In these days of doomscrolling, I often crave a short story or novel that will warm the heart.
Seventeen-year-old Ramkishan, preparing for his matriculation exam, is in the latter category. The narrator, then a mischievous five-year-old, is fond of playing pranks on his father’s students, and Ramkishan becomes a favourite target. Then, one day, the serious young man arrives with a box of sweets. He has passed his exam with excellent marks. He wants to study further in Patna, but doesn’t have the admission fees. Abbajan gives him fifty rupees, and he manages to enrol. Time passes. The narrator grows up. Ramkishan marries. He returns from Patna and begins to teach at a local school. He would have liked to do a BA but, once again, money problems hold him back. The narrator finishes school, leaves home to study further. He graduates and wants to take the civil services exam, but money is tight. So he begins to teach too. He stays in touch with Ramkishan, and hears one day that Master Saab is very ill. He rushes to see him. It’s pneumonia. His teacher is gone within a week. Badiuzzaman was born in Gaya and did a double MA, in Hindi and Urdu. He taught Urdu at a college in Odisha in the 1950s, then moved to Delhi to work with the Government of India’s department of languages for over three decades. He was fluent in Hindi, Urdu, English and Odia. He was closely associated with the Progressive Writers’ Movement, but never bound by any dogma.
