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Nirvana
They are giggling with their grandpa . . .
In exchange for the sweet lure of getting toffees, the children were helping their grandpa, Bulaa.
For an illiterate person like him, it was impossible for him to read the letters written by his son, Nathu, the children's uncle. Bulaa could now pronounce the letters of the alphabet, and could join them to form simple words of familar nouns, like mango, guava and other fruit. He hoped he would soon be able to read and understand the letters his son sent him. This would mean that he would no longer have to go to his grandchildren or to the postmaster, Bhiku, to get them read for him.
Nathu, his youngest son, was unlike all his siblings. He was a boy of six, naughty by nature, yet inquisitive about everything. His curiosity prompted him to invent subjects, like the lifecycle of the tadpole or wandering on the back of the buffalos from field to field. Being the smallest one, he was loved by all. Nathu played the whole day, either with his two sisters or with his friends. Among the four children, Bulaa loved him the most, not because he was the smallest, but because of his easy-to-solve-everything attitude and ready eagerness to help his father and elder brother, Nikhil, in the fields, behaving as though he were as strong as they were.
Bulaa was a simple villager. He lived his life farming rented land. Naturally, he had to give half of the yearly yield to the landowner, which made it impossible to live on the meager stock of grains he was able to harvest each year. In times of natural calamity, they simply had to starve, but they never went to anyone for help, for Bulaa’s code was never to lose one's self-respect.
Meanwhile, a school had been set up on the outskirts of the village under a banyan tree. All the children from that village and those around it were welcome to attend. It was a literacy campaign. Most of the boys and girls gathered there, not out of curiosity, but for the midday meal they were all given This was indeed a lucrative deal as far as their parents were concerned too. The meal was rice, daal [a type of lentil], mixed-vegetables and chutney.
On one such wandering, Nathu attended the school and liked the atmosphere at once. The boys and girls imitating what their teacher was saying, copying what their teacher wrote on the blackboard and queuing for the daily stipulated ordeal, made him curious. His daily stroll brought him there, and the rhyming sounds of the children chanting their lessons drew him close to the school, for it was a new place of wonder to him.
One day, the teacher called him and gave him the same pencils and books as the others. So his education began. Bulaa somehow heard of this and called his beloved son and flogged him mercilessly until his mother, Shanti, came and rescued him from his clutches. He was punished for going outside without permission.
Teacher, Neelam, came and firmly requested Bulaa to send Nathu back to the school, if not for the midday meal but for the studies because she saw a shining future in Nathu, since he was the most intelligent of all of them.
Bulaa was angry, saying Nathu's future was in the fields, as someday he was going to help his father. But Shanti persisted and Nathu finally was allowed to attend the school
- not for the midday meal, but for the learning.
Shanti's thinking was not guided by the fact that education creates a superior mind but by the fact that it leads to mercenary and social gain. However, Nathu was the only one who got permission, and not the other siblings. * * *
What Nathu has proved today was vastly different from what even his perceptive mother had foreseen. For Nathu came first in his class, and he is now studying engineering at Jadavpur University in Kolkata.
The village school ultimately became a three-level one, and became the only district high school, with Nathu becoming an icon for the present students for whom his first teacher, Neelam, now the headmistress, took special classes and constantly tells them Nathu’s story.
Nikhil fathered two children. Both of them went to the school with no
hassles, unlike their uncle, Nathu.
Nowadays, Bulaa sheds tears when he remembers the days he was against Nathu’s education. He considered Nathu old enough to stay at home. He woke up in the wee hours of the morning, not for going to the field,
the previous destination for Nathu, but for learning the letters of the alphabet, so that he could consolidate them to form big sentences and maneuver his understanding to that level when he could read to his own satisfaction in the light of the kerosene lamp.
And so, whilst he was still reading, the sun rose silently in the east.
- Raja Chakraborty
Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
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