ROCKETMAN
by Richard Banks
On my final day at
school, the ritual of the school leavers’ assembly was held, certificates of one
kind or another were handed out and the headmaster addressed the impatient
escapees with an inspirational message that would have been better directed at
zealot missionaries about to convert the heathen. I still remember his
assertion that our school days were just the beginning of our education which
would continue throughout our lives. I think he must have been referring to the
university of life, to the life experiences that steadily and imperceptibly add
to our knowledge of the world and its people. At the time I thought he was
extolling the virtues of lifelong evening classes and the words, ‘you must be
kidding mate’ flittered across my mind. What flittered through it next I don’t
recall, but thoughts of evening classes were not to return for another four
years. When they did it was because I had come to realise that learning was
only a chore if you were required to do it.
My voluntary return to formal education
occurred when a local Institute advertised a new course in the history of
This left me with the dilemma of what to
do next. By now I had become an evening class junky and was prepared to try any
subject in order to get my fix. After closely examining the college prospectus
I decided to enrol on a course entitled, ‘The Asian World of Meditation and
Levitation’. I suppose it would never have occurred to me to do so had it not
been for the Beatle’s flirtation with transcendental meditation under the
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. For a few months everything Indian was in vogue and the
first session of the course was attended by over thirty persons seeking the
inner light that apparently came after many hours of sitting cross-legged on
the floor.
The tutor selected to take us on this
spiritual journey was the Maharishi Matatashe, otherwise known to the local
populace as Mr Singh of the Bombay Tandoori in Walthamstow High Street. At the
beginning of each session, he would hand out fliers for his restaurant and then
instruct us to contemplate various objects in the classroom as they might
appear in orbit around the moon. To facilitate our meditative state he would
strum a sitar, chanting hypnotic mantras in Hindi, which he had written on the
blackboard with English subtitles. After six weeks, several students complained
that they wanted to travel around a more interesting planet. Mr Singh, sensing
that he was beginning to lose his audience, wisely decided that our
meditational skills were sufficiently developed for us to move on to
levitation.
The first session was curiously like the
meditation, in that we were required to visualise objects in space, but this
time we were to imagine that we were travelling towards them. In order to
achieve the intense mental effort that was needed to thrust ourselves upwards,
we were told to shut our eyes and maintain complete silence at all times. Mr
Singh began each levitational ascent, as he called it, by slamming the door of
the classroom and ending it an hour or so later by slamming it a second time.
Those students of a cynical disposition later expressed doubts as to whether Mr
Singh was actually in the room between the slamming of doors. He was certainly
very quiet, but I prefer to believe that he was in the sixth stage of inner
karma, known as Karmadowna. My faith in our tutor was confirmed three weeks
later when I saw him levitating several feet above the blackboard, although I
can not discount the possibility that I may have been asleep. By the tenth
session, I felt the weight of gravity slackening and a delighted Mr Singh
confirmed that I had risen two centimetres above ground level. His attempts to
convince other students that they too had ‘gone solo’ were greeted with
scepticism by those less accomplished than myself. Indeed, several of them
expressed dissatisfaction with Mr Singh’s teaching methods and threatened to
report him to the College Principal.
Mr Singh’s reputation was vindicated by
an event as unexpected as it was dramatic. During the fourteenth session, the
collective peace of fifteen persons pursuing various objects through various
galaxies was interrupted by a loud thud and a shower of white debris from
above. Awoken from our contemplative states, we looked up to see the flailing
legs of one Herbie Lechenstein protruding from the ceiling. It later transpired
that he had become tired of drifting around in space, and instead visualised
himself strapped to the outside of an Apollo moon rocket. He was a keen
astronomer and had watched all the space launches broadcast on TV. He knew
every stage in the launch process and when he saw the engine ignite and the
rocket begins to lift off above a cushion of orange flame he also took off with a
sudden velocity that found his upper half peering into the ladies gymnastics
class. The ladies were not amused, and neither was the Principal, who
threatened to sue Herbie for criminal damage. The class was subsequently
terminated and we received a partial refund of our fees. Herbie sustained a severe concussion and to the best of my knowledge never ‘flew’ again. Indeed, I
understand that the incident so unnerved him that he could not bring himself to
close both eyes for nearly two weeks.
For my part, I have continued to practice
the levitational techniques taught by Mr Singh. Although I have yet to make the
breakthrough briefly experienced by Herbie, I consider it my greatest gift that
in over forty years I have yet to wear out a single pair of shoes. So much is
owed to further education.
Copyright Richard Banks
