Even amongst the poor, there are more poor than others. The corollary of which is that even amongst the poor there would be people who can have a better standard of living than that of others from the same group.And it was true of that family too. Although there were a number of mouths to feed and no steady income, the family was considered as well- to- do . There were many reasons: the landed property,whatever its size, had not been divided as the other two brothers of ML had died before the division could take place, ML was not only literate, he held a Shashtri degree in the Ayurveda,the traditional system of medicine based on diagnosis through feeling the pulse of the patient and curing the disbalance in the equilibrium of three doshas--vatt,pitt, and kuph,which, according to the Ayurveda, is the cause of all diseases. A third reason was that it was a family of priests, in which it was almost mandatory, at least for the male members to be literate,so that they could read and recite the mantras used in the worship
Ml, himself a well- read man ,was acutely aware of the importance of education--at that time there was no possibility of distinguishing between good and bad education. But there was no question of not providing education to his children.And he also knew that there was not much future for the traditional education in which children learnt the three Rs--reading, writing and arithmetic and a smattering of Sanskrit to enable them to recite mantras while conducting a ritual or a religious ceremony. There has to be modern education-the English language, mathematics and science.Ml,therefore, engaged a private tutor who would coach his children at home After the initial coaching the children would be sent to a school A tutor engaged by ML to coach his elder sons --who had a gap of just one and a half year between their ages, quit after the children got admission to a school-- in fact the only school available in a radius of ten miles. A new tutor had, therefore, to be engaged for coaching SB, ML's third son who was much younger--four to five years younger. The tutor was a cousin--a son of SB's mother's sister
Since he was a cousin there was no question of his getting the respect that a traditional Indian family reserves for a teacher.The cousin perhaps felt humiliated and quit after a few months. But ML would not let go of his son's education that easily.He engaged another young man. In 1956, in the month of September, Ml got his son SB admitted to a school in the fifth standard. In May 1957, SB passed the District Board Primary School examination conducted by the Sub Divisional Inspector of Schools at a place called Satyon, where the students from the neighboring schools would gather to participate in the examination. SB was expected to top the list of candidates. He was brilliant. But he could not do so. From September till May, teachers in his school had been solving five sums on the blackboard almost everyday so that the children could internalise the sums and their solutions completely. Almost all the children had understood the solutions fully as the process of solving those sums had been repeated more than a hundred times on the blackboard. There was a sum of LCM, the answer of which was 24. It was a very simple sum and SB had solved it a hundred times before. However, on the day of examination he got an answer 48.Instead of correcting it to 24 as he remembered he argued in his mind that the correct answer was indeed 48 and that the teachers had been calculating the number 24 incorrectly. No surprise that he did not top the list of the candidates declared successful.. But he was just seven years old at time and for a child of that age it did not matter that he was not the first.
Ml, himself a well- read man ,was acutely aware of the importance of education--at that time there was no possibility of distinguishing between good and bad education. But there was no question of not providing education to his children.And he also knew that there was not much future for the traditional education in which children learnt the three Rs--reading, writing and arithmetic and a smattering of Sanskrit to enable them to recite mantras while conducting a ritual or a religious ceremony. There has to be modern education-the English language, mathematics and science.Ml,therefore, engaged a private tutor who would coach his children at home After the initial coaching the children would be sent to a school A tutor engaged by ML to coach his elder sons --who had a gap of just one and a half year between their ages, quit after the children got admission to a school-- in fact the only school available in a radius of ten miles. A new tutor had, therefore, to be engaged for coaching SB, ML's third son who was much younger--four to five years younger. The tutor was a cousin--a son of SB's mother's sister
Since he was a cousin there was no question of his getting the respect that a traditional Indian family reserves for a teacher.The cousin perhaps felt humiliated and quit after a few months. But ML would not let go of his son's education that easily.He engaged another young man. In 1956, in the month of September, Ml got his son SB admitted to a school in the fifth standard. In May 1957, SB passed the District Board Primary School examination conducted by the Sub Divisional Inspector of Schools at a place called Satyon, where the students from the neighboring schools would gather to participate in the examination. SB was expected to top the list of candidates. He was brilliant. But he could not do so. From September till May, teachers in his school had been solving five sums on the blackboard almost everyday so that the children could internalise the sums and their solutions completely. Almost all the children had understood the solutions fully as the process of solving those sums had been repeated more than a hundred times on the blackboard. There was a sum of LCM, the answer of which was 24. It was a very simple sum and SB had solved it a hundred times before. However, on the day of examination he got an answer 48.Instead of correcting it to 24 as he remembered he argued in his mind that the correct answer was indeed 48 and that the teachers had been calculating the number 24 incorrectly. No surprise that he did not top the list of the candidates declared successful.. But he was just seven years old at time and for a child of that age it did not matter that he was not the first.
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