Dear Editor,
I suppose I should have the decency, if not class, to say something, anything. After all, it is the milestone claimed, the mountain scaled of twenty-five subjects. I work at it and the best that I can come up with is: Congratula-tions are in order and deserving. It sounds lame even to my untrained ears. It lacks the emotive power that I am accustomed to use to associate and propel my writings.
I had to drag myself to pen this perfunctory praise. And perfunctory it is on my part. I do recognize that this is a young man; that it is representative of an immense amount of effort; and that there had to be the dredging first, and then filling next of so much space in the memory bank. Take a bow. The senior people in the school and wherever they may be should also take a bow. Great care ought to be taken so that there is no toppling over. The ecstasy of the moment might be overwhelming.
Along the same lines, I suppose the pro-choice (number of subjects) crowd should be well pleased with themselves. Way to go, baby! It is a sacred constitutional right. I shake my head in disbelief, if not alarm. I am willing to admit that it could be me; that I am just an ignorant feller from out there in the sticks and way off the beaten track on this one. What a track record it is. Today, it is the summit of a score plus five subjects. What is next? How many more next year? If it is twenty-five subjects this year, why not thirty in 2018? What about the glorious year of 2019 waiting for the adventurous and the promise of 2020? How many is too many? If matters continue along this insane trajectory (and insane it is), then a constitutional amendment may be required to get a handle on the direction and quantum of this thing. I jest not.
Now what should be an occasion for grand acclaim just seems…well hollow, if not poignantly insignificant. This is the weight and excess of extravagance that has petered out into the maw of the meaningless. Something does not feel right. That is a tragedy in and of itself. It as if having strived and sweated and stayed the course through incredible industry and many a long endless hour, the stands echo with ghostly shadowy applause only, as spectral figures watch and wonder. There is wandering too; that would be the attention and interest in this business.
I score a thousand runs. So what does it mean in the bigger context of the national team? After the clapping is over, there is the detritus of the countless others unaccounted for left in the haze and gloom along the way here and in the nether regions over there of academic performance in this field of play and on this foggy day. Dare I ask: should we care? Time to celebrate!
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
