What do you want to be when you grow up?

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I had nurtured different ambitions at different stages in my life. My earliest desire as far as I can remember was to become an oracle in the small temple in our village. Entranced, I would watch him preparing for his performance. Attired in nothing but a short thin red towel, he would collect hibiscus and other flowers and place then a fresh plantain leaf along with several items which included turmeric powder. Armed with a ‘sword’ that jangled, he would start dancing, ever so slowly to begin with. As he got into the act, the pace of the dance would quicken. Then it would enter the frenetic zone and he would be in direct dialogue with God. That’s when it would happen – he’d hit his skull with the sword. This masochistic game would go on until those who stand around him watching the spectacle were satisfied that he had lost sufficient quantity of blood. A lot of turmeric powder would be applied the forehead of the oracle would be all red and yellow. To my young mind, being hurt was a small price to pay if one could communicate directly with God!

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It was in the year I started going to school, that the dirt track connecting Cannanore and Bangalore which passed through our village was being upgraded. Workers were busy levelling the dirt road, carrying gravel in baskets and molten tar in tins or buckets, spreading the gravel evenly and then pouring the hot black liquid on the track, all this under the hot summer sun. I watched all this for about three days when a contraption I had never seen in my life appeared on the scene. Referred to as the ‘engine’ (Actually, they pronounced the word as ‘injun’) – it was coal-fired, and had two broad heavy metal wheels and a hooded cabin in which sat the driver, his hands clasping the steering.

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When everyone sweated it out in the hot sun, there was shade wherever he went in his ‘chariot’; when all others worked standing, walking or running, he worked at his seat; he was the first to be served at tea-time; he was so powerful that his fingers could move the behemoth he sat in. Wasn’t I impressed? I was enamoured by the perks his job carried. I wanted to be an ‘injun-driver’ when I grew up.

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It was in one of the bus journeys that I discovered my next passion: the conductor. His whistle stopped and started the bus; he collected all the money; he had the authority to decide whether (and how much) to charge for the luggage; he was the last word in deciding whether a child would travel free or on a half-ticket (or a teenager on a half-ticket or full fare). As passengers without seats struggled not to fall into the laps of those seated as the bus careened and swerved, the conductor was steady as the Gibraltar. I was naturally spell-bound. A bus conductor is what I wanted to grow up into.

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The job of the TTE in the train, somehow, did not appeal to me as a model profession I wanted to pursue. True, he was immaculately turned out in his spotless white trousers, black jacket, tie and gold-braided cap, but he did not seem to exude the authority of the bus conductor.

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All these were in my pre-teen days. A couple of years later, my ambitions changed – I wanted to be an English professor like Prof Madhukar Rao of Maharaja’s College, Ernakulam who treated his students as his equals and whose freewheeling classes were great fun. What if some used to say that the secret of the pink cheeks of his was the dash of rouge from his wife’s dressing table? He looked good and he was good. That was all that mattered to me.

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And then I wanted to be a math wizard like Prof Veeramony. Son of a clerk in a private firm, he was a self-made man. He had financed his studies by giving tuitions for those in junior classes. After getting a job, he continued the practice in order to supplement the income, but the question of their getting any favours did not arise at all. In fact, he respected students who did not seek tuitions. He has a booming voice that resonated in the classroom. He was a great singer, and would render the popular romantic numbers of Mohamed Rafi and Yesudas with such feel. Very handsome, he was admired by the girls in the college, but seemed totally unaffeced by all the attention he was getting.

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He was, of course, a great teacher. I have not come across another who could draw a perfect circle on the blackboard. In the Pure/Analytical/Projective/Solid Geometry classes, he would draw the lines and circles given in the question using a chalkpiece. As he said, ‘Draw the perpendicular from P on AB’, one could hear a series of taps on the blackboard and see a dotted line through P at exact right angles to AB. One wondered how he managed that and waited for the next time he’d do it. All he did was to hold the tip of the chalk, place it lightly at P and just run it towards AB. Voila! Instead of a solid line, you had a perfect dotted line. I must confess that it took me a fortnight’s practice during lunch recess to come anywhere near his seemingly effortless feat.

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Becoming a banker minding someone else’s money was never on my agenda; that I ended up as one is the greatest tragedy of my life.