At that time, we considered the Brahmins as outsiders. The Tamil they spoke was different. However, they treated us students like their own children. There was only one exception—our maths teacher, whom we called Arkay Saar. Despite being fond of us, on Mondays and Thursdays, if anyone hadn’t done their homework, he would grab his bamboo wand and beat the boy severely. Eventually, we figured out the reason: he only shaved on Mondays and Thursdays.

Shaving today is quite an enjoyable task, but sixty years ago, it was a different story. Back then, there was a blade called Panama. Naina (Father) would sit on the floor, positioning an ‘ancient’ mirror against the wall with a jug of water and a bar of soap nearby. After dipping the shaving brush in water, he would lather his chin with soap and shave using the Panama blade, which often led to cuts. That was the twice-weekly ritual.

Allow me to share a bit about Naina’s shaving brush. Once, while visiting Nagore from Delhi, where I worked in the civil supplies department, I forgot to bring my shaving brush and ended up using Naina’s. The experience was unforgettable. That brush was from the same shaving kit Naina had bought when he first started shaving as a teenager. Even a palm leaf would have likely done a better job than that brush. So, I went to the shop and bought two new ones—one for Naina and one for myself.

Arkay Saar, however, held no grudges. Even if he chased us off with a cane one day, he would be laughing and chatting with us the next. In contrast, the physics and chemistry professors, who threw record notebooks at the ceiling, behaved like psychos. We never saw a smile on their faces.

In college, every professor treated us like enemies. However, I noticed that they only smiled and conversed with students from the upper class, particularly those who had studied in convents and spoke fluent English. The entire college environment felt very alien to me.

One memory stands out vividly. I spent a year (1960–1961) in a pre-university course at Government College in Karaikal, which was 14 km from Nagore. The only way to travel between the two towns was by bus, as there was no railway line, thanks to the numerous rivers crisscrossing the area. No bridges existed at the time, but they’ve been built since.  In that entire year, I never once used the kakoos to urinate. Thinking back, it seems almost unbelievable.

Up until the age of ten, I wasn’t shy at all. In primary school, we even had competitions in the kakoos to see who could urinate the longest. But after high school, extreme shyness took over, and I couldn’t relieve myself if anyone was nearby.

Every morning, I would leave home at eight, catch the bus to Karaikal, and return by five in the evening. I would hold my urine all day—that’s how intense my shyness had become.

However, by the time I turned thirty-five, all that body shyness disappeared. Kalapriya, an important Tamil poet, lived near Courtallam, a town famous for its waterfalls in Tamil Nadu. Two friends and I went to visit him.

The four of us headed to the spot where the waterfall cascades, where there was a dense forest with caves. The waterfall at the base was ferocious, but in the forest, the water flowed calmly, waist-deep. It was a place known for tigers, but we weren’t concerned. Embracing the enchanting beauty of the forest, I decided to strip off my clothes and be one with nature.

Seeing me, my friends also undressed, except for Kalapriya, who kept his clothes on. We roamed the forest in this way for nearly the entire day. I’ve had two other experiences of wandering naked in public (both stories are quite long, so we can save them for later).

Compared to the professors from my time, today’s private college professors are in a truly pathetic state. When Oscar Wilde was imprisoned, he was sentenced to walk on a treadmill for six hours a day and sleep on a plank. After enduring this hardship for about two years (1895–1897), he was released, only to pass away within three years. Today’s private college professors are no better off. They are often engaged with administrative tasks rather than focusing on teaching students. The situation is even worse for women professors. A distressed female student might call her professor late at night, feeling suicidal after being scolded by her mother. Professors are expected to be both educators and counselors.

A female professor friend of mine once shared a distressing incident: “A female student attempted to assault me, just like the student in Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood who tried to assault her professor! Hare Bhagwan!”

Alright, let’s head to our physics class. The professor began each session with, “Let’s consider.” I knew words like ‘us,’ thanks to our English teacher in school, who had covered words like ‘I,’ ‘you,’ ‘he,’ ‘his,’ ‘she,’ ‘her,’ and ‘the.’ But the meaning of ‘consider’ baffled me. I didn’t even own a dictionary, probably because my schooling had been in Tamil medium, and I had only switched to English medium during pre-university.

For eleven years, starting at age six in first standard until age sixteen in eleventh standard, I studied English for one hour each day—just add up the hours. Yet, despite all those hours, I still didn’t understand ‘let us consider.’

No country teaches English the way India does. (Well, Sri Lanka is even worse.) In pre-university, I struggled and failed all five subjects, including Tamil, even though I might have passed that one subject.

But knowing I was doomed to fail the rest, I didn’t put much effort into Tamil either, so I failed that too.

Later, I began learning English, but that’s another story. Reading works like Baburao Patel’s Q&A on Mother India and R.K. Karanjia’s Blitz, along with cinema gossip, helped shape my understanding and expression in the language. Watching American web series improved my pronunciation, while British series like Lucifer taught me the British accent, which I now prefer over the American one.

Still, something seems off in my brain when it comes to language learning. I’ve spent a lot of time and effort on languages, including Spanish, French, Sanskrit, and Arabic. I’ve filled a dozen thick notebooks with handwritten Spanish notes. At this point, even a buffalo could be writing poetry in Spanish.

Let’s move on. Back to Naina’s story. I mentioned necrophilia among Tamils. Because of that, I didn’t want to pay homage to my Naina’s body, though he had raised me like an emperor. Naina is a memory. Mother is a memory. Yesterday is a memory. Life is nothing but an endless stream of memories, right?  That’s why I felt there was no point in just paying respect to a corpse.

By Charu Nivedita