The Afternoon Visitors

The Tutors

As the three of us moved through the various levels of the educational systems in the three different cities we lived in, we struggled with some of the subjects we had to study or chafed under the stringent teaching styles of some of our teachers. Most of the time, our mother came tirelessly to our aid, daily helping us with our homework and projects we brought home, and often staying up late or waking up early to bring us hot milk or sit with us to help. Sometimes the three of us helped one another. But a few occasions come to mind, unbidden, of the times when we found ourselves up against a mental wall and, frustrated, cast about for other options. That’s how the tutors parachuted into our lives, at different points in time, for brief but intense periods, each one with his own idiosyncrasies and very distinctive and quite unforgettable, even now after decades.

The very first time was around the time that I turned 13. We had just moved to New Delhi from Madras (now Chennai) in  June that year and took out a rental lease on a compact three-bedroom house in South Delhi. It was late summer, equally hot in both places. It turned out that we had arrived midway through the school year (although in the school we had just left behind, it had been the start of a new school year) as we set about trying to get settled in, at home and at school. Settling into our new home was fun, getting used to its unique arrangement of rooms, finding our way to the local markets and other places we would be frequenting in the years to come.

But getting settled at school was a different kettle of fish. Fortunately, in the realms of English Composition, Literature, Social Studies and Mathematics, I found myself at home with my class curricula and the teachers. The second and third languages we had to study were another matter altogether. Every time our Hindi teacher Mrs. A came into the classroom to teach, my heart would sink into my stomach. Although I had learned to speak colloquial Hindi in Bombay as a young child, could understand Hindi dialogues in movies, and had studied formal Hindi from class two as a “second language”, the new elaborate and rather unfamiliar words and phrases I began to hear in my new classroom in New Delhi during the Hindi period struck something akin to terror in my heart. Some of the words were somewhat familiar but they seemed to be swimming in a stew of other esoteric and unusual words issuing from Mrs. A’s thin red-lined mouth.

I thought initially that it must be her strong Punjabi accent that was masking what I might have recognized as Hindi from my own earlier experiences, but soon realized that these were real Hindi words, complex and new to me, that I had also begun to notice in my advanced Hindi reader during my homework and our class reading sessions.  Mrs. A would typically read passages out loud in class in her strong nasal voice and then explain what they meant. Then she would sometimes ask some of the students to read other passages from the reader and ask them questions in Hindi. They would labor through long extempore answers to which she would listen and nod in approval, occasionally correcting a phrase or pronunciation. Sometimes, when a girl would carry a whole answer through without needing help or correction, Mrs. A would beam and make encouraging sounds. Then she would assign everyone their written work for the rest of the class and write out our homework assignments on the blackboard using the compact and elaborate strokes of the Devanagari script.

Just copying down the Hindi homework was a formidable experience for me, a laborious and time-consuming process that was often cut short when the period bell rang and class ended. Someone or the other would erase the board as I rushed to write everything down. It was frustrating. Fortunately, I had made friends with one of my classmates, a pleasant, chatty and warm-hearted girl named Poonam, who offered to lend me her notes to copy what I missed. Poonam was a welcome support in those months and I often borrowed her notes or asked her for clarification when I felt I had missed some finer points.

But little could save me from facing Mrs. A when she turned her attention to me. There were the traumatic moments when her gaze would light on me, trying to melt into my seat three-quarters of the way down one of the aisles, and she would ask me a question or indicate what I was to read out aloud. If it happened to be my lucky day, I could just barely struggle through the passage, with her prompting me most of the way or answering in the simpler bare-bones everyday Hindi that I was more familiar with. Her response would range from a dismissive nod to a look of exasperation or irritation to, on rare occasions, considerable frustration and even contempt.

Once or twice, she left me in no doubt as to what she felt. “Where did you learn that? Who taught you this kind of Hindi?”. Another time, she barked: “Didn’t anyone know Hindi where you came from? This is an insult to your national language!” She also insinuated other things about “Madrasees” but I couldn’t always understand what she said because it was in Hindi. It bothered me though that she assumed that I was a “Madrasee” just because I had moved here from Madras. I still thought of Bombay as my home. It would be some years before I noted that down south, anyone harking from the north of the Vindhya ranges is similarly considered to be a “Punjabi” whether or not their home state is Punjab.

What made things even more challenging about learning Hindi were the genders; trying to remember which nouns are masculine and which feminine is one of the most daunting aspects in learning Hindi. Some years hence, I was to come to the same thoughts about mastering French. The strange thing was that I didn’t remember struggling so much and agonizing over Hindi vocabulary all these years. Somehow, our arrival in New Delhi, and beginning to live in the midst of Hindi-speaking peoples, the ambience of living in the capital city, all made the national language somehow more salient and interesting for us all. The Bombay Hindi I had grown up with seemed to be a very distant (and impoverished?) relative of the language I was getting acquainted with in my new home city of New Delhi. This Hindi that I heard around me now was rich, grand and eloquent with metaphor and not functional, staccato or staid. I now realized that I had often heard my father speak in this way.

Although the more recent generations of our ancestors had lived for at least three centuries on the west coast of India, below Goa, and some had even migrated and settled farther southwards, my father had had a very different starting point to his life. Born in his maternal grandparents’ home in Kasaragod, now in Kerala state, he had grown up almost entirely in the north of India, visiting the ancestral places in the south but a few times in his life. As my grandfather who worked in the Finance Ministry and my grandmother moved their household twice a year in keeping with the changing seasons between New Delhi and Shimla in concert with the seat of the Indian Government under colonial domination, my father and his siblings set down their roots in the north. So my father had grown up, mastering the North-Indian idiom along with the language that must have been spoken all around him in the larger society he moved in. Now I began to envy the proficiency with which he spoke the language, seemingly not even conscious of the flowing ease and spontaneity of his idioms or the gender of the things he talked about. How many years it must have taken to get to this point.

I brought my report card home; I had commendable grades on everything but Hindi. My failing grade was handwritten in red. I wasn’t surprised. My parents and I conferred. What was to be done? My father took the bull by the horns, as was his wont. “I’ll coach you.” He decided. “We’ll work on it everyday, and you’ll be able to learn.” He smiled confidently and gave me a hug.

My mother looked quite relieved. Hindi wasn’t her forte. Having grown up on the west coast in a small inland town in the southern part of Karnataka, she was more schooled in the south-Indian dialects of the region, Kannada and Tulu and could manage a little bit of Tamil as well, having picked it up during her college years spent in Madras. As it was, in her everyday interactions in Hindi with the locals, including shopkeepers, neighbors and the household help, she struggled mightily with the inconsistent genders, the past and present imperfect and perfect tenses, and the ever tricky similes and metaphors that lay ready to pounce on her unsuspecting self at every juncture.

It was easier said than done. After a few sporadic sessions, practicing to speak in the manner that my father did, we all realized that I still had a long way to go: it wasn’t just the speaking, I had much to make up from completing my readings, understanding them, to learning new vocabulary, and learning how to speak and write what seemed at times to be a whole new foreign language. I wonder what we would have done beyond that juncture had one more complication not arisen. It was, in a way, the straw that broke the camel’s back.

We had all been sanguine that the request we had made to the Principal, the Mother Superior of the convent school we attended, about excusing me from studying Sanskrit for the remaining part of the school year would be approved. But it wasn’t, to our utter astonishment. We had reasoned that there were just four months left of the school year and one did not have to take Sanskrit in the high school grades. So why, when all the other students had been studying Sanskrit for the past three years, should I be forced to begin studying this classical language that was (to mangle the metaphor) Greek to me for only part of a year? My parents said that they would go and explain to Mother Superior and expected that she would surely see the point. But the request and the explanation fell on deaf ears for reasons that no one understood. “If I excuse your daughter, I will have a long line of parents asking me to do the same for their children.” She explained rather unsatisfactorily.

What eventually made the situation particularly intolerable was the fact that Sanskrit was being taught by none other than Mrs. A, my Hindi teacher! This meant that I saw her at least thrice more each week and after a while, when she realized that this time around unlike my uncertain familiarity with Hindi, I had not the least grasp of Sanskrit, her disgust and annoyance with me and her perception of the deficits of my linguistic and cultural background reached new depths. I struggled heroically with class and homework assignments, the strange and unfamiliar words, the grammar and the meaning with no compass to guide me. I sat through tests that brought tears to my eyes. But still Mother Superior did not relent. And the sadistic gleam in Mrs. A’s eye grew brighter by the day.

It became a family emergency. Even my grandparents rallied to the cause. My grandfather began to give me impromptu language lessons in the meanings of classical Sanskrit words and my grandmother would explain the esoteric meaning of inspiring passages in the Sanskrit scriptures that she read. Then, one day, we all decided somehow that I had to have a tutor for Hindi and Sanskrit. That was a decision that brought us all some relief and took the pressure away for the moment. My father said he would ask his circle of acquaintances for leads.

My mind draws a blank at this point. I don’t remember how exactly it happened in terms of who did what when and how. But Mr. Bhasin came into our lives. After all these decades, I recall a quiet middle-aged compactly-built gentleman with glasses atop an acquiline nose, wearing a dark blazer over his neat trousers and shoes. He had a studious and confident air that was like balm to me. He listened quietly as my parents explained the situation. He said modestly that he thought he could help me and at the same time, I would have to put in the effort too on my part. I nodded in relief.

My day-to-day life became more full, as though it wasn’t already, with Mr. Bhasin’s twice-a-week tuition sessions at home late in the evenings after school. I don’t recall any dramatic revelations that took place but rather I was aware that, as life settled down again, as the days passed by and my tutor arrived and left, I was becoming more familiar with the words I was seeing, hearing and writing. He left me homework to reinforce the learning and also prepped me for tests and assignments. I had the distinct impression that there were fewer of Mrs. A’s dramatic and condemnatory red squiggles on the papers I got back routinely and my grades seemed to be creeping up ever so imperceptibly. But she still sniffed imperiously in my direction and gave me a piece of her mind every now and then, as though it was too good an opportunity to miss.

Between the relentless exposure to the variations of Hindi spoken around me, Mr. Bhasin’s indefatigable efforts and my own faltering forays into everyday situations demanding immediate and complete immersion, the language gradually began to reveal its secrets to me and I felt more at ease. Sanskrit though was a different kettle of fish altogether. Its mysteries continued to be opaque to me and as my tutor went tirelessly over the various grammatical forms, I would see myself in my mind’s eye as though chipping away at chunks of a large vague shape close on the horizon of my mind. Somehow none of it stuck, but Mr. Bhasin prevailed and I closed the year with a grade almost at the 40% mark. It was actually a technicality, and did not count towards my final grade in the class. I did quite well in the subjects that I liked and was comfortable with. Hindi and Sanskrit were not in that category and I just barely scraped by.

At Mr. Bhasin’s last tutoring session, my mother addressed him by name as she had every time he came throughout our association. “Mr. Basin”, she started gingerly, already faltering over the pronunciation, pronouncing it in the way a contraption in a toilet would be referred to. “We will not be needing your services any further. The school year is ending.” He nodded in response to what she said about not coming back to tutor me but seemed to be involved in an inner struggle with himself. Finally, he spoke: “Madam, the way you have been saying my name … that is not my name.” Now that he had finally got it out, he seemed more emphatic and confident. He went on. “ Madam, it is Bhasin… Bha … SEEN. Bhaseeeen…” It sounded a bit nasal, the way he emphasized the “eeen” sound.

My mother looked a little embarrassed. “Mr. Baseen” she said. “I think my daughter learned well from you. We are grateful ….”

“Madam, It’s BHHH… not BBB…”

“Baseen. That’s what I said. Thank you, Mr. Basin.” She said, with an air of conclusion.

I think he left at that point, after she paid him and we thanked him. We never saw him again. Later that December, we returned to Bombay to our old flat, to our old convent school, and my struggles with advanced Hindi and Sanskrit in New Delhi receded to the past, providing occasional fodder for an anecdote or two.

* * * * *

Our second experience with a Hindi tutor came about three years later when we had moved back to New Delhi. This time, I had graduated from school and entered college, having safely met all my second language requirements. So I observed with both amusement and empathy how my sisters were dealing with the challenges of learning Hindi. Actually, one of them had opted to take advanced Hindi in high school, the other was taking the basic Hindi course. They were a year and a grade apart. But as the standard of instruction for their second language was steep, as I myself had experienced it, our mother (our default coach and tutor) was still mired in learning workable Hindi, and the memory of Mr. Bhasin was still strong, the decision to hire a tutor came easily.

Mr. Tiwari would come to the sprawling old-world apartment we were living in, at Sujan Singh Park, about twice a week in the evenings and my sisters would carry their armloads of books and papers to the dining table where he sat. Mr. Tiwari and Mr. Bhasin merged at some point in my memory because they were both similar in appearance and had a passion for their work. Like Mr. Bhasin, Mr. Tiwari became deeply involved in what he was doing. He spoke emphatically in a high-pitched and insistent voice, nodded and shook his head a good deal, waved his hands around, exhorted my sisters to read the publication Chandamama so that their “vocalbury” would improve. He would smack his lips over the hot cups of tea and biscuits that my mother or the cook would ply him with through the nipping Delhi winter evenings. He would slurp his tea and shake his head in appreciation of it.

When he became engrossed in tutoring, he seemed not to notice things around him. One of the cats we had at the time, Goldie, took a fancy to his trouser legs using it as a dog’s equivalent of a lamppost. Chased away by one or the other of us several times in an evening, Goldie nevertheless would sneak back and happily leave his trademark on Mr. Tiwari’s trouser legs. But the tutor never seemed to notice. What’s more, my sisters both suspected that the clothes that he wore were like a uniform for his tutoring work. He seemed to wear the same set of clothes every time he came and knowing what they did, they had the distinct impression that the complex and seasoned smells that he brought with him again and again somehow had something to do with Goldie the cat. At times, they would hold their breath until the moment passed and at other times, it was all they could do not to gag.

In spite of all this my sisters became quite proficient in Hindi, each in her unique way. I forget for how long Mr. Tiwari was around but it was for at least a couple of years, unlike his predecessor Mr. Bhasin. But before we knew it, my sisters were well on their way into their advanced grades in high school and Mr. Tiwari, like Mr. Bhasin, receded into the past at some indeterminate point.

* * * * *

Going back a few years this time, the year I was getting ready to sit for my school-leaving board exams in Bombay before we returned to New Delhi, Mr. Bhobey entered the scene. As the time for my board exams neared, I found myself becoming increasingly nervous about the advanced science and mathematics courses I had chosen to take. Even my mother, with her longstanding microbiology and medical background could only help me up to a point. I needed guidance from someone in advanced math in particular and also some aspects of physics. An aunt suggested a Mr. Bhobey who tutored high school students in her building somewhere in Matunga, a neighboring suburb. A couple of phone-calls later, we found ourselves waiting for Mr. Bhobey to arrive on a breezy Saturday morning in October.

He arrived, looking portly and dignified, fifty-ish wearing thick lenses. My mother and I met him at our front door and escorted him in towards the dining table where our household help had just re-arranged the chairs around the rectangular dining table after mopping the floor. “Would you like to sit down?” my mother offered. He drew out a chair and began to lower himself onto its seat as we moved towards the other chairs to seat ourselves. But before we got much further, there was a loud crack and Mr. Bhobey fell through the seat of the dining chair.

We were all startled and speechless, he even more than us. The realization of how exactly this happened dawned on both my mother and me at the same time. One of the dining chairs had come apart near the seat and we had been planning to get it repaired. Until then, the chair had been placed in a corner where no one would use it. We realized that the maid, when re-arranging the chairs had made a mistake and placed the broken chair in the wrong place. And my new tutor, before we had even discussed the terms of his employment, had sat on the broken chair, and, what’s more, had fallen through it and become stuck.

But this was no time to cry over spilt milk. Swift action was called for. Mr. Bhobey was by now firmly embedded in the frame of the seat, his nether end suspended below the rim, a pained and shocked expression on his face. My mother and I both acted as swiftly as we could. We had to help him out of the chair. How best to do it, and how to do it in a dignified manner?

He looked at us, grabbed the table’s edge and tried to lever himself out but it did not work. Then he looked at us again helplessly and held out both his hands. My mother took one of his hands and I took the other and we both tugged and he persevered until he broke free. For one awful moment before that happened, I was wondering if one of us was going to have to crouch and push him out from below.

My red-faced mother fussed over Mr. Bhobey, apologizing and trying to put him at ease and I tried hard not to catch her eye because a loud chuckle was on its way out of me and I realized that it would not do at all because we all had this strange hereditary sense of humor and she would give way as well. So we both looked grim and tried to be as serious as we could. Unbelievably, once Mr. Bhobey was seated on a more reliable chair, we actually resumed our conversation and before I knew it, we had all agreed that I would take tuition lessons with Mr. Bhobey thrice a week.

The outcome of it all was a good one. Mr. Bhobey was a good teacher, patient and good-natured, even funny at times. He seemed genuinely glad when I understood a difficult concept or solved a complicated mathematical puzzle. My confidence grew by leaps and bounds and I began to feel much better about taking on my school-leaving exams. However, I noticed that whenever he came to tutor me, Mr. Bhobey would look carefully and even test the seat of a chair by pushing his hand down on it before he sat down at the table for my lesson, every single time. Obviously, he wasn’t taking any more chances.

* * * * *

My Indian Childhood

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