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INDIAN IN COWBOY COUNTRY

THE FINAL EXAM

Satish sat across from Kutty, whose face, with its luminous white teeth, began to brighten as he continued to expostulate about what was wrong with the education system in India, particularly at IIT. He ranted about how the IIT system had a top-class student selection process and a terrific curriculum, but his teachers had been misguided dictators who rewarded students for regurgitating what was taught and said in a class but crucified original thought.

Satish disagreed about the quality of professors, but rather than debating, he listened intently. When Kutty’s intensity began to wane, he egged and prodded him on with a question rather than a contradiction, which would have veered the monologue to a dialogue. He wanted to get Kutty’s mind away from his recent thought of hurling himself off the terrace. He also wanted Kutty to keep talking until Johnny, the senior “mess servant” and a Keralite like Kutty, could make a quick cup of tea to refresh them.

IITians, especially Kutty, were prone to talk endlessly as long as they could sip at a continuous supply of chai.

He continued about how his life had been wasted because of “my stupid scholarship.” After graduation he intended to go back to Mavelikara, “go back to my roots, wear a comfortable lungi and a kurta, and contemplate on my navel.”

Just as Satish sensed the confident, verging on arrogant, Kutty emerging, Johnny came to the table and asked if all was well. Before he could reply, Kutty grinned broadly and apologetically and told him in Malayalam, “Johnny, we just wanted some of your best, fresh morning tea. We have to stay awake till our exams are over.”

A puzzled Johnny, barely awake, rubbed his eyes and looked at Satish, who said, “I am sorry to wake you up, Johnny, but we need a whole jug of tea, urgently.” When Kutty excused himself, and went to the nearby restroom, Satish hurriedly went to Johnny in the kitchen, swore him to secrecy, and told him that Kutty was about to kill himself. He asked Johnny to keep the tea flowing and to interrupt them occasionally to make sure that all was well.

Johnny first brought out two cups and a jug of tea and served them. As they sipped their fresh tea, Johnny returned to the kitchen and come back with two plates of freshly made scrambled eggs, generous with tomatoes and onions, accompanied by hot, crisp unburned toast-not the limp, soggy toast that was served during regular breakfast hours.

Johnny then went back to the kitchen and brought back two tall glasses of milk, saying, “You need milk for strength during your last exam.” With that, he went to a remote end of the large hall and sat down, watching over the soon to-be-graduates as they gorged down their last decent breakfast on this campus. 

When they had finished eating, Johnny quickly cleared the table, hoping that the early birds, who were beginning to file into the mess hall, did not expect to be served breakfast, too. They would have to wait for regular breakfast hours. Satish realized Johnny’s predicament, and suggested to his friend that they take a walk around the campus one last time. Kutty agreed.

A hidden cuckoo loudly proclaimed that morning had broken. The air was sultry and still. Silently the two friends stepped out of the hostel. They pushed the latched but unlocked, front gate open and walked up the eucalyptus-lined road to the campus’ main building.

They passed the Gymkhana with its adjoining track, soccer, and hockey fields, and volleyball and basketball courts – venues of intense inter-hostel and inter-IIT rivalries. They recalled how Kutty, in his passionate desire to upset a close rival during a crucial tennis match, had mooned him, with stunning results. As they regaled in their sports exploits, the two proceeded uphill and stopped. The road was blocked by a small herd of cattle.

“Ah! The original residents of our campus,” Kutty said “I am going to miss them, especially accidentally stepping into their bullshit!”

“These are wild cows,” Kutty continued. “They were here before the campus was built. Remember the time we tried to get rid of them, calling them a danger to students?”

Kutty recalled the time when they had received a call from the estate office saying that the local municipal corporation was going to help catch the campus cows, and transport and release them more than fifty miles away. The office needed student volunteers, over a weekend, to help round up the cows. They were among the dozen volunteers who participated in the cattle roundup.

It was the hardest and the most dangerous work they had done in their lives. Assisting the experienced municipal cow catchers, avoiding swatting tails and sharp horn tips, they prodded, pushed, and cajoled about thirty calves and cows first, and then some very uncooperative bulls, up metal inclines and into trucks. After ten exhausting hours of being cowboys, the worn-out students grew very emotional as they waved good-bye to the captive cows.

After the bovine witnesses to their cumulative lives on the campus had been banished for several days, the Indian cowboys could not erase the mournful moos and sad eyes from their memories. One late Sunday morning, they awoke to an excited shout, “The cows are back! The cows are back!”  It had taken the herd and its homing instincts two weeks to find its way back home.

That early morning Satish and Kutty were unafraid, as they approached the squatted herd and pattered some cows affectionately and reverentially. The cows, in response, mooed to them softly.

Kutty said, “They are saying goodbye,” as he picked up his pace to catch Satish, who was already heading for the convocation hall.

Satish asked Kutty to sit on a raised concrete culvert near the “convo”. He then sat next to him and asked, “Tell me, were you really going to throw yourself off the building?”

“I was thinking about it,” Kutty replied, “But I don’t have the guts to end my life.”

“You were bawling your head off, Kutty, you know you are a bloody manic-depressive, don’t you? You need to see a doctor!”Satish said.

“Thank you, Dr Satish, for that diagnosis. Next patient, please,” intoned Kutty in mockery as he jumped off the culvert and began walking down the road.

Satish followed him and said, “Listen. From now on, you are on your own. You will not have us around to help you with your mood swings.”

“I know and that’s what worries me. Do you really think that I am nervous about the last exam? It’s a piece of cake! I am really concerned about what happens after the exam.

“This place has been my home, my paradise for five years, and I am going to lose it tomorrow. You people have been my family, my brother, my protectors, and we are going to be thrown out tomorrow. This is the end.”

Satish calmed his anxious, dramatic friend and shared with him that he, too was concerned about life after IIT. He was not certain if he would stay in India or go to America. His parents wanted him to go abroad, but his guide, Professor Arjun, was insisting that he should take a job in India.

The mercurial Kutty had not applied for any job, and had received no job offers. He could not afford the application fees to apply to American universities; hence, he was not going to America either.

“What are you going to do after tomorrow?” asked a concerned Satish.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Not really nothing. I have a few ideas that I have been thinking about for all these years. I want to go home to Mavelikara, sit down, write a few papers, and submit them to a few journals.”

“Technical papers?” asked an amused Satish. Kutty hated writing anything, especially technical papers.

“Yes, technical papers, I wanted to write so many but I did not have the time because of the stupid assignments, exams, and tests. Now that I am free from this place, I will sit on a beach, sip coconut water, scratch my belly, listen to the waves, and write.”

“And who is going to support you while you write?”

“I have many rich uncles. All I have to do is convince one to support me and tell him that I will dedicate my papers to him. Maybe one of them has a large ego and a larger wallet, and will give me some money for my bidis, paper, pens, food, lungi and Kurta while I live in my mother’s home. It’s going to be simple living, high thinking for one year. Get all this rubbish out of my head and start a new life, both physically and mentally, and then go forth and conquer the world.”

“I need a break, Satish,” Kutty said, as if apologizing. “These five years were hard on me, and I am tired. Not one thing went my way except my academics, and that was such a waste. I could have learned what they taught me here by reading textbooks in Mavelikara.”

Kutty was the brightest person that Satish had met, even by IIT standards. His constant bitching about the low standards on the campus always irritated him, but he kept quiet.

to be contd...