Delhi: A Chronicle of Arrogance (and Blatant Self-Appraisal)

Continued from my earlier post about Delhi:

Delhi would also teach me that not every guy who opens his mouth first to answer a question in the class is necessarily the smartest. Actually, quite the contrary!

In Delhi, I met Sethi (for example), whose immense desire to impress his teachers and answer questions, and whose infinite capacity to pretend to be a great thinker, did not quite go hand in hand with his average understanding of Physical Chemistry and his basic deficiency in analytical thinking! And yes, he did his Bachelors from one of the top colleges in Delhi.

Delhi would also teach me that even someone coming from a remote part of the country could compete hand in hand with the more privileged students from the so-called best colleges of the country, and show them that he had a better understanding of what he way saying. (No, I did not do well in the exams; but I could prove that a person always sitting in the last bench could sometimes solve problems that the sofisticated and proud Delhi University students could not!)

It was in Delhi that I would make the fearsome AKB stop his teaching, and show him that his derivation of the mathemtical formulae of the day were entirely wrong, leading to his exit for the day, and other students' suggesting me that I ruined myself by antagonizing AKB. (As luck would have it, it would be I having lunch at AKB's home 8 years down the line, and not one of those wise kids!).

Delhi would teach me that not all colleges in remote parts of India are inferior to the Delhi colleges; Delhi would teach me that while St. Stephen's College was perhaps the best college in India for a student's all-round development, being in St. Stephen's did not necessarily make one a master of all trades. Else, I won't have spent endless hours teaching Quantum Chemistry and Irreversible Thermodynamics to Kathuria in his dorm room! (And which would prompt Ranjan to comment, "Tera dimag hai bolke tu bhao khata hai, sala.", which could be loosely transliterated as, "You bastard, you don't have to act so smart, just because you know a thing or two more than us!"). But then for Kathuria, it was a matter of priority; all he ever wanted to do was an MBA and not a Masters in Physical Chemistry.

It would take me 4 more years to read "My Crazy Friends" by Pablo Neruda, and to realize that Delhi was where my Rojas Gimenez and Joaquin Cifuentes lived. And I would forever be grateful to my destiny that I met them, and learned things from them that I won't have otherwise learnt. These two crazy friends among themselves thought me arrogance, pessimism, a bit of impracticality, and to laugh at myself; but they also taught me what a real teacher should be like!

Mauz was right after all (And I hate him for that!).
__________________________
"...Rojas Gimenez, lost in his own
fastidiousness,
a theoretical sailor, certifiably
crazy, offering in the smoke
his wayward tenderness
in one drink after another,
until he fell is stages
as if the wine itself
had taken him further and further away from us!
My vulnerable brother, I learned
so much in your company,
I lost so much in the waywardness of your heart,...."

"...And later, like an apparition,
keeping to his dark corner
during parties,
Joaquin Cifuentes arrived,
freed from his chains, a ghostly friend
with his emphatic face in the rain,
his sharp, defining hairline
crossing a forehead open to pain.
He didn't know how to laugh, my new friend;
and in the course of cruel, ashy evenings,
I watched him destroy himself, Horseman of Death."

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Note: This page belongs to VMK and AKB, my crazy friends, my teachers, two of my Gods!