Our English teacher – Mrs Bakshi

Jan 1, 2011

I met her today. My Guru. My teacher. A rock that I have clung to in most difficult times and the person who infused love whenever I lost hope.

My English at St Xavier’s High School Bathinda, Bakshi Ma`am (Poonam Bakshi) is a picture of grit determination and hard work. Those were the years when she gave me extra lessons without any fees. Those were the times when I turned to her for every small problem – be it personal or professional.

Like a lighthouse she guided me and perhaps many other students since 1997. Today she stands on the cross road of life where I cant do anything for her. Her husband, Mr Bakshi, is fighting against all odd ends. With severe kidney failure, Mr Bakshi, undergoes dialysis. Almost twice a week.

The six-feet tall and cheerful man lay hidden under quilts at his home. My always-smiling and joyful teacher tried a lot to hide her tears, but she could not. Every time I saw her struggle to keep that tear away from coming out, my heart wrenched to see such a pain.

But after every few sentences she said, “I have learnt not to loose hope and not to cry in front of anyone. It’s a battle that my husband, my son and I are fighting all alone. And we have learnt not to give up.”

What she does not mention is that at times she feels so lonely. She does not tell that sitting on the cold desk at hospital, waiting for the five hours long painful dialysis to get over, she reminisces the old days. Thinking of the happiness she shared with her spouse.

At times she feels too helpless to even think of something good happening. She did not tell me how scarce the resources are and how difficult it is to bear expensive treatment. Yet I could make out how much she needs a support, which sadly enough, I cant be. And she is too proud to ask for a help.

Hats off to the lady, who taught so many children, changed so many lives and touched so many people. Now none of us is able to help her and she is too

All I can do is just pray.

Tiger and Dragon share a bond

Love knows no barriers. No matter which part of world one hails from, the language of love and friendship is understood everywhere alike. There is a bond, which ties people together from diverse cultures.

Recent visit of Indian youth delegation to China, under youth cultural exchange programme of Government of India and Government of China, just fortified this feeling.

An initiative under understanding reached between the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Chinese president Hu Jintao, this may be the last Indian delegation to China under the programme. Meant at studying the culture of great Dragon’s country, the visit ended forging many ties and proved to be a learning experience.

The huge delegation of 88 youngsters from India, handpicked from Jammu-Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Gujarat to West Bengal presented striking picture of vast diversity India has. Inclusion from youth even from island states of Andaman and Nicobar and Daman and Diu added to the colorful bouquet of diversity.

It was an awesome experience to be amidst skyscrapers and oversized flyovers of Shanghai, world acclaimed Chinese technology at Hefei and to talk with clouds and have peek into ancient China at Chongqing.

Perhaps we can take a leaf out of China’s urban planning and development arena and provide home to our slums and ensure an equivalent urban skyline. The other side of this progressive story, however, largely remained unseen.

The country with largest population on globe teemed with people and vehicles, but had no traffic chaos. Its disciplined people and equally discipline traffic did not give away truth of it being most populated country.

People here extensively used plastics, especially in the form of packaged drinking water, but the place did not choke with it. Answer to this lay in Chinese’s penchant to recycle everything possible and assign a different class of industry for the same. As per the municipal officials of Chongqing, Government of China offers special subsidy and taxation benefits to the recycling industry.

Chinese care for their environment, and that too an innovative manner. Besides recycling plastic and other garbage, Chinese promote green cover at every possible place.

The cemented city of Shanghai, where one can hardly spot even a small bird, is an example. While countryside is lush green, in city every small space has been converted into green strip. At public places, like Shanghai Expo, huge potted plants try to impart greenery to an otherwise wide expanse of concrete. Some of the pavilions, like Indian pavilion, were designed in a way to be oasis in the desert of huge structures again made of environmental friendly material.

The country also has large buses and public transport systems running on batteries to lessen environmental pollution. Such battery-operated vehicles are frequently found in famous Shanghai’s Nanjing road.

Like India, China too considers its manpower a great asset and efforts are being made to improve the standards of living, especially in the countryside.

Women here share equal dais with men. Cities of Shanghai, Hefei and Chonging buzzed with women all around. It was a place where women drove taxis, buses and other public transports, ran most successful business ventures in market, handled shops, malls and outlets – to cut a long story short – women outnumbered men even as skilled labor in factories.

Lovers of tobacco, Chinese men and women are fond of smoking and have specially designated outlets for sale of finest of tobacco products in cities. For the rural population, small time cigarette shops fulfill these needs. Most of the public places in cities including hotels, restaurants, markets and even public toilets, have tobacco smell wafting in air.

Despite such large consumption of tobacco and its products, one can hardly find a cigarette butt lying on roads. Particular about sanitation, there are round the clock sweepers, deployed to work after night hours also – especially in tourist zones.

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Reaching Shanghai:

By the time we reached Shanghai, excitement took over fatigue, thirst and hunger. Right from landing till boarding respective group buses – all necks had a busy time looking around the well-lit and well-built Shanghai International Airport. And again the shutterbugs went into action.

Folks don’t you feel that repeated boarding and traveling made us perfect travelers? I bet, most of us have become very good travelers by now.

Well, coming back to the point. Meeting the Chinese in-charge of respective group was one of those golden moments. We – in group II – had Ching and John. Both gem of a person, all of us bothered Ching a lot. We’ll have to accept that our Chinese friends had better patience and higher level of tolerance than us.

Though grown ups – all of us behaved like school kids on picnic - while on our outings. And bless Mr Deshpande. It was his efforts that got us yummy Indian food when we landed in Shanghai.

I could kiss the hands of chef who cooked Indian food and thank him profusely (sic) for the only Indian food our palate tasted while in China.

I wish Deshpande Sir would have got us at least one more such treat while in China. My friends like Rachna, Harendra Rao and roommate Vardhika Malpani would not have lost so much of weight by the end of journey.

The long journey from Shanghai to Pudong was all embedded with skyscrapers shining with lights (as if it was Diwali. I doubt even if during our Diwali we have such lightening systems).

In a way, the lights reflected prosperity of Shanghai and its bid to show the world its rabbit’s pace of development and progress. Did anyone notice – the smallest building was six-storey?

All of us had that WOW view from our hotel windows. Once we reached Shanghai, all home sick had that urge to talk to home.

But Chinese are punctual. And punctual enough to even tailor their guests as per their punctuality. Most of us wanted to place a call home telling about safe landing (and much more), but despite repeated attempts did not get an opportunity.

At Chinese hotels, international calls are mainly made through separate business centers. Had it been India, the Indian host would have woken up entire hotel staff to make arrangements for Chinese to make international calls.

But we are Indians and they are Chinese.

I don’t know who slept the first night in hotel at Shanghai and who did not. On entering respective rooms, most of us were busy with the inspection. Peering out of the window opening to well-lit city.

And tragedy awaited for people like Harendra Rao aka apna Hari. Like all of us, Hari too opened the mini-bar a his hotel and his joy knew no bounds on seeing his mini-bar stacked with heaps of chocolates, whiskey, cold drinks and water.

Sharing his happiness, Hari called up his friends to share his newly found trove of treasure. The entire gang had a feast. But the repercussions of feast were to be felt later, while signing out of the hotel. (read ahead for Hari’s plight).

The Shanghai Expo

And with the Shanghai Expo, we started exercising our feet. Lazy like me, who seldom exercise, had a tough time eating herbs (read boiled food) and walking.

While stepping into Shanghai Expo I realized how over populated China was. Since it was a public site, it was bound to have so many people. But still…………!

In zig-zag rows we stood waiting for our turn. Being whisked from one pavilion to another, we hardly had time to absorb the beauty (or should we say the hustle-bustle around).

By the time we reached Indian pavilion, the dormant patriotism suddenly started making waves. Before entering the pavilion all of us raised slogans – Bharat Mata Ki Jai. As if we were some krantikaris (revolutionaries) all set to get Indian pavilion freed from monotony it offered!

I wonder if anyone noticed what stinking smell the water at Indian pavilion emanated. In fact, I later realized that same foul smell of water was experienced in water town Zhujiajiao and other places too.

Indian pavilion:

Well, once at the Indian pavilion, we were hurriedly shown a 3-D show. Even before I could recover from the 3-D show, we were hurled out of the pavilion.

It was here I noticed the ability we Indians have to crowd up. Except for few delegates, none other could make out what our Minister for Sports and Youth Affairs Mr MS Gill said.

Those gifted with better height genes made the most in crowd. They had to just crane out their necks to see the minister, while dwarfs like me got lost in the milieu.

It was only after everyone dispersed, I could find myself. Next 15 to 20 minutes were spent with the photo session. Again, like kids on picnic, we made a beeline to the China pavilion. The Chinese pavilion was in fact much larger, had better designs and even better presentation.

From vintage engines to bullet trains, from archaic drainage systems to recent ones – Chinese pavilion had it all. Especially the movie running on ceiling of the pavilion made us feel as if the sky ahead is moving.

Most of us spent quality time at this pavilion. And then came those four hours long of boredom and hunting. Hunting? Yes, hunting for Indian foods. Many of us tread our way back to the Indian pavilion to munch paranthas, dosas et al.

Those like me, with poor streak of adventure and fear of getting lost, anchored themselves opposite the China pavilion. By the time we reached back to hotel, the homesickness resurfaced.

We hadn’t talked to our families for over 24 hours.

to be continued