A Burning(54)

At each school, students sweep the soil courtyard with brooms. Saplings, newly planted, grow within the protection of twig fences. PT Sir is jostled as he joins his hands in greeting before pushing through the crowd to enter the school building. Everywhere he goes, the scene is the same. About fifty teachers and parents are crammed into the building, and dozens more wait outside. They are usually silent. This is how the events start, he knows now. They will find their voice by the end, when he has become less of a deity and more of a man, sometimes with a cough caused by the dust of the villages.

“Jana Kalyan Party is starting,” he says into a loudspeaker which echoes, “scholarship programs for girl children. In the coming election remember to cast your vote for Bimala Pal and Jana Kalyan Party.”

At one school, when the electricity cuts out, a loud generator powers a portable light. Winged insects buzz and knock. A tiny toad comes hopping into the school building, and a schoolboy is made to pick up the creature and set it loose outside.

    After the speech, the gathered share grievances with PT Sir. A group of gap-toothed mothers and frowning fathers complain: Teachers don’t bother to come to school. Of what use is a scholarship, and of what use a school building, if there are no teachers?

The teachers, in turn, tobacco tucked in their mouths, protest that they are not paid their salaries on time. Their monthly salary comes two months later, sometimes three. How are they supposed to feed their families?

The younger teachers argue: What about progress or raises for them? They find it a dead-end job.

“It is your work to build the nation’s future!” says PT Sir. “Isn’t that noble?”

When the moment of departure is near, no matter how fervently they had been complaining and protesting, the teachers clap for him, a cheerful din that PT Sir absorbs with a smile. What are they clapping for? He doesn’t know, but he is used to it. The people clamoring to see him, to hear his words, the grandmothers holding his hands, the garlands and praise, the prayers, all directed to him, as if he is a god. Who wouldn’t find something electric in it?



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THE NEXT EVENING, there is an important meeting at Bimala Pal’s house. As PT Sir sets off, his wife admires his traditional clothing, his shined shoes. “You are starting to look like a politician!” she says.

    “Is that so?” he says.

This pleases PT Sir, though it is a meager reward. For what has he spent his days falsifying the truth in court? For what has he taken on the ghost of the beef-eater, that man who begs for mercy in the moments before sleep? That ghost who weeps in his mind when he is alone, who pleads with him when he waits for the schoolgirls to come to the field?



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AS THE STATE ELECTIONS approach, the party steps up its campaign to recapture the state legislative house. So long they have been the opposition. Here is their opportunity to form the next government.

At this meeting, Bimala Pal wishes to hear what their platform on education might be. From the past months of engaging with the teachers and parents among their constituents, what have they learned?

PT Sir clears his throat. Suddenly, he is thankful for all the field visits. “Bring another tea,” whispers someone at the far end to the tea boy, who is hovering. Who knows what the boy makes of all this? Who knows if he goes to school?

In the silence of the party’s gaze upon him, PT Sir recognizes all those teachers’ complaints for the treasure chest they are. He has laid his ear to the ground, and heard the unmediated voice of the public. There is no greater currency in this room at the moment. PT Sir tells the room, with casual gravity, what he has heard. Then he proposes, “The greatest issue in education around the state does not have to do with syllabi or supplies. It has to do with personnel. It is the personnel who are voting, not the books.”

    At this some of the older men at the table chuckle. Historically, education strategy has focused on syllabi—altering syllabi to tell the histories that serve the ruling party.

“Forget syllabi,” PT Sir continues. “First of all, teachers’ salaries need to be paid within the first three days of the month, without fail. This is the single biggest complaint I have heard. Teachers don’t want to do their jobs because they’re not getting paid on time. So they don’t show up to school. Then the students stop going. This is one change, a concrete change, we can make and talk about. I think it will bring the teachers’ votes to us.”

Bimala Pal listens. She has on her mind not only schools but floods in the north of the state, ruined crops and stranded villagers. She has on her mind new trains connecting the state to the capital, safety in the mines, quotas for different castes and tribes. She has on her mind beautification of the city, planting of flowers by the roads and regular watering of trees in public parks. The city voters cannot be neglected. There will be a function the next day where she awards laptop computers to high-achieving students of the city.

“That may work,” an older man says, now looking at PT Sir. “Madan is eating everyone’s head about the syllabus. So this is a fresh approach.”

    Madan Choudhury, the current education minister, is behind the state’s push to include more patriotic texts in school syllabi.

“To be honest, I see his point of view,” interrupts another man. “Who is this Hemingway? Who is Steinbeck? Madan is pushing to have more original Bengali literature, and we have to continue that push.”