The man with the scar

For those who studied in CBSE [Central Board for Secondary Education] schools in India in the 1980s, there was a treat when we studied english. Apart from the customary textbook that was prescribed to us by the board, there was this extra book called "Non-detail". Therein lay the treat for us schoolgoers. This book, all of 40 pages was filled with stories from new-age authors from all over the world. Most stories that appeared in the book were abridged versions of the original ones. In most cases, the original title bestowed upon the story by the author was changed by the board to fit in better with the overall theme of the story. I never gave it another thought then, but now I realize the apalling limits of censorship our schools faced.

The best part of the deal was that the teachers hardly ever touched this book, preferring to stick with the curriculum, leaving this gem of a reading material to the students. I particularly enjoyed it, since the local library had nothing but a collection of James Hadley Chase spy novels, with the customary look. By the customary look, I mean that the front cover was missing for all of them. When purchased new, there usually was a photo of a well-endowed (almost always blonde) woman, completely unconnected to the plotline, posing with a dangerous-looking gun. She was almost always in a bikini, a rather skimpy one. Every book had a different woman, and a different gun. Not a book was available with these covers intact. I am sure there was a boy or a man in the local community with a box full of these covers. It was not as though the Chase novels were the works of creative genius either. One could get tired easily of the same plot of an american version of James Bond, who goes about destroying the evil plots of dictators and businessmen.

The non-detail stories, on the other hand, were a welcome distraction from the usual routine fares in the library. That the board changed the curriculum almost every year made it interesting to keep guessing as to what would come our way next. Someone somewhere in Delhi was reading a lot of stories and re-writing them so simpletons like me in southern India could absorb them better. I like to think of the board members as writers at heart; one of those people who like to scribble their thoughts at the sides of the text in books. You probably saw one of their shadow-writings in a library book. For example, "Doubtful interpretation", and "Disagreeable under present days" are two scribbled words that sprang out at me once when I opened a library copy of "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand a few years ago.

I do not remember the names of the authors, but the titles of the stories and the characters left an indelible impression on the greying matter. Names like "Oklahoma" or "Mendota", "Wakarewarewa" stand out. This story where these names appeared was "Locomotive 68", the story of an american indian (a "red indian" as we used to call them. Now we know better) of the same name who is very rich and has a run-in with the author and goes on an adventure of a lifetime. Then there was this story called "Apple Tree complex", a beautiful vignette of a 10-year old girl who gets mad at her parents over a petty issue, and climbs up the apple tree to the tree house, and refuses to come down.

The best story I can still recall vidly was that of the man with the scar. A poignant piece of work, whose real title and author I would love to know about. The story opens in a bar where the author is having a drink (a bar scene prescribed for a 9th grade class in a dry country like 1980s India!) with this aging soldier. In walks a striking looking man with a large scar running down his face to his neck. He has a drink, exchanges a few words of niceties with the soldier and leaves. The soldier narrates the story of the man with the scar to the author. He was the general of rebel forces during the spanish civil war. He had been tried and condemned to go in front of a shooting squad. As a last request, he asks for his wife to be brought to him. She comes just as he is being led to the shooting yard. I can still still recall the words that described her: Strikingly beautiful with raven hair flaying, crimson lips partly open in grief, her fierce eyes streaming rivers of tears as she runs across the courtyard to embrace him...
The soldiers stand stunned mesmerized by her beauty even in her grief. He kisses her, and then removes a hidden knife and stabs her in the heart. She dies in his arms. The general of the government forces who watches stunned as the woman collapses on the ground, asks the man why he did it. He replies that he did not want her to go through pain after he is dead. She would obviously have been the target of many a man's lecherous advances, and would have suffered immensely. He loved her too much to lead her to that fate. Touched by the man's love for his wife, the general pardons him.

The soldier narrating the story stops at this point. The author asks him about the scar, because there had been no mention of how the man had sustained it. To which the soldier replies, "That? A soda bottle exploded and the glass cut his face..."

The unexpected ending completely caught me by surprise, forever etching that story in my mind. Such simplicity from start to end. Cliff's notes perhaps, but still retained its ferocity of purpose. Even at 14, I was able to realize the irony of the events in that story. Now perhaps, with Google's help, I might be able to find the original work. Let's see.

Esperanto

May15, 2009.
Now that I am a contributing member to KQED (our local NPR station), I can write about my own "driving" and "driveway" moments that occur when I drive the short 5 minutes to work. I heard Joe Biden speak today, while I was idling at one of 12 lights on the way to work. He was at Esperanza, a military family community near south LA, talking about benefits that will become available to families of active soldiers and veterans.

The name rattled my old brain, and the name "Esperanto" popped up. As it is, there is a population density of 1 per ten million or so who might read this blog. Among those good souls, I doubt if 1% of that esteemed crowd would know what Esperanto means. Wikipedia says the following:

Esperanto (help·info) is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language in the world.^[2] Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887. The word esperanto means "one who hopes" in the language itself. Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy and flexible language that would serve as a universal second language to foster peace and international understanding.^[3]

Now why would I know that? More than 20 years ago, when I was in high school, I had an English teacher who took his job very very seriously. As the name Lloyd Gonzales would suggest he was, as people would have called him, an Anglo-Indian. Political correctness would beg to differ of course. We were being very presumptive, pegging him as one. He might very much have been a vanilla-flavor Christian. Nevertheless, he had a unique way of teaching the language. Quite contrary to the style of wheezing Tamilians who had been my teachers until that point, who "s"s and "m"s were pronounced "yes" and "yum", he had the clipped British accent which made every student perk up and pay attention. That he had jokes and anecdotes mixed in lessons, only made the hour more interesting. That these non-curricular diversions had been tried out and perfected to varying degrees of success on classes of bygone years, did not occur to us until later. On one such fine sunny day as it is today, he asked "Does anyone know the name of the universal language?". At that time, I prided myself on being the best in quiz and general knowledge. I had few dog-eared books of Britannica encyclopedia. This was not the age of the Google search engine. If I heard "Does anyone know.." or "What is..." uttered anywhere within earshot, my ears perked up like a beagle's! But I was stumped on this one. The answer was, as you could have guess by now, Esperanto.

A decade or so later, I walked into my lab in GM where a Romanian and an American colleague were in a heated argument about something. As soon as I walked in, the Romanian gentleman turned to me, face red, and asked, "Bhaskar! What is the universal language?". History had prepared me ( a la "Slumdog Millionaire") for this very day. I smiled to myself, and said "Why Esperanto of course!". The one piece of knowledge that I thought would never come in handy at any point in my life was about to be put to use. I was going to use it, and enhance my stature in the group as wise and learned. Just a week earlier, I had used the word "Sanctum Sanctorum" in a meeting, to blank stares from most and guffaws of appreciation from a few European managers!!
Obviously smiled that someone other than him knew this, he turned to his adversary and said, "See!! Even Bhaskar knows this. English is NOT the universal language, Esperanto is! I told you..."
The moment of pride vanished without a trace. I was doomed to be the asian dude who knows a thing or two.