50 First "Dates"

What comes to your mind first when you hear the word “date”? If you are a normal 16-25 year old boy or girl reading this (and nationality and culture has no bearing here), it’s the only thing that naturally comes to your mind, yes – an evening out with a girl or boy. Stretching imagination far, if you are hungry and are someone like Joey, you might even think of the dry fruit of that name.

But if you are an Indian boy or girl, then never – and I repeat never will you think of the horrifying concept that was once a recurring nightmare in your childhood. A concept that made you lose sleep before your History exams, a concept that consumed your sweet childhood days and made them dry like dates. All pun on the word is intended J. It is because, every Indian boy (or girl) makes a promise to himself that he will never again think of those terrible things once the trauma is over, lest it come back to haunt him. He locks all those memories up in a tiny little space in his head and never again mentions them till he dies. I think they say hell is a bad place because maybe they make you once again go back and remember and memorize all those dates and take an exam once every hour or so, the invigilator of course is the devil himself. And if caught copying from your fellow “hellites”, the punishment is that you have to memorize dates from the history of hell as well. Yes, I’m talking of those freakish “dates” from History lessons in school that forced you to remember God forsaken dates in human (or inhuman) history.

These abominable things used to appear in our exam papers for 2 or 4 marks “arrange in chronological order” questions. 22 chapters in the textbook, each riddled with innumerable characters, treaties, pacts, voyages and battles and hence producing enough dates to make the numbers of words in the Oxford dictionary seem like child’s play. If only I had a dime for every “date” I had in there, I would be a millionaire with real “dates” right now J

All through my school life, history was a subject I liked. The battles, the heroic deeds, the stories, the guerrilla warfare of Shivaji, the aura of Mughals, and then the Peshwas, British, it was all so exciting to imagine those events as compared to our boring present day life. But what was the whole point of studying the exact dates when they happened!! I mean, did it even make a difference if Shivaji was born on 27^th April 1627 or 29^th April 1627? What mattered was that he was born!!

In our SSC textbook, we had some 20 chapters with the first few dedicated to World Wars. Some stupid guy shot Franz Ferdinand of Austria and started the bloodbath of World War I. Now when we should have been studying why the war started, and what were its ramifications, we were memorizing exactly which date that moron shot him. J I mean, how does that date even matter? But no, we had to memorize that and a hundred other dates and lose the dates of our lives.

I remember this particular event in my SSC year. We had prelims before the actual exam, and we all were taking them seriously. Now, it is a known fact that sometimes, in SSC, teachers don’t always teach every chapter but give one or two for self study. It is also a known fact that people tend to fall asleep in classrooms during civics and history classes. (If you did not know this well documented fact, then my friend, it’s time you got yourself a copy of “50 things that are known facts” by Viraj Datar. J) So when exam time came along, I naturally assumed that I must make up for lost time by doing everything I can to study history well. As I sat up for the most part of the night missing sleep and studying dates and small details, I sadly (and fondly) remembered all the sweet sleep I had enjoyed during the lectures. Next morning, I called up my oldest buddy from school, Upen, and asked him in an exasperated and exhausted voice, “Yaar Upen, full ratra jaglo yaar… doley full laal bil jhalet, dokyache bumba jhalet, pan yaar hey don chapters hotach nahiyet re (loosely translated, it says – Dude, I’ve been up whole night studying History, my eyes can compete with the B.E.S.T. bus for the red color man, but I’m just not able to finish these two chapters)… Workers Union under British Rule. Horrible chapters man… I’ve spent like 4 hours trying to memorize the short notes, brief answers and give reasons and oh man those dates… those awful things are even worse in these chapters man… how have you been able to do these chapters?”

After this frustration filled monologue, Upen said the last thing I was expecting to hear. “Asey chapters aahet aaplyala?” (We have such chapters in the book?”) “Asa kahi nahiye vatta re, I mean, asa koni kadhich kela nahiye dude… out of syllabus aahe bahutek vatta” (“We don’t have any such thing man, no one has even heard of such things, I think it’s out of syllabus!”) I was about to crash on the floor with frustration mingled with relief. 4 hours good people! I had spent 4 hours of the night yawning and desperately trying to stay awake and pushing my memory to memorize the answers and dates and now it wasn’t even in the syllabus!! J J

My school life is filled with such happenings. Second last minute realizations that I’ve forgotten to study the Rapid Reading section of the Marathi exam and my personal favorite, a last minute realization before entering the exam hall that I’ve nicely forgotten to study the poetry section of the Hindi exam J J and such other things. But of all these things, dates stand out like a sore thumb. The worst game they used to play with poor student’s mentality was to mix events from any of the 22 chapters in the book in a single question. So in the four events to be arranged chronologically, you would see something like this:

1. Jyotiba Phule started XYZ ashram in Pune
2. Irwin-Gandhi pact was signed.
3. Germans sunk a U-boat in the Atlantic ocean and
4. Lahore session of the congress was held.

Now, is ANY of these related to the other??? Then how the hell does it matter what order they happened? And how the hell are we supposed to correlate these totally disparate events. J Now that Congress met in Lahore about a gazillion times, har saal kahin aur jagah nahi milti thi to Lahore mein milte they, so exactly which session are we supposed to consider? I mean mindlessly stupid and dumb dates were asked, which made no sense to my 16 year old mind.

The best times were when I used to open my history paper and approach the “Arrange in chronological order” question. Even after hours of preparation, every time I approached this question, I’ve felt the same thing. There’s a small voice inside me, which sometimes gives me guidance. But I think its main occupation has been to start laughing an evil laughter every time such a question comes in an exam. It used to start telling me first in a quiet voice and then loudly without shame. “Nahi aane vaala tereko”, is how it used to start. I used to resolvedly say “Aayega answer mereko”. Then as questions 1 parts A, B, C were answered, and Q2 about chronological order used to come closer, it used to simply start pointing its finger at me and laughing. And always, with surprising regularity, the voice used to be right!! Because instead of asking major important dates, the question makers used to find great pleasure in asking dates which even the people who took part in the event would not remember. Now, when everyone would remember when Gandhiji picked up the salt from the sea, they would ask, “When did Gandhiji leave his ashram”. Now how in the name of salt is THAT important?! But no, it was supposed to be our solemn duty to remember such useless pieces of information which matter not even in the least in the broad sweep of history. And then the boy or girl who most remembers such useless data is the top ranker. It was ironic really that merit was seen to be based on knowing completely unmeritorious information.

So needless to say, even in my final SSC history paper, that question stumped me. I ended up thinking a lot and answering the wrong. But I’m glad to say that in spite of such cruelty done unto me, I’ve not lost my liking for History. It still enthralls me, the events of those days still seem exciting and worth reading about.

I hope that our syllabus making people realize that an event of historic importance gains its importance from what happened on that day and how it affected the days to come, and not from which date it happened. Many times I feel like shouting like Sunny Deol in the movie “Damini” : “…..Tareekh pe tareekh, tareekh pe tareekh, tareekh pe tareekh… aur phir reh jaati hai to bas tareekh” J