156216125188366&p[0]=668523365&p[1]=10156216125293366&sharer_type=all_modes&av=1356305017

                    I met Nagesh in the late 1980s through a circle of young Bank-Officers staying in lodging houses in and around Ernakulam town where we both worked. Nagesh lived alone in a big house in the heart of the city which belonged to his Mom’s family (His late Mom, a wonderful lady, was a Professor of Malayalam in a College in Calicut). I lived in a lodging house called Keerthi Mahal in Jew Street, Ernakulam. We both hated our jobs. We were working as Bank Officers, although in different public sector  banks. We were both from the category of Probationary Officers, freshly minted from college and directly recruited to Officer cadre, without the drudgery of working as clerks for several years. Having been para-dropped into the bank branches, we were struggling with our jobs. The job gave a certain dignity in the midst of much unemployment. Liberalization was still some time away and the software revolution yet to take place.

                      I really don’t know if Nagesh aspired to become a civil servant as Ashley seemed to think. I never asked him that. But he helped me a lot with my reading on India for the UPSC interview (for which I appeared twice with not so encouraging results). But he was more well-read and knowledgeable than the many civil servants I came across in my uneventful life. It is true that he won a national Quiz contest. It wasn’t conducted by Sidhartha Basu but he represented his Bank (I think, my memory plays tricks with me nowadays) in Discover India Quiz and won a trip to any location in India with 5-star hotel stay thrown in. It is a hilarious story how he went about en-cashing that prize and I played a small part in it. I remember trying to handle the Bureaucracy in the tourism department through my friends’ circle to hold them to their promise. It was with great difficulty that the prize was realized. Not to mention the troubles he had when he landed in the hotel (with his nephew along) and the hotel pleaded ignorance about his booking.  But he had his moment in the sun with that quiz and a lot of people knew him as that guy who won the national quiz on TV!!

      Eventually I drifted into Civil Services and he threw away his bank job to join Devagiri college in Calicut as a Lecturer in English. We both took a big hit on our pay packets, he a greater one. Somewhere along the way we lost touch with each other. He remained single, while I married a batch-mate from the Civil Services. I traversed the country on many transfers while he remained rooted to his small town and his teaching career, research and reading. I am not surprised that he asked his student whether he shares the same values with the girl he proposes to marry. That’s just our generation’s thinking. The Missus, also a good reader, is impressed with his range of reading.           

      We rediscovered each other’s coordinates when I visited Calicut long back and met a relative who was teaching in Devagiri college as a temporary lecturer. She put me on to him. It was nice catching up and we maintained contact ever since. I visited his home and was awe-struck by his library which overflowed with books. He took me around various eating joints in Calicut. He, a vegetarian, would peck at his food while I’d sample the veritable feasts laid before me. Every year we gift each other books on our birthdays. That’s probably a much tougher task for me. He invariably finds something interesting for me to read. While I’d be left guessing whether he already owns or have read the book I wish to gift him.

   Nagesh's range of reading was vast. He could name the editor of Punch from the 1950s and could quote from his works. While my tastes were eclectic (with some British crime fiction, Malayalam literature, penguin classics and some soft porn) his range was vast apart from English literature, in which he specialized. A conversation with him could be quite revealing. One could come away feeling that we are dummies and have still a long way to go to get anywhere near that erudition. Also, his modesty strikes you as very unusual for a man so well-read….. The last time we met at his home, I asked him what he thought of Arundhati Roy’s latest work (which I hadn’t read. I’ve started finding her a bit distasteful after she went politically bombastic). He then went on to give a 15 minute-long insight into the book. I was flabbergasted at his analysis. No critique could be as succinct and as illuminating. At the end of it, I had only one thing to say. He should write. I mean really sit down and pen his thoughts. 

    I still remember something he told me about our common avarice to buy books and let them rest near the bedside without reading. It is about an actress who put on a lot of weight. When someone asked her why.... she said honestly that it is all about a childhood with very little food on the family table. Hence the tendency to gorge on whatever is laid in front of her. He lived in small towns with little access to books.   There was nothing much on TV when he grew up nor was there social media. Acquiring books was a gargantuan task since there wasn't Amazon or Flipkart in those days. He maybe the last of the voracious readers from that generation......a true Bibliophile.