"Why do you sign up for exams like these? Can't you spend your time like we did.. when we were kids... plucking guavas from guava trees?" I complained to my daughter. "That's because there are no guava trees in Bangalore!" pat came the answer.
If you grow up on Ruskin Bond's novels, you get a feeling that childhood is well spent only if you steal and eat "litchis" on the sly, walk the forests of the Shivalik foot-hills following a leopard's footprints, have oodles of time on your hands to stalk a solitary ant or follow the trail of a raindrop trickling down your window! At least, you should stand in the blinding rain (with no one questioning your mental balance) and sing- "yeh kaagaz ki kashti, yeh baarish ka paani" (Jagjit Singh's famous ghazal on childhood- 'this paper boat... this rain water')!
Anything less- and you have been robbed of the innocence of childhood! Unfortunately, I didn't do any of these when I was a child and neither will my daughter. But I turned out just fine (I hope!), that's the only consolation.
We had just emerged from the Abacus competition and I couldn't resist a comparison between my daughter and many of Mr Bond's protagonists. This is not the first time that I've seen this competition, neither will it be the last. But the experience is always mind-numbing each time. It's a little like a trip to Tirupati. After each trip, you swear that if God exists everywhere, you don't need to risk a potential stampede to see Him for those 10 seconds. Still, you're back the next year and the next- such is the mind's resilience or its innate amnesia.
For the uninitiated, abacus is by far the most effective method to do calculations mentally. Children are roped in as early as kindergarten and by the time they are in fifth grade, they can navigate through arithmetic with the ease of a Shakuntala Devi! In fact, we are not even competent to verify their answers!
Initially, they use the abacus- a primitive device with beads strung to it to add and subtract. Soon, they can visualize the beads and their movement mentally and don't need the contraption any more. The method is proven and works like a charm.
If there is a flip side (or is the flop side?), it is the path- if the path to education is bitter, the path to "abacus fiefdom" seems worse- karela, neem and castor oil rolled together! The child has to spend two hours of a Sunday in class and a few more hours during the week to complete the homework. If the child can sit still and not complain, you are set. If the child is a free spirit, abacus can be a sentence in solitary confinement- he will revolt and rightfully so, till you finally free him from his shackles!
Abacus exams are not for the faint-hearted. That there are many who are heart-wise strong, headstrong or simply heartless is evident from the far flung places they come from! For the competition in Bangalore, folks troop in from Gulbarga, Raichur, Hubli, Shimoga and Sagar to name a few. For the competition in Chennai (the nationals), wards and parents come from Rajasthan and Jharkhand. All for a "8 minute" competition! You heard it right- 8 minutes for the higher levels of abacus and exactly 5 minutes for the lower levels!! A little like your hundred meter dash- you run like crazy and hope you'll win.
All you see at the venue is a sea of wards- in yellow color T-shirts and double the number of over-anxious parents. After all, this is India- staggering numbers and the anxiety to outdo the other.... go hand in hand. One parent has to wait in the make shift shamianas at the venue. The other (typically the father) accompanies his ward to the examination hall.
The hall is enormous- row upon row of desks and chairs into which children are stuffed like sardines. A barricade all around the hall separates the children from their parents. Parents click away using their cell phone cameras at anything and everything. Trying to spot your child is an impossibility. She is hopefully somewhere there- one grain in that sackful! If you do catch your ward, the parent has the most enlightening last minute comment screamed from the side-lines - "Don't forget to write your hall-ticket number"!
Children- in first grade and second grade blink at complicated instructions blaring over the microphone in English and Kannada alternately- "Z- category students: if you don't use the abacus, you will be disqualified". Parents run helter-skelter trying to verify which category their ward falls under. Invigilators have a tough time reining in the parents.
The question papers are distributed and placed before the child face-down. Parents are told to switch off their cell phones. The competition is about to begin and the organizers want silence. A child who is really late has to be accommodated. "Children... are you ready? Take deep-breaths!"- is the instruction. Children hold on to the end of the question paper... to flip it over.... exactly at the whistle! A nervous excitement takes over everyone. A huge electronic clock shows the 8 minute stop-watch ready to count down!
And then.... a shrill whistle punctures the silence sending shivers down your spine. Like a Mexican wave, on the dot, the question papers are flipped over by your seven year olds and ten year olds and they start solving the questions like mad. They are truly possessed by some spirit... definitely not human! Some of them punch the air with their fingers and fists with one hand, others with both. At the end of the pantomime, they scribble something on the question paper and get back to more action. Some cannot sit down and write; they stand up, write, and again break into a percussionist's tremble with an imaginary ghatam! A grimace is seen on one child's face, a scowl on the other, an involuntary jaw movement and a sudden gnash of the teeth in the third. All our eyes are on the electronic display... like sand trickling down an hour glass, it drains away.
Eight minutes are over in a trice, the whistle rings, the pencils are down and the papers are snatched away! Parents use all kinds of sign language if they spot their child- how many did you solve? 60, 100, 120? The answers and reactions are varied.
For a parent who has not followed his child closely, it is all too bewildering to say the least.
At the end of it, I had a one simple agenda- be sure to pick a child..... my child and head home.
I leave it to you to decide- what would you do?... pluck guavas or add-subtract-multiply-divide in eight minute competitions? Don't vote for the guavas... it will give you a stomach-ache!!
If you grow up on Ruskin Bond's novels, you get a feeling that childhood is well spent only if you steal and eat "litchis" on the sly, walk the forests of the Shivalik foot-hills following a leopard's footprints, have oodles of time on your hands to stalk a solitary ant or follow the trail of a raindrop trickling down your window! At least, you should stand in the blinding rain (with no one questioning your mental balance) and sing- "yeh kaagaz ki kashti, yeh baarish ka paani" (Jagjit Singh's famous ghazal on childhood- 'this paper boat... this rain water')!
Anything less- and you have been robbed of the innocence of childhood! Unfortunately, I didn't do any of these when I was a child and neither will my daughter. But I turned out just fine (I hope!), that's the only consolation.
We had just emerged from the Abacus competition and I couldn't resist a comparison between my daughter and many of Mr Bond's protagonists. This is not the first time that I've seen this competition, neither will it be the last. But the experience is always mind-numbing each time. It's a little like a trip to Tirupati. After each trip, you swear that if God exists everywhere, you don't need to risk a potential stampede to see Him for those 10 seconds. Still, you're back the next year and the next- such is the mind's resilience or its innate amnesia.
For the uninitiated, abacus is by far the most effective method to do calculations mentally. Children are roped in as early as kindergarten and by the time they are in fifth grade, they can navigate through arithmetic with the ease of a Shakuntala Devi! In fact, we are not even competent to verify their answers!
Initially, they use the abacus- a primitive device with beads strung to it to add and subtract. Soon, they can visualize the beads and their movement mentally and don't need the contraption any more. The method is proven and works like a charm.
If there is a flip side (or is the flop side?), it is the path- if the path to education is bitter, the path to "abacus fiefdom" seems worse- karela, neem and castor oil rolled together! The child has to spend two hours of a Sunday in class and a few more hours during the week to complete the homework. If the child can sit still and not complain, you are set. If the child is a free spirit, abacus can be a sentence in solitary confinement- he will revolt and rightfully so, till you finally free him from his shackles!
Abacus exams are not for the faint-hearted. That there are many who are heart-wise strong, headstrong or simply heartless is evident from the far flung places they come from! For the competition in Bangalore, folks troop in from Gulbarga, Raichur, Hubli, Shimoga and Sagar to name a few. For the competition in Chennai (the nationals), wards and parents come from Rajasthan and Jharkhand. All for a "8 minute" competition! You heard it right- 8 minutes for the higher levels of abacus and exactly 5 minutes for the lower levels!! A little like your hundred meter dash- you run like crazy and hope you'll win.
All you see at the venue is a sea of wards- in yellow color T-shirts and double the number of over-anxious parents. After all, this is India- staggering numbers and the anxiety to outdo the other.... go hand in hand. One parent has to wait in the make shift shamianas at the venue. The other (typically the father) accompanies his ward to the examination hall.
The hall is enormous- row upon row of desks and chairs into which children are stuffed like sardines. A barricade all around the hall separates the children from their parents. Parents click away using their cell phone cameras at anything and everything. Trying to spot your child is an impossibility. She is hopefully somewhere there- one grain in that sackful! If you do catch your ward, the parent has the most enlightening last minute comment screamed from the side-lines - "Don't forget to write your hall-ticket number"!
Children- in first grade and second grade blink at complicated instructions blaring over the microphone in English and Kannada alternately- "Z- category students: if you don't use the abacus, you will be disqualified". Parents run helter-skelter trying to verify which category their ward falls under. Invigilators have a tough time reining in the parents.
The question papers are distributed and placed before the child face-down. Parents are told to switch off their cell phones. The competition is about to begin and the organizers want silence. A child who is really late has to be accommodated. "Children... are you ready? Take deep-breaths!"- is the instruction. Children hold on to the end of the question paper... to flip it over.... exactly at the whistle! A nervous excitement takes over everyone. A huge electronic clock shows the 8 minute stop-watch ready to count down!
And then.... a shrill whistle punctures the silence sending shivers down your spine. Like a Mexican wave, on the dot, the question papers are flipped over by your seven year olds and ten year olds and they start solving the questions like mad. They are truly possessed by some spirit... definitely not human! Some of them punch the air with their fingers and fists with one hand, others with both. At the end of the pantomime, they scribble something on the question paper and get back to more action. Some cannot sit down and write; they stand up, write, and again break into a percussionist's tremble with an imaginary ghatam! A grimace is seen on one child's face, a scowl on the other, an involuntary jaw movement and a sudden gnash of the teeth in the third. All our eyes are on the electronic display... like sand trickling down an hour glass, it drains away.
Eight minutes are over in a trice, the whistle rings, the pencils are down and the papers are snatched away! Parents use all kinds of sign language if they spot their child- how many did you solve? 60, 100, 120? The answers and reactions are varied.
For a parent who has not followed his child closely, it is all too bewildering to say the least.
At the end of it, I had a one simple agenda- be sure to pick a child..... my child and head home.
I leave it to you to decide- what would you do?... pluck guavas or add-subtract-multiply-divide in eight minute competitions? Don't vote for the guavas... it will give you a stomach-ache!!
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