Page 72

I'm not a complaisant person at all. Not very good at following orders. My letters, as those who've received them could tell you, don't tend to end with 'obligingly yours'. I've been that way since I was a child. A mouthful of whys and a bellyful of hows. Whats, whens and wheres, rolling of my tongue. A series of never ending questions until an inner instinct was fully satisfied. 

Now as much as my parents loved my inquisitiveness and subsequently the other adults indulged me, it never did sit to well in  terms of educational institutions. I was a eager child and it did always bother me and made me question - why on earth a place of learning would be against asking questions? Following direction blindly, surely couldn't lead you to wisdom. And that answers and wisdom seeking inquisitiveness of mine did two things :

1. I become the child who hung-out with everyone's grandparents and sat in listening to all the intellectual conversation  that my parents and there friends had. It should tell you something of the crowd that these were all people with PhD's or life experiences, who were a mixture of professors, writers, activists, politicians and most of all people who has lived. Yet, all of them were what you'd call common folk. Talk about a full table! My mother had the hardest time trying to teach me the rules of hospitality back then. It took somewhere between my 6th to 10th birthday for her to simply get me to understand that you ought to let a person come in and have a seat, offer a glass of water at least (think very hot, humid summers) before you bombarded someone with a million silly (by adult standards, of course) questions.    

The page 72 of the said textbook from ninth grade,
that still live right next to my dedicated reading chair, in my reading corner. 

2. It made me not the most ideal student for the current educational system of India. And as a direct result of it, I had a not too kind relation with a particular Punjabi teacher of mine back in the day. Amusing as it is now, especially  considering I'm a writer and most of my poetry has always been in Gurmukhi, we had a few very hard years. Not that she was a bad teacher, just that we weren't a good fit. She refused to acknowledge that any other learning pattern than the one she taught was good and, I refused to budge from my learning pattern for it worked the best for me. 

In ninth grade, I refused to read this whole section of syllabus that we were supposed to under 'Kissa Kav' because it didn't suit my temperament. It was the tale of Heer and a few other things. Heer's story is very similar in a manner to Romeo and Juliet. And as fond as I may be of Shakespeare, I refuse to read Romeo and Juliet as well.  

I did frankly and I suppose bluntly questioned her if that truly made me a bad student of language or  the subject. She said to me, and I'm paraphrasing as I translate, that did I think I knew better then the teachers and those who wrote the syllabi. Of course I didn't. My point only was people learned better if they are taught things they are interested in. And as this conversation did happen in a PTA meeting I told her so in presence of my Father. He agreed with me and said that I wasn't wrong. And as my science teacher who actually liked that inquisitiveness of mine, walked in on the tail end of conversation remarking how good at learning I was, that was the end of that conversation. When we got back to the car and my  Mum asked how it all went, my Dad being him, declared me bold. That support though, it's always meant the world to me. 

However in my defense, you can't expect me to show interest in  something I have no interest in. And I refuse to be dishonest about what does interest me. That book from ninth grade, I still own it. For in it, there were many poems besides Heer that I am fond of. Not a very good student according to the school standards I may have been but, how many of my classmates can claim they remember as much of what we read as I do. 

The first poem in our fourth grade book was 'Meri Phali' (My Farm). My favorite textbook of all time for Punjabi was the one from Seventh grade. I still have half of it memorized. I read it when my sister was in seventh grade and I still had three more years before it would be assigned to me. The very first thing in it was a story of a boy and his dog called Moti. And as many people could tell you that I have Prof. Mohan Singh's Chatto di Berri memorized, it was there I did discover it, when I was but nine. And in the same textbook as Heer resides, on Page 72 begins the section on modern poetry with one of my favorite poets - Bhai Veer Singh.  And although my mother introduced me to his poems way before that, I do still remember the exact page for it lead to a frenzy of me reading Valvalla over and over again till I needn't look at the words for they now lived in my heart. And that was the section I read so much that my books cover got worn. The section that lead me to read Galtfamian, Navi purani tehzeeb and Surgi Jurre. 

I never did take a stand, still do not, unless I know I am right. Doesn't necessarily mean the other person is wrong. Simply that I will not let anyone deem me wrong either.