Study Hard, Do Well

Place for Us?         with Nightcafe AI    

               

During our last week in our hill-home, three boys from the next village of Kaphura took to visiting me - on holidays, or between school and their evening tuition - to take turns riding my wife’s cycle. Mine, I told them when they stopped me to plead for a ride, is far too big for any of them to handle. 

Ayush, the tallest of the three, seemed to be on the cusp of adolescence, and was quite comfortable balancing Premila’s cycle. Mahinder is much smaller, and was very wobbly on the first day. I was charmed to see Ayush encourage his friend, holding on to the rear of the saddle, and supporting the handle-bar till he found his balance. On the second day, they brought Dhirender with them; he was much tinier, with shining dark eyes, and a crooked smile, and I said there was no way he would be able to manage an adult cycle, even one belonging to my diminutive wife. Turned out, though, that he could ride quite comfortably, and his eyes positively gleamed with delight when he completed his first turn, down to the heap of construction sand at the bottom of the bend, and back up to our gate.

On our last day in Satoli, Premila warned that the rear brake was a little dodgy, and though I did tighten it, I decided to monitor the boys by cycling along with them. After an hour of turns - from Partridge Hill to Ann Mukherjee’s nursery and back -  they said the rear brake had worked itself loose again, so I told them to call it a day, and wheel the cycle up to the house.

A Swiss flag was dangling from a pillar in our verandah, gifted by a Swiss NGO which was cooperating with our local hospital. The boys wanted to know what it was. 

“Switzerland”, Premila said. 

“Swizzerland”, they echoed.

“Do you know which continent it is in?”, she asked 

“Bengal?”

“America?”

The guesses ranged all over the place, without any sense of the difference between a continent, a nation, or a state. We asked which class they were in. Ayush and Mahinder, it turns out, are 15, and will appear for the 10th standard school boards in March. 

“Let’s start from the top”, Premila said “which are the continents?”

“Europe”, one said.

“Great! And?”

“Er, Punjab.”

“No, no - continent - mahadweep.”

“Hind Mahasagar - the Indian Ocean.”

Encouraged, another ventured “Bay of Bengal?”

“No, no - Continent, Landmass.” 

Blank… 

“In which continent is India?”

“Asia”, Mahinder got it right.

“Great -  can you name the icy continents? With thousands of kilometers of ice and snow?”

“Assam? Uttarakhand?”

“Uttarakhand is not a continent. It’s not even a country. What is it?”

Blank.

When the boys left, Premila turned to me in deep exasperation - What the @#*% are we doing, spending tens of thousands of crores on this shit every year? And what are we equipping these boys for?

“For building walls”, I said, gesturing to the four men constructing a retaining wall in the rear of our property. Gopal and Bhuvan were skilled masons, whom we first met when they built our stone house under the master craftsman, Kishan Ram. Bhuvan stayed on to look after the garden and the house he had helped build. Basant, we had met for the first time this autumn, and he helped with moving stones and carting away loose soil. 

The fourth was Mukesh, Bhuvan’s nephew. We had met Mukesh last summer, when he said he was home from the city, and getting bored - could he help with the garden? Of course, we said, and were delighted by his deep smile, and his bounding energy. 

Should we offer him a permanent job, we had asked his uncle then. He was going back to the city, we were told. He had a B.A. degree, and a permanent office job was in the offing. This year, Mukesh appeared at the edge of our pond one morning. I asked him how he was. 

“Fine, dealing with berozgaari  (unemployment).”

I hope I looked as sympathetic as I felt, but didn’t quite know how to respond. The following week, when work began on the retaining wall, I noticed he was part of the crew. 

Before we left for Delhi on Friday, we paid out wages for the job-work. Premila asked Mukesh about his plans. 

“Plans?” he asked ruefully. “I need a job  - I’m 29, I want to get married, but who will marry an unemployed man?” 

“We would be happy to find a job for you here, but we thought you wanted to work in the city.”

“I’ve tried for so many years, Ma’am - there’s nothing in the city for people like me.”

Vikky, Pawan, Mahesh, Dinesh, Kamal, Yashpal, Mohan, and now Mukesh. Young men I had known since they were little boys, herding goats on the hillside, going shiny-faced to school, parents propelled by the received wisdom handed down by people like us:

“Study hard, do well, get a good job.” 

This advice was sincere, it was well-meaning. This is what we were taught, as were our parents before us. It was a formulation that had served us well. 

But, in the villages, it has failed most. They can study hard, but the teaching is so poor, they don’t do well. And even if they do well, or relatively well, the jobs are not there, except for the few, the rare one whose ability really shines through. We know one or two, but they are from families with a tradition of learning, and the wherewithal to support them through long periods of apprenticeship and job-search. 

Not so the boys in that list, all first-generational learners. Each of them - now grown men -  have engaged with the city, with Haldwani, Rishikesh, Dehradun, Delhi…Two of them now work in the homes of our extended family in Delhi, but the others have turned back, defeated, frustrated by the city.

“How much does this cycle cost?” Mahinder had asked me at the end of his first ride.

“Our parents are poor”, Ayush chipped in, “so they can’t buy us a cycle, but when we start earning…”

“But once we start earning, we’ll buy scooters, no?”

I hope so, and I wish you well, Ayush, Mahinder and Dhirender. But the quality of your learning doesn’t bode well, and neither does India’s employment scenario.