This is coming late, but I had a spate of interviews in the last few days. They are going so-so, as far as I think. Mostly, they are sedate, with occasional peaks or pits. Even if they go well according to me, one can never tell what's going on in the interviewer's mind. And I always feel I could've done better (pretty natural). Overall, I find so many people having great interviews that my chances seem dwindling. I don't think I'm cut out for this survival of the fittest jazz. Still, let's see. Que sera sera.
One good thing about all this is the very interesting people you meet. I've met entrepreneurs, quizzers, guitarists, quant studs, and several other species, but one of the most intriguing are those from whom I've coined a term. The Reluctant-A-Renunciants have got an interview call from IIM A, but they desperately want to go to B or C, since they want a complete experience, not just days & nights of study. They're fervently praying that they don't get through their A interview, so they can choose B or C in peace. If they do get in A, they're afraid that a combination of family pressures, an imagined pecking order, and the fear of regretting the renunciation a decade down the line will force them to choose A. As expected, most of this kind are very good at co-curriculars.
The (un)pleasantries out of the way, let's get to the Star of the Show.

As expected, Nihilanth (2 posts ago, in case you're coming late) was a great experience. Since I'm not from IIT, and not (yet?) from IIM, I couldn't take part in the quizzes. Despite being only indirectly involved, these were two very satisfying days (and half-a-night).
Out of the 6 quizzes, IITM won all quizzes except one, but one can't really say they dominated the scene. In virtually every event, three or so teams were tied in the last round, and it was often the last question or two that were the deciding factor. The IITM team had BoFi, Shamanth & Subramanya. With an almost encyclopedic repository of knowledge, they won much acclaim (And a load of dough). In the Open Quiz though, it was a tie with another team, which even the tie-breaker couldn't break. The other team had Joseph John (Mastermind finalist, if I remember correctly) and 2 other studs. IIT Guwahati hadn't come. Due to exams/placements, only IIMA & IIMK had come, the absence of B & C reduced the intensity.

I met BoFi, Keerthi & Observer for the first time in person. As on all occasions when I personally met people who were hitherto known only virtually, none of them fit my imagined persona in terms of looks. I'm sure I didn't match their imagined guy either. It's not about being better or worse; simply different. Blogs can't sum up a person in entirety. I met Bhavya too; since I had seen the (flowery) photo on his blog, and had seen him earlier in Rendezvous, so atleast this time there was no disconnect between imagination and reality.

The Open Quiz was on the second day, and some formidable competition had gathered for it. I came across 2 guys who were respectively from the IAS and IFS (Indian Foreign Service). The IAS was also an MBBS, and the IFS was also an MBA. The part I liked best about them was their complete lack of arrogance. I'm not too familiar with the regular quizzing circuit in Delhi, but I did see many known faces.
There were three member teams in all events, except the Lone Wolf. In the open quiz, my usual teammate tactfully deserted me to team up with the IA/FS pair. So with an ad-hoc team comprising QuintEssence and a guy whom he first met when the guy had asked him the way to the venue, we proceeded to give the prelims and miss the cutoff by one mark. That too due to a silly mistake; still, it was a tolerable performance. Even had we qualified, we wouldn't have done very well in the finals, so it was for the good, probably. The deserter's team fared much worse than us, again underscoring what an unpredictable and arbitrary process a quiz is.

The sports quiz got over by around 6 pm on Sunday. The Lone Wolf was to be held at 10 pm. Most of the outside people had left. So I was in a dilemma as to how to spend the 4 hours. There was some event going on in another part of the sprawling campus, where the best hostels (Out of 9 total) of IITD are given prizes for their overall extracurric performance throughout the preceding year. The hostels also set up stalls where they showcase some social issue, or something technical, or anything at all, and are judged by the institute's director & his wife. Amon graciously became my impromptu guide and showed me around the fête. I met many members of the quizzing club, and was pleasantly surprised by their friendliness and hospitality. They were caring hosts, without any hubris apparent at all.

Now we come to the Lone Wolf, which was the high point of this exercise, for me. The prelims had been held the previous day, and the finals started around 10:45 pm. Satyajit Chhetri was the quizmaster.
When you can't participate, the best you can do is to answer a few questions as a member of the audience. Since these are passed to us humble viewers only when the people on stage have failed to answer them, these do your ego some good. To continue this ego-inflation, here are a coupla questions that I answered, as one of the unwashed masses, after the high priests had failed.

(1) This was a visual. Essentially, you had to tell what the official helicopter (Not aeroplane) of the US President is called.
(2) [An extract from a book, slightly condensed. Fill in the blanks.]
Look again at that ____ ____ ____. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

And a question from the prelims that I didn't know the answer to, but which'll appeal to the lit enthusiasts:
(3) This is from Alexander Pope's poem "From Eloisa to Abelard." Fill the blank.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
_______________________________________!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.

[Answers in the end.]


Since it was rather late, there were only a few audience members, clustered in the rows of chairs nearest the stage. If I hazard a guess, I would say there were around 25-30 spectators. Logically, most of them must have been earnest quizzers, as they patiently sat in the audience here instead of taking part in the revelry elsewhere. I rarely go to quizzes, so it seemed almost a shrine-like atmosphere. I obviously can't give all the questions and answers, so I'll cut to the part that I liked. It is 12:30 am. The eight 'lone wolves' on the stage are in various stages of alertness. Some of them are sitting on chairs, some sitting cross-legged on the stage, some reclining on the stage, all looking at the projected slides. The atmosphere is very relaxed and informal. In the audience, two girls a few rows ahead of me have their feet propped up on the backs of the chairs in front of them. Another guy is doing the same, only he has taken his shoes off. One person has sprawled across several chairs, wriggling under the handlebars (This is auditoria-style seating. The handlebars are anchored only at the back, without a front pillar. So wriggling under it doesn't require as much contortion as you thought.)
Chhetri has a very calm demeanor and soothing voice; the overall effect is that of peace. It's an indoor auditorium, slightly warm.
Two guys (Rustagi(?) & Jhina) are stretched full-length in the gently-sloping aisle directly to my right, heads propped up on bags, to see the stage clearly. Chhetri starts an audio round. Most of the songs he plays are very pleasant-sounding oldies. Amon, Keerthi, BoFi, Shamanth are all on stage, some with their head bowed down, some looking upwards, some with their eyes closed, concentrating completely on listening, letting the auditory cortex take over. Beautiful music. The audience is silent and receptive. I stretch myself backwards and look at the ceiling, at the regularly spaced triquetras of soft lights. My eyes must be slightly tired, the lights have a large-ish corona around them. With the soft sounds of the black-and-white era, the utter lack of extraneous noise, coupled with my lack of sleep over the last several days, I'm as-if-stoned on the ambience for a minute or two. Then the good quizmaster plays a Punjabi song, which is almost a shock, came as it did after the earlier ones, catching unsuspecting unwinders like me unawares. Still, I am lucky to be here. This is partly why I want to continue my academic experience. Such events, such an informal yet cultured atmosphere is possible only in an academic institution. I'm not ready to 'pass out' of college life just yet.

P.S. George Pailly of IIT Kanpur won the Lone Wolf. (He had borrowed my pen while going on stage. Let's hope some of the luck rubs off.)

[Answers]
1. Marine One
2. Only one guy writes like that. Pale Blue Dot, by Carl Sagan.

3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Tonight is Mahashivaratri, or the Great Night of Lord Shiva. This is held on the trayodashi (Thirteenth night) of the krishna paksha (Waning fortnight of the moon) in the month of Phalguna. Shiva is certainly among the coolest deities in the Hindu pantheon, the one (Along with Vishnu) most 'qualified' to be called God. Ardent devotees will stay awake the whole night, many singing chants. Though I, knowing that the Dude won't mind, will use this rare opportunity to get a full night of sleep. I know what you were expecting, given the previous post; it'll come later.

This reminds me of two things: Swami Dayananda left home because of Shivaratri, as I had to cram in full detail when I was a kid, as part of the Dharma Shiksha (Spiritual Learning) subject in the DAV School that I studied in. In one Shivaratri of his boyhood, he and many members of his family were spending the night in a Shivalaya (Abode of Shiva, as His temples/shrines are called). As the young boy observed fascinated, a rat came and ate much of the prasaad on offer, and scurried all over the statue. The boy was disgusted with a god who could not even protect his own image, let alone his devotees. After much struggle with an family that was unwilling to let go, the Swami (Known as Moolshankara at that time) left home, to discover the real Shiva. Swami Dayananda is not as famous as some other holy men of India, primarily because he did not write in English, preferring to write in Sanskrit, and later, in Hindi. But I've read bits & pieces of his writing, and he's very good, though focused completely on the Vedas.
[Mahashivaratri and Shivaratri are on different nights. The latter comes on the same phase of the moon as does the first, but in the month of Shraavana (The 'n' at the end is retroflex. The ending 'a' is not pronounced as a full long vowel; it only denotes the implicit vowel sound in the n)]

In my MDI interview, when I was asked the question about the essence of Shiva (As told two posts previously), I answered about it being the phallus that symbolizes fertility. Then the surprisingly learned interviewer (Prof Amit Kapoor) explained it in a much more complete way. He said that Shiva symbolizes creation, He is an allegory for making, maintaining and renewing the Universe. When we worship Shiva, especially within ourselves, we humans worship our ability to Create; creation and creative pursuits being the highest attainment that we are capable of.

So I end this post hoping that all of us always retain our creativity, never making choices that crush it, for the sake of nearly worthless money or fame.

A friend (beastman) asked me to spread the word, so:





This'll be held this weekend (5 & 6 March 05) in the Convo Hall (Dogra Hall) at IIT Delhi. There are 6 events, and all except one are inter IIT-IIM only (Darn these elitists! ;) ) The open quiz is on Sunday (6 March) at 9 a.m. The competition will be scintillatingly tough, but if you can stand up to the heat, the rewards are really high.
Before you plead lack of time, let me tell you that I have the IIMK GD/I on 4th, the IITB one on 7th, and the IIMI one on 8th, and still I'm coming, on both days, to absorb the atmosphere, if nothing else. So you have no excuses. See ya there.

On the 22nd of February, I went to my ancestral village in Haryana. Earlier last month, my grandfather, who was very old, had died after a short illness. Far from mourning, it is a custom in Haryana to celebrate the death of an old person, as it's believed that s/he has lived a full life and has been released from the clutches of an old, diseased body. This celebration is usually held after 17 days of death, and is called 'kaaj'. So I was summoned to my village, a place called Meham in Rohtak district of Haryana, to take part in this event. Several distant members of my family, both urban & rural were to collect there. Many of them, including my parents, were already there, and had been doing the necessary preparations.

So on the forenoon of the 22nd, I dropped a couple of novels in my bag, and set out for the village, which I'd last visited 9 years ago, for the kaaj of my grandmother. When younger, I was a much more frequent visitor to our old home, as I & assorted cousins descended on it every summer vacations. This is my father's village, so most of the cousins were from the paternal side. My mother's parental home was another favored haunt during vacations, though there was a separate set of cousins there, and as feckless as the other group. I reached Delhi ISBT in the afternoon, and took the Hisar-bound bus, which I would get off from midway, after a two-and-a-half-hour journey.

After the bus had reached the outskirts of Delhi, out of the noise and crowds, I took out the thin volume of Corbett, which is mentioned in the previous post and which I haven't completed till now, and settled down to a comfortable read. As the Haryana Roadways bus zipped along with characteristic speed through the green fields of Haryana, I chased a predator with Corbett, sometimes getting tantalizingly close. The air was decidedly cooler coming off the fields, and combined with the continual hum of the bus' engine, it had a pleasant soporific effect. I could look out the window and look to the horizon, and see no man-made artifact at all, apart from the orderliness of mustard fields. Out the other side of the bus, it was a similar sea of green, except for the huge cross-country electric pylons of the Northern Grid. These towers reminded me of childhood times, of journeys to places far and near. In a while, as it got later in the afternoon, the lower edge of the Sun's orb peeked intermittently through the bus' windows, its increasingly tinged rays playing over the book's pages. We passed through small villages, with kids playing by the roadside, buffalos chewing cud with supreme indifference to the world around, and old men discussing old tales. There was the customary 'johad', or pond, in most villages, with a small shrine on its banks. The recent elections had lent their color to these hamlets, and many houses flew the banners of their chosen parties. As has since been seen, most of these were Congress supporters. The tricolor of the party is almost the same as the nation's flag, and to an unknowing observer, it would seem as if this was a particularly patriotic region of the country, festooned with the tricolor. These vilages came and went quickly, and most of our time was spent in the fields. As the bus navigated the bridge of asphalt over this verdant sea with an arrogant alacrity, I almost wished it would slow down; I couldn't do justice to either the book or the view in the hour or so that was left. Time, however, waits for none, and I reached my port of call as dusk fell.

Nine years had changed the look of the place, but many landmarks were the same. There was still a johad right across the road from the bus stop, though it had a new garbage dump beside it. More houses had been built, almost all of them being pucca houses. After a bit of trial & error, I managed to locate the path that went to our ancestral home, and I started walking alongside open drains, scurrying hens, and lazing pigs. I would've lost my way, but I found the weaver's home, which allowed me to reorient myself, according to old memories. This place usually had the familiar clickety-clack sound of the handloom, though it was silent this evening, the weaver was probably having his evening meal.
I found my home with the assistance of an elder cousin who was waiting for me at a fork in the road. When I saw it from the inside, the home looked new and old at the same time, as has happened to me before, when rediscovering places and evnts of childhood. After greeting the various aunts and cousins present, I escaped further pleasantry to explore the house.

It is an old, large, rambling house, built over 50 years ago. We come from a family of craftsmen, and my grandfather and great-grandfather had designed & built this house themselves. There is beautiful woodwork on the doors and windows, which was hand-carved lovingly by them in another age. There is a meeting-hall, a rather claustrophobic staircase, a room on the roof, a secret chamber that looks like a cupboard from the outside, and such unusual stuff in this place. There is also a porch, right by the road, where my grandfather used to sit with cronies and talk endless tales, while smoking the hookah and hailing passersby. I spend some time acknowledging the memories of childhood, then go to meet other distant relatives who live nearby. As often happens in villages, there are many generations once or twice removed living here, so I often find that I belong to the parents', or sometimes even the grandparents' generation of people I meet. It's pretty normal here for people double my age to call me 'mama' (Maternal uncle), or 'chacha' (Paternal uncle), or sometimes even 'dada' (Grandfather!). Sitting on a charpai/khat/rope-bed, I play with an 11 month old kid who's among my many nephews. His grandmother practically forces me to drink a glass of milk. Many people here have their own cattle, and milk the cows & buffaloes themselves. The fodder for them comes straight from the fields, which are also self-owned. So the cattle is usually very healthy, and the milk is very rich and nutritious. One glass of this is almost equal to 2 glasses of city milk. Then I go to another place where the halvais (Chefs) are making a surfeit of laddoos (A kind of spherical sweet) for tomorrow's ceremony. There I found a hookah, and promptly engaged an uncle into telling me how to fill it, something that I never had occasion to ask during childhood. In a hookah, the smoke passes through a small chamber of water, so the villagers believe that it is shorn of its unhealthy properties. Some of the older folk, quite ignorant of scientific health, even claim that smoking the hookah regularly keeps them strong and healthy. Most of the younger guys know better, thankfully. Newly enlightened with narcotic skills, and somewhat full from the milk, I come home for dinner. We have our food while sitting on jute mats. It has a rustic charm. The food, especially the chapatis are extremely tasty. There is something in the wheat of this place, and most food is cooked on wood stoves, or chulhas, lending it a kind of warmth not found in food cooked on gas stoves.

Wandering more or less aimlessly, I am called by a 'brother', who is double my age, for some important discussion. He tells me that his daughter has just entered 11th class, and had to take humanities, as the local school has no good teachers for science or commerce. She had a very good score in 10th. He's anxious about her future prospects. I soothe him, saying that as long as she makes sure she learns English very well, she should do fine. I know myself that I am lying to a certain extent, and a person educated in humanities from a rural school can hardly compete with people of the elite urban schools. Still, this is a father looking for reassurance about his child's future, and I don't have the heart to say otherwise. Then he warms up to me, and starts telling me about his own student life. He has looked at much in life and it has made him a philosopher. He told me he used to be the 'dada' of the class, the bully to whom nobody could stand up. Now, he is reaping the fruits of that heedless arrogance, as he is frustrated with his own station in life, and sees no future in the rural areas. He told me he was very good in all subjects apart from English. He couldn't handle English because it seemed illogical to him. This was a time when English wasn't taught in primary schools, most students faced it first only in 6th class or so, and it was a grammarian's approach, primarily rote-based rather than communication-based. He suddenly asked me, "Why is the k in knife not pronounced?" As I ponder it, he continues, "If 'but' is pronounced as but, why is 'put' pronounced as put?" I can't answer this double whammy, and take refuge in the pusillanimous reply that it is 'convention', knowing myself that this is a sorry excuse, not a reply. He then talked at length on such lack of coherence in English, and that's why he could barely pass in English, despite being regularly punished by his harried English teacher. I have barely time to register mentally that his story reminds me of RK Narayan's Swami, when the people who are sitting around us launch into a discussion on the importance of English in today's world, and how a person of rural background can't study in the cities because the medium of education is different. One of them even suggests that Hindi should be abolished, and English should be the only language that is taught from childhood, all over India. To my horror, many other people second his proposal. I have a romantic attachment to Hindi, and like it as much as English, even if I don't get the chance to read as much in Hindi. Still, there are issues here to which I am ignorant, and a city-dweller like me can't really understand how frustrated these people feel, being equal in mental capacity to any other citizen, but still unable to make use of the city's employment opportunities as they lack knowledge of English. The language has become a major point of discussion here, especially because they don't properly know it themselves, while their kids are learning it. It is almost a chimaera to them, an unfathomable entity, which can somehow control their lives while they remain powerless.

After this, the brother's tales continued. After school, he did vocational training at ITI (Industrial Training Institute), which was also the scene of several exploits. Once, he and two of his friends, one of whom is my real uncle, made 20 kilos of Gajar ka Halva (Which is a sweet dish made of carrots). They were pretty keen about physical exercise at the time, and deemed it necessary to have as much nutrition as possible. They divided it into 7 kilos apiece and ate it over a period of time. Where had they got the money to buy the material from? By raiding the baniya's (Village moneylender & shopkeeper) potato farm at night, secretly digging out a sackful of potatoes, and selling it next day in the market. There were many such tales reminiscent of Sawyer & Finn, but I'll give only the more daring. In one case, earlier, this same baniya caught the 'brother' washing his hands in the tubewell in the baniya's farm. Though it's no crime to wash hands, the baniya seemed to have some past history with the bro, and scolded the young man for entering his field without permission. Bro said (In Haryanvi, of course), "You've got much money, and thus power. I can beat you up right now, but you'll get even later. So I can't do anything against you now, but I'll find some way." Baniya asked, "What way?" Bro said, "Let's see." Bro had learnt about electricity and motors recently in his diploma course. So he stole in the baniya's field one dawn, and shorted the motor in his tubewell. Then he sat some distance away and observed dispassionately as the baniya's servant came to turn on the tubewell in the morning. As soon as he pressed the switch, the motor burnt itself out. As the servant stared in surprise at the acrid-smelling motor, bro said in gleefully nonchalant Haryanvi, "Jal gayi ye to." (Man, this has burnt out.) Since this was still the 70s, the majority of the kids had just started going to regular school. Their parents didn't really know much about the protocol or studies of school. To them, it was a building where their kids were supposed to go to in the morning, and return in the afternoon, with one day off a week. The parents didn't comprehend the subjects taught there, but knew the education was important for their kids. So one fine day, two of my uncles, then kids, had no desire at all to go to school, more interested instead in playing the whole day in the shade of the trees. Of course, they had to find some way to convince their dad. One of them had a brilliant idea, which played on the fact that many villagers didn't know the days of the English week. "I'll tell him it's Sunday."

After listening enraptured for a long time to these tales told in bassy, rustic Haryanvi, I took a break, and went out to look at the night sky, which had a lot more stars than are visible in the cities. Then a guy, who turned out to be a nephew, took me to his home. He's only slightly younger than I am. He had just entered BA in one of the best colleges in Rohtak. It's not St Stephen's or Hindu, clearly, but good by local standards. He told me he had just started reading novels and loved it. I was happy that another person had started to discover the joys of reading. I gave him many suggestions, on reading, and on life in general. Then it became a philosophical discussion on the vagaries of life, how different people get different opportunities, and similar talk. Meanwhile, his mother forced me to drink yet another glass of extra-fat milk.
I could hear strains of music, and returned to my home. There, the Kabir-Panthis (The sect of Kabir, the Bhakti-poet) had been invited to sing for a while. These are like religious village bards, though they don't do it full-time. By day, they are weavers, carpenters, farmers. At night, they pick up their instruments and sing the couplets (Dohas) of Sant (Sage) Kabir. They sing in an enthralling baritone, accompanied by unusual instruments. One of these instruments is an earthen-pot with a sheet of rubber tied across its mouth, which is tapped like a tabla and resonates like any drum. There is a strange device that is locally called a Banjo, even though it doesn't resemble the lute-like instrument of the same name used in Western Music. It has a string that is picked with a plectrum by one hand, while the other presses the keys that press upon the string and vary its length, thus changing the pitch as needed. The most simple of the instruments, and the one that evoked the most feelings, was the _Iktara_. This is a single-stringed (String) instrument, like a one-stringed Tanpura. There are no frets, only a single string, a tuning peg, and a resonating gourd. This instrument is associated with many singers & poets of the Bhakti era, most of them are shown carrying it, in paintings and written descriptions. It has a simple 'twang' sound that goes very well with the uncomplicated way in which these people sing. I listened for over an hour to the beautiful couplets of Kabir, which talk of the futility of displaying worldly wealth, the futility of arrogance, which talk of loving all living beings, of peace, of harmony. There are many neighbors and relatives who have come to listen, and our hall is full. Everyone is sitting cross-legged on mats on the floor. The night is somewhat cold, but there are many people, and the collective heat of the congregation keeps everyone warm. I observe the people sitting there. Most of them are tall and fair, with angular features; clearly of the same race as the Caucasians. I think a bit about the theory of the Aryan invasion across Asia Minor into India. I'm not sure about the theory, but it's clear that most of these people of the Gangetic plains have much genetic similarity with the Europeans. I also notice how incongruous I look there, as most of them are in everyday village clothes, some of them soiled from working in the fields during the day, while I am in urban attire, though it is soiled too, from the journey. Of course, it causes no discord; they accept me as one of them. Then, as the bards continue to repeat a couplet on the body becoming dust, and rebirth, I think of the incredible beauty of Indian culture, how the "Unity in Diversity" of Civics class that we used to parody as schoolkids is so true. I have the privilege of having many friends, who belong to almost every place in India. There is no end to the cultural nuances. Even the idiosyncrasies of a particular ritual of a particular race are endearing. When we live in harmony, as friends, it is a beautiful place to live in, truly a subcontinent, a garland of many flowers. These thoughts subside as one of the singers gets especially passionate over a verse and increases his volume. It is a raw voice, not with the cultivated finesse of a classical singer. It is the voice of the farmer, the son of the soil, who is rustic, maybe even illiterate, but who is very cultured, in his own special way.
I'm tired from the bus journey, and probably sleepy from the milk. I make an inconspicuous exit, and go to sleep in a mixture of moods, the predominant of which is thankfulness.

+-------+

The kaaj was held the next day, but the post about it will come later. Much else is going on, and it may even be 3 weeks or so before the next post. By the grace of God, I have been offered admission to MDI, Gurgaon. I was not very serious about this institute, but personally going there and looking at the infrastructure, and the kind of interview I had there, totally changed my perception of it. Partly due to luck, I had got an interviewer who knew much about Hindu philosophy. After he found out that I too was interested in it, the interview touched rare esoteric domains. Just to give you a taste of the interview, "What is the essence of Shiva?" was one of the questions.

A typical son of Garhwal, of that simple and hardy hillfolk; and of that greater India, whose sons only those few who live among them are privileged to know. It is these big-hearted sons of the soil, no matter what their caste or creed, who will one day weld the contending factions into a composite whole, and make of India a great nation.
- Edward James 'Jim' Corbett, in the epilogue of The Man Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag. This was written around 1946 (Book first published 1947.) I could go on about Corbett, but suffice to say that he was one of the pioneers of environmental conservation in India, and a very sensitive and expressive observer of Nature, India, and true beauty in life.

+-------+

The next post's rough draft is ready but will take some time to expand.
By happenstance, I came across a TV ad where a voluble lady was trying to sell some kind of anti-diabetes tea. Apart from the standard mumbo-jumbo, she said (in Hindi), "It has xyz ingredient, which will make your pancreases work much better. It will greatly strengthen your pancreases so they produce more insulin." Clearly she's confusing them with another pair of glands.

Three days ago, I went to vote for the assembly elections in Haryana; but this post is not about politics.

The local voting centre was in DAV School, Sector 14, Faridabad, which, as it turns out, is the school where I studied for most of my life. This post is heavy on nostalgia, and there are many things here which may not be clear to everyone, as they deal with school lore. As far as I know, only around half-a-dozen former schoolmates come here, and they too never comment. Still I'll give the whole story since it was a significant experience for me, and the purpose of this blog is to be the storehouse of immersive experiences.

It had been nearly five years since I last went to school. Studying in college, there had been no reason for going back. There were several good teachers whom it'd be a pleasure to meet again, but there was no special reason, no occasion to meet them.
When I passed out from school in 12th, I considered myself a tough guy; there was no feeling of longing or separation at that time when I left my alma mater. Emotions were for sissies, I thought, not letting the revelry of the farewell parties get too deep. I was glad to be rid of the Maths and other engineering subjects that had almost made my creativity go dormant.
There was a time till 10th when I loved school, the friends, the camaraderie. But most of them went to other schools in their hunt for places that would better prepare them for entrance exams, the necessary evil in the hyper-competitive Indian higher-education scene. In 11th & 12th, PCM had hit me like a ton of bricks. Teachers thought other subjects were simply a waste of time. Getting into IIT was a religion. I was among the few heretics in my class; one of only 2 or 3 students who did not attend a coaching class or maths tution. These last 2 years had greatly darkened my school experience. Thus the impassivity at the end of school.

[First person narrative]
It's a holiday in the state due to the election. There's no danger of bumping into some teacher who'll remember my face but not my name, leading first to discomfiture, and then to much needless fawning-over. So I enter the school in a perky mood. It's in a very peaceful, rather affluent residential area, and there's nobody apart from bored policemen and the intermittent voter at the gates. As soon as I enter, I see the Gayatri Mantra, in 2-feet high solid steel letters on the inner wall. It's a DAV school, these guys are pretty focused on Vedic culture (But not in the rabid way of the fundamentalists.) Above that, I see the series of ACs of the computer labs, where I'd spent many happy hours, discovering the joys of programming. I go through smaller glass doors into an inner courtyard ringed by corridors, I'd passed through these doors several thousand times in a now forgotten age. I can feel the nostalgia start to build.
As soon as I enter, I see a signboard with a saying:

Nirbal balvaan se darta hai [The weak is afraid of the strong]
Nirdhan dhanvaan se darta hai [The poor is afraid of the rich]
Moorkh vidvaan se darta hai [The fool is afraid of the learned]
Par charitravaan se sabhi darte hain
[But everybody is afraid of one who has character]
-Mahatama Arya Bhikshu

It was impossible not to look at this maxim when one entered the school, and I can't believe how new and old it feels, at the same time. I'd forgotten about it, but it lay dormant in some forgotten neurons, now suddenly firing. I look around, and I see a wealth of boards on the walls with some saying or the other. I'd seen all of them, a thousand times, in boyhood, but now they were a perplexing yet delicious mix of old and new. While in school, they'd become a part of the walls for all practical purposes, and one didn't even notice them. Now I could see how thought-provoking these sayings were, which I was too feckless to heed in the tumult of childhood, when the overdue homework was a more pressing issue than some pithy remark of Swami Vivekananda. I decide that I'll take a round of the school after casting my vote.
I step into the marbled courtyard, and the tide of memories begins to swell. It reminds me of lunch breaks, chasing each other, weaving through groups of students; of standing in a shady spot in summer, or a sunny spot in winter, and ogling girls with some budding Romeo; of planning grand evasions of homework submissions through ingenious devices. Listening to the resident raconteurs of the class, who related tall tales of epic student fights and of outsmarted teachers. Before all this overwhelms me, I rush to the room where the voting booth is.
The area where this school's located is populated mostly by upper middle-class people, and population density is rather low, since the houses are larger. So there are few voters. They keep coming and going in groups of twos & threes, there aren't enough people to form a queue at any given time. I cast my vote without any delay, and look at the indelible ink mark on my finger with a tinge of pride.

I exit the room and look around, I see the exit that goes to the playground, and make for it. The policeman at the door of the polling room looks at me quizzically. I must be the first guy who is venturing somewhere else instead of returning after casting his vote. He doesn't say anything though, and I come to the playground. It's a nice sunny afternoon, and the ground, most of whose grass is worn away, looks inviting. Before any nostalgia, what hits me is its emptiness. I'm not used to seeing this place totally devoid of students, and of the noises of sport, cheering, jeering, abuses, shouts. There's no sound at all, not even of any wind rustling through the trees lined around the ground. I look at the skating rink, which was built 8 years earlier, and was among the first banked-track roller-skating rinks in India, the pride and joy of our principal. I see a very unexpected struture in the other corner of the ground. It's a domed octagonal building, of the kind seen in Rajasthani palaces. I move towards it expectantly. As I get near, I can make out a kund, or receptacle in its middle. It's a havankund, a place where havans, or vedic fire-rites, accompanied by mantra chanting, are performed. The building has marble flooring, and is beautifully designed. I take off my shoes, and enter. There are no walls, it's supported by eight pillars, and is open on all sides. There are some mantras written on the inner sides of the dome. It's almost surreal to be standing in a wall-less dome on a sunny day in the middle of a deserted ground, and gently reciting the mantras under my breath. It's almost a temple, but not quite. Old dried flowers are strewn there, probably from a recent havan, maybe on the occasion of Makar Sankranti (13 Jan). It looks very beautiful, but I'm sure the students must have found some choice epithets for it, and for the principal who made it. 'tis the burden of the principal to bear the brunt of students' choicest adjectives, whatever s/he does.
On the other side of the ground is the stage, where we used to stand in disciplined lines in the morning assembly, often making a real-time sotto voce parody of whatever speech the principal was giving. There were foggy days in winter when the stage wasn't visible, and the voice came only from disembodied loudspeakers.
[This is getting long, and I'll give only the more prominent details now.]

I know the building like the back of my hand, and decide to go up by such a staircase that none of the policemen of duty can see me, as I don't want to give too many explanations as to why I wish to roam in a deserted building on an election day. The polling is being done only in one of the hundred-plus rooms, and there's no human on the upper floors.
As I ascend, I run my hand over the wooden bannister, the palm still remembers the texture.
In the first floor corridor, I stride past rows of notice boards, each with several charts, most of them must've been made by reluctant students on whom the task was forced by zealous teachers. As I walk down the corridors, I find that much has changed since I passed out. The school has got ISO certification (Was among the first in Haryana to get it, and probably in India too). There is a fashion design lab, a spanking new conference hall, a Table Tennis hall with 6 shiny tables, a school counsellor's room which wasn't there in my time. The core classrooms though, are still the same, I peer inside some from the small peephole in their doors. I see the same assortment of different kinds of benches, green or black boards, windows in varying degrees of cleanliness. I look at the boards by the classrooms, Welcome to VIII-C, or IX-D, or X-B and suchlike. I go up and down floors. On the topmost (Fourth) floor, I look outside to see if there's still anything familiar. There are hardly any houses that I remember seeing earlier. Only the spires of a nearby temple are as before. There was a time when distant houses and trees could be seen from this height, but with the real estate boom, much taller homes have come up midway, impenetrable barriers that prevent glimpses into a more innocent age.
On many notice boards, I see target scores for that year's exams, and how much has been achieved till now. I also see vision statements and such mumbo-jumbo on some boards. Must be something to do with the ISO certification.

On a whim, I decide to look in the toilets, to see if something has changed there too. I come outside a pair, but can't decide which one is girls', and which boys'. There used to be board, but intrepid students had crossed it out and turned boys to girls (Or vice versa), and then it had been scratched again and repaired, and now it was impossible to make out what it had been originally. Whatever. I push open the door and look in. It looks very clean, newly tiled, gleaming faucets. Must be something to do with the certification too. I go further and see the last cubicle in the room, which houses the shaft which goes down the whole building, carrying the drainpipes. Looking down the maze of pipes, I remember a story from earlier. Near Diwali time, there were always some adventurous people who wanted to blast crackers in the school, and the higher the decibel level, the more their satisfaction. Toilets were the safest place to deploy these, since the teachers and staff were very vigilant around that time, knowing the pyromaniacal inclinations of some of their exemplary students. In one instance, a so-called 'hydrogen bomb' cracker of nearly-volcanic decibel level was exploded in a toilet a few days before Diwali. Even by DAV standards, it was very loud. I remember that the teacher who was taking our class at that time involuntarily rose a few millimetres in the air by reflex jump when that went off. The staff instantly converged on the offending toilet like hawks, but our venturesome pyromaniac showed remarkable dexterity, and descended a floor through this shaft, climbing down drainpipes in an almost Wodehousian manner, to escape detection. That story was told for weeks, and embellished in later recitations, till our adventurer was made to climb down the whole 4 floors, and the frustration of the failed nabbers was described in increasingly vivid anatomical terms.
I exit, and resume my perambulations of the corridors. I pass the room of the middle-classes (5th-8th) supervisor. I had to stand outside this room a few times as a young boy, for not doing my homework. This was an age when I was old enough to spend all my time reading novels, but still young enough to be punished.

On one of the walls, I see the 10 rules of the Arya Samaj. These are instructions for everyone who wants to be a good citizen of the Earth and the nation. When in the younger classes, far from being morally uplifting, these were the source of much misery, as they had to be crammed. The second rule in particular, which contains 21 adjectives to describe God/Ishvara, was particularly vexing.
DAV schools are an affiliate of the Arya Samaj, a socio-religious organization established in 1883 (Or 1886; I forget), whose goal is the upliftment of humanity. Thus these schools generally consider education to be a social responsibility rather than a business. This results in lower fees as compared to other good schools, and due to this, people of all social & economic strata gain admission. This leads to great diversity, and the range of students that are found here is hard to match elsewhere. Also, these are less disciplined than the likes of convent schools, which leads to a quite democratic character. One can study academics, fight, study fiction, play sport, make music and generally do his/her own thing with more freedom than in most schools. This is also the reason for the common perception, especially in north India, that DAVs are the den of rowdy, goon kind of students. This is quite true, and it makes the school even more interesting, with geeks, sportsmen, philosophers, goons, debaters, dancers, musicians and fashion-designers studying cheek-by-jowl in the same class. However this is true of only the larger DAVs, not all. And I understand that this is true of most good schools, but you can't find the same experience with the kind of fees charged in DAV. DAVs in southern India are much more disciplined, I've heard, and are considered almost elite. There were several cases when a student or teacher came to DAV after moving here from southern parts, and experienced a shock on seeing the freewheeling attitude here.

I notice suddenly how the day of my return to the school after five years, is also the one when it's entirely empty, to allow me to explore and rediscover it in peace. Providence is smiling on me.

On one of the charts is the current standing of the houses in various competitions. I look for my old house (Everest), and see that it's first in some, and last in others. It's first in English debate, extempore, and dramatics, which makes me happy. Though, of course, this only means that there's one student in Everest who's very good in English. And more than that, there's almost certainly somebody else who's better, but who's too shy to come out and display his/her talent. This is always the case in all the situations I've seen.
There are portraits of Arya Samaj stalwarts like Swami Dayananda, Mahatama Hansraj etc at some places. As students, the only reason we looked at them was to see if someone had drawn a new moustache on the good Swami, or blackened another tooth in the Mahatama's smile. Now I look at them with some respect for starting such a chain of schools, which tries to balance cultural and modern education.
Now I go towards the final destination, that I'd been saving for the end. I hear my shoes clatter in the deserted corridors of the second floor, I can feel the blood rushing faster as I walk the same path that was covered before the most highly-awaited period of the week. As I near the library, I note with delight that it has been substantially enlarged, and I am happy, and envious towards the current students, who have access to a much larger selection of books than I had at that time. There is a sequence of notice boards with charts that extol books, and the joys of reading. They further elevate my mood.
I read one such:
"Reading an old book feels so familiar, it's like coming home"
Coming to the locked glass doors of the main library, I peer through, to the shelves upon shelves of books. When I was here, there were already over 15000 books; now there must be much more. I feel like a devotee looking at the sanctum sanctorum of a temple. How many blissful hours, days, weeks, months had I spent with these books! I read a chart inside the library, through the glass:
"It's not true that we live only one life; if we can read, we can lead as many lives, and as many kinds of lives as we want."
Beautiful.

I'm reminded of the time when we would read our issued book in a day or two, then exchange it with another student, exchange again & again, racing against time to finish as many books as possible before the next week's library period, so newer vistas in books could be explored. Minor things like homework, of course, were treated with contempt, which sometimes led to problems with teachers, and epic evasions at the time of submission. I also recall the beautiful sequence in which almost every person climbs the rungs of reading, starting with Enid Blytons, and graduating through Nancy Drews & Hardy Boys to Alistair MacLeans, and PG Wodehouse, by which time s/he can handle almost anything. Asterix, Tintin and other comics also move in parallel; and in my time, there also used to be the incredible Target magazine, which had several fanatic subscribers. Plus the classics, from Twain to Dickens. There were many joyous discoveries here. I recall a time when I was looking at the titles of book upon book in a shelf, finding that I'd read all of them, and stumbled upon a PG Wodehouse. Believe it or not, I didn't know at that time what this Wodehouse creature was. I got the book issued simply because the cover looked quite amusing, with a dancing butlerine figure balancing a glass on a salver. It was The Old Reliable, and I laughed like a loon when I read that book. I also discovered Asimov slightly after that, attracted by its cover, which had a highly imaginative rendition of a spaceship flying off a futuristic Science Fiction world. They proved to be my bulwark in the dark years of 11th and 12th. By that time, we were allowed to get 2 books issued at one time. While almost all my classmates' both books were weighty tomes on Physics, Chemistry or Maths, I was the librarian's 'crazy one' who always got 2 fiction books issued. While the teachers tried to drill the tactics of clearing the JEE into us, I was living half in a sub-gravity world with 3 Suns and hyperspace drive, and half in a 1920s British manor replete with Aunts and butlers. I didn't clear the JEE, and I don't regret it at all.
As all this flows through my mind, and my breath makes the glass door foggy, I bow my head, in honour of the Spirit of Learning, which has walked with me this far, and will be a fellow-traveller till the end.
After a while, I move away from the library, and notice another chart on the wall:
"Old wood to burn
Old wine to drink
Old friends to trust
Old books to read."
It's almost sensory overload.

I enter a classroom near the library, sliding open a bolt that is slightly bent, evidently because some student overflowing with the eagerness of youth tried to kick open the door when it was bolted.
Very familiar classroom, like a hundred others. It is very probable that I might have studied in this very room in one of the nine years I spent here. This is VIII class, Room no. 216. The late afternoon Sun is streaming through the windows, casting a glow on most things. The blackboard has some polynomials written on it, and questions on finding their LCM etc. The notice board has a list of the teachers who teach this class, and I notice that the Hindi teacher is the very same who used to teach me in 8th. She is one of the best teachers I've been lucky enough to study under. I look above, at the fans. Some of them have deep marks on their blades. Sometimes some students bend their blades downwards on the last working day before the summer vacation, which are then straightened when they return, because it's too hot to sit under a fan which is giving only 10% of the intended air, handicapped by blades bent 90 degrees towards the ground. It also reminds me of fighting for the benches under the fan. I glance at the benches, and see what unending generations of students have been writing. Crossed out swear words, psychedelic doodles, proclamations of undying friendship, impromptu lyrics, random scratches, on wood polished and rounded through years of use. Heck, I used to sit on these very benches in a not so distant history. I go to the last row, the bench in the very corner, the one right next to the window, and sit in it. I stretch myself, pass my palm over the reassuring cool surface. It's getting somewhat late, but there's nothing to worry about. Even if the polling officials pack up and leave, and the doors on the ground floor are locked, there are still enough exits out of this place. There was a time when I and an equally adventurous classmate scaled the boundary wall to escape school for a day. I feel strangely powerful sitting here. That there is nobody who knows that a person is sitting on the second floor of this building, alone with his thoughts. It's a privilege to find such solitude in a city.
There are lunch wrappers, forgotten pencils, and such assorted debris in the desks below the writing surface. I look through the wall-length windows at the setting Sun. A pleasing languor pervades the Universe. There are no reasons for getting up. I sit there for over half-an-hour, in a thankful attitude, on a nostalgia trip.
Suddenly the phone vibrates. It's my brother, enquiring about my whereabouts, as I was supposed to return directly after casting my vote. I tell him I'm just looking around the school, it's been so long. He was in the same school, and passed out only last year. I can sense the smile in his reply.
Just a few more years mate, then the nostalgia will hit you.
As I finally decide to go back, and walk to the door, I see a book in one of the desks. Someone has forgotten it. It's an English reader, with assorted stories. I'm about to put it back, but I read one story out of it (A travelogue about Leh, Ladakh) out of respect for the times when I read the whole English & Hindi readers on the day they were bought for the new session.
The indelible ink on my finger will fade away, but this experience won't.

I came across the blog of a professor from XLRI today, and some of what he says gives me a new perspective of things. Considering I've been a student mostly, the issues faced by teachers were not very clear to me (Nor did I care much.)

+-------+

A much longer post, more in line with the usual tone of this place, is coming soon. I know it's overdue. But Musafir is coming on the telly; though I rarely watch movies, it distracts me, and atleast till now, it looks slickly made. It also looks like a Scorpio ad.

1929: The Lahore session of the Congress is held. Nationalistic fervor is overflowing. Led by Nehru, the Congress passes the resolution of Poorna Swaraj or complete independence. It's decided that 26 January will be celebrated as Independence Day henceforth.

26th of January, 1930: Following the observance of Independence Day, the Civil Disobedience movement is launched. Thousands leave govt schools and offices, foreign products are boycotted. A few weeks later, Mahatama Gandhi starts his famed Dandi March to break the salt law. He is joined by lakhs of followers. The British Govt is livid and resorts to firing and brutal repression. The Mahatama becomes iconic, almost a mythical figure.

26th of November, 1949: WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:

JUSTICE, social, economic and political;

LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;

EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all;

FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation:

IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.

Headed by this Preamble, the Constitution of India, the most voluminous in the world, which had occupied the most thoughtful minds of the nascent nation since the previous few years, is finally deemed complete and adopted by the Constituent Assembly.

26th of January, 1950: The newly-formed constitution comes into force, and India is now a republic. There's much that remains to be done. Communal battles have barely ended, and food scarcity is a pressing issue.
From next year, the first five-year plan will start, and India will go the way of being a socialist economy. Later, Indira Gandhi will even amend the preamble to add the word 'Socialist' as one of the defining adjectives of the Indian State, and earn brownie points from the Soviets.

....see Punjab for glimpses of what went on during the intervening period.

26th of January, 1996: In a development of high coincidental value, the PC at our home gets its multimedia kit. It's made by Creative, which is a pale shadow of its former self now. It costs Rs 14000, which'll get you a full computer today. It has the revolutionary Sound Blaster 16 card, a 2x CD ROM drive, and much assorted software. While most of my peers don't even know the difference between a monitor and a keyboard, I, just on the threshold of teenage, have embarked on a journey of incredible immersive learning. I lose myself for unending hours in now forgotten games like Strike Commander, Wing Commander (II), Syndicate Plus, Ultima VIII:Pagan, Eagle Eye Mysteries, and more. The PC Quest magazine has just started to give CDs, twice an year. Every piece of shareware is eagerly dissected by me. The Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia (1995 Edition), greatly enlarges the window through which I look at the world. The internet has just started in India. VSNL offers 500 hours at 14.4 kbps speed, for Rs 15000. As I get the hang of the just-released Windows 95, I come to be known as a computer wizard among all my acquaintances. Though later this wizardry is frittered away as I become jaded with computers.
...

26th of January, 2000: Four Param Vir Chakras are among the many decorations awarded to the soldiers who fought in the Kargil war of the previous summer. Some of them are posthumous. Nationalistic fervor and Pakistan-bashing are at all-time highs. Roads are named after the soldiers; people are exhorted to do more for their country. A few months previously, the NDA govt had returned to power due to this fervor, after having lost the confidence motion in Parliament by a single vote when Jayalalitha retracted her party's support. I am in 12th standard in school, and our zealous English teacher keeps asking us to write articles on the Kargil conflict and on the debt we owe to our armed forces.

26th of January, 2001: Anjar, Gujarat: Schoolkids are preparing to go on a Republic Day parade. They march through the town, singing the National Anthem. As they pass in a narrow lane with congested houses on both sides, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake strikes the Bhuj region in Gujarat. They are crushed to death, holding the tricolor in their hands.
Even a jaded, desensitized, old 'India hand' like me has trouble controlling the lump in his throat when reading this story.
In an associated event, filming in Bhuj of the Aamir Khan starrer Lagaan is disrupted due to the quake.

26th of January, 2005: The President exhorts the citizens to work for the nation in a 'Mission Mode', to make the country a developed nation by 2020. After many years, I watch the R-Day parades on TV. I'd stopped watching them as they seemed to be almost juvenile, reminding me of Stalin and Mao watching their armed might pass them, unending, column upon column. However, as I watch, the Indian display seems too bloody colorful to be intimidating. There's some Spirit of India which turns even the dreariest thing to color, removing most malice. Right from the saluting president and the king of Bhutan, to the fossilized politicos in the audience, to the balloons and kids, and the feverish, overly bombastic commentary, it's more a caricature than a display of military might. I'm glad to belong to such an enigmatic country, which I myself can't define.
The honors list has been announced, and Sunita Narain has won a Padma Shri. Narain heads the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), which broke the pesticide-in-colas story. As a longstanding supporter of CSE, and subscriber of their flagship magazine Down to Earth, I'm even happier at her recognition than I am at RK Laxman's. I regain some respect for the bureaucrats who decide the awardees.
There is much self-congratulation in the media, on how India is becoming an 'information superpower', the universities churning out engineers like on assembly-lines. Far from the easygoing, noisy, harmless image of Indians in the world, Indians are now actually feared competitors. It makes me gladder still.

I understand that this post would've been more effective had I posted it in the morning, as R-Day began. But I watched (parts of) the parade in the morning, and later, it seemed almost a crime to sit cooped up before a computer when there was such a magnificent Sun outdoors, after the cloudy weather of the last few days. Hope I manage to get in 'Mission Mode' from tomorrow. (Isn't this last-sentence too oft-repeated?)

Considering the cyclic nature of all history, the future promises to be more of the same: inertia, sore trials and sweet successes. Best wishes to you all.

Read a report in the newspaper today about how politicians in Bihar are using a large fleet of helicopters to campaign for their parties/themselves. The correspondent talked to one of them, it was a senior politico, forgot who; this guy complained that flying by choppers was necessary, as the condition of the roads was too bad.
One of the many reasons India is the land of ironies.

I think this is the most 'normal' post on my blog till now, as in what blogs are supposed to be: snippets of disconnected info. This, of course, is only a temporary condition, so those who like the abnormality of my blog needn't worry.

Today is Id-ul-Zuha.

Rather confused by the plethora of Ids that are celebrated at various times of the year, I asked a Muslim friend about them. While all this info should easily be available on the net, I'm giving it here for increasing your general awareness. Now why you would want to increase your general awareness with such data is beyond me. Anyway. You can use this info at an appropriate moment to stun your enemies and delight your friends. I can hardly claim to know enough even about Hindu festivals, let alone Muslim ones, and this information has been informally obtained from a friend, so standard disclaimers apply.

The word Id, derived from the Arabic 'Iwd', literally means 'Festival', thus Id-ul-Zuha is the Festival of Sacrifice. This is celebrated to commemorate the time when Hazrat Ibrahim (Who is among the most important religious figures after Prophet Mohammad) decided to sacrifice his son to Allah after receiving direction (Presumably in a dream or while meditating) that he should sacrifice that which was most dear to him. He blindfolded himself, so his hand wouldn't waver when he brought his sword down. When he did bring it down, he found that there was a ram in place of his son, and his son was safe. Since then, the festival is celebrated. Cattle is sacrificed to commemorate that event, and remind pious muslims of the value of sacrifice. [As a (hopefully) pious vegetarian, I must say I can't see the logic behind this. But almost all religious fests are rather illogical anyway. The others don't involve bloodshed atleast. But there may be weals and bruises involved sometimes. Someday I'll tell you how Holi is celebrated in the villages of Haryana (Also UP), where women whip men with coiled dupatta clothes, while the men scurry for cover. It's good, unclean fun. Unclean because both the victims and perpetrators look like they have just been dipped in a muddy pond and then rubbed with colors of all hues. Which they have been.] Id-ul-Zuha also culminates the Haj festival in Mecca.

Muharram comes 30 days after Id-ul-Zuha, and is a day of mourning & self-flagellation. This is to mourn the death of Prophet Mohammad's grandson Imam Hussain, who was martyred at Karbala [Most probably in a war] Shias perform self-flagellation, while Sunnis give alms.

Id-e-Milad-ul-Nabi is the birthday of Prophet Mohammad.

Id-ul-Fitr is the end of Ramadan/Ramazan, the holy month of fasting. 'Fittra', or foodgrain, is donated on this day (2 kg of grain per person, or its monetary value.) Two-and-a-half months later, Id-ul-Zuha comes again, and the cycle of celebration, which has provided succour to countless humans of countless civilizations, even in times of war or famine, continues.

While on this topic, the Islamic calendar is Lunar, like the Hindu one, but there is no correction involved in the Islamic one to bring it in sync with the Solar calendar, so the 12 Islamic months fall in each of the months of the Gregorian calendar, repeating in a 32.5 year cycle.