Rubik’s Cube

The 1980s was a time when wants were few. There was a single television channel which broadcast only in the evening. The quality of programming mostly poor and soap opera’s hadn’t yet brought in programs viewable to the masses, commercials were few and scattered.

The corruption of want was yet to set in. Wants were realistic and simple, the newspapers or the government controlled television had not yet learnt the power to drive consumption.

The days stretched extended past the dusk, the violence of the later years which would reduce lives to the lighted hours was yet to set in. Life might not have been idyllic but it demanded much less and gave much more.

Broadcast television was controlled by the government by the print media press was private and free. We waited for the morning newspapers to come in, they were the real contact with what happened in the world.

‘The Tribune’ the major English language newspaper in the part of India where I grew up carried an interview of Erno Rubik, the inventor of the Rubik’s cube.

My memory of that interview are vague, four decades have passed. Erno Rubik was in India and our newspaper managed to get an interview. The one thing I remember is that I wanted the Rubik’s cube the moment I read that article.

The 1980s was also the period when import was restricted and the cube wasn’t manufactured in India. Importing good or buying them from shops which imported them was expensive and sometimes not possible in the town where I get up.

The newspaper article was widely read and parents with better resources were able to buy the cubes and when someone in my peer group was able to get one, my obsession to own a Rubik’s cube increased even more. But the cost of a cube when converted into a much weaker Indian rupee was beyond what a 12 year old could hope to save up.

My school used to have annual outings or ‘Picnic’ as we called it then. There was an outing planned close to when my obsession to own the cube was at its peak. The outing was to the Bhakra Nangal dam a few hours drive away from my town, there were activities planned, I don’t remember today whether boating in the lake was one of them.

So the want for a Rubik’s cube, made me convince my parents to make me give up the trip, the saved expense contributing partly towards the cost of my Rubik’s cube. The cost of a cube was about twice what that trip could have cost, so a birthday few months later, and the cost of the resulting present would have added to the purchase of my cube.

The trip went ahead, I stayed home, missing a school outing for the first time. The Rubik’s cube looked like a very realistic possibility , the money was saved, the plans to buy the cube at a feverish pitch.

The day after a school outing is normally a holiday, allowing children to recoup from the outing. I woke up later than usual and was made aware of the headline in the newspaper.
It said ‘ Tragedy at Nangal’.

The supervisors of the school outing had organised a boating trip , whether it was planned or as an afterthought no one remembers. The children got into two boats overloaded past their capacity. Life jackets were unknown, safety standards whenever present, were enforced rarely, if ever.

The boats capsized mid lake , 22 children and two of the boatmen drowned.

The memories of the later months are clear, the school closed for a month. When the classes finally resumed, we were shifted into a much smaller classroom, the number of students had decreased.

There were protests by the parents who lost their children, there were calls for prosecution of the teachers who supervised the trip. We would go to school to see protesting parents outside the gates, anger and grief on display ,day after day.

The anger died, grief did not, and the commemoration ceremonies every year brought back what was never forgotten. There is a plaque in the school with the names of each of the students who lost their lives, the ones who understood its significance probably all scattered today.

What is not forgotten is the date, etched even after the withering decades. We might have to think back to remember what year it was, but the date is clear.

The tragedy took place 38 years ago, on September 29th.

And for me, the one who did not join the trip, forever is an association with the Rubik’s Cube.