At school as kid I had to answer the question in the affirmative as many times as a pressure cooker blow whistles cooking dal. The questions coming from teachers, the likes of those that bring back memories of lazy rhino wallowing in the mud on a safari, wielding a cane while their beady, glaring eyes looking over glasses gave palpitations and the quivering lips could hardly afford a ‘No’. A ‘Yes’ would be the wisest course of action as it would save either of us, take loads off teachers’ head and the kid spared the cane. It was a win-win.

But there was an ugly side of it. At home, the grey-haired elderly ripened with wisdom would give lessons on life at leisure. You could avoid them at the cost of an earful. If you don’t want to swallow a bitter pill, lend them ears and bear with their sermonizing. Of things they would say, among others, ‘telling lie is a cardinal sin that costs the tongue of a sinner in next life’, ‘stealing will mean having one’s hands chopped off in hell’, ‘the soul of a lazy person transmigrate into a donkey’, ‘honest and truthful get to sit on the lap of God in heaven’, so on and so forth.

So, answering the question ‘do I understand!’ would put me on a horn of moral dilemma. Not only moral, it would fill me with dread like I can lie my way out of getting cane in school but I may have to pay dearly in hell or in next life! How will I save myself there?

Not knowing the beans about it, I’d allow thoughts to wrestle with the problem in mind until some palliative thoughts vindicate me till the other day when the time arrives to face the cane again.

Next day in school I am once again faced with the same haunting question ‘do I understand!’ My lips would struggle to utter the two-letter word ‘No’ but I’d once again fail to pluck up the courage it takes to say it. Once I did but that was before the canes had landed on my open palm. It was excruciatingly painful so much so that I had wetted my pant. With that the fear had crept into me and buried deep in my psyche giving me perpetual dread. This question ‘do I understand!’ had brought me to face two hells. One that I would face after death and the other I faced day in, day out.  I was in trap with no escape in sight.

How many times I cursed this ‘do I understand!’, I have lost count of.  I wished I had power to rip the phrase out of teachers’ tongue and flush it down the shit pipe. It was so tormenting, no way of getting round it. It was like banging your head against a brick wall. You can’t say ‘No’ for fear of getting cane and you can’t say ‘Yes’ cause you land up in hell to suffer for donkey’s years. What a fucking catch-22 situation!

My little head would take the brunt of this ‘do I understand!’ I’d take to a lonely place and allow thoughts to wrestle with the problem until they bring some sort of respite from it. It is in the very nature of thoughts to take on any color after the fashion of a chameleon. One can run through head all colors of thoughts i.e. positive thoughts, negative thoughts, palliative thoughts, remedial thoughts, optimistic thoughts, pessimistic thoughts, narrow thoughts, broad thoughts, constructive thoughts, destructive thoughts, and thoughts galore.

I went through the school and said good-bye to teaching/learning for a good 7 years. And yet, the ghost of ‘do I understand!’ didn’t go away.

Now, I decided to take a thorough look at this f***ing thing ‘understand’ so as to really get it over and done with this shitty ‘understand’.

I dug deep into it. Nothing came of it. The cassette player understand just as good as I understand. What a silly thing to do! They treat humans like a machine! I say things. The machine records it. I put it on and it plays the record. The teachers in school asked of me to repeat what they had read out from the book or things they had said. If I could parrot it, it amounted to ‘understand’. That way I could avoid the can and redeem myself from the sin of lying!  But, would that make me any different from the cassette player?

Anyway, I got this thing ‘understand’. This took the crushing load off my head – fear of rotting in hell after death. Don’t know what but something in me kept prodding me into getting to the bottom of this thing ‘understand’.

I took the plunge into it and what I found eased years of torment I was put through with this thing ‘understand’. I concluded I simply cannot understand anything in empty head. There’s no way I can understand anything. In order for me to understand a thing, I need to put data in head which, in turn, will feed into shaping a framework and within the scope of this framework with the aid of data I figure things out. The humans understand a thing in the same way as a cassette player or a computer. The difference is that humans have put limitations on machine and not on them. They bend and twist and stretch their head until they crash or let go of things when it is too much for them to bear.

The other day someone on one or the other social media argued the point that humans are intelligent creature and are capable of probing and solving mysteries of universe. I responded to him saying they are what they think they are. He countered saying that it was not a matter of thought but something genetically proven by science. I said, things issuing from his head were nothing but things fed into his head.

Likewise, someone posted on social media that expectation begets frustration and disappointment, and hence, one should try to get over expectation. I said, give no space for expectation in your head, frustration and disappointment runs miles from you. She said, you can’t do that because humans are genetically wired into emotional reactions and it was but natural for them to have expectations. I told her the same thing ‘things issuing from her head were none other than things fed into her head.’ It was a game of data and the framework set up in head.

Anyway I got rid of the ghost of ‘do I understand!’ haunting me for years. Now this ghost can’t stop me from going dead to the world in my bed at night. That is so wonderful!