It is strange how your opinion of yourself can be influenced by what others think of you. In January, 1909, when I joined the Ravenshaw Collegiate School, Cuttack, a sudden change came over me. Among European and Anglo-Indian boys my parentage had counted for nothing, but among our own people it was different. Further, my knowledge of English was above the ordinary level and that gave me an added estimation in the eyes of my new class-mates. Even the teachers treated me with undue consideration, because they expected me to stand first, and in an Indian school studies, and not sports, brought credit and reward. At the first quarterly examination I did justify the hopes placed in me. The new atmosphere in which I lived and moved forced me to think better of myself — that I was worth something and was not an insignificant creature. It was not a feeling of pride that crept into me but of self-confidence, which till then had been lacking and which is the sine qua non of all success in life.

This time it was not the infant class which I joined but the fourth (1) class — so I did not have to look up all the time. Boys of the fourth class considered themselves as belonging to one of the higher classes and moved about with an air of importance. So did I. But in one respect I was seriously handicapped in spite of all the other advantages I enjoyed. I had read hardly a word of Bengali — my mother-tongue — before I joined this school, while the other boys had already reached a high standard. I remember that the first day I had to write an essay on 'Cow' (or was it 'Horse'?), I was made the laughing-stock of all my class-mates. I knew nothing of grammar and precious little of spelling and when the teacher read out my composition to the whole class with running comments, punctuated with laughter, flowing in from all sides, I felt humbled to the dust. I had never had this experience before — to be laughed at for deficiency in studies — and on top of it, I had lately developed a species of self-consciousness which had made me ultrasensitive. For weeks and months the Bengali lessons would give me the creeps. But for the time being, however acute the mental torture, there was nothing I could do but put up with the humiliation and secretly resolve to make good. Slowly and steadily I began to gain ground and at the annual examination I had the satisfaction of getting the highest marks in that subject.

I enjoyed my new surroundings, the more so as I had longed for the change. At the other school, though I had been there for seven years, I had not left behind any friends. Here it looked as if I would enter into lasting friendship with at least some of my classmates. My friends were not of the sporting type because I did not take kindly to sports and only the drill lessons interested me. Apart from my own lukewarmness, there was another obstacle to my taking to sports enthusiastically. It was customary for the boys to return home after school-hours, have a light tiffin, and then go out for games. My parents did not like us to do that. Either they thought that sports would interfere with our studies or they did not regard the atmosphere of the playground as congenial to our mental health. Possibly the latter consideration weighed more with them. Be that as it may, the domestic situation was such that if we wanted to go out for games, we had to do it on the sly. Some of my brothers and uncles did do so and occasionally, when they were caught, were given a talking-to. But, knowing my parents' habits, it was generally possible to dodge them, especially as they were in the habit of going out for a drive and walk. If I had had a strong desire like the others, I could easily have joined them at the games. But I did not. Moreover, I was then of a goody-goody nature and was busy devouring ethical verses in Sanskrit. Some of these verses taught that the highest virtue consisted in obeying one's father — that when one's father was satisfied all the gods were satisfied (2) — that one's mother was even greater than one's father etc., etc. I therefore thought it better not to do what would displease my parents. So I would take to gardening along with those who did not go out for games. We had a fairly big kitchen and flower garden adjoining our house and in company with the gardener we would water and tend the plants or do some digging or help lay out the beds. Gardening I found absorbingly interesting. It served, among other things, to open my eyes to the beauties of nature, about which I shall I have something to say later on. Besides gardening, we would also go in for physical exercise and gymnastics for which there were arrangements at home.

Looking back on my past life I feel inclined to think that I should not have neglected sports. By doing so, I probably developed precocity and accentuated my introvert tendencies. To ripen too early is not good, either for a tree or for a human being and one has to pay for it in the long run. There is nothing to beat nature's law of gradual development, and however much prodigies may interest us at first they generally fail to fulfil their early promise.

Talking of an ideal, I am reminded of an experience I had when I was at the P. E. School. I was then about ten. Our teacher asked us to write an essay on what we would like to be when we were grown-up. My eldest brother was in the habit of giving us talks on the respective virtues of a judge, magistrate, commissioner, barrister, doctor, engineer, and so forth, and I had picked up odd things from what I had heard him say. I jumbled up as many of these as I still remembered and wound up by saying that I would be a magistrate. The teacher remarked that to be a magistrate after being a commissioner would be an anti-climax, but I was too young to understand the status of the different professions and designations. After that I had no occasion to be worried by the thought of what I should aspire to be in later life. I only remember hearing in talks within the family circle that the highest position one could get to was the Indian Civil Service. (3)

"One fine morning Subhas called on me. He had come to draw me into a debating club he had started 'Debates must be encouraged among us, the country will need great debaters, parliamentarians - when we are free, that is.' 'Debates!' I fell from the sky, as our Bengali idiom has it. 'But didn't Shri Ramakrishna say through debates you never can win a clue to the truth?' 'Never mind what he said,' Subhas cut in impatiently. 'We must not remain everlastingly moored to the past. Traditions have been the bane of the Hindu culture. We must create the future.'..."

Netaji - The Man: Reminiscences, Dilip Kumar Roy (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1966)

The headmaster did not usually give any regular lessons till the boys reached the second class. So I began to long for the day when I would reach the second class and be entitled to listen to his lectures. That day did arrive, (4) but my good fortune did not last long. After a few months orders for his transfer came. However, before he left us he had succeeded in rousing in me a vague perception of moral values — an inchoate feeling that in human life moral values should count more than anything else. In other words he had made me feel the truth of what we had read in our Poetry-Book —

“The rank is but the guinea's stamp
The man is the gold for all that.”

And it was well that he had, for about this time the usual mental changes — best described in scientific terminology as sex-consciousness — which are incidental to approaching puberty, began to overtake me.

Notes

1. In our time the numbering was different from what obtains now. For instance, formerly the first class was the top class in a High School.
2. Pitah Swargah, Pitah Dharmah, Pitahi Paramantapah etc.
3. In those days it was nicknamed the heaven-born service.
4. I was then fourteen.
5. I have had repeated demonstrations of this principle in later life.
6. There is a saying in Sanskrit — "As. you think, so you become".