Books and authors make me think

There are schools, and then there are schools.  A lot can happen in one's life depending on the school.

Some of my cousins who lived in smaller towns deep south in peninsular India were highly impressed by the school that my siblings and I went to.  The buildings, the science labs, and English as the medium of instruction were a complete contrast to the schools that they attended.

I didn't know any better, until  I came to know about schools that were a lot more impressive.

Sometime during my middle school years, when students from a couple of other schools came to participate in what I would now refer to as an academic decathlon, I sensed that there were schools that were even better than mine.  Some of those students were from a "public school" and carried themselves with confidence that I did not think was achievable until one reached adulthood.
(A note to my fellow Americans: The "public schools" in India are private boarding schools modeled after the British ones.)

So now there was a new tier that I hadn't known about. Until then, I had only known about government schools, and tuition-funded private schools like the one that I attended.  A public school?

When I started following politics as a pre-teen, and when Indira Gandhi's younger son, Sanjay Gandhi, was all over the news for all the controversies that he generated before his aeronautical and acrobatic fall to death, I understood that there were schools that even among public schools there were highly exclusive ones like the Doon School that Sanjay Gandhi attended.

The commie wannabe in me began to understand that the typical government school student faced a lower chance of "succeeding" in life compared to the typical student in my school, and a typical student at my school would not stand a chance against the typical Doon School student.

I suppose it was one of many eye-opening revelations on the unfairness in life, which has been one of my favorite topics here in this blog.

A few months ago, we hosted my companion's acquaintance.  I was meeting him for the first time.  During the chat over cake and tea, he said in his fading British accent that his sons were finishing their high school education in India, at a public school.  He preempted my question; it was the high school that he attended and that was the reason for his sons to go there.

No foreign student came anywhere near our school!  And I have never been anywhere near the part of India where those exclusive public schools are located.  The India of public schools is not the India of private schools, which are certainly not the India of government schools.

I am now reading a work of fiction by an author who is a Doon School product.  The Calcutta Chromosome is by Amitav Ghosh, who was born and raised in India.  Wikipedia notes:

Ghosh was born in Calcutta on 11 July 1956 and was educated at the all-boys boarding school The Doon School in Dehradun. He grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. His contemporaries at Doon included author Vikram Seth and historian Ram Guha.  While at school, he regularly contributed fiction and poetry to The Doon School Weekly (then edited by Seth) and founded the magazine History Times along with Guha.

I doubt that there is any government school in India where students run a weekly publication.

Back in 2013, I wrote in a blog-post that Americans only get to see the successful Indians--here in the US or back in India--who are often people like Amitav Ghosh and me and many more, who come from privileged backgrounds.  Well, Ghosh was raised with a lot more privilege than I was.  A government run school in India rarely produces students who are able to make their way to America at a young age in pursuit of their educational or business dreams.  If only politicians and the public here in the US would understand that people like me do not represent the average person in India.

From the reunion in 2011.
The one wearing a dark shirt and holding a plastic bag is Vijay.