Some lessons are taught in classrooms. Others arrive disguised as dog-eared paperbacks and weekday matinees.
Mr Subrat Ratho reflects on the novels, libraries and English matinee films that quietly educated his generation outside the classroom and sparked a lifelong curiosity about the world.
Every generation has an unofficial curriculum.
It consists not of prescribed textbooks or examination syllabi, but of the books that circulate from one friend to another, are borrowed from neighbourhood libraries, and are read long after bedtime.
For me, that curriculum included Alistair MacLean, Harold Robbins, Irving Wallace, Arthur Hailey, Leon Uris and Ian Fleming.
No school prescribed them. No teacher recommended them. Many literary critics may have dismissed them as commercial, sensational or formulaic. Yet, looking back after half a century, I suspect they educated us in ways that no textbook ever could.
Each of them quietly opened a different window onto the world.
Alistair MacLean taught us that courage was seldom loud. His heroes were ordinary men thrust into extraordinary situations, surviving through intelligence, endurance and loyalty. Whether battling enemy commandos, Arctic blizzards or impossible odds at sea, they showed us that calmness under pressure was itself a form of heroism.
Harold Robbins introduced us to the intoxicating worlds of wealth, ambition and power. We may have picked up his novels because of their scandalous reputation, but we stayed because they revealed something enduring about human nature. Behind every billionaire, film star or industrialist lay insecurity, rivalry, betrayal and relentless ambition. Long before I entered public service or the corporate world, Robbins had planted an enduring curiosity about what truly drives people.
Irving Wallace made ideas exciting. His novels ventured into politics, science, medicine, religion and ethics with astonishing confidence. Whether every detail was fact or fiction hardly mattered. He taught us that ideas themselves could be gripping, and that curiosity was often more rewarding than certainty.
Arthur Hailey transformed organisations into compelling stories. An airport, a hotel, a hospital or a bank ceased to be mere buildings; they became intricate systems where hundreds of professionals worked under immense pressure, each depending upon the competence of countless others. Years later, as an administrator, I realised how accurately he had captured the hidden complexity of institutions.
Leon Uris gave history a human face. Wars, revolutions and nation-building were no longer distant events confined to textbooks. They became stories of ordinary people confronted by extraordinary times. His novels awakened an interest in history that classrooms had somehow failed to inspire.
Ian Fleming offered something entirely different. James Bond was fantasy, certainly, but it was sophisticated fantasy. Through Bond we discovered Cold War politics, espionage, diplomacy and international intrigue. Long before we understood geopolitics, we had already become fascinated by it.
Together, these writers expanded our horizons.
They enlarged our vocabulary without our noticing.
They introduced us to distant countries.
They familiarised us with professions, institutions and political events that barely figured in our school curriculum.
Most importantly, they made reading irresistible.
Books, however, were only one part of that unofficial education.
The other classroom was the neighbourhood cinema.
I cannot remember every plot of every book I read, nor every English film we watched after strategically abandoning a games period.
But I remember the feeling.
I remember cycling to the Sector 5 Library in Rourkela on warm Saturday afternoons, wondering whether the Leon Uris or Arthur Hailey novel I wanted would still be available—or whether someone else had beaten me to it. I remember the unmistakable aroma of old paperbacks, that slightly musty scent of yellowing pages which somehow promised adventure long before the first chapter began.
I remember exchanging one dog-eared novel for another, carrying it home as though I had discovered buried treasure.
And I remember those wonderfully reckless afternoons when a few of us decided that the school’s games period was expendable. Armed with pooled pocket money and adolescent confidence, we climbed over the rear gate of Stewart School and made our way to Suraj Cinema in Cuttack for an English matinee.
Sometimes it was a James Bond film.
At other times, a Charles Bronson thriller.
The darkened theatre became an extension of the library. Ian Fleming’s Bond stepped effortlessly from the page onto the screen, while Bronson’s stoic heroes embodied the quiet determination we had admired in Alistair MacLean’s characters.
The conversations afterwards were every bit as enjoyable as the books and the films themselves.
Without realising it, we were discussing history, politics, business and human behaviour.
We thought we were merely entertaining ourselves.
In reality, we were educating ourselves.
Our teachers taught us mathematics, science, history, geography and English.
Those books taught us curiosity.
Those films expanded our imagination.
Together, they gave us a sense that the world was far larger, more complex and infinitely more fascinating than the one described in our textbooks.
Not every influential teacher stood in front of a classroom.
Some waited quietly on the shelves of the neighbourhood library.
Some—particularly the steamier ones—circulated through an entirely different system, passed discreetly from satchel to satchel until every dog-eared copy had acquired a history of its own.
Others flickered across the screen of Suraj Cinema on a weekday afternoon.
Looking back today, I realise that they were all part of the same education.
They made the world seem far larger than the one I inhabited, and they left me eager to explore it.
Neither my parents nor my teachers ever told me to read these authors or watch those films.
Yet, in their own quiet and unexpected way, they shaped how I thought, how I imagined the world, and perhaps even the person I eventually became.
