Dear,........,
Hello. I got recollection of my memory of a period already covered but not recounted in the blog. I will type them out for the record. I told in one of my previous blogs that my academic career was not spectacular. One big reason was my eyesight. I could not clearly see what was being written on the blackboard in the classroom. It had been happening around the time when I had passed the Middle (8th Grade). I thought that was normal. My elder brother wore glasses for far vision. One day by chance I wore them and looked outside onto the neighbours house. I saw the cement design on the walls of the house first time. During that short moment, the world looked different. I mentioned this to my parents. My eyesight was tested. I needed glasses of power minus 3.5 to correct my vision. This power remained constant till about twenty years back. On check up then, I was told that my eyes have improved. The lens power required to correct the vision came down to minus 2.75. Subsequent tests revealed that every five years, the correction factor has been improving. When last checked about two years back, it had improved to minus 1.75. I have been told that with age, the far vision improves but the near vision deteriorates. In my case God has been kind. I can read and write without nearsighted glasses.
Now back to the period when I was a teacher in S.P.School. I was doing a couple of home tutions to students in their houses to earn myself a little extra money. We had a close relative who were passing through a bad period and were tight on finances. The family was a husband and wife, two daughters one elder to me by two years or so, the next one a year younger to me and a brother about five to six years junior to me. They lived about two kilometers away on a plot of land which they owned. They were living in two sheds similar to the jhuggi that we associate with the ladies who come to the houses every day to clean dishes and houses (kaam waali bhai) The second daughter was behind me in studies by one year. My books would always be taken by her every time I would pass an exams. She failed in Fsc three times. The parents got a teacher to teach her after her third failure. But the teacher discontinued after about a week. He complained that there were too many flies around for him to be comfortable. Her mother came to our house and requested my uncle to send me to her house to help her daughter. I had to obey my uncle jee. So I started tutoring her. Here I noticed that she was great at remembering the answers. Her only problem was that she did not have a strategy. She would always complain that she did not have enough time to solve all the questions. If there would be five questions to answer, she would be able to do only two or three questions before it would be time to hand over the answer paper. I taught her only time management. She passed to the relief of everyone. Later she studied and completed her masters exams. She got employment in Auditor General Office. I did not charge a single paisa from the family. They were ever grateful to me. My uncle a great person, was very happy that we helped them. Her father was a very hard working man. Someone had cheated him because of which he had passed through a very bad time. He was a short statured person and we had a nickname for him- "Thumb Man". He passed away before the Kashmiri Pandit migration in 1990. His wife migrated with children to Ghaziabad with children. She had expressed a wish to her daughter to see me when she was on her deathbed. Sad, I received the message too late.
I also taught their son for about a year. He lives in Indore. He married his son to a kashmiri girl living in Noida UP a few years back. He sent me an invitation. I attended the marriage. As soon as I arrived at the function - Lagan ceremony, and he saw me, he took me to the madap where his son and his bride were seated on ornamental chairs. He asked his son and bride to get up from their chairs and bow before me. They did as directed. (They almost did a "dandwat" namaskar, meaning fully prostrate before me and touched my feet.) He spoke in glowing terms about me to them and everyone around. I felt awkward.
There was another family which sought my help for teaching their son. This was in second week of December 1963. My uncle told him (he was his maternal cousin) that I may have to go to Delhi for the interview. But he insisted and took out Rs. 210/- as three months wages for the tuition on the condition that I would teach him for three months. He said that the money would be mine even if I taught him for a day and then I would have to go to Delhi. My father who was also there asked him to send a bottle of Rum for him. He agreed and I started the teaching. The rum bottle was handed over on the first day itself. I taught the boy for a week when the holy relic was lost and there was widespread chaos and then I had to leave for Delhi. The boy ultimately retired as a chief engineer in Escorts Ltd.
Bye for now. I will be here again tomorrow.
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