History

The first thought that comes to my mind when I read or hear this word is about school. I was formally introduced to history in my Third grade, I think (my history is very weak hence the uncertainty). And I hated history soon after our first encounter. History, a subject which deals with things which are (usually) old and ancient, surprisingly brought many new things in my life, like the realization that there are questions which have to be answered in more than one line. Till then I only knew 'Answer in one line' type of questions but the dawn of History introduced me to 'Answer in brief' type of questions which had a page long answers. One more interesting thing about these answers was that though they say 'Answer in brief' there was nothing brief about the answers for me. One page answer - that was 'huge' for me. Hence the word 'brief' became synonymous with 'big' for me. It took me some years to realise that it actually means quite the opposite. So that was my first impression of history.

Soon I had grown accustomed to history and its peculiarities like long answers, dates, people, and 'Arrange in chronological order'. Being a fairly good student I overcame my dislike for the subject and  attacked it with gusto by mugging up whatever it threw at me. I maintained my good grades and advanced to next classes. The history too advanced and now there were bigger answers and more people to study about. But hey I had figured history out so it was no more a big deal. Although History and I travelled on a gloomy path, there were some moments of respite. The first was when we studied history about Shivaji Maharaj. The reason that History didn’t bother me much at that time was because Raje's life was more like a story than a sequence of chronological events. Even today the stories of the History textbook are etched in my mind although I can't remember a single date when a particular event took place. Raje's oath of establishing 'Swarajya' with just a handful of Mavalas, capturing his first fort Torna, the first real threat to Swarajya - Afzal Khan, the battle of Pratapgad and victory of the Marathas over the huge Adilshahi forces and many events after that created a movie in my mind so enchanting, that I forgot my resentment towards history. The second respite was the history about World Wars. Here history became a war movie in my mind. Two camps fighting one another for supremacy. Their relations with each other, their vested interests, their greed, cunningness made it such a realistic picture that I didn’t mind to write some pages about it in my answering book. But apart from these two exceptions, history and I went along our gloomy path which finally ended when I passed my Tenth standard exams.

After Tenth I opted for the Science stream which gave me an opportunity to study science and maths which I loved (notice the past tense) till tenth standard. Also this meant that History had become a part of my history (felt like poetic justice to me). The next six years (12th + B.E) I never thought about history, not once. After by B.E. I worked at TCS for a year. I was in Trivandrum for my training. People from various states of India were there. It was a very novel experience for me, to be among people from different geographies, and hence different food habits, different languages, basically different everything. During our interactions I noticed that everyone was very proud of their own states, customs and heritage.

I always liked reading, nothing specific though. Just whatever fancied me I used to read it, be it a newspaper, fiction, non-fiction etc. In TCS we were spending our whole day in computer labs. We used to (try to) do some project work and then the rest of the time was meant for reading tutorials about JAVA, HTML etc. online. Well since we all are never good at doing things that we are supposed to do I used to spend time reading Wikipedia.  Although I hated history I liked geography very much. So I started with Pangea, super continents, New Zealandia, and many things that I can't recollect now. While reading geography I didn’t even realize when I had started reading history topics. Geography has had a profound effect on our history. While reading about the plate tectonics, Gondwanaland, I was directed to Indian subcontinent, the rivers of India, Indus river,  Indus valley civilization, Aryan invasion theory and so on. I then keenly read about the evolution of different religions, cultures, traditions, in India, different dynasties and empires that rose and fell. I revisited the history taught to me in school. The Gupta period, the Mauryan empire, the Shakas, Kushanas, Pandyas, Cholas, Vijayanagar kingdom, Delhi sultanate, Mughal empire, Maratha empire, British India, World Wars and so on. This time history never bugged me at all, because this time I was under no obligation to remember the dates and the chronological order of the events. I read them like stories, true and glorious stories written on the canvas of time itself. I saw history in a new light and I liked what I saw. History 2.0 was awesome.

Reading all that information also gave me an insight of the events of the present. I was able to better understand the beliefs, cultures, of my colleagues and friends. I was able to understand their pride for their states, their regional histories. I was able to understand why a person from Midnapore (West Bengal) looked up to Khudiram Bose. It helped me to better understand my country and my countryfolk (countrymen would have been gender biased hence the folk part. Hey, I still remember some of what was taught in Business skills in TCS). I said that geography shaped our history, but history is not something that goes down so easily. History levelled the score with geography when it reshaped the world map. The partition of India creating India and Pakistan, the complex borders of Jammu and Kashmir, creation of a Jew state amidst the Arab countries, war of 1971 and creation of Bangladesh are some of the punches that history threw at (political)geography.

History which was a subject with boring lessons in school, has now become a collection of life lessons for me. It has changed the way I perceive the world. In times where there are controversies day in and day out, learning about our history may help us to form an educated opinion about matters based on knowledge, rather than what you are told or what you believe. History is the guide along the way which will show our present the way to a better future.