Not Simple – অসরল

I entered school life with a big enthusiasm. That fervor lasted for three seasons.
Those days in any class we would have two exams – half-yearly and annual. It was the annual exam of my third year. The subject was Bengali. It’s my mother tongue. I was proceeding fine. All of a sudden, a jolt. This question said – ‘Byakhya Karo’ meaning, ‘Explain.’
Below that was a quotation.

I could not figure out what the question meant. The quoted line is self-exoplanetary. What extra do I have to add? The day is vivid in my mind even today. All other students have left. I am still struggling to write something without any clue. Tears are coming down incessantly. The teacher who was in charge of the exam room has given me some extra time. But, all in vain.

That’s the first time, I got afraid of an exam. That fear never left me. Later, that question invaded the English papers too. Since then, whenever I hear or read ‘Byakhya Karo’ or ‘Explain’ I get butterflies in my stomach.
That fear took me later through a different turn. Poems were rich sources of such lines. Almost every line could be placed under that terrible demand – ‘Byakhya Karo’, ‘Explain’. I started hating poems.

However, life is amazing. I found a very secretive juicy way of retaliation. I started writing poems. Now whoever read the lines I have written, have to explain them themselves in their heads. Each time I had to write an essay in any exams, Bengali or English I would inject a few lines of poem on the topic, did not matter what topic it was. Revenge! Mu-ha-ha!

The second disastrous experience was in Math. Those days we had to solve problems of arithmetic expressions. It was a very common type of problem. The instruction would say – simplify. We had to solve long arithmetic arrays of numbers joined with each other by symbols like bracket, of, division, multiplication, addition and subtraction. The instruction would read – ‘Saral Karo’ meaning ‘Simplify’. The most ironic of all, those problems were always called– ‘Saral Onka’ – ‘Simple Math’.

The key to solve such problems was to use BODMAS, the acronym for the steps to be followed strictly in the order of – bracket, of, division, multiplication, addition and subtraction. A funny sidenote here is that despite the acronym being in English, a language almost alien to me; I liked it, because in Bengali it meant – a wicked person. So appropriate!

Most of the time the answer to these problems would be 1 or 0. But, which one – is it 1 or is it 0?

We had math books with sets of questions placed at the end of each chapter. The answers to those questions were all arranged in the last few pages of the math book. It did not matter, how good the math book was, how nicely the answers were arranged, there would always be a few misprints in those answers.

Now imagine, after a long work of simplification, you have come down to 1 or 0. Then you match it with the answer given at the end of the book. If it matches, superb! If it doesn’t, is the book wrong or you? Is it a printing mistake or once again you have messed it up?

Since then I have lost my trust in any thing or process that is called simple.

Well, below is a poem on ‘Simple Math’. I originally wrote it in Bengali. Here I have translated it in my poor English (my third top dreaded one in learning).

|| Not Simple ||

Treachery of Simple Math
Unparalleled.
(It asked us to – simplify
We called it Simple Math; why!)
Escaped from the brackets, who knows whose simple soul
Marching with addition-subtraction-multiplication-division
A strange alien BODMAS reigned on us.
Just like a deficit budget most of the time
Start from the beginning, again … messed it up again …
Still I would take it.
But when
The answer would swing between
Zero and one
The ceaseless twilight of right and wrong –
I feel choked even today.
Can’t remember how many times
Reached the supreme one
Rolled back empty handed –
For the wicked drama of misprints on the ending pages!
That’s when I started fearing simplicity this much
That’s when the end began.

|| অসরল ||

সরল অঙ্কের বিশ্বাসঘাতকতার
কোন তুলনা নেই।
(সরল কর বলে যার শুরু
তার নাম সরল অঙ্ক হত কি করে!)
বন্ধনী মুক্ত কে জানে কার সরল প্রাণ
যোগ-বিয়োগ-গুণ-ভাগের কুচকাওয়াজে
দিশী জমিতে আশ্চর্য এক বিলাতি বদমাশ।
হামেশাই ঘাটতি বাজেটের প্রতিচ্ছবি।
ফের গোড়া থেকে শুরু – ফের গোলযোগ।
সহ্য হত তাও।
কিন্তু যখন
উত্তর দুলতে থাকত
শূণ্য অথবা এক-এর
ঠিক-ভুলের চির গোধূলিতে –
ভাবলে আজও দম আটকে আসে।
কত বার যে
পরম ব্রহ্মে পৌঁছে গিয়েও
শূণ্য হাতে ফিরে আসা –
শেষের পাতায় ছাপার ভুলের নষ্ট রঙ্গে!
সেই থেকে আমার সরলতায় এত আতঙ্ক
সেই শুরু সর্বনাশের।

[প্রকাশিতঃ শারদীয়া অঞ্জলি, ২০২০]