My newspaper gives me the "information" - and, truly, I had not known this - that 2012 is the NATIONAL YEAR OF MATHEMATICS. And then goes on to paint a rather depressing picture of the state of maths in the country, bemoaning the way it is taught, the way it is researched, and so on...
My mind goes back in time. To my days in school. To those wonderful sepia tinted memories, given a truly safe distance from the reach of some terrifying teachers' arms (and rulers, canes, hands...)
My "love affair" with Maths started, if I remember right, in Std VI - till then we were taught Arithmetic which was fairly interesting and easy, interesting perhaps because it was easy. And then, in VI we came to a new class, a new subject called "Modern Mathematics" and a new tyrant of a teacher. Years later, I now can empathise with her frequent use of rulers and canes - not to draw lines on the blackboard but on our backs - because I now suspect that "Modern Mathematics" was equally beyond her understanding. So, we were given "homework" day after day while at the same time we were such wonderfully "outstanding" students, spending class after class outside in the corridor, kneeling down and copying our arrears of homework from those nerdy, geeky kids who had actually done theirs! The arrears of homework, therefore, continued to grow like our current account/fiscal deficit soon to resemble a Greek crisis.
Std VI, I remember, was also a time when I visited the Head Master's chambers almost every single day, a hand outstretched to receive 5 or 10 of his choicest. One learned, at that discerning age, that a thick fat cane was less dangerous than the thin reedy ones.
Std VII and VIII weren't much better, the went by in a blur of repetitive sessions of being outstanding, further research into what is the best remedy for a "pain killer" after one of those sessions with the head Master... we discovered that toothpaste had a remarkably cooling effect! (Talk of research!)
Std IX and X saw the love affair with Mathematics going up into a higher plane. A new teacher, for once a male, young, handsome like Amitabh Bachchan, and we fell in love with him - we tried, too, but in vain, to fall in love with the subject. Anthony was his name, I'm sure he must have been brilliant - the fault was ours, we just couldn't understand what he tried to teach. His aim was accurate, too, he could hit us in the face with a broken piece of chalk from a distance right across the classroom. He ought to have been in the national archery team, bulls eye every time!
If only he could explain as well as he could aim..... sigh.
I sat through 2 years of Trigonometry living under a whole cloud of darkness. Even today, those wonderful problems called "Proving the Identity" or whatever, proving that the LHS equals the RHS can leave me shivering and not because if the weather....
After many, many steps - many more than prescribed, certainly - I would arrive at that wonderful moment of truth. Having spent several minutes with my nose to the notebook, I would suddenly lift my head up, a look of joy on my face, a "Eureka" moment, the problem SOLVED..... right hand raised up in excitement.
Anthony would stroll over, take one look, his right hand would then catch hold of my earlobe between his thumb and forefinger while his left hand, index finger (looooooong one) pointing accusingly at the first line of the equation.
I would go red - not out of embarrassment, had run of THAT way back in Std VI - but because of his skill in deploying his fingers on my earlobes. What I had managed to do was LHS equals LHS. Somewhere, in those myriad steps, my RHS had quietly given up the struggle and sunk without a trace.
My mind goes back in time. To my days in school. To those wonderful sepia tinted memories, given a truly safe distance from the reach of some terrifying teachers' arms (and rulers, canes, hands...)
My "love affair" with Maths started, if I remember right, in Std VI - till then we were taught Arithmetic which was fairly interesting and easy, interesting perhaps because it was easy. And then, in VI we came to a new class, a new subject called "Modern Mathematics" and a new tyrant of a teacher. Years later, I now can empathise with her frequent use of rulers and canes - not to draw lines on the blackboard but on our backs - because I now suspect that "Modern Mathematics" was equally beyond her understanding. So, we were given "homework" day after day while at the same time we were such wonderfully "outstanding" students, spending class after class outside in the corridor, kneeling down and copying our arrears of homework from those nerdy, geeky kids who had actually done theirs! The arrears of homework, therefore, continued to grow like our current account/fiscal deficit soon to resemble a Greek crisis.
Std VI, I remember, was also a time when I visited the Head Master's chambers almost every single day, a hand outstretched to receive 5 or 10 of his choicest. One learned, at that discerning age, that a thick fat cane was less dangerous than the thin reedy ones.
Std VII and VIII weren't much better, the went by in a blur of repetitive sessions of being outstanding, further research into what is the best remedy for a "pain killer" after one of those sessions with the head Master... we discovered that toothpaste had a remarkably cooling effect! (Talk of research!)
Std IX and X saw the love affair with Mathematics going up into a higher plane. A new teacher, for once a male, young, handsome like Amitabh Bachchan, and we fell in love with him - we tried, too, but in vain, to fall in love with the subject. Anthony was his name, I'm sure he must have been brilliant - the fault was ours, we just couldn't understand what he tried to teach. His aim was accurate, too, he could hit us in the face with a broken piece of chalk from a distance right across the classroom. He ought to have been in the national archery team, bulls eye every time!
I sat through 2 years of Trigonometry living under a whole cloud of darkness. Even today, those wonderful problems called "Proving the Identity" or whatever, proving that the LHS equals the RHS can leave me shivering and not because if the weather....
After many, many steps - many more than prescribed, certainly - I would arrive at that wonderful moment of truth. Having spent several minutes with my nose to the notebook, I would suddenly lift my head up, a look of joy on my face, a "Eureka" moment, the problem SOLVED..... right hand raised up in excitement.
Anthony would stroll over, take one look, his right hand would then catch hold of my earlobe between his thumb and forefinger while his left hand, index finger (looooooong one) pointing accusingly at the first line of the equation.
I would go red - not out of embarrassment, had run of THAT way back in Std VI - but because of his skill in deploying his fingers on my earlobes. What I had managed to do was LHS equals LHS. Somewhere, in those myriad steps, my RHS had quietly given up the struggle and sunk without a trace.
2012 - National year of mathematics. RIP.
