Home » Poems » Ibohal Kshetrimayum » Don'T Ask Me About My Education

Don'T Ask Me About My Education

From time to time, people ask me
About my education.
Only then, I remember
I have no degrees or diplomas.
I attended no university either.
I hated textbooks and exams.
I still do.
That's bad education, they say.

But they don't know
I was taught by a book
No school could afford to teach from.
There was a street
Connecting south and north of my town.
It divided the market into two halves.
One half on the east and
The other on the west.
Another street bisected it
At the centre of the bazaar,
Below a flyover.
And, the crossroads was the battleground
Of the southern and northern gangs.
I belonged to the southerners.
The southern stretch of the street,
From the humped bridge to the edge of the crossroads,
Was my book containing all lessons.
I needed no falling apples
To understand gravity.
But from metallic sounds of falling coins
On the tin-bowl of a blind beggar,
Who sat in the shade of a fig tree,
The only tree left in the township,
Singing love songs 
Plucking rusted strings of his old guitar;
I learned about hearts with different gravities.
I was tutored by the street
About the equator, latitudes and longitudes,
When the gangs crossed borders and 
Engaged in fierce battles, fought with
Knives, chains, iron-rods, baseball bats and catapults.
I gathered ways of politics and diplomacy
While debating with the rich and famous
Who bought luxurious goods from big shops,
Without raising an eyebrow,
But bargained over price of five oranges
With an old woman selling fruits on the sidewalk.
I felt the brunt of economics from its ultimate core
When a pickpocket who was beaten black and blue,
By a mob, handed out to me a list of medicines
He promised his ailing mother,
When he left home with holes in his pockets.
You can ask me anything about
History and literature.
I won't run away before sharing some knowledge,
For I've seen the wars, the nazis, the concentration camps,
The French Revolution, Pearl Harbour, 
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the communists and socialists,
Fidel Castro, Che Guevara; and also Macbeth, Othello,
Romeo and Juliet, Robin Hood, King Lear, King Arthur,
And other kings and their queens;
In the two bioscope halls of the street.
Well, candidly speaking, I even sat in one of the theatres
Holding rose scented hands of my (own) flower girl,
Watching Breakfast at Tiffany's,
On a forgotten Sunday.

So, don't ask me about my education.

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