Why Are the Best the Best?

My past year began with teaching—taking classes at our department’s training academy. And it’s ending with teaching too. On the thirty-first, I’ll be going to teach BGB officers a class on the Customs Act.

The BGB training school is near Bandarban. I have a desire to spend this thirty-first in the hills. With my hill friends. After finishing the evening class, I’ll explore the town in the evening. Beyond the town, into the villages. Villages atop the hills. Hill gardens beside them. In the hill garden on a winter night, I’ll pitch a tent and build a campfire. Through the silent heart of the hill night, there will be dancing, singing, and the pull of silver guitars all night long. With the simple people of the hills, bathing in sparks of fire, I’ll bid goodbye to the year. Giving a thumbs up to the misty blanket, the sleeping hills will awaken and celebrate at the barbecue party. Watching the smoky winter dawn over the hills and spending golden warm nights are two of the most beautiful gifts in the world. What an extraordinarily beautiful sight! This scene can be touched—with the eyes, with the entire body and soul. I’ve spent two other thirty-firsts in the hills before. I’m waiting for this one too.

I’ve often had to teach in training programs in my own department and other departments. In Bengali, in English. Along with that, there were career conversations throughout the year at universities and various other places. That too is a kind of teaching. Teaching is one of the most joyful tasks in the world. It’s an old habit, I can’t give it up. Even now, whenever I teach, I feel the same excitement as that first day. The irresistible temptation to feel some enchanted eyes gazing back is truly overwhelming. I’m tagged as a master officer in our department.

I don’t think I teach too badly. While teaching, I’ve wanted to change many people’s perspectives, and I’ve succeeded too. The grain-husking pestle pounds grain even in heaven. And I don’t even go as far as heaven. I stay within the country. So motivational words naturally come during teaching. I speak of this country, remind them of our debt to the nation. I teach those I instruct to take pride in their own jobs. They feel good about their position and dignity. So they pray for me, love me. I truly don’t know if there’s any return for this love! Once I taught a class to assistant revenue officers in our department. I’m sharing feedback from that class. The feedback is from younger brother Nixon. He’s also a BCS cadre himself. His brother-in-law was in my class. He’s a smart officer in our department.

One evening, dada (the customs officer) came home and said, “Today an excellent AC gave a class. When he mentioned the name, I recognized him. Sushanta Pal.” During dinner that night, he said one of his sons should become like Sushanta sir, serve the country. Everyone naturally assumed that boys studying in English medium would go abroad—he himself wanted that too. After the class, he thought, no, at least one son should do something for the country. I wanted to know how long the class was. ……An hour and a half!!

At that moment, a father changed his dreams for his son!

I wasn’t very surprised, because people’s expectations of Sushanta da are quite high. Someone even wrote on his profile: “If he were to follow anyone blindly in life, it would be Sushanta sir.”

Some have written,
“Certain people are born
to change lives.” Some have written, “To change the world.” Some have quoted him, writing about “surpassing oneself every day.” At his
career talks, pushing through the overflowing crowds of success-seekers, some say,
“He’s not an actor, not a politician either, yet we’ve come to hear him speak.”

Though I’ve never
attended, almost everyone who has been to his career talks has thought anew about life,
has found a different meaning
in living.

I’ve never met him
in person, only exchanged a greeting on Facebook
once! Yet I’ve grown fond of him—not as an Assistant Commissioner of Customs, not for his appearance (he looks like someone who ‘can’t even flip a fried fish properly’—
sorry, dada!), not for any impossibly handsome features, not for his ability to speak with a smile, not for his wonderful writing skills, not because his personal library houses over 4,500 books,
not even for showing that bashful ‘I did nothing!’
kind of humility on TV after catching smuggled gold worth crores in Customs. I’ve grown fond of him
for planting dreams in the minds of thousands of young people. Thousands of boys and girls carry dreams of ‘achieving something in life’ in their breast pockets, and they come to listen to this dreamer, and in coming, they transform themselves. What could be
more beautiful than this?

We desperately needed
this brave soul who dares to show dreams… Stay well, dada.

This is what I’ve received!
This is how it’s passed, how it passes. Year turns into
year. Work continues, life revolves.
I sink in despair, float in hope,
and help others float too.

I work more. Work
meaning, I have to work. Tell me, how is it?

Writing.
Editing copy for departmental souvenirs, writing those opening messages
for magazines,
preparing speeches and presentations
for seniors,
writing letters on behalf of the department on various matters (several letters have reached the Honorable Prime Minister, and both the department and the country have benefited from them),
contributing to magazines. Many drafts need to be prepared. And other such tasks.

Presenting.
I’m responsible for hosting various formal and informal departmental programs.
Along with writing scripts, organizing programs,
singing, reciting poetry. Speaking on behalf of the department at various
venues. These tasks take hours upon hours. One more thing. I mean, recently this has included sports commentary! On January 3rd, I’ll have to provide commentary for our annual departmental sports competition. All day long! Seeking everyone’s prayers! (Note: I’m absolutely terrible at sports. Haven’t kicked a football once in my life. Thank goodness you don’t need to know how to play
to do commentary—I mean, to provide expert commentary.)

I’ve been beating my own
drum for quite a while. Now let me beat yours a little.

Knowing only how to do a job is a matter of great fortune. A job means just that—a job. If you don’t know how to do anything else, then simply doing your job is your job. But if you do know other things, then doing your job and doing those other things—both become your job. Which means you’ll have to take responsibility.

Knowing how to hide yourself in a job is a tremendously great art. If you can’t manage it, you’ll be caught and assigned various tasks. You mustn’t make mistakes in any of them. If you don’t know how to do other things, you’re in luck—you’re “saved.” Those who do know how, you can catch their mistakes. And since you don’t know how to do other work, no one on earth has the ability to catch your mistakes. You don’t do it, so what mistakes could you make? Only those who do, make mistakes. Those who don’t, do everything perfectly in their minds. We are a nation that sits before the TV hitting sixes and fours. Alas! In this world, goats and donkeys are the safest of all!

If you know how to do something, it means everyone around you will automatically assume they could have done that task better than you if they had done it.

You can stand on stage before thousands of people and speak for hours on end. Try making them stand up there once. See how many times per minute they need the bathroom, how many times per minute their hands and feet tremble, what regional stuttering means and its various types and manifestations, how sudden lice infestations occur in hair, where hands go missing, how wonderfully diverse the dance of neck and waist can be.

You can write well. Let those who chatter excessively write just one line. They’ll deliver and fill up pages with unwritings like: “My forehead was washed away in the waters of two eyes,/ My two feet were then tied to the branches of a pomegranate tree.” Do you know the story behind this? Well, let me tell you. Poetry doesn’t necessarily require Santiniketan. You need substance in your head. Sitting in a cottage on the side of a peaceful mountain, an educated man began writing poetry like this: “My forehead was washed away in the waters of two eyes…” Then he began thinking—the forehead getting wet with tears! How strange! But he didn’t want to change that line either; what an extraordinary thing my super-fertile mind has produced! What to do, what to do—thinking like this for a long time, he finally wrote the second line: “My two feet were then tied to the branches of a pomegranate tree…” Understand the situation!!

I believe these things are innate. In certain fields, no matter how much you practice, you cannot become the best. Some things are in the blood.

Manna Dey was once asked, “What does one need to do to become a great artist?” His answer will remain with me for life. The answer was: “To become an artist, one must practice a lot. But to become a great artist, one must have God-given talent.”

At an event, Shrikant was asked, “Do you have any sorrows in life?” His reply was, “No sorrows, but I do have one regret. I remained unschooled in music all my life. I am a self-taught artist.” Let me tell you, friends, he learned to sing by listening, by feeling. Another great artist like Nachiketa has had no formal training since childhood. His father wanted his son to grow up and join the Indian Civil Service. (Somehow this thought brings me joy.) When we learn that a young woman on her deathbed, lying in a clinic bed in her final moments, makes her last wish that Shrikant’s “Amar sharata din, meghla akash, brishti — tomake dilam” should play in her room, we think once again that one can sing well even with a little listening here and there. Let some boys become wayward instead of well-behaved. Why should everyone be proper? Let some become mad. We want the Hemantas to abandon their engineering studies and come to singing. Let the Binoy Majumdars study engineering if they must, then one day throw everything aside and sit down to write a thunderous “Phire Esho, Chaka.” Did all this happen through rigorous practice? It’s not that Shrikant had no formal training at all. He learned Rabindra Sangeet at Dakshini, later learned tabla from Ustad Ali Ahmad Khan. I understand. But many people learn these things! How many become Shrikant? To sing with such depth of feeling requires the grace of Saraswati!

A journalist once asked Kumar Sanu, “Sanuji, how many hours do you practice daily?” Kumar Sanu cleverly deflected the question and moved to another topic. The interviewer was persistent. When asked the same question again, Sanu said, “Tell me, how many times did you have to try to get an appointment with me?” The answer came: “Three times, dada.” Then Sanu said, “So imagine how busy I have to be! I turn down twice as many films as I sign. Where do I have time to practice? I haven’t found time to practice in the last eight years!”

John Denver took ten minutes to write “You Fill Up My Senses,” written for his wife Annie. The gentleman was skiing and wrote this most popular song in a brief break.

“Keu Kotha Rakheni,” perhaps written in hurt over someone or some people who didn’t keep their word, took Sunil Gangopadhyay 15-20 minutes to write. After making a gentleman who had come asking for a poem for publication sit in the drawing room, saying “Please wait, I’ll be right back with the poem,” the poet escaped to the inner room and wrote this wonderful poem that would later be recited countless times.

At just 22 years old, Humayun Ahmed wrote “Nandita Naroke” in one night. “After my death, don’t place the Gita with me, give me ‘Putul Nacher Itikatha,’” Sandeepan wrote in his diary. Manik wrote this novel at just 22. How many books could a 22-year-old youth have read? How much preparation can one have at 22? Even if I were given 220 years to live and the opportunity to read 22,000 books, could I write something like “Nandita Naroke” or “Putul Nacher Itikatha”?

Karan Johar had planned to remove the song ‘Suraj Hua Maddham’ from his film ‘Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham’. He believed the audience wouldn’t ‘buy’ it. On his friend Shah Rukh’s advice, he took the ‘risk’ of including it in the movie. The rest, as we know, is history. The idea of killing off Shah Rukh’s character in ‘Kal Ho Naa Ho’ was actually suggested by Shah Rukh himself. It was on his recommendation that the script was changed to have a tragic ending. Some of Shah Rukh’s dialogues in the film were improvised by him spontaneously during filming. Can this kind of intuitive sense be developed through some ‘easy method of learning greatness’?

A few days ago, I posted a status on Facebook with a drawing of a happy family, which became one of my most ‘liked’ posts ever. (It had at least 2000+ likes.) That’s not the point. Just a few minutes after posting it, seeing around 200 likes, one of my well-wishing seniors called to ask where I was, what I was doing, whether I was performing my duties properly. A little while later, our airport team recovered nearly 10 kilograms of gold bars. Now let me share the fact: it took me about 15 minutes to write that post. I wrote it in Bengali on my basic phone while I was on duty.

Not everyone takes 2 hours to complete 2 hours’ worth of work.

Some do it in 2 hours.

Some do it in half an hour.

Some take 8 hours.

Brother, if you fall into the first or third category, then why does your blood boil when you see someone from the second category enjoying life a little with their saved time? Why does it make you itch? There are some excellent itch-relief ointments available in the market these days. Buy yourself some ointment, brother—what’s the big deal? You have to understand. If you can’t understand, you have to eat puffed rice.

13 September 2015