Lessons in Geography: Chapter III

Sreekumar K

Six books had been copied. That was the seventh one. Three more and I was done.

Seventh standard social science.

Schools have changed quite a lot in these three decades. There were no such things like social science those days. There was science, maths and history. May be there was geography too but I don’t remember much of that anyway.

My mind was going around a few lines in the pdf sent to me by the president of the club which had initiated the mission of copying notes for those children who had lost their books in the recent floods.

It wasn’t the notes that caught my attention. It was a parody of a poem I too had learned in my school days. Beyond its mellifluous rhythm, I too had found it quite a bore. But this little genius had parodied it to talk about his squirrel, a great escape artist.

Arshad

Standard VII

So, just twelve and already a poet.

Actually that was a good thing to take up. Though I had voted for photocopying the notes and not writing them down in new note books, I now saw the point in it.

It would create a kind of obligation, a social obligation. When the children saw these books they would surely think that even unknown people cared for them and that there was nothing to fear.

Nothing to fear till the next flood. Or the drought.

Life is so uncertain. No wonder someone once said life is certainly uncertain.

At 55, that was not an easy task, listening to my daughter reading  out from notebooks and taking it down onto fresh notebooks.

And what a stupid lingo!

I could’t spell some of these geography terms. English or Latin or Sanskrit? How were the children supposed to make heads and tails out of this?

“Dad, are you going to write or should I go? I have a lot of homework to finish.”

Ramya had already read out a line three times and she was getting impatient.

On the Sands of Time. A lesson about landslides, quakes and erosions.

Hundreds of people were doing the same, sitting in different places in and around Kerala. In a week, they would finish ten thousand notebooks. It was by dividing it with thousand that I fixed my target as ten.

From the kitchen, Malu announced that the Onam feast was ready. We had decided to limit Onam, the week-long feast festival, to a single day this year. Most of Kerala had decided not to have any celebration because of the deluge.

I told her we would come in a while. I wanted to finish that lesson.
But the lines of the parody kept going round and round in my mind. Then I heard Ramya too singing it.

I closed my book.

“Come dear, let’s go eat.”

My phone rang and Malu brought it to me. It was those youngsters who were waiting for me to start distributing lunch packets at the medical college.

I told them to go ahead and not to wait for me. They thanked me for letting them have some useful connections and sponsorships.

There were almost five hundred messages on my WhatsApp. In FLOOD 2018, a messenger group, many more, in the last two hours or so.
And there was a team of many youngsters, tracking them from different places and acting on them too.

The incredible young blood.

An old friend called to ask if I would accompany him to Chengannur to deliver some grocery in a badly hit area called Pandanadu.

I told him I was too tied up here.

Suddenly I thought of my elder uncle from Pathanamthitta. He hadn’t called yet.

Even when I sat for the Onam feast, my mind was still in the pdf. A lot of information there, though not well written.

And it was mostly about natural calamities.

What a strange co-incidence that it was such a lesson which I had to copy.

Remya came to the dining table, her nose in the pdf.

“Can’t read a thing. Really bad handwriting.”

I leaned over and glanced at it while pouring dal onto my heap of rice served on  a banana leaf.

“I don’t think it is the handwriting. Looks more like drenched in water. Let me see.”

I took it from her and stared at it. Obviously, it was soaked in water.

Everything around was either wet, soaked, drenched or dripping.

That was not actually a pdf. It was a jpg to be precise. They had sent photos of a notebook’s pages. In their hurry to get it done they had not even checked whether the pages were legible.

“There is nothing wrong with his handwriting. His handwriting is OK. The book had got drenched before they took the pics. And the little guy is a prospective Ravi Varma, look!” I showed the drawings on the pages to my wife and my daughter.

“Not a little Ravi Varma, a little M F Hussein. Arshad, his name is. Muslim, for sure.”

I too recalled. I had seen his name and his address scribbled on the first page.

Arshad B K

‘Nilaavu’

Valiyapara P O

Idukki

I looked at the drawings on a few pages and then handed it over to them. Ramya flipped the pages and again stared at a certain page.

“O, you are again right. There is a pattern. It was heavily drenched. Thank god the guy had used gel pen. Otherwise, nothing would have remained. He is a prospective poet too. Little Kadammanitta or Ayyappan.”

“You mean little Rafeek Ahammed! Those ones are hindus, I guess.”

Yes, I gave it right back. But she didn’t seem to notice. She was still frowning at the page.

Images of a leaking hut and a boy all drenched on his way back from school came up in my mind.

“Notes on the other pages can’t be read. Let’s see if they can send us the copy of another book.” I  sent a message  to the WhatsApp group.

Replies tinkled in. Several people offered more legible copies.

I left the pdf on the table and turned on the TV.

A rerun of the chief minister’s press conference. He was unusually slow and deliberate. Careful about his words, gestures and face expressions. He might be the only one who learned lessons from this flood.

Ramya indicated to a page of the pdf. It was the same page she had been staring at for long.

“I tried to make heads and tails out of it. Too obscure and subjective. Images are all kind of Gothic. Objective co-relatives aplenty.”

“That reminds me of something. What was it? OK, your uncle had called. He is safe,” said Malu and both of us promptly ignored her. I have got a lot of objectionable relatives, my uncle being one of them.

Ramya, pedantic by nature, would have probably picked all this up yesterday in her literature class and I was pretty sure she had no idea what she was saying. She was growing up.

“Let me see.” I looked at the page.

There was great variety. Subjects and styles varied quite a lot.

“There are a couple of love poems too.” Ramya spoke in a low tone. I noticed that her face had a little bit of red on it when she said that. To hide it all, she laughed out loud.

“An artist and a poet. Probably cricketer and footballer too. Possibly a cheesecake for the girls around.” She sighed, with an intention to irritate her mom.

I finished my feast and got up with the pdf.

After washing my hands, I settled down in the drawing room, on a sofa and went over the poems.

Not bad. In fact, some poems were really too mature for his age.

Just twelve.

Suddenly I had an idea. It might be a good thing to send a few of those to magazines. Whatever they pay would be a surprise for him. I had his address.

The possibilities are endless.

I heard my daughter singing those lines again, the same lines ringing in my mind too.

“What is the slang for those sticky songs that go on ringing in your mind? Ring worm? Brain worm?”

“Dad, it is ear worm. And it ain’t a slang. There is even a wiki entry on it. It is also called a brain worm. But there is a real worm that attacks deer.”

“Ok, so has the ear worm attacked you, dear!”

Ramaya moaned.

Another message tinkled in. And a call soon after.

“Sir, I have sent the pdf. Please check and respond.”

“Thank you, wait, just a second. You know the first pdf you had sent me. Where did you find the book, the notebook, the one which you took the pdf from? Can you trace the boy?...Yes, Arshad. His complete address is on the first page of that copy. Can you find his details, please? Don’t bother much though, I know you are too busy. Only if it comes up.... Will tell you soon. Not now, it is a pleasant surprise. OK, thank you.”

I again looked at the pictures. Not bad. Lack of training was obvious but he was a keen observer. He was a better poet than an artist.

His house name was interesting.

Nilaavu. In Malayalam it means moonlight.

Probably smart parents too. It reflected their religious sentiments, but then it was neutral enough. No wonder the son was sensitive in his choice of words.
My God, even such children were being clobbered by the academic lingo within a few bare walls the whole day.

By the time the club president rang me up I had finished copying two more books.

He sounded too busy.

“Well, we got that book by sheer coincidence. We had posted on WhatsApp that we needed copies of notebooks. And Vishal, my son-in-law, was at Idukki with a relief group. He send me photos of a notebook he came by. I rang him up just now. Yes, the name is right. Arshad… The body has not yet been recovered….”

I cut the phone, leaned back and looked around.

My daughter and her mom were still looking at the pdf as if it was a family album. My daughter was explaining the lines to my wife who looked intrigued and amused.

I didn’t want to break the news to them.

The pdf they were holding seemed to be dripping still.

I wiped my eyes.

---